People in the News

He's the Senior VP and GM of Greater Media Interactive, a role he's occupied since 2007, and he says he'll be retiring at the end of this month. Before going digital, Tom Bender was Regional GM for Greater Media’s Detroit cluster since 1986, where he was responsible for creating one of the first Classic Rock stations in America, WCSX-FM, and a whole lot more.

iHeartMedia’s Jeff Stevens has been moved up to Senior VP Programming in Dayton. iHeart has six FMs and two AMs in the Dayton market. Stevens was PD and morning show personality for Mix 107.7 in Dayton and has been with iHeart/Clear Channel for 22 years.

77 WABC’s Joan Hamburg taped a special show at Sardi's Restaurant in New York City this week to celebrate this Sunday’s Tony Awards. Hamburg chatted it up with some of Broadway’s biggest names to talk about their shows and Tony nominations.

WNKS KISS 95.1’s Maney, Roy and LauRen Morning Show crew will appear on TLC’s My Big Fat Fabulous Life, starring Whitney Thore. The third season premieres Wednesday, June 8 at 9/8c.

Gantt will hold shifts on both KHQT (Hot 103) and KSNM (Classic Hits 98.7). A North Carolina native, Stacy "Carolina" Gantt is also a graduate of the Charlotte, NC, campus of Connecticut School of Broadcasting. Her first radio job was an intern on the Ace & TJ Show on WNKS.

Mike Tyler, owner of Broadcast Affiliate Sales and partner in Fishnet Syndication, has been hired by BizTalkRadio to head up affiliate relations. Tyler was most recently VP at TKO Radio Networks, which he and his Partner Kent Jones purchased. Mike was also VP of Rejoice Radio Networks before becoming a Partner in Fishnet Syndication. Tyler has also served on the NAB's Board of Directors.

The former WRQN-FM Toledo PD is joining the Tom Kent Radio Network. He is moving into affiliate sales handling AC and Country products. Elliott has also had stops at South Central Media in Evansville, IN, and Northern Broadcast Group in Traverse City. He was also Chief Marketing Consultant of Radio One 2 One in Indianapolis.

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.

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.

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.