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Houston contemporary Christian music station 89.3 KSBJ recently held its most successful Sharathon, an annual four-day on-air fundraising event. On Friday alone, over 50% of funds needed to reach the Sharathon goal were raised, along with the largest one-time gift in KSBJ history, $150,000 from an anonymous donor.

It's the 16th year for the NAB Education Foundation's Broadcast Leadership Training program and 15 broadcasters graduated from the 10-month Executive MBA-style program. With this class, 270 participants have graduated from the program.

When the NAB caught wind of Wheeler's fact sheet, the trade organization representing radio and TV was not happy. NAB Executive Vice President of Communications Dennis Wharton said, "It is shocking that regulators who bless mammoth mergers like AT&T/DirecTV and Charter/Time Warner Cable would still bar common ownership of two TV stations or broadcast/newspaper combinations in a local market." Here's the full NAB statement...

In his May 26 blog entitled "Court Chides FCC For Not Doing Its Job," Broadcast attorney John Garziglia predicted the FCC might just take the easy way out and basically do nothing to the ownership rules. And, for sure, The Commission did nearly exactly what Garziglia opined last month. He also wrote about what the court might do if the Commission did decide to do nothing.

Bob Papper, who is a Professor Emeritus at Hofstra University, has released his seventh annual survey of newsrooms across the United States. Papper reports that salaries in radio newsrooms were up 3.1% from last year – after dropping 4.1% a year ago and barely moving the year before that.

According to the new BIA State of the Industry report, stations in the largest markets account for a disproportionate share of overall industry revenues. Radio stations in the top 50 ranked markets constitute 19.1 percent of commercial radio stations in the U.S. but generated 52.8 percent of all over-the-air advertising revenues in 2015. Check out this chart for more details...

In the new BIA/Kelsey State of The Industry report, the research firm says stations airing those formats attract larger numbers of higher income and higher educated listeners. In contrast a lower share of revenue goes to Spanish language stations.

MediaPost has the details from a new Juniper Research study that says digital advertising revenue will double to $285 Billion by 2020. The study also says ad blocking is expected to cost publishers $27 billion in lost revenues in the next five years. The study also predicts mobile advertising is expected to grow by 64.2% through 2020.

The new deal includes all games being broadcast in WZGC-FM (The Game). Additionally, new Hawks-based content – across digital, social, and radio channels – for both 92.9 The Game and V-103, will be developed as part of the expanded partnership. Steve Holman will begin his 32nd year as the play-by-play announcer for the franchise in 2016-17.

Joan Hamburg does a lot of things extremely well. Wife, mother (she has a National Mother of the Year award for that), broadcaster, friend, advocate, and humanitarian. Joan Hamburg has succeeded at many roles throughout her storied career. And in 2016 she was named Radio Ink's MIW Legend.