El Paso Radio: KLAQ Sued Over Maternity Dismissal

Stephanie McMaster

UPDATE: A lawsuit filed last August by an El Paso radio morning cohost at Townsquare Media’s rock “Q95.5” KLAQ was dismissed in July 2017, following a settlement between the parties. Stephanie McMaster-Berning filed suit after being let go in March 2016, one month before the birth of her baby.

The station, she claimed, had not wanted her to be out during the spring ratings season; she said she was fired because she was pregnant and would need maternity leave.

According to court documents, “the parties have reached a mutually satisfactory compromise resolving all issues in this matter. A Settlement Agreement and General Release has been knowingly and voluntarily executed by the parties.” No details were included.

Original posting...

The former co-host of the popular KLAQ 95.5 FM morning radio show claims that she was fired because she was pregnant and would need maternity leave, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in El Paso.

The El Paso Times reports Stephanie McMaster-Berning alleges in the lawsuit that she was fired in March, a month before the birth of her baby, because the rock radio station did not want her to be on maternity leave during the spring ratings season.

McMaster-Berning, who was known on-air as Stephanie McMaster, is suing morning show host Buzz Adams and Townsquare Media, the parent company of KLAQ. Adams is named in the lawsuit as Michael Whitt.

McMaster-Berning accuses Adams of repeatedly making comments criticizing employees who took time off to care for newborn babies before she was fired.

McMaster-Berning, Adams and representatives of KLAQ could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit alleges McMaster-Berning's firing was in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.

In August 2015, McMaster-Berning joined the "Buzz Adams Morning Show," a humorous show that is a longtime staple of El Paso morning radio. Last year it expanded to markets in Midland-Odessa KBAT 99.9 FM, San Angelo KNRX 96.5 FM  and Abilene KEYJ-107.9 FM.

Before joining the morning show, McMaster-Berning worked in the radio station's corporate offices in New York City and was the known for humorous social media posts. She was nicknamed "Stephanie the Corporate Computer Babe" and would help KLAQ staff with social media efforts, the KLAQ website says.

According to the lawsuit, McMaster-Berning moved to El Paso with her two children, ages 12 and 8, when she was hired as the KLAQ morning show co-host.

After arriving in El Paso, she learned that she was pregnant and advised KLAQ Operations Manager Kevin Vargas, who allegedly told her that the maternity leave would coincide with the station's spring ratings season, the lawsuit states.

St. Louis Radio: WIL To Host “Fist Bumps” Pop Up Concerts

New Country WIL 92.3 FM has announced that the Bud and Broadway’s “50,000 Fist Bumps” Challenge initiative will be hosting a series of FREE Parking Lot Pop Up Concerts.

The Pop Up Concerts will take place weekly through the month of August 2016 – WIL listeners can learn the location of each Pop Up Concert by listening for the announcements on the “Bud and Broadway” Show at 7:20 am each Monday morning during August. Followers will find directions and details on each artist at www.WIL92.com.

During each Pop Up Concert event, Bud and Broadway will be giving away 100 tickets exclusively to police officers for the upcoming Old Dominion concert at Ballpark Village in downtown St. Louis on October 1st.

The “50,000 Fist Bumps” Challenge runs July through October, 2016, and offers unique opportunities and other special perks for WIL followers, as a way of fostering positive attitudes and to give back to the St. Louis community.

Besides the August Pop Up Concerts, the “50,000 Fist Bumps” activities and events planned include everything from catered lunch corporate takeovers to “field trips” to fun venues both small and large throughout the metro area.

Bud Ford dreamt of being a police officer saying, “they are a special group and we are so lucky to have them. We’re glad to give back in any way we can.” Jerry Broadway continues, “I also dreamed of being a police officer before I fell into radio. I have many dear friends who are law enforcement officers, and I have the utmost respect for anyone who cares enough about their community to put on a badge and walk out their door to an uncertain fate every day of their life.”
Adds Program Director Scott Roddy, “Bud and Broadway are making huge strides as the ONLY live and local new country morning show in St. Louis. Their commitment to the local community, meeting new country fans one-on-one, is unparalleled. Bud and Broadway wanted to give back to our heroes in blue, and feel this is the least they can do.”

MO Radio: Alpha Names Mark Benkiel MM For Moberly Cluster

Mark Benkiel

Alpha Media, Moberly-Macon has announced Mark Benkiel as new Market Manager. The Moberly-Macon market is home to Country KRES 104.7 FM, Talk KWIX 92.5 FM, Oldies KWIX 1230AM, Contemporary-Christian KTCM 97.3 FM, Classic Hits KIRK 99.9 FM.

Benkiel has 16 years of advertising experience in radio, print, and digital in the South and Mid-Atlantic. His previous experience includes General Sales Manager and District Manager. Most recently, Benkiel served as General Sales Manager for Cumulus Media in Macon, Georgia.

Alpha Media EVP Midwest Region, George Pelletier commented on the announcement, “Mark brings a terrific level of enthusiasm and experience to the Alpha Moberly team.  He understands community broadcasting and will be a great addition to the Alpha pack.”

“I am very excited to join a great team of individuals in Moberly, MO. Alpha Media feels like being part of a family. I’m looking forward to being live and local while helping the community. Les Tuttle has done such a wonderful job building a great foundation of excellence. I am honored to work for George Pelletier who has such a great track record in the radio industry. My wife and I feel blessed to have been given such a great opportunity and we look forward to serving the greater Moberly community,” Benkiel remarked.

Shazam Could Be Radio Ratings Game Changer

Arbitron, which was purchased by Nielsen in 2012, rolled out the Portable People Meter in 2007. The small, pager-like device gathers subaudible codes that identify the source of a broadcast. Today, they’re being used in about 50 of the largest media markets. Nearly immediately, radio programmers in PPM markets saw listening plummet; it turns out, a lot of people weren’t listening as frequently as they reported in their diaries.

As flawed as the old-fashioned diary system is, it has long been the only game in town for radio programmers and advertising salespeople to demonstrate how many listeners their station has. But that could be changing soon, according to Damien Willis at the Las Cruces Sun-News.

Last week, five of the biggest corporate giants in radio announced a partnership, a “strategic alliance,” with Shazam, the app on your phone that can instantly identify nearly any song. Cumulus, iHeartMedia, Entercom, Cox and Sun Broadcast Group are on board to help Shazam develop “market- and station-level audience metrics across all radio formats.”

The plan is to “leverage information collected from 10s of millions of devices to produce the accurate, stable cross-platform audience metrics that the industry has been waiting for.”

That’s important for a variety of reasons. One of PPM’s shortcomings is that it is another device listeners have to lug around with them. If you can just put that technology (or similar, Shazam-driven technology) on their smartphones, you’ve eliminated one major friction point. It also creates, as the companies noted, a potential sample size of tens of millions of smartphones.

“The richness of our data, combined with Shazam’s measurement capabilities, will enable much deeper insights than traditional audio measurement does, and we believe it’s a necessary and valuable addition to the evolving multi-platform audio measurement marketplace,” said Radha Subramanyam, iHeartMedia’s president of research and insights.

It is unclear exactly how the new Shazam technology will work — how they plan to distinguish which station users are listening to, specifically — but it’s easy to imagine that it will work very similarly to the way the app currently identifies songs.

ESPN Radio Reports Strong Gains

ESPN Radio recorded a strong Spring 2016, earning a 27% overall increase in impressions from the same time last year, according to Nielsen Audio in PPM markets.

Across all affiliates ESPN Radio now owns a 50% share of all Men 25-54 sports radio listening, up from 42% over the same period last year. In addition, ESPN Radio grew its female audience by 42% over last year. ESPN Radio has added 625,000 new listeners in the last quarter.

“ESPN Radio is constantly evolving to reflect our fans’ desires for sports talk radio,” said David Roberts, vice president, ESPN Audio network content.

“With the additions of several new voices and shows over the last year, including The Trifecta, Jorge & Izzy and First & Last, and the continued quality of our mainstay daytime programming, we offer one of the broadest and most diverse lineups -- from top to bottom – in sports talk radio today.”

Among ESPN Radio shows, morning staple Mike & Mike also saw improvement in the Spring book, up 2% over 2015, while The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz recorded a 35% gain in TV viewers, up from the Fall 2015 book.

SiriusXM Orders Two New Satellites

SiriusXM has selected Space System Loral (SSL) to provide to high power satellites to continue the delivery of SiriusXM's audio entertainment and data services.

According to SatNews, The satellites will be SXM-7 and SXM-8 and they will replace the XM-3 and XM-4 satellites. These exchanges will occur in 2019 and 2020, respectively, and will serve the more than 30.6 million subscribers across North America.

Both SXM-7 and SXM-8 will operate in the S-band spectrum and each satellite will generate more than 20 kW of power and will have a large, unfurlable antenna reflector, which enables broadcast to radios without the need for large dish-type antennas on the ground.

SSL has previously built a total of seven satellites for SiriusXM, including its first generation Sirius satellites, which were launched in 2000. Of the seven satellites built, one was a ground spare that was never needed due to the reliability of the original constellation and that satellite was donated to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in 2012.

Both of these satellites are based on the SSL 1300 platform, which has the flexibility to support a broad range of applications and technology advances—they are designed to provide service for 15 years or longer.

July 29 Radio History

Florence Freeman

In 1911...radio ‘soap opera queen’ Florence Freeman was born in New York City.

She starred for more than a decade in the title role of two longrunning daytime dramas, NBC’s Young Widder Brown and CBS’s Wendy Warren & the News, and was a prominent cast member of Pepper Young’s Family, John’s Other Wife and Valiant Lady. She was also a regular on Maxwell House Show Boat and Abie’s Irish Rose.

She died April 25 2000 at age 88.


In 1914...transcontinental telephone service began in the US with the first test phone conversation between New York and San Francisco.


In 1936...despite the very few TV sets in existence, in New York RCA showed the first real TV program, comprised of dancing, a film on locomotives, a Bonwit Teller fashion show, some comedy, and a monologue from the play Tobacco Road.  It would be more than a decade, after WWII, before commercial television really took hold.


In 1938...Reporter/anchor Peter Jennings was born in Toronto.  His father, Charles, was a CBC announcer and executive, and at age 9, Peter hosted a half-hour weekly children’s show on the network.

After dropping out of Trinity College School, he joined the CBC as host of a public-affairs program, then in 1962 co-anchored the CTV News. In 1964, he moved to New York and became a correspondent for ABC, then anchor of ABC Nightly News (1965-67). He returned to reporting in 1968, served as ABC’s chief foreign correspondent in London. He was appointed sole ABC anchor when the show moved to New York City in 1983.

He died of cancer Aug 7 2005 at age 67.

Clint Buehlmann

In 1977...Clint Buehlmann did his last show on WBEN 930 AM, Buffalo, New York. He had been a highly-rated morning personality for about 40 years.


In 1984...orchestra & chorale leader Fred Waring, who emceed the longrunning radio show Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians, and continued the program for 6 years in early TV, died suddenly following a stroke at age 84.





In 1995...bandleader Les Elgart died of heart failure at age 76. Elgart’s recording of Bandstand Boogie was adopted by Dick Clark as the theme for American Bandstand. Elgart also had two top-selling albums in the 50’s: The Elgart Touch and For Dancers Also. He often jointly led a band with his brother Larry in the 1950s and 60s.


In 2005...the single-named society singer Hildegarde, one of the most popular vocalists on North American radio in the 1940’s, died at the age of 99.

Tom Snyder

In 2007...Newscater/Talk Host Tom Snyder died.

Snyder had loved radio since he was a child and at some point changed his field of study from pre-med to journalism. He once told Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Tim Cuprisin that broadcasting became more important to him than attending classes, and he skipped a lot of them.  Snyder began his career as a radio reporter at WRIT (unrelated to the present-day FM station) in Milwaukee and at WKZO in Kalamazoo (where he was fired by John Fetzer) in the 1950s. For a time he worked at Savannah, Georgia, AM station WSAV (now WBMQ).

Snyder at WRIT

After moving to television in the 1960s, he was a news anchor for KYW-TV in Cleveland (now WKYC-TV) and, after a 1965 station switch, Philadelphia, and WNBC-TV and WABC-TV in New York City.

He talked about driving cross country in an early Corvair from Atlanta to Los Angeles around 1963, where he landed a news job at KTLA, then on to KNBC-TV, also in Los Angeles, where from 1970 to 1974 he was an anchor for the 6 p.m. newscast working with KNBC broadcaster Kelly Lange, who was then a weather reporter before serving as a long-time KNBC news anchor.

Lange later became Snyder's regular substitute guest host on the Tomorrow program, prior to the hiring of co-host Rona Barrett in the program's last year. Even after attaining fame as host of Tomorrow, Snyder kept his hand in news anchoring with the Sunday broadcasts of NBC Nightly News during 1975 and 1976.

Moonves: CBS Has Terrific Quarter

CBS Corporation today reported results for the second quarter of 2016, including the highest second quarter diluted earnings per share ("EPS") in the Company's history.

"CBS turned in another terrific quarter, on the way to another outstanding year, as we continue to take advantage of all the growth catalysts before us," said Leslie Moonves, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, CBS Corporation (CBS).

Les Moonves

"Our base business is very healthy, including our strongest upfront selling season in years, which will benefit us beginning in late September when the new higher pricing takes effect. At the same time, we continue to build our fast-growing, high-margin revenue streams at a rapid clip. During the quarter, retransmission consent and reverse compensation grew 44% and remain on track to surpass $1 billion in revenue this year. Our over-the-top streaming services, CBS All Access and Showtime OTT, continue to exceed expectations, and we anticipate a significant lift next year with the launch of our new Star Trek series on CBS and Twin Peaks on Showtime. Our content licensing business also had a great quarter and was up 16% thanks to lucrative international deals for our Star Trek library programming that will continue to benefit us as new episodes launch in January.

"All of these high-margin revenue streams will become an even bigger part of our revenue mix next year when we expect to complete the separation of our radio business and intensify our focus on our core content strategy. Looking ahead, we will continue to invest first and foremost in premium content while using excess cash to return capital to our investors. We will take advantage of every opportunity that is in the best interest of our shareholders, and we are more confident than ever in our long-term growth prospects."

Second Quarter 2016 Results

• Revenues for the second quarter of 2016 increased 2% to $3.29 billion from $3.22 billion for the same prior-year period, even though the prior year included two significant events which did not recur in 2016: Showtime's distribution of the Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao boxing event, the highest-grossing pay-per-view event of all time, and the broadcast of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship  finals on the CBS Television Network. 
• Revenue growth for this year's second quarter reflects a 16% increase from content licensing and distribution revenues, driven mainly by the licensing of five Star Trek series in the international marketplace. Revenues for the second quarter of 2016 also benefited from 44% growth in retransmission revenues and fees from CBS Television Network affiliated stations, as well as revenues from new digital distribution platforms.
• Operating income for the second quarter of 2016 increased 25% to $733 million from $586 million for the same prior-year period, driven by growth in higher-margin revenues, and rose 14% from adjusted operating income of $641 million for the second quarter of 2015.
• Net earnings of $423 million for the second quarter of 2016 rose 27% from $332 million for the same quarter in 2015, driven by the higher operating income, and increased 16% from adjusted net earnings of $365 million for the second quarter of 2015.
• EPS for the second quarter of 2016 grew 39% to $.93 from $.67 for the same quarter in 2015 and increased 26% from adjusted EPS of $.74. Weighted average shares outstanding were 455 million in the second quarter of 2016, down from 495 million in the prior-year period, mainly as a result of the Company's ongoing share repurchase program.

Adjusted results for the second quarter of 2015 excluded restructuring charges of $55 million ($33 million, net of tax). No adjustments were made to reported results for the second quarter of 2016.

Free Cash Flow, Balance Sheet and Liquidity

For the second quarter of 2016, operating cash flow from continuing operations was $225 million compared with $464 million in the same prior-year period, while free cash flow was $184 million compared with $435 million for the second quarter of 2015. These decreases partly reflected the timing of receipts and payments relating to the previously mentioned 2015 pay-per-view boxing event. For the first six months of 2016, operating cash flow from continuing operations was $1.25 billion compared with $881 million in the same prior-year period, and free cash flow of $1.17 billion increased from $835 million in 2015. The increases for the six-month period were driven by growth in affiliate and subscription fees and higher advertising revenues, including the broadcast of Super Bowl 50 on CBS, partially offset by increased investment in content.

Judge Turns Down Redstone Dismissal Request

Philippe Dauman, Sumner Redstone

(Reuters) -- A Massachusetts judge on Thursday rejected Sumner Redstone's bid to quickly end a case that will likely determine the future of the media mogul's $40 billion holdings, marking a victory for Viacom Inc Chief Executive Philippe Dauman.

The issue is whether the 93-year-old Redstone knew what he was doing when he removed Dauman and Viacom board member George Abrams from the seven-person trust that will control his majority ownership of Viacom and CBS Corp (CBS.N) when he dies or is incapacitated.

Judge George Phelan of Norfolk County Probate and Family Court in Canton, Massachusetts rejected Redstone's motion to dismiss, and ruled that the case should proceed in Massachusetts.

While Phelan allowed Dauman to examine medical records relating to Redstone, the judge rejected Dauman's request for an immediate mental examination of the 93-year-old Redstone.

A spokeswoman for National Amusements declined to comment. Calls to Viacom and spokespeople for Sumner Redstone and his daughter Shari were not immediately returned.

R.I.P.: Syndicated Radio Talk Host Jerry Doyle

Jerry Doyle, known for his role on science fiction TV series “Babylon 5” and for founding EpicTimes, has died, his family announced on Thursday.

He was 60 years-of-age. The Jerry Doyle Show, airs throughout the United States on Talk Radio Network,

Doyle, who was also the host of a nationally syndicated talk radio show, was found unresponsive in his Las Vegas home on Wednesday afternoon.

Clark County coroner John Fudenberg said Thursday that an autopsy was scheduled, and it will take several weeks and toxicology tests to determine a cause of death.

In recent years, his self-titled radio show aired on Talk Radio Network and, in Las Vegas, weekday afternoons on AM radio station KDWN.

Cause of death is unknown.

The family of Jerry Doyle is sad to announce Jerry’s passing. The cause of death is unknown at this time.

— Jerry Doyle (@jerrydoyle) July 28, 2016

Alex Cox Promoted to EVP/COO Of Cox Enterprises

Alex Cox

Cox Enterprises has announced that Alexander C. Taylor, great-grandson of company Founder James M. Cox, has been promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer, effective immediately.

He will continue reporting to Chief Executive Officer, John M. Dyer.

In his new role, Taylor will be responsible for the company's three major operating subsidiaries: Cox Communications, Cox Automotive and Cox Media Group while continuing to provide leadership over the company's strategic growth plans.

"Cox has always been a family-led business and I am pleased that the next generation is continuing to play a critical role in the future of our company," said James C. Kennedy, chairman of Cox Enterprises and grandson of James M. Cox. "Our company has grown for nearly 120 years based on hard work and enduring values. I am confident Alex will help lead us into a bright, strong tomorrow."

"Alex has the bold thinking and vision, rooted in a deep understanding and commitment to our businesses, that will enable our company to grow and compete for the next 10, 20 and even 30 years," said Dyer. "He is truly dedicated to our company and its employees, customers and the communities where we do business."

A 16-year Cox veteran, Taylor is a fourth-generation member of the Cox family and serves on Cox Enterprises' board of directors. He started his Cox career as a reporter and editor with various Cox media properties, rising through the ranks and ultimately serving as executive vice president of Cox Media Group, where he oversaw the group's largest television, radio, newspaper and digital properties.

Brett Favre To Host NFL Show On SiriusXM

Brett Favre

Legendary NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this August, will be a host this upcoming season on SiriusXM NFL Radio, SiriusXM's exclusive 24/7 NFL channel.

It will be the first regular sports media role for the three-time NFL MVP since he retired after the 2010 season.

Favre will host a series of hour-long broadcasts during this season that will showcase the traits that made him a fan-favorite – his passion for the game on the field and his easy-going personality off it – and will give SiriusXM listeners an opportunity to interact with one of the game's all-time greats.  He will make his debut on SiriusXM NFL Radio on August 5 (6:00 pm ET) with a special "Town Hall" style show live from Canton, Ohio, where he and other members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Class of 2016 will be enshrined the next day.

After the Hall of Fame show, Favre will host the show live on a regular basis starting in September.

He and co-host Bruce Murray will discuss the headline news happening around the NFL, analyze the league's teams and players, and share his experiences from his career and his life since retiring.  Listeners nationwide will have the opportunity to call in to the show and talk with a player who rewrote the game's record book over his extraordinary 20-year professional career.

SiriusXM NFL Radio is available to listeners nationwide on channel 88 on satellite radios and on the SiriusXM app for authenticated subscribers with the SiriusXM All-Access package.

"I am looking forward to working with SiriusXM NFL Radio this season," said Favre.  "I've been a listener, both when I played and after I retired, and it's a great place to talk about the game.  I'm excited to talk with fans and weigh in with my opinions on what's happening in the league, and it'll be fun talking to some former colleagues now and then."

NY Times Reports Ad Revenue Down 12 Percent

The New York Times Company had a slight net loss in the second quarter, in part because of severance costs related to the closing of the company’s editing and prepress operations in Paris.

The company had strong growth in digital subscriptions, it said on Thursday, but digital advertising revenue, which has been a bright spot in the past, declined.

In its earnings release, the company said that it had added 51,000 net digital-only subscriptions in the quarter for its news products and 16,000 net crossword product subscriptions. The Times now has about 1.2 million digital-only subscriptions for its news products and 1.4 million total digital-only subscriptions.

The company reported a net loss of about $500,000 for the quarter, compared with net income of $16 million in the second quarter of 2015. The company took a roughly $12 million charge, largely in severance costs, in connection to the Paris closings. Total revenue fell 3 percent, to $373 million, from $383 million in the same quarter a year earlier.

The Times continued to struggle with declining advertising revenue, which fell about 12 percent, to $131 million. Print advertising revenue slid 14 percent in the quarter, and digital advertising revenue dropped 7 percent, to $45 million. Digital advertising revenue now represents more than a third of the company’s total ad revenue.

Facebook Reports Sharp Ad Sales Growth

(Reuters) -- Facebook Inc provided more evidence on Wednesday that it can turn eyeballs into profit as the maker of the world's most popular app and social website trounced Wall Street's estimates, sending its shares to an all-time high.

The leading social media company's mobile app and push into video attracted new advertisers and encouraged existing ones to spend more. It now has more than 1.7 billion monthly users, well ahead of any rivals.

Its shares were up 5.4 percent in after-hours trading at $130.01, after hitting their highest since the company went public in 2012.

"Facebook has shown that you can be a giant and you can be innovative," said analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy. "What is working very well is their very quick shift from desktop to mobility. This was their biggest issue when they went public."

Facebook is adapting better to the shift toward mobile and video than social media rival Twitter Inc, which reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth in three years on Wednesday.

Mobile advertising revenue accounted for 84 percent of the company's total advertising revenue, compared with 76 percent a year earlier.

Total advertising revenue surged 63 percent to $6.24 billion, beating the average analyst estimate of $5.80 billion, according to market research firm FactSet StreetAccount.

The company also saw strong growth in monthly active users, now boasting 1.71 billion as of June 30, up from 1.49 billion a year earlier. Time spent on its suite of apps, including the main Facebook app, Instagram and Messenger, increased "double digit percentages," Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call with analysts.

David Wehner, Facebook's chief financial officer, pointed to Asia-Pacific, especially India, as one of the most promising areas for continued user growth. The region "has been a consistently good performer for us over the last several quarters and we will continue to invest our global sales resources to drive opportunities there," Wehner said in an interview with Reuters.

Facebook (FB) Monthly Active Users Over Time | FindTheCompany

MILLENNIAL SHIFT

Facebook is one of the biggest beneficiaries as advertisers move money away from television to the internet and mobile platforms. The company has been beefing up its presence in the mobile video market, where Snapchat and YouTube pose strong competition.

The company is also courting advertisers to experiment with Facebook Live, its recently launched live video feature. Executives said they were working to become a "video first" platform, and identified private messaging as a growing focus.

Zuckerberg reiterated his company's 10-year plan on the call with analysts. Over the next three years, it will focus on continuing to grow its massive user base, especially in developed nations, and over the next 10 years it will look to build new technology to get more people online and using Facebook through internet-beaming drones.

Meanwhile, Facebook still has several untapped areas for revenue opportunities, including its WhatsApp and Messenger apps, both of which have more than 1 billion users. But Wehner said the company does not plan to monetize them any time soon, and that it is instead focused on building interactions between businesses and users on the apps.

Facebook also owns picture-sharing app Instagram, which recently announced it has more than 500 million users. Facebook has yet to say how much money Instagram makes, but research firm eMarketer predicts it will make $1.5 billion in revenue this year.

Excluding items, Facebook earned 97 cents per share for the second quarter ended June 30. Analysts on average had expected a profit of 82 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Net income attributable to Facebook's stockholders rose to $2.05 billion, or 71 cents per share, compared with $715 million, or 25 cents per share, a year earlier.

Total revenue rose 59.2 percent to $6.44 billion, ahead of analysts' average estimate of $6.02 billion.

Report: Ad Agency Clients Most Interested In TV

Roughly half of US ad agency professionals said their clients are most interested in advertising on spot TV or spot cable—more than any other medium including digital, mobile, streaming video and radio, April 2016 research revealed.

Media buying and selling software provider Strata surveyed 84 US ad agency professionals who were at the media director level or higher at agencies of varying sizes. When it came down to the advertising media their clients were most interested in, TV was the top choice.

Digital was second. Indeed, 31% of US ad agency professionals said their clients were most interested in advertising on that medium. Few respondents said their clients were most interested in advertising on mobile.

eMarketer estimates that digital—which includes mobile—is neck-and-neck with TV ad spend in the US. eMarketer expects outlays on digital ads will hit $68.82 billion in 2016, while TV spending will total $70.60 billion.

Nevertheless, no other medium can challenge TV’s dominance of the US advertising market. According to eMarketer, spending on every other medium combined, which includes print, radio and out-of-home, doesn’t come close.