News

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...

Thanks to broadcast attorney David Oxenford for simplifying this one for us. In his latest blog, Oxenford points out that the FCC is asking for comments on its proposed new fees, and the proposed fees go up significantly for broadcasters. The fees are meant to recoup the costs of the FCC’s regulation of the industries that it oversees.

That was partly due to two fewer selling days for radio's biggest ad category. GM, Ford and other manufacturers reported lower U.S. vehicle sales for May due to sluggish demand for sedans and those two fewer selling days. General Motors' sales fell 18 percent, Ford was down 6 percent and Toyota's sales dropped 10 percent compared to 2015. Volkswagen's sales were down 17 percent. Fiat Chrysler and Subaru saw slight increases. Hyundai's sales jumped 12 percent.

The company, owned by Duke Wright, purchased WNFN-FM in Millersville, Tennessee, from Joule Broadcasting for $3.75 million. Midwest now has three FMs in the Nashville area. Millersville is just north of the city. Eddie Esserman of Media Services Group was the exclusive broker on this deal.

Beasley Media Group, Inc. has hired Deirdre (“Deedy”) Palmer to serve as General Sales Manager for the company’s Las Vegas cluster. Palmer has two decades of radio industry experience in the Vegas market, along with magazine and custom publishing experience. Most recently, she was Vice President of Sales at a Las Vegas-based media company.