Entercom, CBS Radio close to uniting

What to expect when Entercom takes over CBS Radio Friday A new era in radio begins Friday when Entercom closes on its deal with CBS Radio and officially takes over the company’s 244 radio stations. In Chicago, Entercom takes over seven CBS radio stations: all-news WBBM-AM and its simulcast on WCFS-FM; sports talk WSCR-AM (The Score); Adult Album Alternative WXRT-FM; […]

The Media Notepad: CBC program turns an international spotlight on Chicago segregation

Also: DeCastro, Nyren return to management roles; Comic-Con HQ closes and shifts to Amazon; Mavs bottom in ratings before Bulls do Chicago’s violence epidemic is once again on the international stage – this time in Canada. Public broadcaster CBC recently aired an Chicago installment of Interrupt This Program, a series about “underground art scenes in cities under pressure and cities […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Bigger is not better – maybe

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 […]

T Dog’s Media Notepad: Good ratings start for APB – but not creatively

Also: The End for Sacramento’s KDND;  ‘The Insider’ canceled; WIND-AM’s Joe Walsh goes national  The latest crime procedural based (and filmed) in Chicago debuted Monday night with Fox’s APB, starring Justin Kirk. The premise: after losing a friend to an armed robbery at a liquor store, millionaire Gideon Reeves (Kirk) decides to take over the high-crime 13th police district using high-tech […]

Entercom merges with CBS Radio

Seven Chicago radio stations under new ownership In a deal which marks the first under the FCC chairmanship of Ajit Pai, CBS Radio announced Thursday morning it was merging its station group to Philadelphia-based Entrecom Communications for $1.7 billion. The merger creates a new mega-station group, with 244 stations nationwide and in 23 of the top 25 radio markets. When the […]

T Dog’s Media Notepad: Gannett pulls plug on merger with Tronc

  The proposed merger between Gannett and Tronc is now off the table. Gannett announced Tuesday it would no longer pursue a merger between the two, due to bankers pulling hteir money from the deal. Merger talks between the two was going at a snail’s pace . By comparison, the AT&T-TimeWarner proposed merger took just two days to get together. The […]

CBS Radio up for sale

It’s an end of an era. CBS Corp. announced on Tuesday it was exploring several options of its radio station group, including a sale. The stations could be spun-off, swapped, or sold outright. CBS owns several radio/TV combos in most large markets, including Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston, Dallas, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Detroit, Sacramento, and Baltimore. In […]

WGCI launches new morning show

Kyle Santillian arrives from North Carolina WGCI is hoping someone from Mayberry can turn around its morning luck. As first reported by RobertFeder.com on Tuesday, iHeartMedia’s urban contemporary station has hired Kyle Santillian to anchor its new morning show, beginning this Thursday. Santillian arrives from Entercom-owned urban contemporary station WJMH-FM (102 Jamz) in Reidsville, N.C., which serves the Greensboro-Winston Salem-High […]

Indianapolis radio stations unite to curb violence

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 […]

T Dog’s Think Tank: Reeling radio

Last week was one those in the radio industry would love to forget – in fact, radio has been having these types of weeks for quite some time now. Repeating the same mantra heard over and over again the last few decades, Big Media eliminated positions again with Clear Channel and Cumulus leading the way. CC last week eliminated hundreds […]

Settlement reached in Sacramento radio case

A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit filed nearly three years ago by a family whose mother died from the aftermath of a radio stunt. The Strange Family was awarded $16.6 million from a jury who felt the radio station – Entercom-owned KDND-FM in Sacramento, known as The End, was neligient in the stunt. The jury only held the […]

WNUA-FM to flip to Spanish-language format

After 22 years as a pioneering “Smooth Jazz” outlet, Clear Channel-owned WNUA-FM is changing formats to Spanish Pop, effective Friday at 9:55 a.m. The station is being branded as “Mega 95.5”. and is being made available online at Mega955.com. The move is being made as other stations across the country are dropping the Smooth Jazz format. On Tuesday, Clear Channel […]

T Dog’s Groovy Grab Bag

Inauguration ratings; Litton clears Street Court in New York and Chicago; Erica Cobb has a new gig. – The Inauguration of Barack Obama scored in the ratings yesterday, with the most watched swearing-in ceremony since President Reagan in 1981, with a 29.2 rating in the 56 markets metered by Nielsen on an “overnight” basis. In Chicago, here’s how the household […]

Spring 2008 book is out

In between the end of TCA and start of Comic-Con, I’m squeezing in some news regarding Chicago radio! (I know you’re excited… yeah, right. But it’s nice to talk about something local for a change.) The Spring 2008 books are out for both Chicago and Milwaukee, are you can access them by clicking here (Chicago) and here (Milwaukee), with the […]

No charges in radio station water drinking stunt

The district attorney’s office has determined that Entercom’s KDND-FM (107.9 The End) in Sacramento, and its members (current and former) will not face any charges in the water-drinking radio stunt that killed Jennifer Strange back on January 12. She participated to win a video game system, where whoever drunk the most water without going to the bathroom the longest would […]