News

MasterCard jumps from 40th to 1st on the Media Monitors chart of advertisers after airing over 47,300 commercials on radio stations across the country last week. GEICO was pushed down to a distant second with 38,907 spots. Walgreen's came in third for the second week in a row airing 36,708 commercials, followed by Macy's (35,137) and Burger King (29,582).

It's called Univision Deportes, a new national sports radio network. The network will launch in 10 markets and will include sports commentary, live games, original content, and other programming beginning the first quarter of 2017.

Cumulus has announced the replacement show on WLS for The Jonathon Brandmeier Show. The husband and wife team of Bob Sirott and Marianne Murciano will host a new 10 a.m. to noon show starting January 2. The duo last hosted a show together from 2013-2015 on WGN.

In tandem with Bruce Dye and Brigadoon Fitness, and King of Carts, WOWO-AM/FM raised an impressive $171,904 during its annual Penny Pitch Radiothon. That total will be matched by a local sponsor to $343,808 and split between the Community Harvest Food Bank's program Hope for Heroes, and Super Shot.

That's the opinion of many including Chris Kampmeier (pictured), although there are many others who would disagree with that statement. The veteran programmer of 47 years is retiring December 31. His final position in the business was Region VP of Programming for iHeartMedia’s North Florida Region. We spoke to Kampmeier at length about his extremely successful run in radio, his management philosophy and, of course, programming. We'll be sharing that with you over the next several days. One of the questions we asked Kampmeier was about radio's commercial load. Here's what he had to say...

In a letter to Irving Azoff, the band Anthrax says including its songs in GMR's repetoire of music "presents a skewed and unjust misrepresentation of the complete facts." Anthrax has recorded and released more than 150 songs over 35 years. And the band says it does not want radio programmers to think that they cannot play any of those songs because Azoff has included them in his fight against the RMLC. Here's the full Anthrax letter to Azoff...

Bob Coburn was the voice of the longtime syndicated rock program called Rockline. KLOS has been his radio home since 1980 and the radio station announced Sunday Coburn has died of lung cancer after being diagnosed earlier this year. The station says Coburn was not in pain and he was surrounded by his family. (Picture courtesy KLOS website).

Steve Rooney, a popular radio personality on Mix 107.5/Clovis, NM, died near his home in Portales, Saturday night, when the vehicle he was driving encountered ice on the roadway, according to a news release from New Mexico State Police. He was 45.

With GM Dave Vagle retiring after managing Hubbard’s Alexandria, MN, market for 27 years, the company has chosen Derek Falter to take his place. Falter will oversee KIKV-FM and KULO-FM in Alexandria and KKWS-FM, KWAD-AM and KNSP-AM in Wadena.