Salem Media Group/St. Louis has announced the return of Jamie Allman Returns to St. Louis airwaves.
Allman is joining Salem’s KXFN 1380 AM / K287BY 105.3 FM The Answer starting Feb 28.
Allman's returns follow a after a 10-month absence when he departed KFTK-FM, after anearly 16-year run.
He says, “I’m proud and super stoked to be joining a legendary broadcasting company. Salem always puts the listener first and we are a perfect match. There is no bigger castle of common-sense conservatism in broadcasting. I’m honored to inhabit a part of it with energy, insight, and entertainment.”
Allman and former employers Emmis Communications and Entercom were involved in a lengthy legal fight over Allman’s dismissal from KFTK-FM in the aftermath of this social media post about Parkland, Florida shooting survivor David Hogg in April of 2018.
Salem St. Louis vice president and general manager Greg Lhamon says, “Jamie is a broadcasting legend in this market. He’s bright, passionate, and asks tough questions when he interviews political leaders. He’ll keep them on their toes, that’s for sure. But his show is just plain fun, too. We are thrilled to see him return to St. Louis radio.”
Allman will now compete directly with KFTK-FM, which fired him from his $155,000 per year job last April after a controversial Twitter post about Parkland, FL, shooting survivor turned activist David Hogg. A protracted legal battle ended last fall when he and the station reached an out-of-court settlement. The terms of that settlement, filed in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, were not disclosed.
Lee Family Broadcasting has announced the launch of a brand new radio station on translator K248BZ 97.5 FM that will cover the Magic Valley. The station will be fed via KXTA 97.1 HD3
The station is known as “LatinX 97.5.”
LatinX is the only broadcast station in Idaho that offers today’s LatinX (Millenials and Generation Z), something truly different. These 12-34 year-olds have grown up listening to music in both English and Spanish. They are completely bilingual and comfortable with navigating both cultures.
Now, for the first time, listeners are able to tune to a station that relates to them. LatinX blends today’s top Latino artists, such as Prince Royce, Pitbull, J. Balvin, Cardi B. and Shakira, with the best of English pop stars such as Rhianna, Drake and Bruno Mars. There’s a little bit of reggaeto?n, salsa and big scoop of pop to keep it moving and grooving.
Kim Lee, President of Lee Family Broadcasting commented that the community “…was overdue for a change – something young and different! Data from the Census Bureau shows this is the fastest growing group in our region and speaking generally, most of the area schools have a 40-60 percent Latino population.”
The station will be anchored by the Cuban Coffee Morning Show, featuring Alex Hernandez (Cuban Flow), a successful rapper, a champion boxer from Cuba and broadcaster, most recently at Exitos 104.9 in Tri-Cities, Washington. Afternoons will be hosted by Quela Renz (La Chaparrita Ramirez).
This is the third “Hispanic” station operated by Lee Family Broadcasting. Regional Mexican radio station KXTA 99.1 FM La Perrona and KXTA La Patrona 970 AM are the other two in the market.
In 2014, 18% of all audio consumption came from music that people owned, whether it be their CDs, owned digital files, vinyl, cassettes, or any other format. At the end of 2018, this share has fallen to 12%. The loss of six ‘shares’ of listening constitutes the biggest change, up or down, documented byShare of Ear® to date.
In 2014, Edison Research began the Share of Ear survey, the first study designed to measure the total audio space. According to Edison Research President Larry Rosin, “Having now completed five full years of this rolling study, we can look at the biggest changes over this dynamic time for audio. When we look at the totality of the information, the single biggest change we have seen is the decline in ‘owned music’.”
Not only has the share of “owned music” fallen significantly, but the number of people who listen at all to this category in a given day is down by the same percentage. Five years ago 38% of all Americans ages 13 and older listened to owned music at some point each day, today this has also fallen by one-third to 25%. Naturally, these declines are accompanied by increases in other ways for people to consume music.
ESPN rising star Adnan Virk has been fired by the network, reports The NYPost citing sources.
Virk is accused of leaking confidential company information to the media on multiple occasions. When ESPN investigated the allegations, it felt that Virk failed to fully cooperate.
He recently signed a new multi-year contract.
“Adnan Virk no longer works at ESPN,” ESPN vice president Josh Krulewitz told The Post.
On Friday, Virk was escorted off the Bristol campus. The specific nature of the information Virk chose to share is unknown at this time.
During his move up the ESPN ladder, Virk had become ABC’s lead studio host on its college football game coverage. He was a regular host on “Baseball Tonight” and college basketball. He was one of the main fill-in hosts on ESPN Radio. He had developed a podcast, called “Cinephile,” about movies.
Like all ESPN/Disney employees, Virk was required annually to take compliance training dealing with privacy and how to handle sensitive information.
The reporter who exposed Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s racist yearbook photo said a “concerned citizen” led him to the story that has prompted widespread outrage and calls for the Democrat’s resignation.
The Washington Post reports Patrick Howley, editor in chief of the website Big League Politics, first reported Friday the existence of a photo on Northam’s page of his medical school yearbook depicting a figure in blackface standing next to another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood.
“It’s very easy to explain,” Howley, 29, said in an interview Saturday. “A concerned citizen, not a political opponent, came to us and pointed this out. I was very offended [by the photo] because I don’t like racism.”
The tip came after Northam’s comments on Wednesday about late-term abortions, he said. Howley declined to give any further information about his source, citing a confidentiality agreement. But he said it took him just a few hours to confirm that the photo was authentic.
The source of the tip appears to have been a medical school classmate or classmates of Northam who acted as a direct result of the abortion controversy that erupted earlier in the week, according to two people at Big League Politics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The lawyers representing Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann and his family said Friday they have sent letters to media outlets, individual journalists, celebrities and Catholic organizations as the first step in possible libel and defamation lawsuits.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the list includes 50-plus names of organizations or individuals: from presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren to actress Alyssa Milano; individual journalists including Maggie Haberman, Ana Cabrera and David Brooks; national media outlets like the The New York Times, CNN, GQ and TMZ; and the dioceses of Covington and Lexington as well as the archdioceses of Louisville and Baltimore.
Nick, as well as his school, faced threats from those angered by video showing him, his classmates and Native Americans engaged in a much-debated confrontation. Some of the students wore "Make America Great Again" hats. Some students chanted and performed the tomahawk chop.
The legal counsel representing Nick and his family, Todd McMurtry and experienced libel and defamation lawyer L. Lin Wood of Atlanta, have said they will seek justice for the harm allegedly done to the teen.
McMurtry said an example of false reports were those saying Nick got into the face of Phillips.
McMurtry added his belief that some in the aftermath of the incident "permanently stained (Nick's) reputation."
According to the Enquirer, the long list of people and outlets targeted includes:
The Mentoring & Inspiring Women in Radio (MIW) Group has announced the opening of the application window for its 2019 Mildred Carter MIW Group Mentoring Program.
Currently in its 18th year, this notable experience pairs up-and-coming women, who currently work in the radio industry, with female professionals recognized as leaders in all aspects of radio broadcasting and media.
Beasley Media Group has committed to once again provide support as the lead sponsor of the 2019 initiative, which provides a comprehensive learning platform and networking opportunity for women interested in advancing their careers.
A total of four candidates from within the radio broadcasting industry – including management, sales, marketing, programming and digital disciplines – will be selected for the 2019 program. Of those, at least one spot will be designated for a programming candidate and one spot designated for a digital candidate. For mentee criteria, and instructions on how to apply, please visit www.radiomiw.com. The deadline to apply is Wednesday, February 20, 2019.
Lindsay Cerajewski
“This unique initiative provides and amazing opportunity for mentees to gain valuable insight, knowledge and access to some of the most influential women in radio,” says Lindsay Cerajewski, chair of the 2019 MIW Group’s Mentoring Committee and National Sales Manager at Entercom Chicago. “It is very rewarding to watch our Mentees grow professionally throughout the year.”
MIW Group Spokeswoman Denyse Mesnik added, “We are absolutely thrilled Beasley Media Group has once again generously offered to serve as lead sponsor of MIW Group’s heritage Mildred Carter Mentoring Program for 2019. We look forward to another successful year!”
“It is a privilege to once again support such a wonderful program that promotes the advancement of women to senior positions in the radio industry,” said Caroline Beasley. “Similar to Beasley Media Group’s commitment in providing our employees with the opportunity to learn, grow and thrive in their chosen career paths, the MIW Group’s Mildred Carter Mentoring Program is a shining example of how to nurture and support future leaders in the radio industry. We are proud to be a part of the initiative.”
The MIW Group Mentoring Program is named in the memory of Mildred Carter, who, along with her husband, Andrew “Skip” Carter, founded the first African American owned radio station in the U.S. in 1950, when they turned on KPRS Kansas City, Missouri. Mrs. Carter ran the Carter Broadcast Group for many years after the death of Skip Carter, before turning over control of the company to her grandson, Michael Carter in 1987.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents took Sha Yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, better known as rapper 21 Savage, into custody early Sunday morning in Atlanta after a “targeted operation with federal and local law enforcement partners.”
Though he is often touted as a local Atlanta rapper, ICE officials say he is actually “a United Kingdom national” and has overstayed his visa, reports The Washington Post.
The arrest occurred days after the rapper performed in Atlanta at the Bud Light Super Bowl Music Fest during Super Bowl week.
21 Savage is best known for his single “Bank Account” as well as being featured on hit songs such as Post Malone’s “Rockstar,” Cardi B’s “Bartier Cardi” and Drake’s “Sneakin'." His latest album, “I Am > I Was,” hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart in January.
“Mr. Abraham-Joseph initially entered the U.S. legally in July 2005, but subsequently failed to depart under the terms of his nonimmigrant visa and he became unlawfully present in the U.S. when his visa expired in July 2006,” ICE spokesman Bryan Cox told The Washington Post in a statement.
“In addition to being in violation of federal immigration law, Mr. Abraham-Joseph was convicted on felony drug charges in October 2014 in Fulton County, Georgia,” the statement added.
The rapper has been placed in “removal proceedings before the federal immigration courts,” Cox said. “ICE will now await the outcome of his case before a federal immigration judge to determine future actions.”
ICE, though, says he was born in the United Kingdom and entered the country in the summer of 2005.
“His whole public persona is false. He actually came to the U.S. from the U.K. as a teen and overstayed his visa,” an ICE spokesperson reportedly told CNN correspondent Nick Valencia.
Linda Ronstadt quit performing years ago – her Parkinson's disease makes singing impossible. But last fall, she spoke to a sellout crowd at The Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles, who came to see her in person, and listen to her talk about what has been a magical life. according to CBS News.
Ronstadt was a musical force of nature who sold 100 million records, had four consecutive platinum albums, and won an armful of Grammys for songs in wildly different music styles, like country, Latin and pop
For more than four decades it seemed there was nothing Linda Ronstadt couldn't do, until she sensed that her voice was beginning to fail her.
CBS Correspondent Tracy Smith asked Ronstadt, "When did you start noticing there was something wrong with your voice?"
"2000," she replied. "I'd start to sing and then it would just clamp up. It was, like, a cramp. My voice would freeze. And I said, 'There's something wrong with my voice.' And people would say, 'Oh, you're just a perfectionist.' I go, 'No, there's really something systemically wrong.'
"And it's very slow-moving, this disease, so it took a long time to really finally manifest."
She played her last show in 2009, but it wasn't until 2013 that she revealed she'd been diagnosed with Parkinson's.
Irv Brown, an iconic Denver radio host whose decades-long Colorado sports career spanned from standout athlete, to high school and college coach, to six-time NCAA Final Four basketball official, died Sunday morning.
His death was confirmed by Joe Williams, his longtime radio partner. A cause of death was not immediately known, but his health had declined in recent months, Williams said. The Greeley Tribune first reported the news.
“When you think about sports and Colorado, I don’t think there’s ever been anyone — in the entire spectrum of sports, starting in junior high, through high school, college and the pros — I don’t think there’s ever been a person in Colorado who touched as many lives as Irv did,” Williams told The Denver Post.
Brown was born March 3, 1935, in Denver. He graduated from Denver’s North High School in 1953, where he was a standout athlete in basketball and baseball, earning seven varsity letters. He attended Colorado State College — what is now the University of Northern Colorado — where he played baseball and was center fielder for the 1957 team that competed in the College World Series.
Irv Brown 2016
After, he began his coaching career, which included coaching football, basketball and baseball at Arvada High School, where his 1964 baseball team won the Class AAA state title over Grand Junction, 5-3.
Eventually, he became a basketball official, building relationships with icons in the sport, including Bobby Knight, launching a career that included officiating six Final Fours from 1969 to 1977. “Officiating college basketball was the most challenging thing I did,” Brown once said. “But I also had a lot of fun.”
He began his media career as a sports reporter on KHOW 630 AM in 1974. He was also a color analyst during the early days of a then-nascent network called ESPN.
Brown worked for 42 years in radio, hiring eventual partner, Williams, in 1981 at KWBZ to sell a show that Brown and former Denver Post sports columnist Woody Paige hosted. The pair later formed “The Irv and Joe Show,” which aired on numerous radio stations through more than a quarter century, including KKFN 104.3 The Fan. It most recently broadcast on Mile High Sports radio 1340 AM.
Brown is credited with inspiring the careers of numerous broadcasters in the Denver market. On the day current Broncos play-by-play announcer Dave Logan was cut from the team, he called Brown.
➦In 1935...the CBS Radio Network first aired "Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch", based on the movie of the same name. The plot: Mrs. Wiggs, facing eviction, scrabbles for survival with her number of children and hopes for the return of her husband, who left many years before, looking for gold in the Klondike. It aired for three years.
➦In 1927...KGA-AM, Spokane, Washington signed-on.
For many years, KGA was a successful country music outlet. In 1994 it switched to a news/talk format. It now airs a sports format and simulcasts on a translator at 103.5 FM. KGA was a 50,000 watt clear-channel Class A station for most of its life, and could be heard after sunset around the Pacific Northwest, plus part of Western Canada. On July 15, 2008,
KGA reduced its nighttime power from 50,000 watts to 15,000 watts, surrendered its status as a Class A to Class B, and changed its directional antenna system. Class A stations have the widest coverage areas and best protection from interference from other stations. All of this was done so that its sister station, KSFN in Piedmont, California, could increase its nighttime power from 230 watts to 2,400 watts. The justification for this change was gaining several hundred thousand potential listeners in the San Francisco Bay Area while sacrificing KGA's smaller potential audience in the Pacific Northwest
KGA 1510 AM (50Kw-D, 15Kw-N) Red=Local Coverage
➦In 1940...'Amanda of Honeymoon Hill' debuted on the NBC Blue network. It was a 15-minute daily radio soap opera produced by Frank and Anne Hummert. Broadway actress Joy Hathaway had the title role, sometimes described as "the beauty of flaming red hair." The series was broadcast from February 5, 1940, until April 26, 1946, initially on the Blue Network at 3:15 p.m. until August 1942. It then moved to CBS, airing at 10:30am until 1943 when it was heard at 11 a.m.
➦In 1976...The single "Rhiannon (Will You Ever Win)" was rleased by Fleetwood Mac in North America.
➦In 1977…Fleetwood Mac released "Rumours." The album won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978 and sold over 40 million copies worldwide.
➦In 1978..."Stayin' Alive" by the Bee Gees hit number one on most of the singles pop charts.
➦In 1983...Singer Karen Carpenter, who formed The Carpenters with her brother Richard, died as a result of complications from anorexia.
She was 32.
➦In 1983…Radio announcer Jim Ameche died of lung cancer at age 67.
Jim Ameche
When Ameche's older brother, Don Ameche, left his position as the host and announcer for The Chase and Sanborn Hour in the early 1940s, Jim took over for the remainder of the show's run. He also was heard as mountie Jim West on ABC's Silver Eagle (1951–55). Other shows Ameche was heard on included Grand Hotel, Hollywood Playhouse, and Big Sister.
In the 1940s, he had several programs on WGN radio in Chicago. He was also heard on stations in Los Angeles and Palm Springs in the late 1950s and early 60s. For many years he was a popular local radio personality in the New York City area. By the late 1960s, he was working as an announcer on New York's WHN and the TV pitchman for a Longines Symphonette Society mail-order record album featuring clips of old-time radio broadcasts. For many years, he was the afternoon announcer on WQXR, the classical radio station of The New York Times, and was a familiar and beloved voice. He also recorded numerous radio ads in Phoenix, Arizona in his later years[citation needed].
He portrayed Alexander Graham Bell in the 1957 film The Story of Mankind, the role his brother Don had played in the film biography of Bell in 1939. The two brothers' faces and voices were a close match.
➦In 1992...veteran actor and announcer John Dehner died from emphysema & diabetes at age 76.
Dehner's early radio jobs included being a news editor and a disc jockey. While working at KFWB in Los Angeles, California, he was a member of a news team that won a Peabody Award for its reporting on the first United Nations conference.
Possessing a deep, resonant voice, Dehner had an extensive career as a radio actor and was once recognized by Radio Life Magazine as having the entertainment industry's "best radio voice".
He performed as a lead or supporting player in such series as The Whistler, Gunsmoke and Philip Marlowe. He also starred as Paladin in the radio version of Have Gun – Will Travel, one of the few times a show began on television and then was later adapted for radio. On CBS Radio in 1958, he starred in the series Frontier Gentleman.
➦In 1996...WYNY 103.5 FM, NYC dropped the Country music format it had aired since 1988. The last song played at 6:15 PM on WYNY was Garth Brooks', "The Dance."
Charlie Cook became the PD in 1992, replaced by Johnny Michaels, Fred Horton, Rusty Walker, and finally Chris Kampmeir (Now retired after several years as Operations Manager for iHeartMedia/Orlando).
103.5 resurrected the old calls of WKTU (which had been on 92.3 in the 1970's and early 1980's - but by this time, the WKTU calls were being used at a station in Ocean City NJ and when WKTU was acquired for 103.5 on February 28, 1996, the Ocean City station switched to WTKU.)
WKTU is now owned by iHeartMedia and airs a Rhythmic HotAC format.
➦In 2004...Happy Birthday to Facebook, which was launched originally as a social networking website limited to Harvard University students.
➦In 2009...Eddie Schwartz died at age 62.
Eddie Schwartz - 1976
A native of the Southeast Side of Chicago, Schwartz' interest in radio began as a youngster with the gift of a portable radio from his grandparents. He fell asleep each night tuned to the Jack Eigen Show on WMAQ (AM). When his part-time high school job took him to the WLS (AM) studios for a delivery, WLS personality Dex Card invited Schwartz to come into the studio and watch him broadcast. The experience made him even more determined to secure a job in radio. Schwartz attended Columbia College where he studied radio production. Some of Schwartz' classmates included Pat Sajak, Bob Sirott, and Bruce DuMont; he was the first of the group to get a broadcasting job.
The beginning of his on-air career was something of an accident. A half-hour before airtime, the usual late-night radio personality phoned the station to say he would not be in. WIND had made no arrangements for a replacement because of such short notice. Schwartz was there and was asked to fill in. It soon became his full-time overnight job, as the audience liked his style of honestly speaking his mind and addressing community concerns. During his programs, Schwartz led discussions on local Chicago issues.
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