News

Stephanie Ollinger was the midday host on NRG's Country station WYTE-FM in Wausau-Stevens Point, Wisconsin. She died on Saturday while celebrating her anniversary with her husband. She was only 31.

With GEICO at number one, airing over 42,000 spots, and The Home Depot at number two with 28,952 commercials last week, Rite Aid jumped to the number three spot, up from 12, on the Media Monitors weekly chart. The drugstore chain ran 27,675 ads. McDonald's and Burger King battled it out for 4th and 5th with 27,645 and 26,508 spots respectively.

Media Monitors also tells us that from the 85 major radio markets it is keeping an eye on that Hillary Clinton For President aired 15,902 spots in the last 10 days. Gary Johnson’s campaign went from 1,827 spots to 39. And, the Great America PAC bought 15 ads, down from 124 spots.

Broker Michael Bergner fills us in on this deal. Kirby Confer and Donald Alt own Forever Media and they are purchasing WCEI-FM and WINX-FM in Easton, Maryland, from First Media. They will pay $6.5 million for the two stations.

Atlanta’s STAR 94.1 has added a man with an interesting name to its personality roster. Zack Babb will cover weekdays, 8 p.m. to midnight, as well as hosting occasional weekend shifts.

KKHH-FM in Texas announced two on-air changes on Monday. Michele McKnight (pictured) will officially take over middays and JayDee (DJ Dizzle) takes over as the new evening host. McKnight and Jay Dee have been rotating shifts on a part-time basis for HOT 95-7 since June.

Sports Talk 790 AM will be Innes' new home after his August firing by WIP in Philadelphia. Innes was let go by CBS after he harshly criticized competitor Mike Missanelli on the air and on Twitter. Missanelli works for Greater Media’s 97.5 The Fanatic and was caught up in a fake caller controversy. Innes will host afternoons for iHeart in Houston, the same slot he held in Philadelphia with CBS.

The announcement has added extra luster to next year’s CRS in Nashville (February 22-24). Keith will present Toby Keith: My Way on Friday, Feb. 24 from 3-4 p.m. CT., discussing his career, forming his own label, and building a business empire, among other things.

iHeartMedia has given up on country music in Indianapolis. After 14 months the company has flipped formats from country to Hip Hop and will now battle with Radio One for that audience. The iHeart station kicked off Monday at noon with with 10,000 songs in a row.

WAY Media President Bob Augsburg tells Radio Ink that as WAY-FM prepares to celebrate 30 years of ministry, listeners responded with a record-setting response to fund the ministry.