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Eric Mastel has taken what we are told was a struggling cluster for Cumulus and turned it into one of the company's top performers. You cannot do that without getting people to follow you into battle.

In the latest Nielsen report, in the Hispanic 18-and-over demo, radio runs away with the audience. Approximately 96.7% of the Hispanic population is reached by radio on a weekly basis, 7 percentage points higher than television. The smartphone is a distant third at 81.5%. That 96.7% number, according to Nielsen, translates to just under 35 million Hispanics reached every week by radio.

eMarketer reports that US marketers will allocate an average of 11.6% of their ad budget and inventory to digital audio by mid-2017, doubling what they spent two years earlier. The research suggests the money will go to streaming music services and podcasts, and most likely be done through programmatic buying.

Talk show host Jerry Springer has a weekly podcast called Tales, Tunes & Tomfoolery. He has joined Westwood One’s Podcast & On-Demand platform via audioBoom and Westwood will now provide exclusive ad sales representation for the show.

The RTDNA handed out its prestigious Edward R. Murrow awards last night in Washington, DC. ABC News Radio won the top honor for Overall Excellence in Radio, Breaking News- Radio and Hard News- Radio. VP for ABC Radio Steve Jones accepted the award and here's what he had to say.

That's according Triton Digital which released its July ranker on Monday. According to the latest stats, overall streaming has seen steady growth when compared to July 2015. "Both pureplays and AM/FM broadcasters showed positive growth during the Monday-Friday 6:00 a.m.-8:00 p.m. daypart and the Monday-Sunday 6:00 a.m.-Midnight daypart."

CBS' 104.1 JACK-FM (KZJK) in Minneapolis says Remy Maxwell will become the station’s first ever live afternoon drive host later this month. Remy started his radio career more than 20 years ago, with shows in L.A., Minneapolis, and on Sirius. He joined KZJK in December 2010 as the Imaging Director and live event personality.

Michele Kiefer has been named GSM for iHeartMedia's five radio stations in Charlotte. Kiefer is a 22-year media veteran who previously served as Senior VP of Sales for iHeart in Indianapolis. She has also worked as D.O.S. for Cumulus in Indianapolis.

If you don't know the answer to that question, you need to be at Radio Ink's Forecast 2017 in New York City. Is the brain replacing the heart in digital media buying? As it’s now tracking, digital will soon make up half of all agency revenue, yet only one of the top five digital agencies is an established, traditional advertising company. The new players come from technology and digital placement is a science dictated by equations and algorithms.

As more public companies report earnings, it certainly will be interesting to see how well they are doing with political advertising revenue. Last week, Emmis CEO Jeff Smulyan said he was disappointed so far, and the report from Media Monitors each week isn't very encouraging.