Chair Wheeler Talks With FCC 'Occupiers'

A small band of net neutrality advocates who have pitched their tents beside the U.S. Federal Communications Commission hope that their on-the-ground activism can counterbalance well-funded lobbying efforts by large broadband providers, according to pcworld.com.

The small group of protestors, which had grown from two on May 7 to about 15 Tuesday night, is calling on the FCC to regulate broadband as a common-carrier, utility-style service, as an alternative to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s recent proposal for net neutrality rules that allow broadband carriers to engage in “commercially reasonable” traffic management.

The “Occupy the FCC” protestors, in advocating for the FCC to regulate broadband in the same way as it treats traditional telecom services, are swimming upstream against several large broadband providers and dozens of members of Congress. The FCC is scheduled Thursday to vote on whether to officially release Wheeler’s proposal and open it up to public comment, and Wheeler met with the small group Wednesday morning.

By reclassifying broadband as a common-carrier telecom service, the “FCC has greater ability to regulate in the public interest,” said Margaret Flowers of nearby Baltimore, an activist with PopularResistance.org who has been camping out at the FCC for a week. “We don’t want to see any backroom deals cut with the telecom giants to undercut the public interest.”

While Wheeler seemed to still favor his net neutrality proposal during the meeting, protestors said they believe they’re having an impact on the FCC. Three of the commission’s five members have talked with the protestors since last Friday.

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FL Radio: JVC Media Expanding To South Florida

John Caracciola

JVC Media, with radio stations on Long Island, and in the Gainesville, Ocala, Florida market,  has announced its intention to purchase the assets of radio station WSVU 960 AM and translators W295BJ and W240CI, licensed to North Palm Beach, FL from North Palm Beach Broadcasting, Inc.

In addition, JVC Media also announced that simultaneously they have entered into an agreement to purchase the assets of radio station WBGF 93.5 FM and WSWN 900 AM serving the West Palm Beach area and licensed to BGI Broadcasting, L.P.

JVC was formed by broadcasting veterans John Caracciolo and Victor Canales and is backed by Northwood Ventures.

WSVU (AM) along with its two FM translators is a radio station with a track record of success and community involvement. WSVU serves the West Palm Beach area. WBGF (FM) and WSWN (AM) are unique facilities serving the West Palm area with signals as far north as Jupiter and as far south as Boca Raton. JVC will combine the recourses of all 5 signals into a locally programmed and promotionally active cluster following its mantra of “live, local and fun” radio programming.

"We are honored and privileged to welcome these great radio signals into the JVC family," said John Caracciolo, CEO, JVC Media. “We love this business and we see a huge opportunity to grow in this market”

JVC Media VP/COO Victor Canales added, “This is a great market, and we are excited to continue the trend of fun, local radio. We plan on adding staff in Florida and New York and to make a big splash with marketing and programming when we begin operating the stations.”

Grammy Producer Calls Out Urban Radio For Explicit Lyrics

Carvin Higgins

Carvin Haggins, 2 time Grammy Winner best known for working with the biggest names in the music industry such as, Musiq SoulChild, Raheem Devaughn, Justin Timberlake and Chrisette Michele, Chris Brown and more. Haggins has had enough of the over-sexed, murderous, drug dealing being emphasized in music over the air waves.

Carvin went onto say "the way alot of the music has gone over the years there is simply no "balance" the majority of it is negative. He gave examples in saying, even tho you had NWA there was Public Enemy, there was a balance in the music, there were choices".

Carvin states, he does not have a problem with artist expressing themselves, however they should keep in mind the messages they are sending to young children. The violence depicted in music is taking away from the artists true "creativity". Carvin noticed several differentiating factors in the distribution of music over the air waves. The differences on pop radio vs urban radio stations are significant. Haggins noticed the lyrics on pop radio are often time bleeped out or removed, vs. on urban radio the lyrics are "explicit".

Haggins started a petition on Change.org. Click Here.

Carvin is now holding Urban Radio Accountable for not making the music "child friendly" the way pop radio does. Carvin says he'll be Boycotting and picketing against CCM+E's WUSL 98.9 FM Power 99 Radio Station in Philadelphia on June 7, 2014.

Cosmo Model Wants Dinner With...Glenn Beck!

Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Chrissy Teigen graces the June issue of Cosmopolitan magazine, and after running through her diet tricks and her marriage secrets, Teigen dropped a bombshell: She would like to have dinner with Glenn Beck.

Yes, that’s right, Teigen listed Glenn as one of the four people she would invite to her “fantasy celebrity dinner” along with chef Anthony Bourdain, actress Angelina Jolie, and Tom Cruz’s 8-year-old daughter Suri.
Despite admitting he had no idea who Teigen was before hearing about the Cosmo article, Beck obviously had A LOT of fun with the story on radio Wednesday morning.

Report: Labels Buy Stake In Shazam

Shazam Entertainment, the music-identification app, landed small investments from the world’s biggest record companies, according to the WSJ.

Warner Music Group owner Access Industries – the holding company of billionaire Len Blavatnik – along with Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, are each taking $3 million stakes in Shazam, these people said. All of the shares were purchased from a single third-party investor, according to people familiar with the transactions.

Shazam, which is based in London, helps people identify music playing on the radio or other public setting. For the labels, Shazam’s biggest value lies in its role as a marketing partner: The app lets people share the song’s name on social media, download it from Apple  iTunes Store or stream it on subscription services such as Spotify.

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The New York Times Replaces Executive Editor

Jill Abramson (NY Times)

Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The New York Times, is unexpectedly leaving the position and will be replaced by Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the newspaper, the company said Wednesday.

Ms. Abramson, 60, a former investigative correspondent and Washington editor who was appointed to lead the newsroom in 2011, was the first woman to serve in the top job.

“I’ve loved my run at The Times,” she said in a statement. “I got to work with the best journalists in the world doing so much stand-up journalism,” she said, noting her appointment of many senior female editors as one of her achievements.

“There is no journalist in our newsroom or elsewhere better qualified to take on the responsibilities of executive editor at this time than Dean Baquet,” said Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the publisher of The New York Times and chairman of The New York Times Company. “He is an exceptional reporter and editor with impeccable news judgment who enjoys the confidence and support of his colleagues around the world and across the organization.”

Mr. Baquet, 57, a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter and a former editor of the Los Angeles Times, will become the first African-American executive editor at the New York Times. “It is an honor to be asked to lead the only newsroom in the country that is actually better than it was a generation ago,” he said, “one that approaches the world with wonder and ambition every day.”

The reasons for the switch were not immediately clear.

Report: 'Equal Pay' Was Core Issue For NYTimes Firing

It's been reported that The New York Times Executive Editor was fired over equal pay.

Jimm Abramson, according to Ken Auletta at The New Yorker, discovered that her pay and pension benefits were considerably less than of counterpart, Bill Keller. Abramson succeeded Keller when he departed.

“She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect.

Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits.

Abramson, who spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, had been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, which accounted for some of the pension disparity.

Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said that Jill Abramson’s total compensation as executive editor “was directly comparable to Bill Keller’s”—though it was not actually the same.

Auletta says he was told by a friend of Abramson’s that the pay gap with Keller was only closed after she complained. But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories.

According to The New Yorker, Sulzberger’s frustration with Abramson had been growing. She had already clashed with the company’s C.E.O., Mark Thompson, over native advertising and the perceived intrusion of the business side into the newsroom.

Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, “I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …” Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.

Throwback Thursday: Bob Pittman On NBC4 In NYC

Clear Channel's Bob Pittman & Lee Masters (Jarl Mohn, appointed last week as new CEO for NPR) from WNBC 660 AM Radio New York hosted 'Album Tracks', late night on NBC4 New York back in the late '70s.  

The video seems to be an early pilot for MTV.

This clip features music news bites and a spotlight on Styx, and the second single "Fooling Yourself" from 1977's landmark LP, The Grand Illusion.

BBC Radio: Radio 2 Gains, BBC 1 Loses Listeners

Host Chris Evans

Radio 2 has surged to its biggest-ever audience as sister station Radio 1's breakfast DJ Nick Grimshaw lost more than a million of his older listeners since taking over from Chris Moyles.

The Guardian is reporting Radio 2, which was named UK station of the year at the Radio Academy awards this week, attracted 15.6 million listeners in the first quarter of this year, according to Rajar audience figures published on Thursday.

It was a new high for the station, which has transformed itself over the last decade and a half, with record ratings for Chris Evans, Ken Bruce, Steve Wright and Graham Norton.

Radio 1, which is undergoing its own reinvention as it seeks a younger audience, had 10.5 million listeners, down 400,000 on the previous quarter but up 2.6% year on year.

Grimshaw had 5.85 million listeners, down from 6.3 million the previous quarter and his predecessor Moyles's final audience of 6.7 million.

But with the station under pressure from the BBC Trust and its commercial rivals to do more to appeal to younger listeners, the presenter was in the unusual position of being praised by his controller for losing listeners.

Radio 1 said the show had gained 130,000 listeners aged 24 and under and shed more than half a million over-25s during the three-month period.

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BBC Radio: Radio 1 Shedding Older Listeners

Host Nick Grimshaw

DJ Nick Grimshaw has been praised by his station boss after shedding more than half a million listeners over the age of 25 from his Radio 1 breakfast show in the space of three months.

Coventry Telegraph reports the station's controller Ben Cooper said that losing the older listeners while gaining younger fans to bring down the overall age was fulfilling the "challenge" the presenter had been set.

Grimshaw's programme has a weekly audience of 5.85 million according to new figures from industry body Rajar, down 440,000 in total on the previous quarter.

The morning programme which Grimshaw - who is himself 29 - took over in 2012 has piled on 130,000 15 to 24-year-olds in the past three months while losing older listeners.

Ben Cooper has been trying to reduce the average age of listeners to Radio 1 after the BBC Trust wanted the station to do more to appeal to a younger targer audience.

Since replacing predecessor Chris Moyles the show has lost 1.11 million listeners aged 25 or more, while adding 230,000 under 24s.

Ben Cooper said of the latest figures: "I was asked to build a younger audience for Radio 1 and regenerate the brand, and these figures show we're doing exactly that.

Gannett To Acquire London Broadcasting

Gannett, publisher of USAToday, said Wednesday it agreed to buy six TV stations from Dallas-based London Broadcasting Company for $215 million in cash, deepening its presence in Texas.

Once the deal closes, the McLean-based media company will own or operate 46 stations, reflecting the corporate strategy of reducing its dependence on print media. In December, Gannett closed the $2.2 billion acquisition of Belo, which nearly doubled the number of its TV stations from 23 to 40.

The latest deal includes KCEN (NBC) in Waco-Temple-Bryan, KYTX (CBS) in Tyler-Longview, KIII (ABC) in Corpus Christi, KBMT (ABC) and its digital sub-channel KJAC (NBC) in Beaumont-Port Arthur, KXVA (FOX) in Abilene-Sweetwater and KIDY (FOX) in San Angelo.

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