News

Podcasts. Nothing but podcasts. iHeartMedia in Allentown has debuted "The iHeartPodcast Channel." One podcast after another, most of them one hour long, will be played on AM 1470 in Allentown.  Here are the shows iHeart has chosen for this station.

Saga is in acquisition mode and looking to grow. CEO Ed Christian says a couple of brokers have nicknamed him Goldilocks. The reason, Christian says, is his game plan to purchase a single station here, or a single station there.

On Tuesday Saga Communications reported a net revenue increase of 4.7% to $32.9 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2018. On a same-station basis for the 12 months ended December 31, 2018, net revenue increased 1.1% to $116.5 million.

On a busy earnings day, Salem was the final company to report Tuesday with same station net broadcast revenue increasing 1.9% to $50.3 million from $49.3 million in Q4 of 2017. Digital revenue increased 4% to $11.5 million from $11.1 million.

Beasley has promoted Kent Dunn to the position of Regional VP for Augusta and Fayetteville. Dunn has been overseeing the company’s cluster in Augusta. He replaces Erika Beasley who was running the Fayetteville cluster and is now Corporate Digital Content Director for Local Markets

Kudos to Meg Stevens who has been named Region Senior Vice President of Programming for iHeart's Atlanta Region. Stevens joins the Atlanta Region from WKKT 96.9 The Kat.

That's the opinion of former Housing and Urban Development Director Henry Cisneros, who was a keynote speaker at the Radio Ink Hispanic Conference in Miami, Tuesday. Cisneros asked Hispanic Broadcasters to use their voice to make sure their audience understands how President Trump is singling them out.

Another positive quarterly report from a public radio company. Townsquare CEO Bill Wilson says he's feeling pretty good about how the company's performing. With more of a focus on local, a highly lucrative digital division, and strong political ad revenue, Townsquare had an excellent fourth quarter in 2018 and it appears 2019 is looking strong as well.

Senior Vice President of Digital Content at Westwood One, Tim Sabean, is out with a new blog detailing how important creative is to driving sales. And as Sabean correctly points out, "the relationship between the listener and the host is intimate, and ads reach a captive, engaged listener." Sabean then explains how podcast hosts can make the strongest impact.

It's a five-part blog series that sheds light on how radio can survive and thrive in a connected world. The first blog is “Alexa, Are My Station’s Smart Speaker Promos Working?”