September 25 Radio History

In 1933...Tom Mix was heard for the first time on NBC Radio. His show ran until June,1950.

Here's the Tom Mix tie-in to the call sign of Hubbard Radio's WTMX Chicago.

WKBI AM in St. Marys PA went on in 1950. This was the first of a group of stations that would become the Allegheny Mountain Radio Network headed up by Cary Simpson. In 1966, WKBI-FM went on the air Licensed to Ridgeway, Elk County PA's County seat.

In the 70's WKBI-FM changed formats from Top 40 to Country and at that time changed call letters to WTMX in honor of one of Hollywoods early famous cowboys of the silver screen, Tom Mix. Mix was born in Southern Elk county.

WTMX would become WKBI-FM again in 1983.

In Chicago, WCLR changed it's call sign to WTMX in 1989.

(H/T: Jim Linn Jacksonville.)

In 1967...Bob  Hall, Host of Music Til Dawn on WCBS 880 AM passed away.  "Music Till Dawn" premiered on April 13, 1953. WCBS announcer Bob Hall was the model for hosts on that program around the nation.




In 1975...While performing "Lonely Teardrops" onstage at the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill, NJ during a Dick Clark oldies revue, Jackie Wilson collapses from a heart attack, bashing his head on the stage and lapsing into a come from which he will remain until his death in 1983.

Video features Wilson on the TV Show Shindig with Billy Preston on the keyboards.

In 1976...Frampton Comes Alive!  by Peter Frampton stood alone at the top of the album chart for the eighth week.  Silk Degrees from Boz Scaggs was a strong second with Linda Ronstadt's Hasten Down the Wind close behind.

The self-titled Fleetwood Mac was now moving back up after 61 weeks of release.

The rest of the Top 10:  Wild Cherry, War with their Greatest Hits package, Spirit from John Denver at #7, Spitfire by Jefferson Starship, All Things in Time by Lou Rawls at #9 and Chicago X.


In 1978…Radio actor (The Shadow, The First Nighter Program, Heartbeat Theater) Bret Morrison died following a heart attack at the age of 66.

In 1989...Jacor launched "Power 93: the Power Pig" in Tampa.

A year earlier, Jacor Broadcasting bought WFLA-FM 93.3 and its sister station, WFLA-AM 970, and switched the FM’s format and calls to oldies WFLZ “Z93.”  The format lasted only about a year.

After a weekend of stunting, including an hour of an urban contemporary micro-format, WFLZ would flip to Top 40 on September 25, 1989 at 8:15 AM to compete against local CHR Q105 (the first song under the new format was "Cold Hearted" by Paula Abdul). The station became "Power 93" or "The Power Pig", and aggressively targeted Q105 with promotions such as handing out "Screw The Q" t-shirts at various on the street events.

The station took over first place in 72 days and became one of the most legendary radio stations of all time.

Power Pig WFLZ #1

The first full-time Power Pig on-air lineup in October 1989 included Dr. Don Carpenter and the “Three Little Pigs” – Jack Harris, BJ Harris, and PD Marc Chase – on the morning show. In middays was long-time Tampa radio vet Dave Mann; afternoons were led by former Q105'er Jon 'Rock N Roll' Anthony, and nights were hosted by Tim and Tom. The original Beaver Stevens held down 10pm-2am, and Russell ‘The Love Muscle’ handled overnights from 2am-6am. The Pig continued its double-entendres on the weekends, too, with Hot "Dickie" Damn, Booger, Hardin Long, Jason (Mason's illegitimate son) Dixon, Jomama Johnson, Boner, and Brian Christopher.

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Ratings for “The Power Pig” took off with listeners 12+ and 18-34 who bought specially-designed T-shirts imprinted with “Screw the Q” on them from the station’s pink-colored mobile unit dubbed “The Pig Van.”  Lawsuits ensued and, in the end, Q105 took quite a beating and switched to country in 1993. In 1995 WFLZ dropped its aggressive approach and re-imaged itself more mainstream Top 40 as “93.3 FLZ The New Music Revolution” and, in 2000, “The #1 Hit Music Channel”.


In 2001…XM Satellite Radio began fulltime operations. It was set to officially launch on September 12, but due to the September 11 attacks, the kickoff was postponed to the 25th.


In 2003...Bob Murphy broadcast his last MLB NY Mets radio broadcast


In 2005…Longtime radio favorite in Seattle (KOL, KJR) and Chicago (WLS, WCFL), Jerry Kay died at the age of 67.


In 2010…Radio-TV show announcer (Amos 'n Andy, The Adventures of Frank Race, Dr. Christian, The Sears Radio Theater, Stars over Hollywood, The Golden Days of Radio, The World Tomorrow, The Red Skelton Show, Highway Patrol, The George Gobel Show, Mackenzie's Raiders) Art Gilmore died at age 98.


In 2013…News correspondent (CBS, NPR, CNN) Lee Thornton, the first African American woman to cover a regular White House beat for one of the big three broadcast networks, died of pancreatic cancer at 71.

CBS Radio Plans $1.5B Debt Offering Ahead of IPO

(Reuters) -- CBS Radio Inc, which CBS Corp is planning to shed, is preparing to take on about $1.5 billion in debt ahead of its initial public offering and use most of the proceeds to pay its parent in cash, according to people familiar with the matter.

The IPO for the subsidiary, which owns 117 U.S. radio stations, including in top markets such as New York and Los Angeles, was registered in July with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. CBS has not publicly disclosed how much debt the unit plans to issue.

CBS Radio stated in its IPO registration statement that it would distribute some proceeds from the debt offering to its parent, while keeping some money for general corporate purposes.

CBS's debt offering will be split between bonds and loans, and could come before the end of the year, the sources said this week.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Wells Fargo & Co, Bank of America Corp. and Credit Suisse Group AG are underwriters on the IPO, while JPMorgan Chase & Co is leading the bank financing, and Deutsche Bank AG is running the bond financing, the sources added.

The sources asked not to be identified because the details of the offering were not yet public. Representatives of CBS and all of the banks declined to comment.

CBS will use capital from the radio deal for buybacks and investing in the business, CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves told the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference this week. Moonves had said that private equity firms, radio rivals and international groups have expressed interest in buying CBS Radio.

Les Moonves

An IPO, however, is viewed as the most likely option, according to the sources.

Speculation has grown among media industry insiders that CBS Corp may merge with Viacom, which has the same controlling shareholder in Sumner Redstone, although CBS CEO Moonves has said that no talks are underway.

CBS Radio is profitable and its sports, news and music stations are in top markets such as New York and Los Angeles. But a radio company IPO may be a tough sale as new digital competitors have emerged and depressed advertising sales for the medium for years.

Internet radio company Pandora Media Inc (P.N) is taking a small but growing share of the $15 billion to $17 billion in local ad dollars from FM radio per year, Macquarie analyst Amy Yong said in a research note in August.

CBS Radio generated revenue of $1.23 billion last year, down from $1.3 billion a year ago, according to the IPO registration.

iHM: New On Demand Features Won't Hurt Stations

To promote its upcoming paid subscription services, iHeartMedia plans to unleash the power of its full portfolio, from 850 radio stations with well-known national and local personalities, to digital platforms and social media. But the best promotion method, says iHeartRadio president Darren Davis, will come with iHeartRadio users finding it to be an exciting, seamless experience, according to InsideRadio.

“The features and functionality are going to be right there in front of you when you’re using the app,” Davis said. “If you’re listening to KIIS-FM Los Angeles [on iHeartRadio] and you hear a great song, it will be very intuitive how you could save the song to a playlist or replay it right then and there.”

Rather than serving as a replacement for other paid services, iHeartMedia’s new subscription plans—iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access—are being touted as additive and complementary to a Spotify or Apple Music. The idea, said Davis, is to give users more options and more choice. Davis said he doesn’t see any threat to iHeart’s over-the-air audience either, noting that iHeartRadio has only helped build awareness and listening for its stations. So far this year, Davis noted, digital listening is up 30% and broadcast ratings are up 10%. “We think of the app as a safety net to catch extra listening occasions,” Davis added.

The company took a full-throttle promo strategy to launch and build iHeartRadio as well, which now has 84% brand awareness, according to Davis.

For his part, iHeart chairman and CEO Bob Pittman calls the expanded iHeart products a “new era of interactive radio.

“For decades radio has remained the No. 1 medium to reach consumers, fostering a sense of community and engaging listeners through entertaining on-air personalities and curated music and content,” Pittman said in a news release. “While other streaming services have taken a music collection approach to digital streaming, no one has yet built a service incorporating on-demand technology with real live radio—and at a scale that only iHeartMedia can, with its reach of over a quarter of a billion people every month.”

Report: Twitter Talking Sale

By Greg Roumeliotis and Liana B. Baker

(Reuters) - Twitter Inc has initiated talks with several technology companies to explore selling itself, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, signaling the start of what is likely to be a slow-rolling auction of the high-profile but money-losing social media company.

A sale of Twitter has been the subject of on-again, off-again rumors for many months as the company grapples with stagnant user growth, soft advertising sales and losses running at hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

Jack Dorsey

The company's business struggles have come even as the 10-year-old service has evolved into a potent global source of news, entertainment and social commentary.

CNBC, citing anonymous sources, reported on Friday that Twitter is in talks with companies including Google and may receive a formal bid soon. A source told Reuters that Salesforce.com is also in pursuit.

Twitter and Alphabet Inc, Google's parent company did not respond to a request for comment. Salesforce declined to comment.

Verizon, another company mentioned in media reports on Friday as a possible suitor, said it did not comment on M&A rumors but that it had not submitted a bid for the company.

Twitter shares jumped more than 19 percent to $22.22 per share on Friday, marking the largest one-day rise since their first day of trading in 2013. The company now has a market value of around $16 billion.

Morningstar analyst Ali Mogharabi said Alphabet would be the best acquirer for Twitter since it has not yet been able to crack social media on its own despite several efforts.

"From a strategic standpoint, we think it would be more beneficial for Alphabet as opposed to Salesforce," Mogharabi said. Former Google executive Omid Kordestani is executive chairman of Twitter.

Morningstar estimates Twitter could be bought for $22 per share. Twitter is working with investment banks Goldman Sachs and Allen & Co in considering possible transactions, sources familiar with the situation said.

FindTheCompany | Graphiq

SALESFORCE SURPRISE

The most unexpected development on Friday was Salesforce.com's interest in acquiring Twitter. Salesforce serves business customers with cloud-based computing services and has virtually no presence in consumer media.

But a recent presentation about its new "Einstein" artificial intelligence platform provided a peak at how Twitter could fit into the company's strategy .

Salesforce executives said they license the Twitter "firehose" of all Tweets that come through the platform, and use it to power sentiment analysis and other tools that show how companies and brands are being discussed and perceived.

Salesforce Chief Executive Marc Benioff is active in political causes in San Francisco and the two companies are located just blocks from each other in the city.

Salesforce's chief digital evangelist, Vala Afshar, tweeted on Friday: "Why @twitter? 1 personal learning network 2 the best realtime, context rich news 3 democratize intelligence 4 great place to promote others."

Later, Afshar added: "I have tweeted my personal views regarding 'Why Twitter?' numerous times over the past couple of years. I simply love Twitter."

FindTheCompany | Graphiq

RIVALS ASCEND

Afshar's sentiment is not shared on Wall Street, however. Twitter missed Wall Street's sales expectations in both the first and second quarters of 2016, according to Thomson Reuters StarMine, and has yet to produce a net profit in 11 quarters as a public company.

As of the end of the second quarter, the company had an accumulated loss of nearly $2.3 billion since its inception.

It has also failed to keep pace with rivals, notably Facebook's Instagram and Snapchat. Both now boast more users than Twitter by most measures even though they are much newer, and advertisers have begun to migrate their ad dollars accordingly.

Twitter's revenue grew rapidly under former Chief Executive  Dick Costolo, but stagnant user growth and mounting complaints about lack of innovation in the product led to Costolo's departure last year.

The company has also faced criticism for its failure to stem abuse on the platform and for missing the opportunity to play a bigger role in the red-hot messaging arena. Twitter has 313 million monthly users, up just 3 percent from a year ago.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey returned to the company as chief executive in 2015 while retaining his role as CEO of payment company Square, and his plan for reviving Twitter is at best seen as unfinished. Recent moves to be a big player in live video, including a deal to broadcast NFL games, are too new to be reflected in user growth or ad sales.

Twitter went public in November 2013 at $26 a share. The shares peaked above $74 just over a month after its IPO, but have been on steady downward trajectory since. From then through Thursday's close at $18.63, the stock had lost three-quarters of its value.

 (Reporting By Liana B. Baker, Dan Burns, Greg Roumeliotis and Sinead Carew; Writing by Jonathan Weber; Editing by Meredith Mazzilli)

Deflategate: NFL TV Ratings

The NFL is the biggest ratings powerhouse on TV, but so far this season even the mighty football league has found itself watching its ratings fall, reports money.cnn.com.

Through the first two weeks of the regular season, the league's premiere game, NBC's "Sunday Night Football," is down 12% in viewership compared to last year; ESPN's big game, "Monday Night Football," is also down 12%; and CBS' first "Thursday Night Football" game fell a whopping 26%, according to Nielsen data.

Even with these declines, the NFL is still bigger than most everything else on TV. Through two weeks, NFL coverage on all networks is averaging 18.3 million viewers. To put that into perspective, the season six finale of "The Walking Dead" brought in around 14 million viewers.

But that average is still down from 20.1 million viewers over the same time frame last year, which is concerning to networks and anyone else banking on the future of linear TV -- because if the NFL isn't immune to ratings drops, what is?

Billie Gold, vice president and director of programming research at Amplifi, the global buying arm of media company the Dentsu Aegis Network, said it's the lack of big games and prominent names that has sacked the league the past two weeks.

"This season there have been fewer marquee match-ups early on, while some prominent NFL superstars are missing from the limelight," she said.

And not every NFL broadcast has seen a decline. CBS' second Thursday Night Football game on Thursday night between the Patriots and the Houston Texans was up 4% from the same game last season. And Sunday games, which represent the bulk of the schedule, have seen smaller declines -- the ones broadcast on CBS are down only 5% while ratings for Fox's Sunday games are roughly unchanged from last season.

On top of the quarterback problem, the NFL is also competing with the presidential election, which has brought in big viewership for the last year.

The Wall Street Journal reports the first presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump on Sept. 26 is expected to reduce ratings for ESPN’s Monday Night Football, and multiple ad buyers are predicting TV viewership in the range of about 10.3 million to 11 million people for the game. That would be down 15% to 20% from last year’s average Monday Night Football rating.

ESPN, majority owned by Walt Disney Co., already took a hit on advertising pricing because of expected competition with the debate coupled with a weaker game matchup, according to people familiar with the matter. The game is the lowest priced of any Monday night for the 16-week NFL schedule, the people said.

When Trump and Mrs. Clinton duke it out across networks that night, ad buyers predict viewership for the debate may be up anywhere from 20% to 50% from the 67 million people who watched Democratic incumbent President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Gov. Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate in 2012.

L-A Radio: MLB Dodgers Honor Vin Scully

Vin Scully with wife Sandy

The Dodgers rolled out the blue carpet for Vin Scully, literally. They rolled out the dignitaries too, and the videos, and even a symphony orchestra, report the LA Times.

At its heart, however, the Vin Scully tribute Friday was the world’s biggest thank-you card, come to life. The greatest broadcaster in baseball history came to say thank you to the fans, and the fans came to say thank you to him.

When Scully was introduced, to a sellout crowd seemingly hoping to applaud long enough to persuade him to reconsider retirement, he fought back tears, then put his hand over his heart. The crowd would not sit down before he did.

For nearly an hour, in person and on video, speakers from Sandy Koufax to Kobe Bryant and from Bob Costas to Kevin Costner extolled the virtues of Scully. The occasion was so special that players from the Dodgers — and the visiting Colorado Rockies — gathered in their dugouts to watch.
Then the guest of honor stepped to the microphone, and again the fans rose as one, for so long and with such gusto that Scully sheepishly interrupted the fans he has called friends for 67 years.

“Aw, come on,” Scully said. “It’s just me.”

And then he brought the house down by dropping the line with which he greets his listeners, his viewers, his friends.

“Hi everybody, and a very pleasant good evening to you,” he said, almost mischievously. “I thought I’d get that out of the way right away.”

Dodgers Chairman Mark Walter said the team would add Scully’s name to the stadium “ring of honor,” next to the retired numbers. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti gave Scully the key to the city. Commissioner Rob Manfred said the league would donate $50,000 to the Jackie Robinson Foundation, in honor of Scully.

Jamie Jarrin, who calls the Dodgers in Spanish and like Scully is in the Hall of Fame, thanked Scully for teaching him the game. Charley Steiner, the Dodgers’ radio voice, said Scully’s 67 years with one team would be as unbreakable a baseball record as Cal Ripken’s streak of 2,632 consecutive games played, Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, and Cy Young’s 511 victories.

Don Newcombe, 90, the Dodgers’ starting pitcher in Scully’s 1950 debut, was there. So were Koufax and Clayton Kershaw, the greatest left-handers in team history. Scully called no-hitters for each, half a century apart.

Kershaw, on behalf of Dodgers players past and present, thanked Scully for “painting a picture for us.”

September 24 Radio History

In 1933...the first dramatic presentation for radio, "Roses and Drums", was heard on WABC (then a CBS station) in New York City.


In 1934...Seattle Radio Legend Pat O’Day was born (Pat W. Berg). He is probably best known as the afternoon drive personality at Seattle's KJR 950 in the 1960s, he would eventually become program director and general manager. He owned KYYX 96.5 FM in Seattle in the mid seventies and early 80s. This frequency is now occupied by KJAQ.




In 1942...Glenn Miller ended his Moonlight Serenade series on CBS radio. It was time for Miller to go to war. The show had aired three times a week for Chesterfield Cigarettes.


In 1948..."Axis Sally" (real name Mildred Gillars) pleaded innocent to charges of treason. She was convicted and wound up serving 12 years behind bars for being a Nazi wartime radio propagandist.

Mildred Gillars

In 1934 she moved to Dresden, Germany, to study music, later being employed as a teacher of English at the Berlitz School of Languages in Berlin. In 1940 she obtained work as an announcer with the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (RRG), German State Radio.

By 1941, as the U.S. State Department was advising American nationals to return home, Gillars chose to stay in Germany after her fiancé, Paul Karlson, a naturalized German citizen, said that he would never marry her if she returned to the United States. Shortly afterwards, Karlson was sent to the Eastern Front, where he died in action.

Until 1942 Gillars' broadcasts were largely apolitical. This changed when Max Otto Koischwitz, the program director in the USA Zone at the RRG, cast Gillars in a new show called Home Sweet Home.

Soon she acquired several names amongst her GI listeners, including Berlin Bitch, Berlin Babe, Olga, and Sally, but the one that became most common was "Axis Sally".

This name probably came from the time when, asked to describe herself on the air, Gillars had said she was "the Irish type… a real Sally."

In 1943, an Italian-American woman, Rita Zucca, also began broadcasting to American troops from Rome, using the name "Sally". Often the two women were thought to be one and the same.

Gillars' main programs from Berlin were:

Home Sweet Home Hour, from December 24, 1942, until 1945, a regular propaganda program the purpose of which was to make American forces in Europe feel homesick. A running theme of these broadcasts was the infidelity of soldiers' wives and sweethearts while the listeners were stationed in Europe and North Africa.

Midge-at-the-Mike, broadcast from March to late fall 1943,  in which she played American songs interspersed with defeatist propaganda, anti-Semitic rhetoric and attacks on Franklin D. Roosevelt.

G. I.’s Letter-box and Medical Reports 1944, directed at the US home audience in which Gillars used information on wounded and captured US airmen to cause fear and worry in their families.

She remained in Berlin until the end of the war. Her last broadcast was on May 6, 1945, just two days before the German surrender.

Mildred Gillars died of colon cancer at Grant Medical Center in Columbus on June 25, 1988


In 1957...MLB Dodgers play last game in Brooklyn airing on WMGM 1050 AM


In 1960…Radio announcer (Truth or Consequences, The Baby Snooks Show, The Amos 'n' Andy Show, Fibber McGee and Molly)/commercial pitchman (Johnson Wax, Pet Milk, Auto-Lite, Rinso, Reynolds Aluminum) Harlow Wilcox died at the age of 60.

In 1977...The Hot 100...The Emotions returned to #1, making it five weeks for "Best of My Love".  The Floaters had to settle for #2 with "Float On" while another hit from Rumours--"Don't Stop" kept Fleetwood Mac in the limelight.  K.C. and the Sunshine Band were up with "Keep It Comin' Love" and the Brothers Johnson were at 5 with "Strawberry Letter 23".

The rest of the Top 10:  Andy Gibb's previous #1 "I Just Want To Be Your Everything" tumbled, ELO moved up with "Telephone Line", Meco's instrumental "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" moved from 13-8, Shaun Cassidy had a hit with the Eric Carmen song "That's Rock 'N' Roll" and Foreigner cracked the list with "Cold As Ice".


In 1977...The Album Charts..Rumours by Fleetwood Mac was #1 for a record 20th week.  It wasn't done yet.

In 1988...The Hot 100...Bobby McFerrin took over at #1 with his positive song "Don't Worry Be Happy".  Guns N' Roses slipped to 2 with "Sweet Child O' Mine" and Taylor Dayne edged up with "I'll Always Love You".  Robert Palmer fell after a long run with "Simply Irresistible" and Leppard had their third Top 10 song from Hysteria--"Love Bites".

The rest of the Top 10:  Huey Lewis & the News with "Perfect World", Peter Cetera from Sun Valley, Idaho with "One Good Woman", the New Edition dropped with "If It Isn't Love", Kenny Loggins had the #9 song--"Nobody's Fool" and Cheap Trick joined the party with their remake of the Elvis Presley classic "Don't Be Cruel".

D/FW Radio: Ditka Says If You Don't Like USA? "Get The Hell Out"

With embattled San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick appearing on the cover of Time magazine for his recent sting of protests during the playing of the National Anthem at NFL games, KRLD 105.3 FM The Fan asked Hall of Fame coach Mike Ditka his opinion on the matter.

CBS Local reports The Fan’s Shan & RJ show posed the question to the former Chicago Bears coach of what he thought about Kaepernick and his choice to kneel during the playing of the National Anthem.

“I think it’s a problem…anybody who disrespects this country and the flag” said Ditka. “If they don’t like the country they don’t like our flag…get the hell out.”

“I have no respect for Colin Kaepernick – he probably has no respect for me, that’s his choice” said Ditka. “My choice is, I like this country, I respect our flag, and I don’t see all the atrocities going on in this country that people say are going on.”

Ditka added, “I see opportunities if people want to look for opportunity – now if they don’t want to look for them – then you can find problems with anything, but this is the land of opportunity because you can be anything you want to be if you work. If you don’t work…that’s a different problem. ”

iHM Unveils New On-Demand Plus, All-Access iHR Services

iHeartMedia, the creator of iHeartRadio – the all-in-one streaming music and live digital radio service – announced today that it is reinventing live radio with the launch of its two new subscription services -- iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access -- set to debut in January 2017.

While research shows that more than 90 percent of listeners say they listen to both FM radio and music collections, but at different times, for different reasons, this marks the first time ever that on demand functionality will be used to improve the radio experience, unlike current services which can only approach on demand through a music collection offering.

Darren Davis

Because 73 percent of consumers, which include users of on demand music services, continually cite radio as their primary source of music discovery, iHeartRadio’s new on demand offering will allow listeners to bridge the divide between music discovery and music collecting by seamlessly incorporating true interactivity into the radio listening experience through a variety of new features.

“We’re now making it easier than ever for iHeartRadio users to think of music discovery and collecting in a brand new and easy-to-use way,” said Darren Davis, President of iHeartRadio. “For the first time ever, when listeners hear a new or favorite song on the radio they can instantly replay a song and even save it directly to a playlist. We are reimagining radio -- with the new technologies and offerings powered by our on-demand options, music discovery, music collecting and the power of community and companionship fostered by live radio and influential and trusted personalities. iHeartRadio is now combining it all for the first time; there’s no other digital music service that can do this.”

Bob Pittman

“For decades radio has remained the No. 1 medium to reach consumers, fostering a sense of community and engaging listeners through entertaining on-air personalities and curated music and content,” said Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. “While other streaming services have taken a music collection approach to digital streaming, no one has yet built a service incorporating on demand technology with real live radio-- and at a scale that only iHeartMedia can, with its reach of over a quarter of a billion people every month. And only iHeartMedia can leverage the power of radio and bring to market new and innovative ways to extend on-demand capabilities onto the iHeartRadio platform. It’s a monumental shift for the industry as we lead the way into a new era of interactive radio.”

The two new iHeartRadio services are iHeartRadio Plus, which will be focused on the enhanced radio experience, and iHeartRadio All Access, which will go beyond iHeartRadio Plus to include a full on demand music collection experience – but one still tied directly to radio.

Because iHeartRadio’s new service is the only one using on demand functionality to make radio even better, instead of simply duplicating the on demand music collection experience, this new service continues iHeartRadio’s important mission of partnering with artists and the music industry — presenting more opportunities to further grow revenue for them:

• iHeartRadio Plus is designed to serve as an addition to other on demand services, not as a replacement. It’s a perfect add-on, enhancing the radio listening experience for both new on demand subscribers and those who currently subscribe to other, traditional on demand music collection service, and driving new revenue for both artists and music companies.
• iHeartMedia reaches more than a quarter of a billion Americans a month through its broadcast stations alone. No other service comes close -- and as a result, iHeartRadio has the ability to drive massive awareness, introducing iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access on a national scale to a large new audience — and the 84 percent of iHeartRadio users who do not currently subscribe to an on demand service and who for the first time may be interested in subscribing to a service that provides them with the best of live radio combined with easy-to-use on demand functionality that the can connect directly to their music collection.
• iHeartRadio has reached license agreements with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group and Universal Music Group, and in addition has signed agreements with independent record labels and distributors including The Orchard, Entertainment One, INgrooves, DashGo, Naxos and CD Baby.

Music Labels Like What They Hear From iHR

iHeartRadio has reached license agreements with Warner Music Group, Sony Music Group and Universal Music Group, and in addition has signed agreements with independent record labels and distributors including The Orchard, Entertainment One, INgrooves, DashGo, Naxos and CD Baby.

“Universal Music Group is pleased to welcome a new addition to the growing and dynamic music subscription space with iHeart’s launch of interactive services,” said Sir Lucian Grainge, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group. “We’re glad to build upon our relationship with iHeart, which under Bob’s leadership continues to innovate the radio experience by adding distinct features and services and attract a broad audience that remains deeply passionate about music.”

“I’d like to congratulate Bob Pittman and the team at iHeartRadio on their move into the subscription music business,” said Doug Morris, CEO of Sony Music Entertainment. “This deal further expands our long-running successful relationship, and creates promising new commercial opportunities to engage with the millions of music fans who listen to iHeart every day. We look forward to working with them to develop premium music solutions for radio users.”

“We’re pleased to be expanding our long-standing partnership with Bob and his team,” said Steve Cooper, CEO of Warner Music Group. “iHeart’s expertise and reach in radio programming and curation, combined with the full power of streaming technology, is a compelling prospect. These new services will open up the choice of experiences that iHeart offers music fans, while providing our artists and songwriters with a wider range of commercial and marketing opportunities.”

"iHeartRadio's vast audience of digital radio listeners will now see the world of possibilities offered in a subscription service," says Brad Navin, CEO of The Orchard. "We are excited to see what this opportunity will bring, both for our clients and for the industry as a whole."

“We are excited to extend our relationship with iHeartMedia from on-air radio to their upcoming music subscription services,” said Bob Roback, CEO of independent music distributor INgrooves. “This is another fantastic opportunity to expand support for our vibrant and global music marketplace and give fans access to great music."

Backgrounder: iHeartMedia Launches New Services For iHR

iHeartRadio announced its upcoming services at the now-legendary iHeartRadio Music Festival, the iconic two-day celebration of music when today’s hottest artists converge on Las Vegas at one time, on one stage, for great performances and unique one-time-only collaborations. This year’s Festival will feature an extraordinary line-up, including performances by U2, Sting, Drake, Britney Spears, Sam Hunt, twenty one pilots, Billy Idol, Florida Georgia Line, OneRepublic, Sia, Cage the Elephant, Zedd, Tears for Fears, Ariana Grande, Pitbull and Usher.

iHeartRadio, which itself was introduced at the inaugural iHeartRadio Music Festival in 2011, is a free all-in-one service that offers listeners thousands of live radio stations, personalized custom artist stations created by just one song or seed artist and the top podcasts and personalities. On-demand offerings will be added in January, 2017.

iHeartRadio recently announced it has surpassed 90 million registered users. The streaming service continues to reach user milestones at a rate faster than Facebook or any other streaming music service. iHeartRadio has also been downloaded more than a billion times and is now available on 90 unique device platforms spanning in-home entertainment, wearables, gaming, mobile and auto.

Two Fests To Pack Las Vegas This Weekend

Even in what’s often touted as the Entertainment Capital of the World, this could be a magic 100 for the record books: 45 acts billed between two music festivals on Friday, and 55 more on Saturday, reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

For the past three years, Las Vegas downtown’s Life is Beautiful festival managed to land on a different weekend than the iHeartRadio Music Festival on the Strip.

But this year, organizers of both are crossing their fingers for fine weather Saturday, even if the competition is less direct than it might seem. Life is Beautiful sells close to half its 100,000-plus tickets in the Las Vegas market. And you’re either there or you miss it — unless you submit to some jittery dude’s phone-cam on YouTube.

iHeartRadio will fill the T-Mobile Arena on Friday and Saturday for the likes of U2, Drake, Sting and Usher. But millions more outside Las Vegas will be watching it via live streaming on CWTV.com and The CW app, or listening on 150 radio stations or the iHeartRadio app, which the festival was created to promote six years ago.

The biggest overlap with Life is Beautiful comes with iHeartRadio’s Daytime Village on Saturday, on the MGM Resorts Village festival site across the Strip from Luxor. As many as 25,000 people will check out 16 genre-spanning acts, from Cage The Elephant to Troye Sivan to Las Vegas-born closer Panic! At the Disco.

“It’s the first time it sold out this far in advance,” Tom Poleman, iHeartMedia’s chief programming executive, says of the Daytime Village’s third year. “I think that people caught on to how amazing that experience is unto itself. The prices are really affordable (tickets started at $49) and the lineup is incredible.”

John Sykes, president of iHeartMedia’s Entertainment Enterprises, says “anything is on the table” when it comes to the iHeartRadio weekend growing still more down the road.

Las Vegas “gives us that ability to be flexible,” he added of the venue capacity in the resort corridor. “In certain cities like New York, the geography would block you.”

Each night’s performances have been known to hit the five-hour mark but are also edited into a pair of two-hour highlights shows airing Oct. 6 and 7 on The CW.

Expert Sees $5B Opportunity For In-Car Content

In the age of connected and autonomous vehicles, an AM-FM radio just won’t cut it, reports Automotive News.

An idle driver sitting in a car that drives itself will be looking for things to read, watch or listen to. The autonomous vehicle content delivery industry could be worth up to $5 billion, said Elliot Garbus, general manager of the transportation solutions division at Intel, at an event hosted by SAE International in suburban Detroit earlier this week.

But that’s looking long term. For the nearer future, in-vehicle content can actually help ease the transition into autonomous driving, Garbus said. A recent survey by AAA shows that 75 percent of people said they were afraid to let an autonomous car drive itself.

According to Automotive News, features such as a map that shows passengers what the camera, radar and lidar sensors are picking up can help ease the transition to vehicle-controlled driving from human-controlled operation.

Existing entertainment systems could be developed for more extensive content delivery, Garbus said the estimated multibillion-dollar market could still be up for grabs as consumers develop new habits for riding in self-driving vehicles.

Autonomous vehicles will need to provide in-vehicle computing services -- like the ability to check email, look up nearby restaurants or stream videos -- and 5G connectivity, which is expected to debut within the next five years, Garbus said. Those services can facilitate either business or entertainment services, providing more value to the consumer, he added.

And The 2016 Marconi Award Winners Are...

Winners of the 2016 National Association of Broadcasters' (NAB) Marconi Radio Awards were announced Thursday night at the 27th annual NAB Marconi Radio Awards Dinner & Show, held at the Radio Show in Nashville.

Established in 1989 and named after inventor and Nobel Prize winner Guglielmo Marconi, the NAB Marconi Radio Awards are given to radio stations and outstanding on-air personalities to recognize excellence in radio. This year's NAB Marconi Radio Award recipients are:

Legendary Station of the Year
WINS-AM, New York, NY

AC Station of the Year
WLEN-FM, Adrian, MI

Network/Syndicated Personality of the Year 
Delilah, Premiere Networks

CHR Station of the Year
KTXY-FM,Columbia, MO

Major Market Personality of the Year
Toucher & Rich, WBZ-FM, Boston, MA

Classic Hits Station of the Year
KRTH-FM, Los Angeles, CA

Large Market Personality of the Year
Brooke & Jubal, KQMV-FM, Seattle, WA

Country Station of the Year
KKBQ-FM, Houston, TX

Medium Market Personality of the Year
Chaz & AJ, WPLR-FM, Milford, CT

News/Talk Station of the Year
WTOP-FM, Washington, D.C.

Small Market Personality of the Year
Brent Carl Fleshman, WHUB-FM, Cookeville, TN

Non-commercial Station of the Year
WSOU-FM, South Orange, NJ

Major Market Station of the Year
WBEB-FM, Philadelphia, PA

Religious Station of the Year
KLTY-FM, Dallas, TX

Host Scott Shannon

Large Market Station of the Year
WBAL-AM, Baltimore, MD

Rock Station of the Year
KCMQ-FM, Columbia, MO

Medium Market Station of the Year
WHKO-FM, Dayton, OH

Spanish Station of the Year
KLOL-FM, Houston, TX

Small Market Station of the Year
WKDZ-FM, Cadiz, KY

Sports Station of the Year
WXYT-FM, Detroit, MI

Urban Station of the Year
WHUR-FM, Washington, D.C.

Marconi finalists were selected by a task force of broadcasters, and the winners were voted on by the NAB Marconi Radio Awards Selection Academy. The votes were tabulated by an independent firm.

Meanwhile, the RAB and NAB announced the total number of registered attendees for the 2016 Radio Show, held this week in Nashville.

2016 Radio Show Attendees: 2,272

This compares to 2,170 attendees at the 2015 Radio Show in Atlanta and is the largest attendance figure since the RAB and NAB started partnering on the event in 2010.

As previously announced, the 2017 Radio Show will be held September 6-8 in Austin, TX.

CBS Radio Touts Five Marconi Winners

Five CBS RADIO stations and on-air personalities were awarded The National Association of Broadcasters’ Marconi Award, the industry’s most prestigious honor, at the annual awards show on Thursday, Sept. 22, held during the Radio Advertising Bureau’s Radio Show in Nashville, TX.

CBS RADIO winners included:

•  WINS-AM, New York – Legendary Station of the Year
• KRTH-FM, Los Angeles – Classic Hits Station of the Year
• KLOL-FM, Houston – Spanish Station of the Year
• Toucher and Rich (WBZ-FM), Boston – Major Market Personality of the Year
• WXYT-FM, Detroit – Sports Station of the Year

“We are truly honored that so many of our local stations and on-air personalities have been awarded with the prestigious Marconi Award,” said Andre Fernandez, President, CBS RADIO. “As a company, it is both our objective and our passion to inform and entertain our loyal listeners every day, and the five awards we’ve received this year are further proof that our efforts are successful.”

Established in 1989 and named after inventor and Nobel Prize winner Guglielmo Marconi, the NAB Marconi Radio Awards honor radio stations and on-air personalities for excellence in broadcasting.

Fred Jacobs' Notes From The Radio Show

Sam Matheny, Fred Jacobs, Steve Newberry, Scott Burnell

A busy week at The Radio Show and a decidedly more upbeat radio industry taking in the sights and sounds of Music City.  From Fred Jacobs (President of Jacobs Media Strategies) blog, here are a few quick hits:

• There was a nice buzz at the conference, a congenial and large crowd, and a positive feeling about radio.
• That said, many of the same “ize” words permeated the air.  How do we smartly digitize?  What’s the smartest way to strategize? How do we effectively monetize?  How can we best prioritize?  The radio industry continues to try to figure it all out.
• The buzz topic this year had to be podcasting, punctuated by Nielsen’s announcement that they’re figured out how to measure on-demand audio.  Here’s the money quote from Brad Kelly:

“It’s no longer about measuring the device, like television or radio. It’s about measuring the consumer and their behavior.”

• And podcasting sessions from Amplifi Media’s Steve Goldstein and our Seth Resler (with the NAB’s Josh Miely) were packed – a strong indicator about how broadcasters are trying to get their heads around podcasting.
• The “connected car” has been elevated to a key topic in radio circles.  I participated in a free-wheeling panel conversation with Ford’s Scott Burnell and Commonwealth Broadcasting’s Steve Newberry.  Moderated by NAB Chief Technical Officer Sam Matheny, we covered a lot of ground from the technical side to Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.  But a big conclusion voiced by all three of us panelists was the need for radio to double-down on its content game to remain competitive in the ever-crowded dash.

For some reason, I seemed to run into more people I hadn’t seen in a number of years, a reminder that it’s always great to connect with old friends and colleagues in the radio business.

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Trump vs. Clinton Debate To Mark Biggest Moment of Election

By Steve Holland and Amanda Becker

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Hillary Clinton, suddenly vulnerable in the presidential race, is under pressure to deliver a strong performance against Republican Donald Trump in their first debate on Monday, a moment that could be the most consequential yet of the 2016 election.

Political veterans involved in preparing for past presidential debates said Clinton should drive home how she would run the country during uncertain times and draw a contrast as the steady, experienced alternative to the untested Trump. For his part, Trump needed to show enough gravitas to convince skeptics that he is ready to be commander in chief, they said.

The 90-minute face-off at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York, the first of three debates, takes place at a time when Clinton's once-comfortable lead in opinion polls over the former reality TV star has evaporated.

History shows that a single bad debate performance can alter the trajectory of a U.S. presidential race.  Reuters/Ipsos polling shows about 20 percent of the electorate remains undecided, far higher at this stage in the campaign than the 12 percent undecided four years ago.

The TV audience for the debate is expected to be a record, easily surpassing the record 46.2 million households who watched the first encounter between President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney in 2012, according to the Nielsen ratings company.  

"I am going to do my very best to communicate as clearly and fearlessly as I can in the face of the insults and the attacks and the bullying and the bigotry that we have seen coming from my opponent," Clinton said on Tuesday on the Steve Harvey Radio show.

Anita Dunn, who helped President Barack Obama prepare for debates against Republican nominee John McCain in 2008, said Obama succeeded at their first debate by steering the conversation repeatedly back to the struggling U.S. economy even though the event was supposed to be about foreign policy.

She said she expected Clinton to try to exploit Trump's weaknesses and emphasize her strengths. "The contrast between them is what you want to hone," she said.

The debate will be the best opportunity for two candidates, both widely seen by voters as untrustworthy, to put to rest questions about their fitness for the White House with the Nov. 8 election fast approaching.

Even the candidates' body language will be closely scrutinized, just as it has been in past elections.

Brett O'Donnell, a debate coach who helped President George W. Bush in his 2004 debates and McCain in 2008, said Bush did not put in the necessary work for his first debate against Democrat John Kerry that year and it showed.

Quickly put on the defensive, Bush blinked rapidly and slouched behind the lectern. Kerry was judged the winner. Bush got more serious about the debates after that, O'Donnell said.

Clinton had a shaky performance at a Sept. 7 NBC "Commander-in-Chief" forum where she became prickly in response to questions about her handling of classified emails while serving as U.S. secretary of state.

"Presentation is very important, and Hillary has to work on that. Her presentation at the 'Commander-in-Chief' forum was not very good. She didn’t come off as likeable. She came off as sour and defensive," O'Donnell said.

InsideGov | Graphiq

TWO TRUMPS

Clinton is spending most of this week in debate preparations with a small circle of top aides at her home in Chappaqua, New York.

Clinton aides said she is preparing for two scenarios: One in which Trump is measured and serious, and another in which he is freewheeling and makes inflammatory personal attacks.

Trump relied on his famed spontaneity to fire off one-line zingers to dismantle 16 Republican rivals during the primaries, dispatching "low-energy" Jeb Bush or "lying Ted" Cruz and "little Marco" Rubio. He has repeatedly called Clinton "crooked Hillary" at rallies.

"You're just not sure who is going to show up,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a senior adviser to Clinton. “He may be aggressive or he may lay back. That’s hard to game out necessarily so I would say most of the focus is on what points does she want to make.”

A Trump supporter, Republican U.S. Representative Chris Collins of New York, said Trump understands that he needs to put forth a presidential demeanor.

"I think the seriousness of that can't be understated and that we're going to see the debate prep making sure that she's not going to be able to pull him somehow off the message," he said.

Rick Lazio, a Republican former congressman from New York, found Clinton a tough opponent when he faced her in a U.S. Senate debate in New York in 2000.

He was seen as bullying, lost the debate and the election, and now says Trump will need to treat Clinton carefully.

"What he has to avoid is a sense that he is name-calling, highly disrespectful, badgering, anything like that," he said.

InsideGov | Graphiq

ROLE-PLAYING

Former Republican Senator Judd Gregg, who played Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry in George W. Bush's mock debate sessions in 2000 and 2004, said Bush began preparing in early June unbeknownst to the news media and for a while did two practice sessions a day.

For that reason, he said, he suspects Trump is doing more preparation work than he lets on.

"I have to believe he is doing something because it would be foolish to go in there and not practice at hearing lines," he said.

A Republican source close to the campaign said former Fox News Chief Executive Roger Ailes has been coaching Trump but that the former reality TV star does not want to be over-prepared.

Trump spokesman Jason Miller said Trump is preparing for the debates but "there's nobody who's playing the role of Hillary Clinton."

"Mr. Trump prepares for everything that he does," he said.

 (Additional reporting by Amanda Becker and Richard Cowan; Editing by Ross Colvin and Jonathan Oatis)

Pew: More Say Press Is Too Easy On Trump

Throughout the 2016 presidential race, the Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton campaigns have decried the news media for treating them too harshly. Americans, however, don’t seem to agree. Only a slim minority thinks the news media’s coverage of Trump and Clinton is too tough, a view the public also held in previous general elections.

In fact, more Americans say the media are too easy on Trump than said so of the Republican nominees in both 2012 and 2008. As for Clinton, views of whether she is being treated too easily tend to be more similar to recent election cycles.

Almost three-in-ten Americans (27%) feel that Trump is treated too easily by the media, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 1,000 adults conducted Sept. 15-18, 2016. That’s more than said so of Mitt Romney in 2012 (20%), and nearly twice the share who said so of John McCain in 2008 (15%).

A third (33%) also say this of Clinton, slightly more than felt the media were too easy on Barack Obama in 2012 (28%) but about in line with views of his treatment in 2008 (31%).

On the flip side, the public’s sense of whether the news media are being too tough on Trump is not different from Republican candidates in recent election cycles. Nearly the same portion of Americans think the press is too tough on him (23%) as felt the same about Romney in 2012 and McCain in 2008 (21% and 23%, respectively).

For Clinton, just 16% of Americans say the media have been too tough on her, which is on par with views in 2012 about how tough they were on Obama (15%). But more see coverage of Clinton as too tough than did so of Obama in 2008 (7%).

Gaming, Gambling in Liberty Media's F1 Growth Plan

Greg Maffei

(Reuters) -- Gaming and gambling are among potential growth areas for Formula One as the sport's new owners seek to develop largely untapped digital markets, Liberty Media chief executive Greg Maffei said on Thursday.

Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia investment conference in New York, Maffei also saw revenues growing through an increasing switch from free-to-air to pay television, more sponsorship deals and more races.

"Less than one percent of revenues are from digital," he said. "They really have no organized digital effort. I think there's a lot of things that can be done around gaming, VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality).

"There's an enormous amount of video feed and data about the races that we are already capturing that we are not in any way processing incrementally for the dedicated fan, or opportunities around things like gambling.

"Outside of the United States there is a huge gambling opportunity in the sport, none of which we capitalize on."

Formula One faces a major shake-up after U.S. cable TV mogul John Malone's Liberty Media agreed to take control of the cash-generating glamour sport.

The deal, which has an enterprise value of $8 billion according to a company statement, is likely to lead to a new push to develop the U.S. market and win fresh audiences.

Liberty Media has acquired an initial 18.7 percent stake from controlling shareholder CVC Capital Partners and plans to complete a cash and shares deal by the first quarter of 2017.

American Chase Carey has been appointed as Formula One chairman, working with the sport's 85-year-old commercial supremo Bernie Ecclestone, a Briton.

Liberty Media has interests in the Atlanta Braves baseball team, satellite radio service Sirius XM, entertainment group Live Nation and minority interests in Time Warner and Viacom.

"I think we have 17 sponsors, and we have three people working in sponsorship in F1," said Maffei. "In contrast at Major League Baseball, a business we have some familiarity with through the Braves, there are 75 sponsors just in the U.S."

Yahoo: Hackers Got Data From 500M Accounts In 2014

Yahoo Inc said on Thursday that at least 500 million of its accounts were hacked in 2014 by what it believed was a state-sponsored actor, a theft that appeared to be the world's biggest known cyber breach by far.

Cyber thieves may have stolen names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords, the company said. But unprotected passwords, payment card data and bank account information did not appear to have been compromised, signaling that some of the most valuable user data was not taken.

The attack on Yahoo was unprecedented in size, more than triple other large attacks on sites such as eBay Inc, and it comes to light at a difficult time for Yahoo.

Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is under pressure to shore up the flagging fortunes of the site founded in 1994, and the company in July agreed to a $4.83 billion cash sale of its internet business to Verizon Communications Inc.

"This is the biggest data breach ever," said well-known cryptologist Bruce Schneier, adding that the impact on Yahoo and its users remained unclear because many questions remain, including the identity of the state-sponsored hackers behind it.

On its website on Thursday, Yahoo encouraged users to change their passwords but did not require it.

Although the attack happened in 2014, Yahoo only discovered the incursion after August reports of a separate breach. While that report turned out to be false, Yahoo's investigation turned up the 2014 theft, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Analyst Robert Peck of SunTrust Robinson Humphrey said the breach probably was not enough to prompt Verizon to abandon its deal with Yahoo, but it could call for a price decrease of $100 million to $200 million, depending on how many users leave Yahoo.

Steven Caponi, an attorney at K&L Gates with a practice including merger litigation, said that Yahoo's breach could fall under the "material adverse change" clause common in mergers allowing a buyer to walk away if its target's value deteriorates.

"That would give Verizon the opportunity to renegotiate the terms or potentially walk away from the transaction if it is a material change. Whether it is a material change will depend in large part on what kind of information was compromised," Caponi said.

Still, it is rare for mergers to fall apart over material changes. Verizon said in a statement it was made aware of the breach within the last two days and had limited information about the matter.

"We will evaluate as the investigation continues through the lens of overall Verizon interests," the company said.

Shares of Yahoo stock closed a penny higher at $44.15, while shares of Verizon, were up about 1 percent.

Graphiq

RISING ATTACKS

The Yahoo breach follows a rising number of other large-scale data attacks and could make it a watershed event that prompts government and businesses to put more effort into bolstering defenses, said Dan Kaminsky, a well-known internet security expert.

Retailers and health insurers have been especially hard hit after high-profile breaches at Home Depot Inc, Target Corp, Anthem Inc and Premera Blue Cross.

"Five hundred of the Fortune 500 have been hacked," he said. "If anything has changed, it's that these attacks are getting publicly disclosed."

Three U.S. intelligence officials, who declined to be identified by name, said they believed the attack was state-sponsored because of its resemblance to previous hacks traced to Russian intelligence agencies or hackers acting at their direction.

Yahoo said it was working with law enforcement on the matter, and the FBI said it was investigating.

"The investigation has found no evidence that the state-sponsored actor is currently in Yahoo's network," the company said.

While the breach comprised mostly low-value information, it did include security questions and answers created by users themselves. That data could make users vulnerable if they use the same answers on other sites.

A former Yahoo employee said the Q&A were deliberately left unencrypted, which allowed Yahoo to catch fake accounts more easily because fake accounts tended to reuse questions and answers.

News of the massive breach at one of the nation's largest email providers may fan concern that U.S. companies and government agencies are not doing enough to improve cyber security.

Democratic Senator Mark Warner said in a statement he was "most troubled by news that this breach occurred in 2014, and yet the public is only learning details of it today."

Technology website Recode first reported Tuesday that Yahoo planned to disclose details about a data breach affecting hundreds of millions of users.

(Reporting by Aishwarya Venugopal in Bengaluru and Dustin Volz in Washington; additional reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston, Lauren Hirsch in New York, and Joseph Menn and Deborah Todd in San Francisco, writing by Alwyn Scott; editing by Peter Henderson and Cynthia Osterman)

Facebook Overestimated Key Video Metric

Big ad buyers and marketers are upset with Facebook Inc. after learning the tech giant vastly overestimated average viewing time for video ads on its platform for two years, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Several weeks ago, Facebook disclosed in a post on its “Advertiser Help Center” that its metric for the average time users spent watching videos was artificially inflated because it was only factoring in video views of more than three seconds. The company said it was introducing a new metric to fix the problem.

The news is an embarrassment for Facebook, which has been touting the rapid growth of video consumption across its platform in recent years.

Due to the miscalculated data, marketers may have misjudged the performance of video advertising they have purchased from Facebook over the past two years. It also may have impacted their decisions about how much to spend on Facebook video versus other video ad sellers such as Google’s YouTube, Twitter, and even TV networks.

Huntsville Radio: Ray Nelson Named VP/MM For Cumulus

Ray Nelson

Cumulus Media announces that it has appointed Ray Nelson to Vice President/Market Manager for Cumulus Media-Huntsville’s six-station cluster.

Included In the Huntsville cluster are: UrbanAC WHRP 94.1 FM, N/T WVNN 92.5 FM, Country/NASH Icon WWFF 93.3 FM, Top40 WZYP 104.3 FM, CBS Sports Radio WUMP 730 AM and N/T WVNN 770 AM.

Nelson was previously Vice President/General Manager/Cluster Director of Sales for Cox Radio in Birmingham, AL. Prior to that, he was Vice President/Market Manager for Clear Channel/iHeartMedia in Ann Arbor, MI. He was also General Manager/General Sales Manager/National Sales Manager for Fritz Broadcasting in Saginaw, MI.

Jeff Brown, Senior Vice President, Cumulus Media, said: “Ray's track record of success speaks for itself. Adding him to our team of Market Managers was an absolute no-brainer. I'm excited for Ray and for our talented team in Huntsville.”

Nelson said: “"I am thrilled and honored to have the opportunity lead the Cumulus Huntsville cluster, the Huntsville market is a fabulous growth market. I appreciate the confidence that Jeff Brown and the entire Cumulus management team have demonstrated in selecting me to champion Cumulus Huntsville

TV Cable Ratings: Brian William's '11th Hour' In-Demo Struggles

Brian Williams

MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour with Brian Williams” has struggled in the key news demographic of adults 25-54 since it premiered two weeks ago. That is the statistic that is likely to determine whether or not Williams receives a permanent primetime show.

According to The Wrap, Williams averaged 235,000 viewers in the key demo from Sept. 6-20, which trails “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” which averaged 293,000 demo viewers from 11-11:30 p.m. ET over the same time period.

Ratings juggernaut “The O’Reilly Factor” beat both CNN and MSNBC’s live shows with a replay of its 8 p.m. edition, averaging 367,000 for the first half of its repeat. However, the late-night repeat of O’Reilly regularly finishes among the Top 10 cable news shows, so this isn’t surprising.

Also Read: Brian Williams to Anchor Late-Night MSNBC Show
What’s surprising is that Williams struggled despite a strong performance in total viewers. Williams new show averaged 1.09 million viewers, compared to 761,000 for CNN during the same time period. But total viewers don’t pay the bills. Advertisers look at 25-54 year olds when deciding where to spend their cash.

Through the first nine episodes of “The 11th Hour,” the show only beat CNN from 11-11:30 ET in the key demo twice. Both victories came during the show’s first three nights and Lemon has won six straight.

Williams’ show is down two percent compared to MSNBC’s 11-11:30 programming from Aug. 2016, but up a whopping 133 percent compared to the “All In with Chris Hayes” repeats that aired in that time slot back in Sept. 2015. In laymen’s terms, he’s crushing a show that nobody watched from a year ago but losing to the show he recently replaced.

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