With podcast ad spending projected to surge 32% this year, advertising/marketing will be the fastest growing source of audio media revenue this year, outpacing the increase in direct consumer spending by a wide margin -- +14.4% vs. +8.3%, according to Mediapost citing the 2021 edition of PQ Media's annual U.S. Audio Media Forecast report.
The report, which is being released today, however, finds that direct consumer spending on audio subscription services continues to be the dominant share of the marketplace, accounting for 59% of the $44.02 billion the U.S. audio media industry -- both conventional radio, as well as digital audio services -- will take in this year.
“Audio has proven to be a resilient medium since its rise to the fore of the media spectrum in the 1920s, continually adapting to strong challenges posed by the emergence of new technologies, such as television in the 1950s, as well as related changes in consumer behaviors and shifting ad budgets," notes PQ CEO Patrick Quinn.
The good news for the overall medium, regardless of revenue stream, is that consumer consumption of audio continues to rise as new platforms and formats expand. PQ estimates the average American consumer will boost their time spent listenting to audio media this year by 3.3%, rising to an averaeg of 13.7 hours weekly.
The US is the undisputed front-runner within the global podcasting ecosystem, in terms of both content production listener adoptionm according to eMarketer.
In 2021, 40.0% of US internet users will listen to a podcast at least once per month. No other country comes close to matching this figure (Sweden, home of Spotify, will be in second place with 34.6%). The US will also have the most monthly podcast listeners, at 117.8 million—over 40 million more than our aggregate figure for Europe. China will be in second place, with 85.6 million listeners.
This year, for the first time, more than half of all digital audio listeners in the US will also be podcast listeners. By the end of 2024, that figure will cross the 60% mark. Among digital consumers in the US, podcast listening has become mainstream in a surprisingly rapid fashion.
To drive home the point, 35.2% of the US population will listen to a podcast at least once a month in 2021. That figure was 14.3% as recently as 2015.
Thanks to the enormous US-made library of podcast content, English speakers around the world have a wider array of shows available to them than non-English speakers do. This smooths the path for podcast adoption in countries with high levels of English-language proficiency.
Rogers Communications Inc late Friday reinstated ousted Chairman Edward Rogers after a court backed his petition to constitute a new board, drawing curtains on a rare public battle for the control of a Canadian company even as the family feud showed no signs of ending.
Reuters reports the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled in favor of Edward Rogers, handing a big victory to the late founder's son in a dispute that pitted him against his mother and sisters and had weighed on the stock.
The rare public fight in the Canadian corporate world was sparked over the question of who should lead the company, and some analysts have raised concerns the dispute could potentially impact Rogers' C$20 billion ($16.1 billion) bid for rival Shaw Communications.
But soon after the ruling, Edward Rogers said that he supported CEO Joe Natale, though the entire conflict was sparked after he tried and failed to remove Natale as chief executive, saying at the time he had lost confidence in Natale's ability to lead the combined entity after the Shaw deal.
"Much has been written about Rogers CEO Joe Natale and his future," Edward Rogers said in a statement after Friday's ruling. "Mr. Natale remains CEO and a director of Rogers Communications and has the Board's support."
He said the focus must now return to closing the Shaw deal, the company's biggest M&A.
In a short statement, Rogers Communications noted the court's decision and accepted Edward Rogers as the chair, and said Natale remained as CEO.
Rogers and mother Loretta
Even as the brawl at the corporate level cooled off, the family fight showed no signs of easing. In a statement, the family matriarch, Loretta Rogers, and her two daughters said the ruling "represents a black eye for good governance and shareholder rights and sets a dangerous new precedent for Canada's capital markets by allowing the independent directors of a public company to be removed with the stroke of a pen."
"The company now faces a very real prospect of management upheaval and a prolonged period of uncertainty, at perhaps the worst possible time," the statement added.
Edward Rogers' attempt at dislodging Natale as CEO in September put him at odds with his mother and two sisters, who are Rogers directors. Edward Rogers - son of the late founder, Ted Rogers - lost out in the ensuing power struggle, and he was removed as the chair of Rogers Communications.
iHeart Media San Diego has announced an extended contract agreement for another five years to 2026 with “The Show,” heard mornings from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. on KIOZ-FM Rock 105.3, reports the Times Of San Diego.
Featuring Eddie Pappani, Sky Williams, Tylhor “Thor” Dodd, and Emily Griffiths, “The Show” has been entertaining audiences with irreverent conversation during morning drive on KIOZ-FM since 2010.
Pappani and Williams have worked together at KIOZ since 2004. “And I can’t believe they haven’t grown sick of us yet,” Pappani said. “I couldn’t be more excited and thrilled to continue our run at iHeart Radio and Rock 105.3. I want to thank Sky, my partner in crime for 21 years, and Thor and Emily for their dedication and hard work. Big thanks to everyone at iHeart Media San Diego for their continued support. We are excited to continue to entertain with our hot discussions about sandwiches for years to come.”
Shauna Moran, Rock 105.3 program director, said in a statement, “I am thrilled to continue our amazing run with `The Show.’ Their years of hard work, dedication, adaptability, evolution and just plain true grit have been amazing to watch. Their listeners’ loyalty is unparalleled, and I look forward to watching them grow their audience. Cheers to another five years.”
Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch last week raved to analysts that the company’s affiliate business units are pretty much on a tear at the moment. And why shouldn’t he? A full live schedule at Fox Sports is finally back. Advertising revenue just topped $1.1 billion. And Fox News, according to the company’s chief executive, is reaching market share levels that are “now at multi-year highs” — to say nothing of the recent launch of the Fox Weather app, which Murdoch said has seen more than 1 million downloads post-launch, with users also spending more than 42 million minutes engaging with the free, ad-supported product during its first week.
Forbes reports Murdoch declared, “the fiscal year is off to an excellent start.”
Lachlan Murdoch
From there, the impression Murdoch tried to leave with analysts is that cable news is Fox’s world, and everyone else is just living in it. All of that came, by the way, amid a presentation of the company’s numbers for the three months that ended September 30 — a period in which Fox Corp reported total quarterly revenue of $3.05 billion, up 12% from the same period in 2020.
Advertising revenue during that period climbed 17% to surpass $1.1 billion, mostly due to continued growth at Fox-owned Tubi as well as the return of a full schedule of live events at Fox Sports and more scripted programming at Fox Entertainment in the current year quarter. Quarterly net income, meanwhile, saw an unfavorable comparison to last year ($708 million, compared to $1.12 billion in 2020) due to a $462 million one-time gain that had been recognized from a cash reimbursement that Disney paid Fox.
By way of detailing some of the news-related components of Fox’s operation at the moment, Murdoch teased a little of what’s ahead for TMZ — which Fox bought during the quarter from WarnerMedia for an undisclosed price (although media reports have pegged the deal at coming in under $50 million).
Murdoch said the acquisition gives Fox “an array of possibilities” to quickly expand a brand that’s long been a cornerstone of the company’s local TV stations. The plan, for now, is to bring the TMZ brand to all parts of Fox’s portfolio, he continued, as well as “amplifying TMZ’s digital presence.”
Something else worth a mention is getting to be an old story at this point. But Fox News’ ratings leadership has managed to produce some notable headlines in recent days, including November 2 representing Fox News’ highest-rated “odd year” election night coverage in history.
‘The Five’ is October’s most-watched cable news show as Fox News crushes MSNBC, CNNhttps://t.co/mHL7M2HhNg
The ratings dominance has extended into the late-night hours, with the already-popular Fox host Greg Gutfeld’s late-night show Gutfeld! that launched in April routinely drawing more viewers than the more-established late-night hosts like Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and even CBS’ Stephen Colbert.
Americans have turned off the news—on television, online and in print, according to the Columbia Journalism Review.
News outlets are used to declines following elections—with the exception of the 2016 election, a news spectacle which electrified one half of America, and petrified the other, focusing both on endless political clickbait headlines, palace intrigue, and the social media fallout of a divisive culture war Donald Trump stoked at every opportunity.
But, perhaps as a result of that bump, the current declines across the industry are unusually precipitous. On television, between October 2020 and October 2021, according to Nielsen data, CNN was down 73 percent, to 661,00 viewers. Over the same period, MSNBC was down 56 percent, to 1.2 million viewers, and Fox News was down 53 percent, to 2.3 million viewers.
CNN and Fox News representatives declined to comment on the numbers, but emphasized the cyclical nature of news coverage. MSNBC representatives could not be reached for comment.
Broadcast TV networks also saw declining figures for their evening newscasts. For the third quarter of 2021, ABC World News Tonight was down 10 percent, to 7.9 million viewers, compared with the same period last year. NBC Nightly News was down 12 percent, to 6.6 million viewers, and CBS Evening News was down 8 percent, to 4.9 million viewers.
Digital news consumption has fallen this year, too. According to Comscore, which measures digital news readership, traffic on CNN.com—still the largest news website, with 136.4 million monthly unique visitors—was down six percent in September 2021, compared with September 2020.
Over the same period, Vox Media, the second most popular site, was down 14 percent; the New York Times, in third, was down 12 percent; and the Washington Post, fifth, was down 20 percent. According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans who get their news through social media also declined, falling five percent over the previous year.
The FBI searched the home of James O’Keefe, the founder of conservative outfit Project Veritas, on Saturday as part of its investigation into the possible theft of a diary belonging to Ashley Biden, President Biden’s daughter, The New York Times reported.
The search of O’Keefe’s apartment in Mamaroneck, New York, comes one day after O’Keefe released a statement acknowledging that the group, which specializes in “sting” videos featuring activists, politicians and the media, had been approached by people claiming to have Ashley’s diary. O’Keefe said the group decided not to publish it.
“Late last year, we were approached by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Biden’s diary,” O’Keefe said in a statement on the Project Veritas website. “The tipsters indicated that they were negotiating with a different media outlet for the payment of monies for the diary.”
He continued: “At the end of the day, we made the ethical decision that because, in part, we could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, we could not publish the diary and any part thereof.” He added that the group turned the diary over to law enforcement.
Project Veritas press secretary R.C. Maxwell told CNBC in an email Saturday that they “do not have any further comment” beyond Friday’s statement.
Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett appeared on "Hannity" Friday and stressed there's a "huge difference" between what Ashley Biden's attorney has alleged that her diary was stolen versus what O'Keefe alleged about it being left behind in a room, saying "one's a crime and the other one isn't."
Jarrett insisted that even if the diary was the subject of a theft, it would be a "state crime" rather than a federal crime and that the investigation, which allegedly began under Attorney General William Barr, has become an "enormous conflict of interest" with President Biden now in office.
On Sunday, a stream of loved ones and fellow concertgoers stopped at a growing memorial outside of the stadium to place bouquets, light tiny wax candles and write a few words on posters for some of the deceased.
While paying respects, some attendees raised more questions about the chaotic scene not even 48 hours prior, reports The Houston Chronicle.
For 37 minutes after Houston police and firefighters responded to a “mass casualty” event at a packed Astroworld rap concert where attendees were crushed against the stage Friday evening, Travis Scott continued performing.
Police officials said the promoter, Live Nation, agreed to cut the show shortly after multiple people collapsed at 9:38 p.m. But concert attendees said Scott appeared to play his whole set and finished at 10:15 p.m. Concert staff ignored pleas from fans to halt the show, including some who climbed onto camera platforms to point out others who had collapsed and needed medical attention.
A review of videos and social media posts that documented one of the deadliest concerts in U.S. history raises questions about the official timeline of events put forth by local officials, the swiftness of their response and their ability to communicate effectively with concert promoters during the disaster.
LA Times 11/7/21
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said he had enough officers onsite to handle the crowd of 50,000. But he also said he could not have abruptly ended the show for fear of sparking a riot his department could not control.
The delay restricted the movement of first responders, who were still transporting limp bodies when Scott finished his final song, “Goosebumps.”
Eight people died, including 14- and 16-year-old high school students. Scores were injured.
Saturday brought shock and mourning. Live Nation canceled the second day of the festival. Scott offered his condolences. Houston and Harris County officials defended their planning for the event but pledged a thorough investigation into what went wrong.
Two veteran concert promoters of major shows — one with experience in Texas — said the plans and procedures between promoters, showrunners and local officials outline exactly how to pull the plug on a show. Neither would comment publicly because Live Nation, the company that managed Astroworld, is a dominant force in entertainment booking.
Often, a performer with a high-energy and complex performance such as Scott’s would have a direct line to a producer or stage manager via an earpiece. The producer/manager would be in constant contact and have the ability at practically any time to tell a performer what is going on and that a show is being abruptly halted.
Cancellation can come from various people along the process, ranging from the artists themselves to promoters and police. Stage crews can, in a matter of seconds if necessary, turn off all power to the stage and broadcast safety and security messages on video boards and over the audio system.
Live Nation did not use the PA system or video boards to broadcast any safety messages Friday evening, attendees said.
On Friday, the concert began with early signs of trouble. Hundreds of Scott’s fans stormed a VIP security checkpoint at 2 p.m. and bypassed metal detectors. Some were trampled during the rush; others were detained.
It wasn’t the first time fans had breached fences or security barricades at Scott’s performances — the same thing happened at the Astroworld Festival in 2019 and in past performances in other cities.
At 8:39 p.m. attendee Jorlyn Santana, 19, standing near the front of the stage on the left side, shot a video of of concertgoers hopping barricades because of overcrowding. Security staff with a flashlight treated a man lying prone.
Scott began performing at the concert at 9:06 p.m. Around that same time, the crowd of 50,000 people began pressing toward the stage, officials said.
In Travis Scott’s 2019 Netflix documentary “Look Mom I Can Fly,” in the aftermath of a particularly volatile May 2017 show at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion in Rogers, Ark., one fan beamed at a camera crew while leaning on crutches. “I survived, I survived! It’s all good!” they said.
Following the show, Scott faced three misdemeanor charges of inciting a riot, disorderly conduct and endangering the welfare of a minor after he invited fans to overpower security and rush the stage. Scott pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and had to pay more than $6,000 to two people injured at the show.
“I just hate getting arrested, man. That s— is whack,” Scott said in the documentary, upon his release from jail.
The LA Times reports Scott’s talent for stirring up a young fanbase with the fury of an underground punk act has long been a part of his appeal. On his 2018 song “Stargazing,” the rapper reveled in his crowds’ heaving energy: ”it ain’t a mosh pit if ain’t no injuries.” Yet the 30-year-old rapper is also one of the most successful figures in contemporary hip-hop, an endorsement-friendly business mogul in the vein of Jay-Z and Puff Daddy, and one of a handful of rap artists who can headline major festivals.
Scott has twice faced criminal charges related to inciting crowds into over-heated fervors. Before the incident in Arkansas, the rapper pleaded guilty in 2015 to charges of reckless conduct, after cajoling fans at Lollapalooza to climb over barricades and onto the stage with him during his show at the Chicago festival.
Travis Scott
“Everyone in a green shirt get the f— back,” Scott said, referencing the festival’s security staff. “Middle finger up to security right now.” He then led the crowd in a chant of “We want rage.” (Scott often refers to his fans as “ragers.”)
Scott’s set lasted barely five minutes, whereupon he fled the scene and was soon apprehended by local police. A judge ordered him under court supervision for a year following his guilty plea.
In April 2017, a man named Kyle Green sued Scott after he attended a show at Terminal 5 in New York City, where Green claims fans pushed him off an upper-deck balcony. A different fan jumped from the same balcony in a widely seen video, after Scott pointed him out and encouraged him to leap off. “I see you, but are you gonna do it?” Scott said from the stage. “They gonna catch you. Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared!”
Green was left partially paralyzed by the incident.
The 30-year-old Scott, whose real name is Jaques Webster, was born in Houston, a famed city for outlaw hip-hop that figures prominently in his work (His chart-topping 2018 album “Astroworld” was named after a now-closed local theme park).
As the country – and the radio industry – emerges from the pandemic, Jacobs Media is excited to announce it is bringing back its customized tours for broadcasters at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show, January 5-8 in Las Vegas. These tours are designed to provide radio execs a glimpse of the future, as well as to learn how innovation and new technology will impact radio – in the car, at home, on mobile devices, and more.
“The return of our 2022 CES Tours marks an exciting moment for us and the radio industry,” remarks Jacobs Media President Fred Jacobs. “While aspects of our world have slowed down, technology has marched on, and we’ve got some catching up to do. Radio doesn’t operate in a vacuum, and understanding technology that is right around the corner is key to the industry’s future success. If CES is on your bucket list, this is the year to go. It will definitely be less congested and easier to navigate.”
While CES 2022 will be as important, exciting, and mind-expanding as usual, there will be some changes – it will be smaller, and many exhibits – including automotive – will be in the brand new West Hall at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The aisles will be wider, providing a much more enjoyable experience.
“Our tours are designed to provide broadcasters with a customized experience that gives them access to leaders of companies that will include Amazon, Google, and car companies to talk about their products and how they affect radio,” comments Jacobs Media Vice President/General Manager Paul Jacobs. “We work hard with the team at the Consumer Technology Association to identify the most important and relevant companies to visit on our tours, and of course, we’ll include a few surprises.”
The Jacobs Media CES Tours provide guests with a CES registration, the tour, discounted hotel rates, and a group dinner to socialize and compare notes about the presentations, displays, and of course, the future. It is open to all broadcast radio pros, including those in corporate, management, programming, sales, engineering, and digital.
Click HERE for rore information and registration for Jacobs Media’s CES Tours.
Tencent Holdings Ltd. pulled off a pair of successes for its League of Legends franchise over the weekend, with a raucous e-sports tournament that drew more viewers than ever before and the strong debut for a new video series on Netflix, reports Bloomberg.
“Arcane,” an anime series based on the League fantasy universe, premiered to an overwhelmingly positive response, garnering 130 million views in China within a few hours and becoming the most searched show on Tencent’s streaming site. Globally, the show -- co-created by the Tencent-owned game maker Riot Games Inc. -- is streamed on Netflix Inc.’s service as well as Amazon.com Inc.’s Twitch.
Riot’s promotional push around “Arcane” included a live premiere event in Los Angeles and advertisements posted at bus stops around the city. Epic Games Inc., also partly owned by Tencent, even debuted a League hero in its hit Fortnite game.
Earlier in the weekend, the League of Legends World Championship hit a record of more than 4 million concurrent viewers tuning in, according to Esports Charts. That was without including audiences in China, which provided the winning team for this year’s event and where a replay of the match has been watched more than 11 million times on Tencent-backed Bilibili Inc. The streaming service said cumulative views of the finals night grew 20% from the previous year without disclosing the exact number.
Chinese e-sports stocks surged after the event, with the tournament’s topic of the home team winning viewed more than 3 billion times on the microblogging site Weibo Corp. Dalian Zeus Entertainment and Hangzhou Electric Soul both rose by the 10% daily limit.
The successes come after Beijing has imposed a broad crackdown on the country’s games industry, hurting the stocks of Tencent and other companies. In August, authorities said children could play video games just three hours a week in most cases.
WQXR-FM is the outgrowth of a "high-fidelity" AM station, WQXR 1560 AM, which was founded in 1936 by John V. L. Hogan and Elliott Sanger. Hogan began this station as a mechanical television station, W2XR, which went on the air on March 26, 1929.
One of the station's listeners was the inventor of frequency modulation, Edwin Howard Armstrong. When Armstrong put his experimental FM station, W2XMN, on the air, he arranged to rebroadcast some of WQXR's programming. This ended in 1939, when Hogan and Sanger put their own experimental FM station on the air, W2XQR on this date, just down the dial from Armstrong at 42.3 MHz.
When the Federal Communications Commission began licensing commercial FM stations, W2XQR moved to 45.9 MHz and became W59NY; the special FM call signs were later dropped and the station became WQXQ.
➦In 1953...Buddy Holly and Bob Montgomery (billed as “Buddy & Bob”) appeared on radio station KDAV in their hometown of Lubbock, Texas, in the first of a series of Sunday country music shows.
➦In 2012....WXRK NYC changes call letters to WNOW-FM. The calls today are WNYL.
The station, first known as WMCA-FM, went on the air on December 25, 1948. It was co-owned with WMCA 570 AM by former New York state senator Nathan Straus. FM radio was not a successful venture for Straus, and he sought to either sell it or close the station down altogether.
WNYL logo
In late 1950, Straus sold the station to the owners of WHOM 1480 AM, now WZRC, and WHOM-FM appeared on February 26, 1951, featuring a variety of formats, including ethnic, background music, classical, Spanish, and easy listening. By the early 1970s, WHOM-FM had a Spanish-language easy listening format.
Following the sale of the WHOM stations to SJR Communications, the FM station became WKTU, taking on an adult contemporary format that began on June 5, 1975. At that point, WKTU was positioned as a "soft rock" station and called "Mellow 92". Ratings were relatively low. The station held on to the format in spite of low ratings until 1978.
That June, when a station executive, David Rapaport (father of actor Michael Rapaport), visited New York's Studio 54 discothèque on half a dozen occasions, and was very impressed with the crowds there. He then got the idea that a disco-based station was needed, as several FM-based Top 40 stations were leaning disco in other markets.
As a result, Rapaport purchased 200 disco records and brought them into the station. Keeping the same air-staff, adding Paco from their Spanish-language AM station WHOM, and with no notice, the station abruptly flipped to a disco-based rhythmic top 40 format with the tagline "Disco 92" at 6 p.m. on July 24, 1978.
In fall 1978, the station rose from "Worst to First", unseating Top40 77WABC-AM in the 18−30 age demographic.
Bonnie Raitt is 72
🎂HAPPY BIRTHDAYS:
Singer Bonnie Bramlett is 77.
Singer Bonnie Raitt is 72.
Former “Entertainment Tonight” host Mary Hart is 71.
Former Playboy CEO Christie Hefner is 69.
Actor Alfre Woodard is 69.
Gretchen Mol is 49
Singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones is 67.
Guitarist Pearl Thompson of The Cure is 64.
Singer-actor Leif Garrett is 60.
TV chef Gordon Ramsay is 55.
Actor Courtney Thorne-Smith is 54.
Actor Parker Posey is 53.
Singer Diana King is 51.
Bassist Scott Devendorf of The National is 49.
Actor Gretchen Mol is 49.
Actor Matthew Rhys (“The Americans,” “Brothers and Sisters”) 47
Actor Tara Reid (“Sharknado,” ″American Pie”) is 46.
Singer Bucky Covington (“American Idol”) is 44.
Actor Dania Ramirez (“Devious Maids,” ″Entourage”) is 42.
TV personality Jack Osbourne (“The Osbournes”) is 36.
