Pirate radio is an unauthorized transmission of radio signals on the frequencies in or adjacent to the FM and AM radio bands. Pirate radio operations pose public safety risks, including causing harmful interference to licensed radio stations which transmit public safety emergency alert messages.
The first penalty proposed by the Commission today is $920,000 against Masner Beauplan for operating an unauthorized radio station, known as “Radio Leve Kanpe” on 91.7 MHz in Irvington, New Jersey, and Maplewood, New Jersey, from November 2023 to January 2024. The second penalty is against Raul Alcantara, against whom the Commission proposed a penalty of $40,000 for operating an unauthorized radio station, known as “Sabor FM” on 88.9 MHz in the Bronx, New York, from November 2023 to January 2024. Finally, the Commission proposed a penalty of $40,000 against Wilner Baptiste for operating an unauthorized radio station, known as “M-One Radio Live” or “M-One Live Radio” on 94.1 MHz in Spring Valley, New York, from January 2024 to June 2024.
The proposed actions, formally called Notices of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture, or NALs, contain only allegations that advise the parties on how they have apparently violated the law and may set forth proposed monetary penalties. The parties will be given a 30-day period to respond to the NALs, and the Commission will consider the parties’ submissions of evidence and legal arguments before acting further to resolve the matter through a Forfeiture Order.
In early October, CNN will begin experimenting with charging some readers for digital access as part of a bid to shore up its business as cable television erodes industrywide, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.
The NY Times reports the company is planning a so-called metered model, which will require the site’s habitual users to pay after reading a certain number of articles, the people said. Many other publishers, including The New York Times and The New Yorker, have used metered paywalls to generate subscriptions over the past decade.
The starting price of a subscription is unclear. But the two people said that CNN would start with an inexpensive offering to gauge customer demand.
 |
| Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb |
Just weeks after celebrating her 60th birthday, the beloved TV personality broke down in tears as she revealed live on-air that she will be leaving “Today” in the New Year.
“I do have some news. So I was doing the math and I realized that I have spent 26 years at NBC,” an emotional Kotb began. “I just turned 60 and it was such a monumental moment for me when I turned 60 years old because I started thinking about that decade. Like, ‘What does that decade mean? What does it hold? What it’s gonna have for me?’”
Kotb and Guthrie were the show’s first all-female anchor team. Kotb got her start at NBC as a correspondent with Dateline, transitioning to co-hosting the final hour of Today with Katie Lee Gifford and injecting the program with heart and humor.
The Philly Inquirer reports Fetterman and Sen. Katie Britt (R., Ala.) introduced the Stop the Scroll Act on Tuesday. The bill, if passed into law, would require the surgeon general to design a warning label system enforced by the Federal Trade Commission. The label would appear as a pop-up box warning users about the potential mental health risks of using social media and providing links to mental health resources every time a user opens a platform like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or X. Users would need to acknowledge the warning before continuing to the platform.
In the interview on Fox host Bret Baier’s “Common Ground” segment, Fetterman and Britt described themselves as friends who bonded during their freshman orientation in the U.S. Senate — along with each other’s spouses, Gisele Fetterman and former New England Patriots player Wesley Britt.
Sen. Britt visited Fetterman when he was in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for major depression last year following his near-fatal stroke and election win in 2022.
Fetterman said in the interview that he has witnessed the negative impact of social media both on himself and on his children. The two senators said they have bonded over their experiences as elected officials with children, which directly ties to their support for the bill. Fetterman has three children and Britt has two.
Bloomberg reports Helene made landfall near Perry with top sustained winds of 140 miles (225 kilometers) per hour, according to an advisory from the US National Hurricane Center, making it a Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
The hurricane’s massive size means it’s expected to bring torrential rain and flooding to cities hundreds of miles away, including Atlanta and Asheville, North Carolina. Prior to making landfall, its outer winds extended out 310 miles, with storm causing widespread disruptions to ground and air travel.
Hurricane Helene racing into Georgia with strong winds & heavy rain - @CELLIOTTTV on @foxweather from Valdosta with latest conditions pic.twitter.com/Dqo3AoKDSz
— Fox News MMR (@FoxNewsMMR) September 27, 2024
Over 1.3 million homes and businesses are without power across southeast US, according to PowerOutage.us, with the vast majority in Florida. The storm also shut in about a quarter of Gulf of Mexico oil production and a fifth of gas activities, according a Thursday notice from the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
Helene plowed ashore in Florida’s rural Big Bend region, near the state’s capital Tallahassee that has a population of about 200,000. Governor Ron DeSantis said it would be one of the strongest storms to strike at the city in memory.
The NY Times reports the details of the settlement, reached as the jury was being selected before the trial, were not immediately disclosed.
Smartmatic, an election technology company, had accused Newsmax of trying to entice viewers from its rival, Fox News, by airing false reports that Smartmatic helped swing the 2020 election for Joseph R. Biden Jr. The lawsuit was filed in Delaware Superior Court in 2021.
Jury selection in the case began on Thursday morning in Wilmington, Del., and the trial had been expected to take up to four weeks.“Newsmax is pleased to announce it has resolved the litigation brought by Smartmatic through a confidential settlement,” Newsmax said in its statement.
The 12th-hour settlement avoids the spectacle of a closely watched trial. It is not unusual for parties in defamation cases to reach a deal before a trial. In a similar case last year, Fox News settled a lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million just minutes before opening statements were to begin.
In a statement released to Media Confiendetial Friday, a Fox spox said, “Smartmatic unsurprisingly chose to settle its case with Newsmax on the eve of trial after a series of major setbacks devastated its case. Those setbacks included: the fact that Smartmatic's President and Co-Founder, as well as one current and one former executive, were federally indicted for bribery in obtaining key businesses in the Philippines; Smartmatic was forced to cut its damage claims from $1.7 billion to $370 million to avoid evidence of those indictments; and the Delaware Judge ruled that Smartmatic could not recover punitive damages. Smartmatic's claims against Fox are similarly impaired, unsupported by the facts and intended to chill First Amendment freedoms. We look forward to defending this case when it goes to trial.”
.png)
ESPN’s coverage of the Connecticut Sun’s Game 2 win over the Indiana Fever delivered an astonishing 2.5 million viewers.
That’s the most-watched WNBA postseason game ever across ESPN platforms. Per Sports Media Watch: It is the most-watched postseason game outside of the WNBA Finals since Game 2 of the Los Angeles Sparks-Houston Comets 1999 Western Conference Final (2.62M). The viewership follows Sunday’s Sun-Fever Game 1 on ABC which drew 1.84 million viewers against the NFL. That game, per Sports Media Watch, was the most-watched WNBA playoff game since 2003.
In another remarkable viewership number, the Minnesota Lynx’s series-clinching win over the Phoenix Mercury on Wednesday night drew 1.22 million viewers on ESPN.
You always want a viewership story to sell if you are a professional sports league, and the WNBA has a great metrics story to sell in 2024. ESPN announced last week that its WNBA regular season was its most-watched ever for games across ESPN Networks airwaves (including ABC).
Games averaged 1.2 million viewers, a massive jump over last year’s games (440,000 viewers). There were also seven games on ION this season that topped more than 1 million viewers this season.
 |
| Arthur Crofton (1952-2024) |
“To say that he will be missed is a huge understatement,” the station said. “Arthur has been hosting mornings on WEJZ for over 30 years. He entertained and informed millions of North Floridians and he loved every minute of it. Please keep his family in your prayers.”
No cause of death was announced.
Thursday morning, his radio co-host, Yvonne Velazquez, paid tribute to Crofton on air, talking with those who had worked with him and those who had listened to him. "We got countless stories this morning and on our Facebook page of personal stories, of people meeting with him and connecting with him," she said after the morning show ended. "He’s going to be greatly missed by his radio family and his listening family."
She mentioned one caller in particular, who told her: “I knew I was more than a listener the day he called me ‘mate.’"
Crofton, who first came to Jacksonville radio in 1978, grew up in northeast England, the son of an English father and a mother from Alabama.
At 19, he enrolled at his mother’s alma mater, the University of Alabama, where he majored in communication, already in love with radio. As a kid, he had listened to the BBC, but it was pirate radio — freewheeling unlicensed stations that operated on ships offshore — that made him want to become a disc jockey.
In a 2008 Times-Union interview with Charlie Patton, he told how his first radio job was at a tiny AM station, housed in a wooden shack, where he spent Sunday mornings running preachers' tapes. For that, he made all of $2 an hour.
As a student, he was a disc jockey at a local station. After a political science professor he looked up to complimented his work, he felt justified in his career choice, he told Patton.
Crofton was 26 when he came to Jacksonville in 1978, to Sunny 60. He worked at several other stations, as well as one in Washington D.C. before joining WEJZ in 1990, where his smooth English accent was a perfect fit for the morning show.
 |
| William Conrad |
Conrad estimated that he played more than 7,500 roles during his radio career.
Most prominently, Conrad's deep, resonant voice was heard in the role of Marshal Matt Dillon on CBS Radio's gritty Western series Gunsmoke (April 26, 1952 – June 18, 1961). The producers originally rejected him for the part because of his ubiquitous presence on so many radio dramas and the familiarity of his voice, but his impressive audition could not be dismissed, and he became the obvious choice for the role. Conrad voiced Dillon for the show's nine-year run, and he wrote the June 1953 episode "Sundown." When Gunsmoke was adapted for television in 1955, executives at CBS did not cast Conrad or his radio costars despite a campaign to get them to change their minds.
In January 1956, Conrad was the announcer on the debut broadcast of The CBS Radio Workshop.
➦In 1933..."Waltz Time" debuted . It remained on the NBC Radio network until 1948. The show features Abe Lyman (August 4, 1897 – October 23, 1957) and his band, which was popular from the 1920s to the 1940s. He made recordings, appeared in films and provided the music for numerous radio shows, including Your Hit Parade.
➦In 1938...Comedian Bob Hope introduce a new song, "Thanks For The Memory". It was introduced in the 1938 film The Big Broadcast of 1938 by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross. In the film, Ross and Hope's characters are a divorced couple who encounter each other aboard a ship. Near the film's end, they poignantly sing one of the many versions of this song, recalling the ups and downs of their relationship (then they decide to get back together).
➦In 1985...The Howard Stern Show aired for the last time on 66 WNBC NYC.
The New York Post first reported that the FCC last week "adopted an order to approve Soros’ purchase of more than 200 radio stations in 40 markets just weeks before the presidential election," potentially allowing the far-left kingmaker to reach more than 165 million Americans at a critical time.
"The FCC decision came after a partisan vote with the commission’s three Democrats voting for the move while the two Republicans voted against it, sources added," Post reporter Lydia Moynihan wrote.
The Soros group told the Post they would circle back to the FCC in the near future to run that process. If the deal goes through, Soros would be considered a "major shareholder," but not necessarily the "owner" of the stations.
An FCC spokesperson told Fox News Digital that "no decision is final until the Commission releases it, which we have not."
"The Commission has a long-standing process for reviewing transactions that involve emergence from bankruptcy," the spokesperson added, noting that the application before the Commission pertains to a transfer from Audacy in bankruptcy, to Audacy post-bankruptcy.
Some inside the FCC object to the notion the move was some sort of shortcut or "fast-tracked" for Soros, pointing to a similar process used to under the previous administration in the bankruptcy proceedings of Cumulus Media in 2018, iHeart Media in 2019, Liberman Television in 2019, Fusion Connect in 2019, Windstream Holdings in 2020, America-CV Station Group in 2021, and Alpha Media in 2021.
However, Trump-nominated Commissioner Nathan Simington blasted the process and said it was, indeed, fast-tracked.
"Commission leadership tried to approve the item at the staff level, with nothing but a 48-hour notice to Commissioners on a summer Friday. There is almost no factual record on the item because there was almost no attempt to do a real public interest analysis," Simington continued. "Not a single Commissioner outside of the Chairwoman was invited to even think about the issue until staff was directed to handle it on our behalf without our votes. That’s the true ‘fast-track.’"
According to TV Newser citing Nielsen live plus same-day data, Fox News handily won both measured categories across all dayparts. In primetime, the network attracted 2.513 million total viewers and 310,000 pairs of A25-54 eyeballs. FNC was down a respective -20% and -34% compared to the previous week. Total day numbers were 1.486 million in the former category and 203,000 in the latter for declines of -6% and -11%, respectively.
MSNBC experienced a steeper exodus in primetime, with 1.481 million total viewers and 154,000 A25-54 viewers for declines of -29% and -46%, respectively. It fell under the million-viewer mark in total day total viewers with an audience of 952,000, and under the 100,000-viewer mark in the demo with 99,000. That translates to declines of -18% and -27% compared to the previous week.
Basic cable chart-wise, MSNBC dropped one spot from No. 2 to No. 3 among primetime total viewers and fell from fourth to seventh in the primetime demo. Total day standings saw the network holding on to second place in total viewers and moving down from third to fourth in the demo.
CNN took the biggest week-to-week hit of the three outlets, settling for a primetime audience of 681,000 total viewers and 138,000 A25-54 viewers. That translates to plunges of -43% and -54%, respectively. The news wasn’t much better in total day, where only 517,000 total viewers and 94,000 demo viewers tuned in for drops of -21% and -30% compared to Debate Week. CNN also saw its total day demo gap with MSNBC expand to 5,000 viewers after narrowing to 1,000 for a two-week stretch.
Programming:
Fox News claimed 10 spots on the week’s list of the Top 15 most-watched cable news programs among total viewers. The Five (3,396,000 viewers at 5 p.m.) finished first, while MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show (2,359,000 viewers at 9 p.m.) swooped in at No. 7.
But the picture is rosier over a longer timespan, with three-quarters of the top 50 publishers seeing year-on-year growth in visits in August.
The contraction is particularly pronounced among the top ten US news sites by traffic, where eight publishers saw visits drop compared to July.
In July every site in the top ten saw month-on-month traffic growth, likely driven by blockbuster news events including the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s departure from the presidential race.
But in August People.com (162.6 million visits) and Yahoo Finance (162.8 million) were the only top ten sites to continue growing their traffic, by 3% and 2% respectively.
The biggest drop came at CNN, which saw visits fall 16% to 441.4 million. It nonetheless remained the most-visited news site in the US, a position it has held since Similarweb updated its data model in June and pushed the site ahead of The New York Times.
 |
| Top 25 news websites in the US |
The New York Times maintained its position in second place, with 361.8 million visits, and Fox News was third on 293 million.
Yahoo Finance and People both shuffled up the board one spot to sixth and seventh place respectively, pushing the New York Post (150 million visits, down 7% year-on-year) down to eighth.
Mail Online remained steady at ninth place with 122.2 million visits while Google News (120.8 million) jumped three places to tenth despite losing 4% of traffic month-on-month, displacing Newsweek (115.7 million) from the top ten.
The western coast of Florida, including Tampa Bay, are under a hurricane and storm surge warning. The storm’s winds are forecast to reach at least 120 mph, making it a Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
The Weather Prediction Center forecasts a high risk of excessive rainfall that could cause flash flooding in the region between Atlanta and Asheville, N.C., on Thursday. ”Landslides are possible in areas of steep terrain in the southern Appalachians“, Robbie Berg, a meteorologist at the NHC, wrote in the hurricane center’s last advisory.
“A catastrophic and deadly storm surge is likely along portions of the Florida Big Bend coast, where inundation could reach as high as 20 feet above ground level, along with destructive waves,” said NHC Warning Coordination Meteorologist Robbie Berg. “There is also a danger of life-threatening storm surge along the remainder of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula. Residents in those areas should follow advice given by local officials and evacuate if told to do so.”
This flexibility is expected to help broadcasters optimize their digital signal coverage, making digital radio more accessible and reliable for listeners. By allowing stations to adjust power levels independently on each sideband, they can better protect adjacent analog stations from interference3.
It’s a move that should support the broader adoption of digital radio, providing a more robust and flexible broadcasting environment. How do you think this will impact the radio industry, especially in terms of digital adoption and listener experience?
The rulemaking followed petitions from the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), Xperi Corporation, and National Public Radio (NPR), who have long advocated for increased flexibility in FM digital broadcasting. The FCC acknowledged their studies, which demonstrated that many stations could operate at higher digital power levels on one sideband while protecting neighboring analog signals by reducing power on the other sideband. The FCC also noted that such operations have not led to significant interference in tests.
The FCC's decision affects nearly all FM stations, except for those operating on Channel 300 (107.9 MHz), which still require experimental authorization for asymmetric sideband use due to concerns about interference with the Aeronautical Radio Navigation Spectrum.
Wednesday night Ruhle pressed where Harris would "get the money" to fund her pricey economic proposals if Republicans on Capitol Hill block her efforts to raise the corporate tax rate.
"Do you still go forward with those plans and borrow?" Ruhle asked.
"But we're gonna have to raise corporate taxes," Harris responded. "We’re going to have to make sure that the biggest corporations and billionaires pay their fair share. That’s just it. It’s about paying their fair share."
WATCH: Fox’s @tracegallagher calls out MSNBC’s Ruhle for weak interview with Kamala: “The interview went exactly as expected: Questions were asked, answers were not given. And MSNBC called it a huge success.“ pic.twitter.com/J2YLWP1E35
— TV News Now (@TVNewsNow) September 26, 2024
Appearing on "Deadline: White House" after the interview, Ruhle admitted that Harris "doesn't answer the question."
"If the GOP is controlling the Senate, if she can’t raise corporate taxes, where is she going to get the money from to expand the child tax credit and do whatever she wants to do. And she says, ‘we just have to do it,’" Ruhle told MSNBC colleague Nicolle Wallace. "That’s great and that’s a campaign promise, but the issue is, if it means we’re gonna just borrow again, then what we’re doing is we’re just never addressing the deficit. And back in the days when you were a proud Republican, debts and deficits matters."
 |
| Jessica and Steve |
"I am thrilled that we have successfully extended ‘Kramer & Jess,’” said Tracy Brandys, Senior Vice President and Market Manager, Audacy Baltimore. “This morning duo’s outstanding talent and dynamic presence have truly made a remarkable impact in Baltimore, and I am confident that our listeners will continue enjoying and engaging with their entertaining show."
In addition to hosting mornings, Kramer is the voice and creative mind behind the “Certified Mama’s Boy” podcast. He has had radio stops nationwide in Flordia, San Diego and Phoneix, including at Audacy’s KMLE Country 107.9 (KMLE-FM).
"I’m so grateful for our strong relationship with Baltimore,” said Dutra. ”Our listeners have been a part of some of our biggest milestones, including my engagement and wedding. I’m so excited to continue waking up with Baltimore and building our connection!"
Before joining Audacy in 2020, Dutra was co-host, producer and social media coordinator for “Geena The Latina and Frankie” on Channel 933 (KHTS-FM) in San Diego,
Along with our stand-alone Audio app and the Listen tab in The New York Times app, we remain dedicated to getting our journalism to subscribers in more creative, accessible and direct ways. Today, we’re excited to expand where people can subscribe to listen to our world-class audio journalism by teaming up with Apple Podcasts and Spotify, two of the biggest platforms where listening is happening.
On Apple Podcasts, listeners who purchased their subscription to The Times in The New York Times app will have their subscriptions automatically connected the next time they open Apple Podcasts. Listeners can also connect their subscriptions by signing into their account from The New York Times channel page and from individual Show pages on Apple Podcasts.
“Our audio journalism connects The Times with millions of people every day, and now we’re taking a significant step forward in transforming this powerful connection into a key driver of our subscription business,” said Ben Cotton, head of subscription growth at The Times. “We believe that our audio journalism, featuring the most authoritative coverage of the most important and interesting stories, is worth paying for. And working closely with Apple Podcasts and Spotify has allowed us to create a seamless experience that’s both intuitive to use and easy to understand. This collaboration allows us to expand our reach while making it easier than ever for listeners to not only engage more deeply with The Times but support our original, independent audio journalism by subscribing.”
“Our audio report has gotten much bigger over the past few years, and it has a lot more breadth. We now have several news programs, more shows in tech, politics, culture and lifestyle, and we’ve even expanded our shows in Opinion and Sports. We’re excited to get all our shows in front of more people,” added Paula Szuchman, The Times’s director of audio.
A podcast subscription will cost $6/month and $50/year. New York Times All Access and Home Delivery subscribers will continue to have full access at no additional charge.
 |
| Alex Jones |
In a court hearing Tuesday, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez said he would approve the sale, but that he must first change a previous order to make clear that the trustee overseeing Jones' personal bankruptcy case controls all of Free Speech Systems' assets.
Jones and the company filed for bankruptcy in 2022 after losing defamation and emotional distress lawsuits by Sandy Hook families after he repeatedly called the Connecticut school shooting a hoax staged by "crisis actors." Adam Lanza killed 26 people, including 20 children, in the shooting, in Newtown, Connecticut.
The outcome of the Infowars auctions could determine Jones' broadcasting fate. He has vowed to continue hosting talk shows and could do so through a new website or his personal social media accounts, which are not part of the sale.
According to Marketing Brew, the roster of women’s sports podcasts on the market has been quietly growing for the past several years. The Athletic first introduced Full Time with Meg Linehan, a women’s soccer podcast hosted by the veteran reporter, in 2020, the same year Hyslop and the team at The Gist got The Gist of It up and running. A year later, start-up consultancy and media platform Goals started its podcast, The Business Case for Women’s Sports. And ahead of the Women’s World Cup last summer, soccer stars Christen Press and Tobin Heath debuted their women’s soccer podcast, The Re—Cap Show.
 |
| Gayle Troberman |
“For years, whenever I’ve turned on pre-game or halftime reports, I have always been disappointed to see almost exclusively all-male roundtables and chat shows on my screens,” Ward wrote in an email. “It’s the reason we are psyched to be amplifying women’s voices in the space even further.”
iHeartMedia CMO Gayle Troberman said the programming team noticed increased interest in women’s sports content from both audiences and advertisers, prompting a rapid move into the space earlier this year. The company debuted its women’s sports network at Cannes, which includes the daily women’s sports podcast Good Game with Sarah Spain and women’s sports broadcast dispatches across 500 iHeart radio stations.
Audiences seem to like what they hear. The Gist of It, which covers both men’s and women’s sports, has grown its audience about 20% year over year without any paid marketing support since it started, Hyslop said, and more than 90% of its mainly millennial and Gen Z listener base identify as female or non-binary, she said.
In practice, Berliner opted for the disc format, which made the photoengraving step much less difficult and offered the prospect of making multiple copies of the result by some simpler process such as electrotyping, molding or stamping. Soon Berliner was using a more direct recording method, in which the stylus traced a line through a very thin coating of wax on a zinc disc, which was then etched in acid to convert the line of bared metal into a playable groove.
 |
| Ted Weems band on set of Fibber McGee & Molly - 1937 |
➦In 1901...Bandleader Ted Weems born in Pitcairen, PA (Died at age 61 - May 6, 1963). His work in music was recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Weems moved to Chicago with his band around 1928. The Ted Weems Orchestra had chart success in 1929 with the novelty song "Piccolo Pete", which rewarded him with his second Gold Record, and the #1 hit "The Man from the South". The band gained popularity in the 1930s, making regular radio broadcasts. These included Jack Benny's Canada Dry program on CBS and NBC during the early 1930s, and the Fibber McGee & Molly program in the late 1930s.
In 1936, the Ted Weems Orchestra gave singer Perry Como his first national exposure; Como recorded with the band (on Decca Records), beginning his long and successful career.
The first season of the Beat the Band radio show on the NBC Red Network (1940–1941) included Weems and his orchestra as part of the cast.
In 1940, Weems and his orchestra were featured on Beat the Band on the NBC-Red radio network.
➦In 1908...Saturday Evening Post ad for a Victor 'talking machine'.
➦In 1919...Actress Barbara Britton born Barbara Maurine Brantingham (Died from pancreatic cancer at age 60 – January 17, 1980). She is best known for her Western film roles opposite Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, and Gene Autry and for her two-year tenure as inquisitive amateur sleuth Pam North on the television and radio series Mr. and Mrs. North.
➦In 1960…John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debates in American history. The debates were staged at the studios of WBBM-TV in Chicago. The Kennedy-Nixon debates not only had a major impact on the election’s outcome, but ushered in a new era in which crafting a public image and taking advantage of media exposure became essential ingredients of a successful political campaign. They also heralded the central role television has continued to play in the democratic process.
 |
| Jeff Glor |
Glor was currently a co-host of CBS Saturday Morning, along with Dana Jacobson and Michelle Miller, a position he’s held since June 2019. Glor also serves as a CBS News special correspondent, traveling the world to report on breaking news stories on location. He has interviewed dozens of authors as well as part of the show’s extensive book coverage.
The network news division is also parting ways with three veteran correspondents, including Ben Tracy, who covered environmental issues out of Los Angeles; Anna Werner, the senior consumer investigative correspondent; and Chicago-based reporter Roxana Saberi, according to people briefed on the cuts.
The staff reductions hit CBS stations as well. Morning news anchor Marci Gonzales of Los Angeles outlet KCAL is among those who will depart.
CBS News top brass announced this summer that O’Donnell would vacate the anchor chair after the presidential election in November. The network will also bring the show back to New York in a cost-savings measure and revamp it under CBS News journalist John Dickerson and WCBS anchorman Maurice DuBois.
The changes come as CBS-parent Paramount is in the throes of laying off 2,000 staffers in order to cut $500 million from the budget ahead of its planned merger with Skydance Media, which is expected to be finalized next year.
Glor has been with CBS News since 2007, first serving as a reporter and anchor and filing reports for CBS Sunday Morning and The Early Show, which was later rebooted as CBS This Morning. In December 2017, Glor became the anchor of the CBS Evening News, taking over for Scott Pelley. Glor was then replaced in June 2019, with 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O’Donnell taking his place in the anchor’s chair. That same month, he joined CBS Saturday Morning as a co-host.
During a House Oversight Committee hearing last week, Carr objected to a deal that would allow a Soros-backed group to take ownership of 200 stations across 40 markets. He claimed the FCC was deviating from its normal procedure by allowing the purchase to take place.
“I think what’s interesting about it is that the FCC is not following its normal process for reviewing transactions that it has established over a number of years,” Carr warned. “It seems to me the FCC is poised, for the first time, to create an entirely new shortcut.”
The National Desk reports the transaction would break a rule preventing more than 25% foreign ownership of U.S. radio stations, Carr alleges. Despite this, Carr claimed the agency was expediting its review process.
“What we usually do is require people to file a petition with us, bring in the National Security Agency to review the foreign ownership—it’s probably no big deal here—but we review that foreign ownership and then we vote,” Carr said. “Here, they’re trying to do something that’s never been done before at a commission level.”
But critics call that a “Soros shortcut” and have asked the FCC to reject Audacy’s plan that will allow it to go forward with its reorganization while the government’s review of the Soros-backed offshore fund’s involvement is reviewed. If the FCC were to agree, it would sideline Audacy’s proposed restructuring.
Insiders say Audacy isn’t looking for a new shortcut or a fast-track process, and that a full foreign ownership review will still take place after Audacy emerges from bankruptcy. They point out it is similar to the structure that has been used in several other Chapter 11 reorganizations in radio during the past several years, including iHeartMedia in 2019, Cumulus Media in 2018, LBI Media in 2019, and Alpha Media.
Rep. Nick Langworthy, R-N.Y., said during the hearing he was “extremely alarmed” by the purchase.
“Looking at the facts, it seems the administration is giving a left-wing billionaire, who is a major donor, a close ally, one of the chief funders of all of their efforts and their dark money, a free pass to take control of hundreds of local radio stations, flooding the airwaves with leftist propaganda and I think it’s blatant,” he said.
NBCU’s stable of entities exhibited double-digit viewership growth across the three main channels that televised Olympics coverage: USA Network viewership jumped 47%, Peacock streaming was up 39%, and viewing across NBC broadcast affiliates rose 62%. Additionally, the Democratic National Convention also provided a boost for NBCU in August, as MSNBC’s coverage of the four-day DNC event lifted network viewership by 43% compared to July levels.
In addition to NBCU, two more companies in the Media Distributor Gauge exhibited positive share changes in August. After topping all media distributors in July, YouTube’s watch-time was up 2% in August to finish the month with 10.6% of TV—another high-water mark for the streaming platform. The other to record growth was The Roku Channel, which received a 3% bump in viewership and added one-tenth of a share point for a platform-best 1.7% of TV usage.
Combined with the fact that audiences turned their attention to the Olympics, many of the remaining media companies were affected by typical August viewing trends in an otherwise atypical month of TV consumption. With new seasons of football and broadcast programming on the horizon, Disney, Paramount and FOX all experienced the end-of-summer lull in viewership in August, and finished with 9.5%, 7.1% and 6.0%, respectively.
Few measurement intervals are likely to rival the impact the Paris Olympics had on TV consumption throughout July and August. While the Games are undoubtedly unique from a cultural and TV programming perspective, NBCU established a successful blueprint for reaching consumers on their viewing platform of choice, which could prove to be an important milestone into the future.
The measurement month of August 2024 included four weeks: 07/29/2024 through 08/25/2024. Nielsen measurement weeks run Monday through Sunday.