News

San Diego Padres radio voice Ted Leitner announced on Twitter that he has cancer and will be stepping away from the broadcast booth indefinitely. The 71-year old Leitner has called Padres games since 1980. He underwent surgery Thursday after calling Wednesday's Padres game.

Winners for the 2018 Radio Mercury Awards were announced Thursday night at the 27th annual awards presentation held in New York City. This year’s $50,000 Best of Show award was split between FCB Chicago (pictured here) for their "Tours" Radio Flyer Campaign and Fitzco//Casanova McCann for their "Share A Coke 1,000 Name Celebration" Campaign.

David LaBrozzi is the new PD at Cumulus' 95.5 PLJ in New York City. LaBrozzi takes over for Rick Gillette who left the company in January. He joins Cumulus Media from Entercom Baltimore, where he was VP of Programming for the company’s four-station cluster for 14 years.

Corus Media has picked Don Kollins to program two of their FM music stations in Winnipeg, Canada. Kollins most recently programmed KGMZ-FM in San Francisco for Entercom. He will program both Power 97 and Peggy 99.1 for Corus.

Johnny Vincent has been announced as Operations Manager for Townsquare Media's Billings, MT cluster, which includes KCTR-FM, KKBR-FM, KMHK-FM, and KBUL AM-FM. 

As Chief Marketing Officer at the Katz Media Group, Stacey Schulman is responsible for elevating the perception and currency of radio, and driving overall growth for Katz Media Group's station clients, of which there are many. The last time we interviewed Schulman, she was Executive VP of Strategy, Analytics and Research at Katz. She was promoted to CMO this past May.

Many of radio’s best leaders say they never would have made it to the top of their careers without being mentored. We reached out to several of radio’s best leaders to get their input and opinion on being mentors and providing mentorship. Here’s what they had to say.

(By Gary Berkowitz) Good news! You have a successful, well-rated morning team on your station. Bad news: They do not get along off the air. With so much emphasis on post-show events (promotions, events, appearances, social media), what’s a PD or GM to do? 

Bible Broadcasting Network closed on its $5.1 million purchase of WCPQ-FM, licensed to Park Forest, IL. WCLR Incorporated was the seller and Bob Heymann of Media Services Group was the broker. The sale was announced in March. WCPQ covers the southern suburbs of Chicago, Joliet, and Kankakee. BBN will carry a religious format, pushing out Polish and dance.

June 5, 1968, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just declared victory in the California presidential primary. Mutual News' Andrew West filed a nearly seven-minute report during the chaos. West’s report is owned by Westwood One News and it will be part of the network's coverage this Tuesday.