News

Benztown has partnered with BMG Production Music, to offer BMG PM’s commercial production music library to radio stations. Through this partnership, BMG Production Music has granted Benztown the exclusive right to distribute and offer its catalog of production music and elements to the U.S. radio market.

Pandora is getting into the country music spirit on June 6, ahead of the CMA Festival and the CMT Music Awards. “Sounds Like Country” is a live celebration in the heart of Nashville and will feature star artists, including Jake Owen, Old Dominion, and RaeLynn.

The company says that's because of direct deals Pandora has with the labels. Collections in Q1 were $161.9 million, compared to $189.3 million in Q1 of 2016. The company says even though collections were down, membership is up, with 10,000 new artists and rights owners joining SoundExchange in the first quarter. 32,000 members received a payout in Q1.

It’s an exclusive long-term agreement under which Harvey will continue as host of The Steve Harvey Morning Show, which now reaches 7 million weekly listeners on almost 100 stations. Harvey will also work with iHeartMedia on a variety of projects.

The company has hired Mike Dee under the title of President of Entercom Sports. As Entercom integrates the CBS properties it will significantly increase the number of sports stations it has as well as the play-by-play activity. Entercom was already a big believer in local sports talk and play-by-play.

That from Caroline Beasley on the Beasley first-quarter earnings call Tuesday. She wasn't specific but you could speculate that one of those surprises took place in Philadelphia where eight Account Executives jumped ship right as the deal to purchase Greater Media was closing. No reason was given for the mass exodus. That's a lot to overcome in a major market and as a result it had an impact on revenue with Philadelphia down 13%.

On May 15, Salem’s San Diego News/Talk station, AM 1170 The Answer, will expand The Hugh Hewitt Morning Show by an additional hour, airing it 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. PT, and add Mike Gallagher Live from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. PT. Hewitt moved to mornings last April and quickly became the "go to" guy for this last presidential campaign. 

The company reported a same-station revenue decline of $2 million in the first quarter, blaming 35% of the decrease on the absence of political revenue. The remainder of the decline was partially attributable to the reformatting of a station in Tampa (the old Bubba the Love Sponge station) and integration issues in Philadelphia.

The worst kept secret at ESPN is that Mike Greenberg will be heading over to the TV side to host his own show. What has been a very well kept secret is who will replace Greenberg and sit next to Mike Golic. At first the speculation was that it would be his son, Mike Jr. New York Daily News writer Bob Raissman is now reporting that Trey Wingo will be Golic's new partner.

Morning show host Kevin Kline, of KKBQ-FM/The New 93Q, set out on Saturday, April 29, in Milan, Italy, to run the Ultra Milano Sanremo and completed the 178.5-mile race in 47.5 hours. And if that isn’t impressive enough, he finished 14th out of a field of 100 runners. Better still, Kline ran to raise awareness and money for the fight against childhood cancer.