Radio News

The NAB on Tuesday afternoon revealed the 10 winners of the 2018 Crystal Radio Awards. Launched in 1987, the NAB Crystal Radio Awards honor radio stations for their outstanding year-round commitment to community service.

There were some smiles and some cheers, and a few standing ovations, at the inaugural NAB Achievement in Broadcasting awards dinner held Monday evening at the Encore Las Vegas resort ballroom tucked away deep inside the posh Strip-side venue. Some of the biggest applause at the ascap-sponsored event was given to a big syndicated morning host based in the Big Apple ... and an NAB veteran who attendees learned via a surprise announcement will be receiving the prestigious 2018 National Radio Award.

A Class A FM serving the Twin Tiers region of New York and Pennsylvania is trading hands. The buyer operates stations across central Pennsylvania and in Tioga County, Pa. However, those stations can't be heard where this Class A reaches, consulting engineers Carl T. Jones Corp. finds.

With an estimated 130,000 attendees here for the 2018 NAB Show, Nautel, PILOT and a Beasley Media Group Classic Hits station serving Southern Nevada believe that foot traffic — and the attendance of many FM radio station owners — will greatly help in spreading the word that live HD multiplex technology has arrived.

With Apple apparently unrelenting in its refusal to include an activated FM chip in its iPhones, a Southern California wireless technology company has seemingly delivered to the nation what Silicon Valley has been a bit reluctant to roll out: a way to access FM radio on an iOS-powered mobile device. The company behind it, Blackloud, is using the 2018 NAB Show as its launching pad for the next gen earbuds.

The final three months of 2017 resulted in mixed results for Christian and conservative-focused Salem Media Group. The first three months of 2018 on Wall Street for the Southern California-based company haven't exactly been mixed. In fact, they've been decisively dismal, with Salem shares falling to another five-year low in Thursday's trading on Wall Street.

Stockholders of Townsquare Media on Tuesday were invited to attend the local broadcast and digital media company's annual meeting, scheduled for May 14 at 9am at the company's Greenwich, Conn., headquarters. The invitation came from Steven Price, former CEO and now Executive Chairman of the company's board of directors. Attendees can submit questions during the annual meeting. They need not ask about Price's salary, or that of other top executives: That information was provided to them in a filing Townsquare has made with the SEC.

Expecting that Form 10-K filing for the 2017 fiscal year for iHeartMedia, the No. 1 owner of radio stations in the U.S.? You're going to have to wait a little bit for the company to submit the report to the Securities & Exchange Commission. The delay has nothing to do with its Chapter 11 bankruptcy organization, or with anything involving the company's operations in this hemisphere of planet Earth. 

Are the marketers and advertisers that the Executive Director of the Culture Marketing Council (CMC) speaks to every day aware of the power of Hispanic radio? Are they actively using Spanish-language radio stations to reach an important consumer segment? Those are two of the key questions posed to Horacio Gavilán by RBR+TVBR Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson in this latest Hispanic Radio Podcast.

ABC Radio and Skyview Networks are further aligning their resources in a move that is intended "to identify, develop and syndicate talent and programs to broadcast radio." ABC Radio will assess talent syndication opportunities for both music and news/talk formats and provide affiliate sales, while Phoenix-based Skyview will handle national sales and distribution.

For a generation of Southern Nevada residents, Stephens Media LLC is known as the former owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. There's another company, named Stephens Media Group, that is about to become the better-known of the similarly named entities. It just grabbed 14 radio stations in Washington State, and will now have a stable of 41 properties — including its four FMs in its home market of Tulsa.

More than 100 radio spots and campaigns have made it to the finals of the 2018 Radio Mercury Awards, which honor outstanding radio created by advertising agencies, production companies, radio stations and students. We've got the complete list of nominees.

A new industry-wide campaign from the Broadcasters Foundation of America has been launched as part of an expanded effort designed "to ensure that broadcasters in acute need know they can apply for aid" from the only charity devoted exclusively to providing financial assistance in times of illness, accident or natural disaster.

David Earl Hoxeng has emerged as a formidable operator in a mid-sized Gulf Coast market. In a deal filed with the FCC on Monday, his company has agreed to acquire a Class D facility branded as "Northwest Florida's Talk Radio." This will be paired with an expanded-band AM with an FM translator serving this market, and a 100kw Class C1 Country station. It follows the assumption of control by Hoxeng's company of this facility in December 2017, via a Time Brokerage Agreement with a financially stressed seller.

Thirteen months ago, the sale of an AM station that uses a six-tower array to reach Arkansas' largest metropolitan area seemed assured. However, that deal never happened. In August, the facility went dark. Now, a sale is moving forward — to a different party, a Form 314 filing made with the Commission on Monday reveals.