Also: local Atlanta station removes popular syndicated show to air more news; controversial political ad removed from local airwaves; the GOP looking to deregulate the media business even more; Ramsey Lewis dies [Editor’s Note: There is an update to the second story in this piece. See below.] Thursday Night Football may have left Fox, but its owned stations certainly haven’t […]
Party’s over as competition, governments take aim at streaming giant It wasn’t too long ago Netflix was the toast of the town, heralded as the best entertainment had to offer on a new, emerging platform. The company partied hardy for years feasting on praise as the darling of Wall Street. Well, the bill is now due. In a […]
Nation’s largest radio chain eliminates positions in belt-tightening In 2009, Clear Channel Communications announced one of the biggest radio layoffs in history, cutting 1,850 positions announced on January 20, the same day President Obama was inaugurated into office. At the time, I wrote: “Even more appalling is their plan to cut back on live, local programming and add more syndicated […]
McQueary’s piece on radio is a complete waste of time and space, as she is a member of the same political party who helped deregulate radio – leading to piped-in out-of-town voices in the first place. Every once in a while, you have those who work in the media who write about the media, proving how completely clueless they are […]
Howard hopes to take cluster to new level There isn’t much going on in D.C. these days with the government shutdown, but one radio programmer is hoping to inject some excitement in the Chicago radio scene. As first reported by Radio Insight last week, iHeartMedia Chicago has hired James Howard to become Senior Vice President of Programming for the six-station […]
A rebuttal to Harry Jessell’s piece: Media consolidation has resulted in bad managerial decisions and lots of layoffs. But bad decision making knows no size. For the last eleven years, yours truly has been writing about media consolidation and how bad it is. On Friday, TVNewscheck’s Harry Jessell wrote a piece saying “bigger is better”, regarding the growing profiles of Sinclair Broadcasting […]
WGN adds Wood and Dempster, plus Manley’s idiotic comment Media Life magazine article on iHeart causing a stir Empire roars back BET to add “Soul Train” WGN-AM has recruited former Cubs pitchers Kerry Wood and Ryan Dempster to provide weekly baseball analysis on Thursdays for the Tribune Broadcasting-owned radio station. Beginning this week, Ryan Dempster will talk baseball with Steve Cochran […]
Of course he’s dead. But you wouldn’t know it The latest radio cutbacks came from a rather unlikely place – CBS Radio, which hadn’t announced cuts since a company-wide downsizing in 2008. CBS announced earlier this week it was eliminating 200 positions nationwide, including a number of positions in Chicago. Other Midwestern cities were hit just as hard including St. Louis […]
You probably wouldn’t know it if you tuned in to the cable news networks or if you read major national or international publications lately, but Chicago isn’t the only American city dealing with an onslaught of gun violence. Somewhat similar to what Chicago’s urban stations are doing to combat the epidemic, Indianapolis’ radio stations are banding together in support of […]
(Editor’s Note: a more recent story on Ramonski Luv being released from V103 can be found here in The Media Notepad, fourth item.) How about this? You finish first in your daypart and what is your reward? You get shown the door. This is exactly what happened to Ramon Wade a.k.a. Ramonski Luv, who was let go from Clear […]
– How to get ahead by channeling the Xbox One and the PS4: CBS-owned WBBM-TV has unveiled its latest weapon in the weather war, with the look and feel of a video game – one you can play on the road. WBBM’s new toy is a new vehicle called The Mobile Weather Lab, and the Columbia Puslar 600 ultrasonic weather […]
Will it work? While urban radio station Hot 97 in New York City is having fun with their new, hot, ridiculous “docudrama” cable TV show, it is a far different environment involving urban radio in Chicago. The atmosphere is far from festive – and the drama is real. As first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times’ Fran Spelman nearly two weeks […]
Content targeting Black, Hispanic audiences come under scrutiny after FCC fines Spanish broadcaster for indecent content Believe it or not, the next indecency battleground could be in Chicago’s African-American community. A group of activists calling themselves The Clear The Airwaves Project are targeting Crawford’s WPWX-FM (Power 92) and Clear Channel’s WGCI-FM for playing salacious hip-hop and rap music targeting children […]
Jacobson loses lawsuit; Rover gets busted; Birmingham format flip goes awry – As first reported by the Chicago Tribune Wednesday evening, a Cook County Judge threw out a lawsuit from WIND-AM morning co-host Amy Jacobson against CBS. She was fired from NBC-owned WMAQ-TV in 2007 after a cameraman from WBBM-TV caught Jacobson at a pool party at Craig Stebic’s Plainfield […]
WLIT becomes “My 93.9 FM” Clear Channel-owned WLIT-FM didn’t need the late “Dandy” Don Meredith to turn off “The Lite”: they practically took the bulb out of the socket and smashed it to the ground. After 24 years as The Lite, WLIT rebranded itself as My 93.9 FM, in line with a few other Clear Channel-owned AC formatted stations around […]