News

Under the headline: "They Said It: Former Radio Executives Slam Terrestrial Radio" -- immediately after the story broke that Warshaw and Sharkey launched their new online radio station -- musicFIRST Coalition sent out a press release pulling quotes from a Billboard interview to try to convince their e-mail base that two "former" radio executives were bashing the radio industry.

Winners for the 2017 Radio Mercury Awards were announced Thursday night at the 26th annual awards presentation held in New York City. This year’s $50,000 Best of Show award was given to The Richards Group for their Motel 6 Campaign. This year’s Marketer of the Year Award was presented to T-Mobile.

The Oakland Raiders are due to move to Las Vegas in 2020 but Beasley Media is getting a jump start by signing a two-year deal to be the Raiders’ flagship in Las Vegas for the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

That's according to the Pensacola News-Journal, and there was no explanation why. The station has been an ESPN affiliate mixing local sports with the ESPN network since 2011. The paper reports owner Dan Weaver informed employees Wednesday that he was ceasing operations immediately.

On Thursday morning, Beasley Media launched "Lite 101.5 FM" on an FM translator in Las Vegas. The station will feature artists such as Maroon 5, Adele, and Madonna, and kick-off with 10,000 songs in a row, commercial-free. It's Beasley's sixth station in the Las Vegas market.

The 2017 CMT Music Awards takes place on June 7, 8 p.m. ET/PT, and CMT and iHeartMedia will again partner up to cover the event, simulcasting the live show from Nashville’s Music City Center across 120 iHeartCountry music radio stations.

And they come from the EVP of Corporate Marketing for Cumulus and Westwood One President Suzanne Grimes, who is one of Radio Ink's 2017 Most Influential Women in Radio. Grimes was recently singled out by Cumulus CEO Mary Berner in Cumulus' latest earnings call after Berner reported Westwood One had a "significantly positive performance in the quarter."

If listeners have the paid services iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access, they are now live on Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. Listeners can now save and replay songs from their favorite radio stations, access songs on-demand, and listen offline, while in the car. Drivers can replay songs and save songs directly to their on-demand library.

DGital Media, in tandem with Book Tour LLC, is launching the weekly podcast featuring the famed writer. Called Book Tour, the debut date is June 22 and the podcast will be recorded in conjunction with the national tour Grisham will be doing for Camino Island, his new novel about a stolen F. Scott Fitzgerald manuscript that turns up on the literary black market.

Lon Helton at Country Aircheck was the first to report that incoming Country Radio Hall of Famer Joe Wade Formicola passed away Tuesday after a brief illness. Formicola hosted mornings on WWWW/Detroit from 1987-1995. He was named CMA Personality of the Year in 1988. Joe shared this picture with Radio Ink back in 2016 which was taken when he worked at WKIX in Raleigh. Arrangements are pending.