Headlines

The National Association of Broadcasters has announced the 50 finalists for the 29th Annual NAB Crystal Radio Awards. The Crystal Radio Awards recognize stations for their year-round commitment to community service. Winners will be announced and the finalists will be honored at the Radio Luncheon April 19 at the 2016 NAB Show in Las Vegas. This year's finalists are:

The Academy of Country Music has announced the full list of radio award winners for the 51st Academy of Country Music Awards. This is the second National On-Air Personality of the Year win for The Bobby Bones Show (2013). Radio award winners will not be televised due to time constraints during the live telecast of the awards at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Sunday, April 3rd. Radio winners will be invited to receive their awards at a private reception in Las Vegas, Saturday, April 2nd.

The Philadelphia Phillies and SportsRadio 94WIP have extended their broadcast partnership for play-by-play of Phillies pre-season, regular season and post-season games. The new deal keeps all games on the FM dial. In a contract signed yesterday, it was stipulated that games would air only on WIP (94.1 FM). In the last few years, Phillies games were heard on both WIP-FM and WPHT-AM.

That's the title of a long piece in The Columbia Journalism Review and it focuses on how crucial radio was in getting the word out about the Flint water situation, which is now a major national news story.

Amid shrinking local budgets and fewer available on-air positions, how and where are Hispanic radio’s next superstars being developed? And how important is that to maintaining Hispanic radio’s edge against other formats that are appealing to its audience, as well as digital and nontraditional sources competing for share of ears? Find out the answers to those questions at the 2016 Radio Ink Hispanic Radio Conference in Fort Lauderdale next month.

That's four consecutive weeks as the top radio advertiser according to Media Monitors. Walgreens placed over 57,000 ads on radio stations all over the country last week.

The Radio Advertising Bureau will present four sales and marketing sessions in Las Vegas this April. The sessions are called: Radio’s Lunch and Learn: Creating Sustainable Performance, Small & Medium Radio Markets Idea Exchange, From Surviving to Thriving in Radio Sales and Digital Strategies Exchange for Radio Workshop.

Broker Bob Heymann of Media Services Group tells us that Mid-West has closed on the purchase of WNSN-FM, WSBT-AM, W241AD, WZOC-FM and WHFB-FM from Gray Television. The radio stations were spun off to Mid-West at the closing of Gray's purchase of the broadcast assets of Schurz Communications. Mid-West paid $5.5 Million for the radio stations.

The New York Times started the speculation that Pandora was in talks with Morgan Stanley to shop the company around. Now, Forbes takes the story to the next level and ponders, in an article written by Bobby Owsinski, who might actually purchase the company. And, he says Pandora, which has yet to consistently turn a profit, could fetch up to $2 billion in a sale.