News

Louisville Public Media has hired Ryan Van Velzer as 89.3 WFPL’s Energy and Environment Reporter. In this role, Van Velzer will continue WFPL’s coverage of topics ranging from sustainability and climate change to energy economics and environmental regulations.

A healthy increase in paid subscribers helped Pandora's total Q4 2017 revenues rise 7% to $395.3 million. Fourth quarter subscription revenue was $97.7 million, an increase of 63% over Q4 2016. The company says it now has 5.48 million Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium subscribers.

That could be the first time ever that the word "decline" followed the word "revenue" when reporting about Pandora. Q4, at least for radio, is typically the strongest quarter for ad revenue, as advertisers look to pull in consumers for the holidays. Not so for Pandora.

Despite increasing total revenue from $1.38 billion to $1.46 billion in 2017, Pandora continues to lose money quarter after quarter, year after year. In 2016, Pandora's net loss was $343 million. That number jumped to $518.3 million last year.

(By Lisa Thal) Every day you meet with businesses to discuss how to help them connect to their consumers using your powerful medium. How do you succeed at this? By creating simple and memorable marketing campaigns with emotion.

And that's thanks to the FCC's repeal of a rule that required broadcasters, with secondary licenses, to maintain paper copies some of certain Commission rules. A Report and Order was to be considered Thursday at the FCC's regular meeting. However, the Commission went ahead and repealed the rule and deleted the item from the agenda.

Cumulus has launched 101.5 Jack FM in Lexington (WVLK-FM). The previous format was the ever-dwindling NASH Icon format. The new station debuted Tuesday.

With one week left on a 30-day grace period after skipping a $106 million interest payment, Bloomberg is reporting that senior iHeart lenders "are preparing to pitch a new term sheet to junior bondholders in an attempt to unite all the creditor groups behind a common proposal."

The new 24/7 channel will feature shows hosted by popular sports talk personalities Jim Rome, Tiki Barber, Brandon Tierney, Scott Ferrall, Taz, Marc Malusis, Damon Amendolara, Bill Reiter, Amy Lawrence and others.

Jim McCloud joins Entercom from Major League Baseball, where he was Group Director & VP of Sponsorship Sales & Client Services. Entercom creates a new position for McLoud, Executive VP of National Business Development. McCloud will focus on bringing Entercom more national revenue.