Radio-Info.com: Radio's Online Community

about 5 hours ago
Cumulus says political dollars are starting to happen – Q2 revenue up 5.8%

Some other groups have been saying that political ads have been relatively slow to start, but Cumulus, reporting its second quarter this morning, says its 5.8% increase in broadcast revenues was due to improved national business, Internet-related revenues, and “political revenue generated by mid-term Congressional elections.” Cumulus also expects political to drive its incremental growth for the second half of the year, getting closer to the November elections. On the balance sheet, Cumulus paid down another $32.1 million in debt in the most recent quarter. CEO Lew Dickey calls April through June “another quarter of solid performance” for both Cumulus Media Inc., the publicly-traded Cumulus, and Cumulus Media Partners, the privately-held group of major market stations managed by CMI.
26 minutes ago
Doug Stephan's side of the Armstrong & Getty phone-bit incident - "A mistake"

How did a listener phone call made to the KSTE, Sacramento-based Armstrong & Getty show wind up on Doug Stephan’s syndicated “Good Day” show? Stephan explains that he does a Talk Radio Count Down show before his regular “Good Morning” show, and in that show he regularly plays clips from many other radio and TV shows – with attribution. He tells Radio-Info that “Armstrong and Getty have been credited 25 times this year.” But recently and by mistake a clip got re-used during “Good Day”, and that’s apparently what an Armstrong & Getty listener heard. Stephan called A&G yesterday and tried to explain what happened, and says the first thing one of them said was “we’re pretending to be outraged.” Stephan says he’s "a cheerleader” for radio and has been doing it for over 40 years, much it for six hours a day.
about 1 hour ago
Long Island's WLIU faces a $500,000 shortfall and silence

Peconic Public Broadcasting, which recently bid over $850,000 to buy non-commercial WLIU-FM (88.3) in Southampton, New York, has yet to raise the full purchase price. The New York Daily News says Peconic is currently over $500,000 short of its goal, and that could bring the end to local public programming for the station. PPB president Dr. Wallace Smith tells the newspaper that the worse-case scenario is the Hamptons will “lose its local programming.” Peconic made the offer to buy WLIU from Long Island University after the school sold the station to cut costs and get it off-campus. Peconic is now turning to the wealthy celebrities on the East End of Long Island to bail them out, but so far big money donors haven’t materialized. The newspaper says actor and Hamptons-area resident Alec Baldwin was approached, but wouldn’t help.
about 1 hour ago
Radio One's Cathy Hughes: Singer Dionne Warwick is a "lobbyist"

The war of words between singer Dionne Warwick saying radio stations should pay the musical artists and Radio One founder Cathy Hughes is escalating. Warwick recently wrote an editorial, calling Hughes' Radio One “one of those Wall Street rip off firms where executives pay themselves big bonuses while they rip us off and throw their workers in the street.” While Hughes, speaking to N'Digo writer Zondra Hughes, says “Dionne hasn’t had a record in thirty years” but also says “I ain’t mad at her.” Instead Cathy Hughes says the record industry, through SoundExchange and MusicFirst, has “already spent about $28 million to get this legislation passed.” She says Warwick is “on the payroll”, and that she and others should be considered “professional lobbyists on this issue.” Read that and other quotes in the Huffington Post item from Zondra Hughes, here. The Radio One founder claims her company will have to pay $1 million monthly if the Performance Rights Act becomes law, which could equate to radio job losses and format changes. She admits Radio One won’t go out of business, but other smaller minority broadcasting companies might.
41 minutes ago
An Ohio DJ gets the finger from - LeBron James

This time, what happened in Vegas didn’t stay in Vegas. Canton, Ohio WHBC-FM “Mix” (94.1) afternoon drive DJ Fig was vacationing in Las Vegas when he spotted someone he recognized. Fig tried to approach basketball superstar LeBron James at a Vegas nightclub, saying to James “hey man Akron still loves you.” While Fig had his camera rolling, James replied to that comment by apparently raising his middle finger to the surprised DJ. Even more ironic is the fact DJ Fig was from a radio station in the basketball king’s hometown of Akron. Fig tells Akron’s WOIO-TV 19 Action News that earlier that evening, James was booed when he was introduced at the nightclub. Since leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers for Miami as a free agent, the hometown hero James has become persona non grata in the area. At a recent baseball game in Cleveland, a man wearing a James basketball jersey was loudly booed by fans and escorted from where he was sitting. You can see Fig’s picture of James here.