News

The Home Depot has been radio's top advertiser for 18 weeks in a row now, according to Media Monitors. Last week, the big-box home improvement store ran a whopping 72,599 commercials on radio stations across the country. That was over 10,000 more commercials than the prior week.

One radio station has chronicled the Little League World Series in Williamsport for 72 years. NewsRadio 1400 AM WRAK, now owned by iHeartmedia. The combination of WRAK and its iHeart Williamsport sister stations – Bill 95.5/95.3 FM and 102.7 KISS-FM – will offer exclusive U.S. radio play-by-play coverage of all 32 games of the Series, scheduled for Aug. 16-26.

The two companies have entered into an arrangement to bring “On-Demand Music Research” from Bridge Ratings to radio stations on a barter basis. Summit Media is the first radio group to sign on to the Focus 360 deal for its music stations in Birmingham, Louisville, and Richmond.

The folks at St. Louis' 105.7 The Point know how to get those charity dollars rolling in. The long-awaited Rizzuto Show “Lock In” Punishment saw hosts Burton, Moon, and Patrico spending 24 hours straight together in a booth at Gingham's Homestyle Restaurant in St. Charles, Missouri. In addition to the station's radiothon, the final tally of donations was $52,964.

United Stations Radio Networks has signed a deal to partner with celebrity and entertainment news website THE BLAST.com to create exclusive content for its affiliated radio stations.

iHeartRadio has created “Your Weekly Mixtape," a personalized playlist for each listener, updated each Monday. iHeart is rolling out the new feature to all registered users. It is a personalized playlist with music from the listener’s favorite artists and songs, as well as new releases and trending music fine-tuned for each individual listener every week.

Alpha Media sent out a press release at 1AM this morning that stated Larry Wilson is stepping down as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the company. Under Wilson's leadership, Alpha has grown to 225 stations in 48 markets. No reason was given for the change.

Megan Stone has been named co-host of WEBE 108 Connecticut’s WEBE Wake Up Morning Show with Jay Michaels. The popular morning radio show serves radio listeners in Fairfield and New Haven counties and airs weekdays 5:30 a.m.-10:00 a.m.

(By Bob McCurdy) Digital marketing has unleashed an obsession with efficiency and short-termism, one that's trading long-term brand-building, for short-term ROI, and it's negatively impacting the brand, business growth, and profit.

(By Jeff McHugh) When is the last time you attended a convention with over 2,000 attendees? At Podcast Movement 2018 in Philadelphia last week, my hand cramped from writing down pages and pages of new ideas. Here are the most interesting things I learned...