News

Known as Stuttering John on the Howard Stern Show, John Melendez launched a new podcast, Thursday, with PodcastOne. In the first episode, Melendez interviews America’s Got Talent judge and comedian Howie Mandell. You can listen to that episode HERE. Picture courtesy Twitter.

Red Zebra Broadcasting made the announcement late Thursday that Tony Kornheiser would be leaving the Washington, D.C., sports station. Kornheiser says he'll be launching a podcast in September. His final show will be in late June. The station will be announcing plans for his 11-1 shift shortly.

Veteran Arkansas broadcaster Bobby Caldwell adds a trio of stations to his Russellville, Arkansas group. Caldwell is purchasing KARV-AM & FM and KYEL-FM from Kermit and Diane Womack of Springdale, Arkansas. The sale price is $800K.

Owen Grover has been promoted to Executive VP & GM of Content Development & Distribution for iHeartMedia. He'll oversee the creation and distribution of content across the iHeartMedia network of station and personality sites, and third-party social platforms.

Two Alpha Media stations in Savannah-Hilton Head, GA, have earned some bragging rights. Two of their personalities brought home honors from the Connect Savannah Readers’ Choice Awards. Tim Leary and the Morning Showgram from New Country BOB 106.9 (WUBB) received “Best Morning Radio Show” and Ryan Koch from Rock 106.1 (WFXH) won “Best Local Radio Personality.”

Frank and funny comedian and nationally syndicated radio host D.L. Hughley is set to be a featured guest co-host on the nationally syndicated morning talk show Live with Kelly alongside Kelly Ripa on Monday, June 6.

The news from ESPN is that popular writer and commentator John Clayton expanding his role with a new local weekday show on 710 ESPN Seattle. Appropriately called John Clayton, the show will air weekdays from 10 a.m. to Noon on 710 ESPN Seattle beginning Monday, June 6.

New York baseball fans are about to get even more spoiled. Balls and Strikes with Matthews and Rubin will provide blanket coverage of the Yankees and Mets every Sunday morning, 7-9 a.m., on 98.7 ESPN. Along with insight and analysis, there’ll be a load of big-name guests.

For the answer to that question, we reached out to broadcast attorney John Garziglia for more analysis. Garziglia has blogged about this issue before for Radio Ink (HERE). Does Garziglia believe this is the final chapter of the war? Let's find out.

This ruling will be of big interest to broadcasters, especially those running music stations. ABS Entertainment argued that pre-1972 songs were protected under state law and could not be broadcast on the radio without permission. In 2015, ABS filed a copyright case against CBS (and others) for pre-1972 recordings for artists such as Al Green. CBS lawyers responded by saying it did not publicly perform any of ABS's pre-1972 recordings and this week a judge agreed with CBS Radio. Here are the details...