News

University of California, Berkeley, student Veronica Irwin is the winner of the third annual BMI Founders Award for Radio Broadcasting scholarship competition.

Keith Hastings is the program director for Cox Media Group's KISS and KTKX in San Antonio. He is also the Rock format leader for the company. With 40 years now in the business, Hastings started in radio at age 16 and is now in his 32nd year of programming radio stations. He's also one of Radio Ink's Best Programmers of 2018.

On Wednesday, the company reported that revenue from its radio division was down less than 1% compared to Q1 2017. Urban One saw revenue growth in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Richmond offset by declines in Atlanta, Raleigh, and St. Louis. CEO Alfred Liggins said there are two big markets that are pretty much dragging the revenue down.

While McDonald's remains one of radio's biggest advertisers, Urban One has really taken a revenue hit from the restaurant chain.

That's the question Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins left everyone pondering yesterday. At the end of 2017, when Tom Joyner signed his last 2-year deal with Reach Media, he announced he'd be retiring at the end of 2019. Liggins isn't so sure about that.

It's been an up and down year so far for radio's largest advertising category. Auto sales were slow in February, up in March, and now weal in April. GM was off by about 8%, Ford posted a 4.7% decline in sales for the month, Nissan dropped a whopping 28% in April and Toyota reported it was down 4.7%.

Isaac Mizrahi, co-president and COO of Miami-based multicultural advertising agency Alma, discusses the important role both Spanish-language radio and English-language radio targeted to Hispanics has for the marketers and advertisers he works with on a daily basis in the latest Hispanic Radio Podcast from Radio Ink.

After fielding a question about the possibility of more stations being sold, following the $12.2 million sale of WPZR-FM in Detroit, Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins wanted his employees to listen to what he had to say and not pay attention to rumors.

He was fired from SiriusXM in July of 2017, three years after his former radio partner Anthony Cumia was fired from the satellite company after going on a racist tirade on Twitter. On Wednesday, Westwood One announced it is launching a new podcast With Gregg "Opie" Hughes, one half of the former syndicated radio team, "Opie and Anthony." The first podcast will be May 7.

Beginning in June, Sun Broadcast Group will offer national ad sales support for the Envision's 24/7 Weather Network. Sun Broadcast Group CEO Jason Bailey said, “We know how important staying local and relevant is to our advertisers and we strive to deliver quality content to them—it’s great to have a partner like Envision Networks, who share that sentiment.”