News

Westwood One is will celebrate Independence Day with a four-hour holiday music special, Celebrate the USA with Maddie & Tae. The all-star birthday party will feature music from Country all-stars Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney, Jason Aldean, Carrie Underwood, and Florida Georgia Line.

The Washington Examiner has the details from the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who said the reason Republican base voters have unrealistic expectations is because of talk radio. And when politicians say talk radio, that usually means Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and other Conservative talkers.

Steve Lehman, the founder and CEO of Premiere Networks, and chairman of multiplatform media company Business Rockstars, is joining a company called Creatv Media. The new firm is being launched by Peter Csathy. According to Variety, Creatv’s investments will be focused on seed-stage rounds in emerging technology and the digital media space.

Media Monitors reports Hillary Clinton’s campaign ran a paltry 445 spots as her campaign to win the primary crossed the finish line. Even more alarming for radio was that Bernie Sanders For President aired only 170 spots, while Donald Trump’s campaign bought a measly two radio ads. No Super PAC or campaign ran negative or “against” ads on radio in the last 10 days. The Media Monitors data is from 82 major markets from May 27 to June 5, 2016.

How much should your clients trust their advertising agencies. Well, according to a new report, not much. On Tuesday, The Association of National Advertisers released a very damaging 58-page report that hits advertising agencies hard in how they conduct business and look upon their clients.

Pandora says its new visual ad experience is a series of native, mobile ad formats that make rich media, video, and display ads more impactful and effective for marketers. It will give listeners more control over the ads they see. The ads launch in beta this summer with Express and the Lexus Dealer Association, and will be available to all advertisers later this year.

Nielsen will once again rate the Newburgh-Middletown, NY, market, twice each year, starting with the Spring survey next month. The Newburgh metro includes Orange County, NY, and the TSA will also include Sullivan County. With a population of about 315,300 people, Newburgh, which has been measured before, comes in as market 154 among the 275+ markets measured by Nielsen. Townsquare will be a subscriber.

Adam Parness will join Pandora in July as Head of Publisher Licensing and Relations. Parness will be responsible for leading Pandora’s relationships with songwriters and music publishers, including the development of broader product rights and internationalization in order to increase revenue, retention and customer engagement.

710 ESPN Seattle is expanding to 14 hours of local, weekday programming with the addition of Gee Scott from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. beginning next week. Scott’s journey into the Seattle sports scene began in 2003, cleaning the vehicles of Seahawks’ players and coaches.

(By Kevin Neathery) You, like me, probably landed in radio sales on your way to or from somewhere else. You probably began as a rep on the street armed with a one-sheet spot package and a dirge list of discarded “accounts” no one else could sell. You bloodied your nose, learned the business, grew your billing, and one day, boom, someone “leaves” (poor devil) and you are the new Sales Manager!