News

Bonneville has hired Steve DiNardo as D.O.S. for its new San Francisco cluster. DiNardo will oversee sales for KOIT-FM, KMVQ-FM, KBLX-FM, and KUFX-FM. DiNardo was Market Manager for Entercom in San Francisco until October when Susan Larkin took over. Bonneville will LMA the stations as part of Entercom's divestiture plan to help close its merger with CBS.

Eddie Esserman is the new Managing Director at the brokerage firm, taking over for George Reed. Esserman has been a director at MSG for nearly 20 years. Reed said, “I look forward to devoting more time to brokering. Thirteen years as Managing Director is at least 10 more than I ever intended.” MSG also announced that Will Cate is joining the company as Research Director.

Want to get your kids away from “screen staring” for a while? NPR’s podcast Wow in the World just might be the answer — and 40 new episodes are being rolled out starting November 6. The show was launched in May, and has topped the kids and family podcast charts, reaching over five million downloads.

Cumulus Media has announced that it has appointed Chris Hart (known on-air as “Big Chris” Hart) as Program Director for Classic Hip Hop radio station KNEV-FM/95.5 The Vibe in Reno, NV. A 15-year veteran of Reno radio, Hart was previously Program Director and afternoon on-air host for KWFP-FM in Reno, following a decade at KUUB-FM in Reno.

ESPN Syracuse has created a new local sports talk show featuring actor Daniel Baldwin. The Daniel Baldwin Show airs from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday. Baldwin is the main host, joined in studio by co-host Josh Grosvent who is also the host of The Show mornings on K-ROCK (WKRL-FM and WKLL-FM).

Live events and national digital revenue are not working out the way Townsquare hoped. On the other hand, radio is. The company announced it's conducting a review of its Entertainment division due to another poor revenue quarter, which could result in a reorganization of that division. That would also mean a total focus on growing core revenue, which comes from radio.

It was a four-man show on the Townsquare earnings call, Tuesday. Former CEO Steven Price, now Executive Board Chairman, introduced new Co-CEOs Bill Wilson and Dhruv Prasad. Wilson will focus on running the radio stations while Prasad focuses on other aspects of the business such as M&A, dealing with investors, and HR.

On the eve of his next court date (today), former WFAN host Craig Carton spoke to USA Today about his life being turned upside down since his arrest in September. Carton, who resigned from his high-paying morning show co-host chair, is accused of being part of a Ponzi scheme that fraudulently procured $4.6 million from a hedge fund.

If you've never listened to Saga Communications CEO Ed Christian's earnings calls before Tuesday, you might think he dabbled in Russian vodka himself before getting into his quarterly numbers. This time around Christian peppered CFO Sam Bush (pictured) with questions about Russia.

Same-station revenue for the company declined 1.1% to $29.6 million. Same-station revenue for the nine months of 2017 was $85.8 million compared to $88.2 million for the same period last year. CEO Ed Christian and CFO Sam Bush did not go into any details about market or category performance for the quarter, and said October was pacing up while it was too early to tell how November and December would end up.