News

The name of the new podcast is "Embedded," and it's hosted by "All Things Considered" co-host Kelly McEvers. In each episode, McEvers and other NPR reporters are embedded newsmakers around the world, including Texas biker gangs, police on Skid Row, the makers of a negative political ad, and the people most affected by El Salvador's gang war.

Westwood One has announced a new partnership with podcaster Jason Stapleton, host of the top-rated podcast, The Jason Stapleton Program. The show is one of the largest liberty-minded podcasts in the world.

710 ESPN, a Bonneville Seattle station, and MLB's Seattle Mariners have agreed to a multi-year contract extension and the station will continue as the home of Mariners baseball. The Mariners have been broadcasting on 710 ESPN since the station’s transition to an all-sports format in 2009. KIRO-AM was also the team’s flagship station from 1985 – 2002.

Marta DeLisi has returned to Beasley's WJBR-FM in Wilmington as GSM. DeLisi says radio is her life but Beasley is her home. “Over the past 14 years, I’ve worked in several radio positions at stations throughout the Philadelphia and Wilmington media markets, but my greatest accomplishments were when I have worked for Beasley."

In our ongoing effort to troll the country and find radio stations doing unique, out-of-the-box radio so we can share those ideas with you, we tripped upon what Cayuga Radio Group General Manager Chet Osadchey is doing in Ithaca, New York.

Entercom Gainesville-Ocala has shifted Peter Rothfuss into the GSM position for its 4-station cluster. Since 2014, Rothfuss has served as an Integrated Marketing Specialist at Entercom Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Rothfuss has held sales management positions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Florida.

Chuck Whitaker is now the Operations Manager of Cumulus' five-station cluster in Pensacola. Whitaker joined Cumulus Pensacola last year as PD of AC-formatted WMEZ-FM after more than 20 years programming stations in Augusta, including nine years at Beasley Top 40 WHHD.

As we reported yesterday, iHeart got into a bit of a battle with bondholders over its debt. Specifically, some of the lenders say iHeart violated covenants by transferring 100K shares of stock to a subsidiary called Broader Media. On Wednesday, the State District Court in Bexar County, Texas, issued iHeart a 14-day restraining order rescinding the notices of default issued by a several iHeart lenders. The court has the option to extend the temporary order another 14 days. As a condition to obtaining the temporary restraining order, iHeart agreed not to dispose of any additional shares until a hearing is held.

Even with only $425K in political revenue in Q4 of 2015, compared to $850K in 2014, Salem was able to increase broadcast revenue over 5%. When you back out political, as every public company loves to do, the increase was over 6%.

Despite still having issues with how Facebook algorithms push consumers to Salem's numerous websites, Salem reported an increase in digital revenue in Q4. The company took in $12.2 million in digital revenue, up 3.8% over 2014.