Radio Show Presents ‘Radio & The Connected Car’

Roger Lanctot

Organizers of the Radio Show will present a Super Session entitled "Radio and the Connected Car." The session will take place on Thursday, September 19 at 9:15 a.m. at the Radio Show in Orlando.

Leading strategists, analysts and researchers will discuss developments in the connected car, what consumers want and where the technology is headed.

This session will reveal data from surveys, focus groups and consumer clinics along with sneak peeks at what car makers and their suppliers have in store for the dashboard of the future. Participants will offer specific recommendations on what radio can do now to maintain its prominence in the automobile for years to come.

The Super Session will feature research and insight from experts in both connected car technology and the radio industry, including presentations by Roger C. Lanctot, associate director, Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics; and Fred Jacobs, president of Jacobs Media. A representative from Arbitron will provide introductory remarks.

Fred Jacobs

Roger Lanctot's expertise includes defining future trends in automotive safety, powertrain and infotainment systems. He has 25 years experience as an analyst, journalist and consultant. At Strategy Analytics, he specializes in tracking, analyzing and forecasting in-car infotainment systems and in-vehicle connectivity.

Fred Jacobs is a top radio consultant specializing in helping radio stations maximize their audience by optimizing marketing, branding and content across all platforms including on-air, social media and mobile. Jacobs' company, Jacobs Media, is a leading mobile application developer through its jacAPPS division, which has created more than 800 apps.

Earlier this year, jacAPPS was selected by The Ford Motor Company as House Developer to help developers configure their apps to adapt to vehicles equipped with the SYNC AppLink system.

The session will be available On-Demand after the Radio Show has concldued.  You'll find it at http://www.radioshowweb.com

NPR To Reduce Staff By 10 Percent, Interim CEO Named

Paul Haaga

The Board of Directors of NPR announced Friday that Paul G. Haaga, Jr. will serve as Acting President & CEO of NPR effective September 30.

Haaga has served on the Board since 2011, most recently as Vice Chair of the Board and Chair of its Finance Committee.

"Paul has made many valuable contributions to NPR during his tenure on the Board," said Kit Jensen, Chair of the NPR Board and CEO of WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 WCPN Ideastream.

"His intimate knowledge of our organization, his unwavering commitment to the highest quality of journalism and programming, and his financial acumen make him particularly well-suited to lead NPR as we begin our search for a permanent chief executive."

Haaga said that his time on the Board has been "one of the most rewarding and exciting phases of my career."

He continued: "I am thrilled to have the opportunity to lead one of the world's leading providers of news, music and cultural programming on an interim basis and I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Board and senior leadership team to help this great organization build on its success."

Haaga will succeed NPR President and CEO Gary E. Knell, who recently announced that he will leave the organization to become President and CEO of the National Geographic Society.

NPR has appointed a search committee, co-chaired by Board members Florence Rogers, President and General Manager, Nevada Public Radio, and John Wotowicz, Managing Partner, Concentric Capital, to lead the search for a permanent CEO.

The Board also approved a budget for fiscal year 2014 and a strategic roadmap to achieve a balanced budget over the next two years.

The budget includes operating and investment revenues of $178.1 million, expenses of $183 million, and an operating cash deficit of $6.1 million, or 3 percent of revenues. As part of the strategy to eliminate the deficit and lower ongoing expenses, NPR will offer a voluntary buyout plan broadly across the organization that seeks to reduce staffing levels by approximately 10 percent.

According to The Washington Post, NPR hopes to reduce its 840-member payroll over the next year. NPR said the buyout is necessary to close a persistent deficit, projected at $6 million in its upcoming fiscal year.

In April, it opened its new headquarters building in the shadow of the Capitol, a $201 million edifice complete with in-house restaurant with an executive chef, health-care facilities, employee gym and gift shop.

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The organization laid off 64 employees, or about 8 percent of its staff, in late 2008 and cut two programs to save money.

NPR receives less than 2 percent of its annual budget directly from federal funds but relies on dues from member stations that receive an average of 15 percent of their budgets from federal funds.

San Diego Radio: Chip Franklin OUT At KOGO

Chip Franklin

Chip Franklin, a fixture at KOGO-600 AM since 2007, is no longer with the station.

According to utsandiego.com, the Clear Channel-owned station on Friday announced a new lineup beginning Monday and Franklin was not included. Afternoon host Chris Merrill will be in the morning-drive spot previously handled by Franklin and LaDona Harvey (who joined Franklin early this year).

Harvey will be on from noon to 3 p.m., with the previous occupant of that time slot, Bob "Sully" Sullivan, shifting to 3 to 7 p.m.

"I had a great run at KOGO, and they have and continue to treat me in a highly professional manner," Franklin said via email. "Believe it or not, I have been very lucky. I still have a lot of great friends there and I sincerely wish them the very best.

Chris Merrill

"The new morning guy, Chris Merrill, is a friend and a tremendous talent. Don't underestimate him.

"It's all good."

Franklin, 56, came to San Diego from Baltimore six years ago. He also has worked as a stand-up comic and music performer. The KOGO website referred to him as "San Diego's most popular morning talk show host."

A few years ago KOGO was often the top-rated station in San Diego. But ratings have declined in recent years and in August, KOGO ranked 17th among San Diego stations rated by Arbitron.

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Barrasso Issues Statement On CCM+E, WMG Agreement

Senator John Brassaso

U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) issued the following statement in response to today’s joint announcement by Clear Channel Media and Warner Music Group that they reached an agreement that includes both a share in broadcast radio revenue and a restructuring of digital music licensing, according to politicalnews.me.

As the lead sponsor of the “Local Radio Freedom Act,” Senator Barrasso has led the fight in the Senate against a government imposed performance tax on our nation’s broadcasters.

“I’m pleased Clear Channel and Warner Music reached an agreement that will benefit radio broadcasters, the music industry and consumers across Wyoming and the nation. This accord is a good example of the power of the marketplace to solve complex business and legal issues involving music licensing. It’s clear that the last thing we need in the world of broadcasting and music is a government imposed mandate on broadcasters to pay royalties on the performance of sound recordings. Today’s agreement should help the radio industry continue to provide local communities with news, weather, sports and entertainment and also ensure it delivers digital services to listeners anywhere, any time.

Senator Barrasso re-introduced the “Local Radio Freedom Act” on March 6, 2013, with Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND). The Act declares that Congress should not impose any new performance fee, tax, royalty or charge relating to public performance of sound recordings on a local radio station for broadcasting sound recordings over-the-air, or on any business for such public performance of sound recordings.

FCC Still Getting Twerking Complaints

Twerking On MTV

The uproar over Miley Cyrus' MTV Video Music Awards performance just won't stop. Its newest iteration comes in the form of more than 150 complaints to the Federal Communications Commission from concerned citizens across the country who want MTV or Cyrus herself punished for indecency, according to The Huffington Post.

"She backed up against her male co-singer's genitals in a doggy-style position and humped him like a bitch in heat," laments a shocked viewer from Maryland, undermining his or her own argument by cursing throughout the description. "Had I wanted my family to see a hooker perform a live sex show, I would have taken [them] to Tijuana."

One outraged Connecticut resident claimed that Cyrus' twerking gave her co-performer, Robin Thicke, an erection that was "easily noticed through his pants."

There is, however, no evidence Thicke had an erection during the performance, and if he did, one would need to scrutinize his groin in order to notice it. The complaints, which were obtained by The Huffington Post through a Freedom of Information request, point out that MTV rated the show as TV-14.

The FCC regulates only broadcast TV channels like ABC or Fox, not cable networks like MTV. On the FCC's website, a page titled "Regulation of Obscenity, Indecency, and Profanity," the agency explains that since cable channels are subscription-based, consumers "have greater control over the programming content that comes into their homes."

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Bet on Cassettes Pays Off

Worker checks loaded cassette

Visitors to National Audio Company on East Water Street in Springfield, MO often have one primary question, and their voices carry into President Steve Stepp’s office near the front door.

“I hear them ask, ‘Do people still use audiocassettes?’ Stepp told the news-leader.com during an interview last week. “And the truth is, yes, we ship a 53-foot trailer load every afternoon at 3:15.”

Fifty years after the invention of the audio format, the Springfield company — already the largest manufacturer of them in the country — is seeing orders increase after a decision to double down on production in the latter half of the last decade. 

And that growth is coming from somewhere it hasn’t in decades — major record labels.

When Stepp and his father founded National Audio in 1969, it sold two things — open reel recording tape and broadcast tape cartridges. In the early 1970s, however, an Ampex sales representative who visited the company each month introduced Stepp to the cassette tape.

Soon after, National Audio was in the cassette business.

“We bought one of these loaders, and we could load a C-90 every seven seconds,” Stepp said. “And we thought, ‘We’ll never need a second machine.’”

According to the Springfield, MO News-Leader, they bought their second machine the next year. Within four years, they had 16. And by the late 1980s, Stepp says, the company was the largest producer of blank cassettes in the nation. One single religious ministry headquartered near St. Louis had a standing order for 250,000 blank cassettes a week.

In the 1990s, however, most musically inclined consumers switched to CDs. And many of National Audio’s competitors focused on the newer digital medium as well, Stepp said.

About two or three years ago, something somewhat surprising — even to Stepp — started happening: musical artists started returning to the medium. Independent record labels and indie bands found that the cassette tape was a low-cost way of getting their music before an audience, he said.

“It may not be the size that it was 20 years ago … but it is a growing market,” Stepp said.

Today, Stepp said, National Audio has about 40 employees, and 70 percent of the company’s revenues comes from cassettes — a slight uptick, since CD and DVD sales have declined in recent years.

“The audiocassette remains the backbone of National Audio Company.”

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Springfield News-Leader photo

Report: Worst Passwords Unveiled

Some passwords seem to invite hackers to come on in and have a look around.

Here is SplashData’s latest annual list of the worst passwords, for 2012, compiled from lists of millions of stolen passwords posted online by hackers.

Most are holdovers from 2011, suggesting that changing people’s passwords isn’t easy. Newcomers to the list are highlighted.

Audio Can Be Transferred By Touching

Disney researchers have developed a microphone that lets a user record a voice message and then relay that message to another person simply by touching them with a finger.

According to wired.com.uk, the microphone converts the voice message into an inaudible signal which is transmitted to the body of the person holding the microphone as an inaudible signal. It can then be transmitted from that person's body to another person's body through touch. The recorded sound only becomes audible when touching someone else's ear.

Their ear canal acts as a sort of speaker, allowing them to listen to a secret finger-transmitted message. The sound can't be heard by anyone else but the person being touched.

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Report: 25 Most Influential People On the Right

Rush Limbaugh

Four media types make townhall.com list of the Top 25 Most Influential People On the Right.   

According to an article by John Hawkins at Town Hall, which is a Salem Communications website, Rush Limbaugh is number 1 on the list.  The story comments on Rush “He's the biggest right wing talk radio host in America, a generation of conservatives grew up listening to him, and he's capable of making news, killing legislation, and selling tens of thousands of books any time he opens his mouth.”

Matt Drudge is #2.  “The Drudge Report isn't just an important news site; it's an agenda-setter. If Drudge decides it's a big story, it shows up EVERYWHERE.”

Other radio talkers making the list are Sean Hannity at #6 and Glenn Beck at #10.

See The Entire List, Click Here.

Report: Top Three With Most Twitter Followers Unveiled

As the Twitter initial public offering made news last week, everyone scrambled to find the numbers.

How much was the raise? What price for the shares? When would they come to market?

At The NYPost, On the Money put together its own Twitter by-the-numbers, with the help of Dashburst

.

Twitter has 500 million users globally, who have generated 170 billion tweets — almost 24 trillion characters, give or take.

China, surprisingly, has the most users, with 35.5 million micro-bloggers.

The list of top three users with the most followers shows that the social media powerhouse is not a Mensa meeting.

• @ justinbieber has 44.4 million bieliebers.
• @ katyperry has 42.6 million, presumably not all of them California Gurls.
• @ ladygaga has 40.1 million fans of bad romance.

According to The Post, the average number of followers is a paltry 208.

Omaha Radio: FCC Searching For Mystery Operator

Operator Unknown

The ghost station of Omaha is a mysterious radio signal at 1490 AM — seemingly without owners, advertisers or disc jockeys — that plays a continuous loop of Buddy Holly, Petula Clark and Bobby Darin, like a 1960s malt-shop jukebox stuffed with an endless supply of coins.

According to omaha.com, nobody seems to know much about it. The Federal Communications Commission admitted it was stumped in papers filed last month.

The station operates under the call letters KOMJ. The FCC said in its filing that the station is owned by Cochise Broadcasting, in Jackson, Wyo. The agency said it could find no phone number for the company.

“On August 1, 2013, an agent from the Kansas City Office attempted to inspect station KOMJ's main studio, while the station was on the air,” the FCC enforcement report reads. “The station's web-page contains no main studio address and only lists a local phone number, which transfers to voice mail for stations located in the state of Arizona. The station's address of record is a mail box in the state of Wyoming.”

The saga took another twist when the FCC dug deeper into the studio location. The agency said it found an unnamed attorney who served as contact person for the station. The attorney, filings say, said the main studio is at 10714 Mockingbird Dr., Omaha.

The FCC sent an inspector; however, the agent from the Kansas City office was unable to located any main studio for KOMJ.

“This location is the main studio for the Journal Broadcast Group stations in Omaha,” according to the inspector's report. “The staff for the Journal Broadcast Group stations stated that station KOMJ's main studio was not located at 10714 Mockingbird Dr. and that no one associated with station KOMJ worked at the location.”  Journal Broadcast Group sold to Cochise Broadcasting in 2007. The FCC said in its report, leases space at the Journal Broadcast studios, but does not broadcast from there.

Lack of a studio and lack of an address for the licensee operating on FCC-regulated airwaves is frowned upon, according to the report.  “Every permittee or licensee of an AM, FM, TV or Class A TV station in the commercial broadcast services shall maintain a public inspection file,” the FCC enforcement action reads. “The file shall be available for public inspection at any time during regular business hours.”

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Tom's Take: A Google search for Cochise Broadcastings led to radiolineup.com which indicated Chochise owns 37-stations in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska.  But no contact info was noted. Another Google search led to the station's skimpy website. A contact page gave a contact phone number. I placed a call and it led to VM saying you have reach KCDQ and to directed me to leave a name& number.   KCDQ is an FM radio station broadcasting at 95.3 MHz. licensed to Douglas, AZ. The station airs adult contemporary programming according to radiolineup.com.  I would suggest the FCC trace the phone number I found.  

Music Industry Vet Jerry Sharell Attacked, Stabbed

Jerry Sharell

Jerry Sharell, a music industry veteran who played a role in the careers of The Carpenters, Joe Cocker, Motley Crue, Joni Mitchell, among others, was held hostage and attacked Sunday night at the home of his girlfriend, according to THR.

Sharell -- who hosts a weekly show, Sundays With Sinatra, on Los Angeles radio station KKJZ 88.1 FM KJazz, Long Beach, CA -- was at the Woodland Hills residence of his new girlfriend when her ex-husband arrived with flowers and a machete. He held the couple hostage for more than three hours before turning violent, stabbing both Sharell and himself.


The woman also was injured when she tried to stop the attack. She was able to escape and called authorities. Police said she had a restraining order against her ex-husband for a history of domestic violence.

Sharell, who suffered stab wounds to his neck and head, was rushed to the hospital, where he is said to be in critical but stable condition. He is in his 70s.

The suspect, who has not been identified, was arrested and taken to the hospital. He also is in critical but stable condition, having apparently slit his wrists.

Both men are expected to survive.

Neighbors told KCAL9′s Cristy Fajardo that Sharell only recently started dating the woman. He lost his wife of 48 years to cancer a year-and-a-half ago.

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R.I.P.: LI Radio Personality/Owner Jack Ellsworth

Jack Ellsworth (Kevin Spencer photo)

Jack Ellsworth (real name Ellswroth Shiebler), a World War II veteran and former radio station owner who played big-band music over the Long Island airwaves for more than half a century, died Thursday at Brookhaven Memorial Hospital Medical Center.

He was 91 and,  according to Newsday, died from renal failure, almost two months after his wife and business partner of 61 years, Dorothy Shiebler, died on July 16, his son Glenn Shiebler, of Wrentham, Mass., said.

"He really died of a broken heart," Shiebler said. "They were inseparable."

The two ran the independent radio station WLIM 1580 AM together from 1981 to 2001. He played the likes of Frank Sinatra and Benny Goodman and broadcast news. After they sold the Patchogue station, he moved his show to WALK1370 AM. Ellsworth, who became known as the "Silver Fox," performed his final radio show on Aug. 1.

His radio career encompassed different roles at various Long Island radio stations: from disc jockey, to president and general manager, to owner.

"I loved doing it and loved keeping the music alive because it's so good, it has to be heard," Ellsworth told the Long Island Advance earlier this year.

Looking back at his life in broadcasting in his memoir, "Memories in Melody: A Lifetime of Experiences from the Golden Era of Popular Music," published last year, he wrote that in a time of continual change it's important to value everyday experiences.

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