The Saturday Aircheck

This week the current owners of 1050 CHUM AM Toronto announced the station will become SportsTalk 1050 CHUM on April 13, 2011. The move comes two years after the station switched to an audio simulcast of Canadian CP24, all all-news format.

However, from May 27, 1957 to June 14, 1986 1050 CHUM was the Top40 station everyone listened to in Toronto.  Today's aircheck features American Gary Gears from December 16, 1973. Hat Tip to the Rock Radio Scrapbook.

Click here to listen.

Cumulus, Citadel ThisClose To Deal?

Cumulus Media Inc. today confirmed that Cumulus and Citadel Broadcasting Corporation  have entered into an exclusivity agreement to negotiate a merger agreement under which Cumulus would acquire all of the outstanding common stock and warrants of Citadel at a price of $37.00 per share. Citadel owns and operates 225 radio stations in over 50 markets and also operates the Citadel Media business, which is among the largest radio networks in the US.

Under the terms of Cumulus' proposal, the payment received by Citadel shareholders would consist of a combination of cash and Cumulus stock for each Citadel share and warrant, with a fixed exchange ratio. Based upon the proposed cash and stock election formula, the $37.00 per share consideration would, on average, be capped at a maximum of $30.00 per share in cash and a maximum of $14.00 per share in Cumulus stock. Based on actual elections made by Citadel shareholders and subject to proration, each Citadel shareholder could individually receive more or less cash or Cumulus stock than these amounts, up to the $37.00 per share total.

Cumulus expects to fund the cash portion of the purchase price with up to $500 million in equity financing from Crestview Partners and Macquarie Capital, and the remainder through debt financing to be led by UBS Investment Bank and Macquarie Capital. Cumulus, which previously announced the pending acquisition of the remaining equity interests that it does not currently own in Cumulus Media Partners LLC, also expects to complete a refinancing of all of the outstanding debt of Cumulus, CMP and Citadel as part of the proposed transaction.

After giving effect to the proposed acquisition, Cumulus would own 570 radio stations across approximately 120 US markets.

A combination of Cumulus and Citadel, together with CMP, would provide Cumulus with:

• A truly national platform with approximately 120 US markets, including 8 of the top 10 markets
• A balance sheet with lower overall leverage and a simplified capital structure
• A significantly enhanced equity market capitalization for Cumulus, which would provide greater trading liquidity and strategic flexibility
• The scale necessary to effectively compete and invest in the local digital media marketplace; and
• A network for the syndication of content and technology assets.

Execution of a definitive merger agreement with Citadel is subject, among other things, to completion of due diligence and financing arrangements. Any transaction would be subject to the approval of each company's board of directors, as well as obtaining regulatory and shareholder approvals, and other customary conditions.

Golf Channel Removes Jim Gray

Golf Channel reporter Jim Gray has been pulled from this weekend's assignment at the Northern Trust Open after an argument with Dustin Johnson's caddie following the first round Thursday at Riviera Country Club, according to Bob Harig at espn.com.

The network said in a statement that it was removing him from the coverage so as not to be a distraction.

Johnson's caddie, Bobby Brown, argued with Gray on Thursday in the scoring area, telling the veteran broadcaster that he should not have been discussing a rules incident with Johnson on the course during the round.

A four-time winner on the PGA Tour, Johnson was nearly disqualified and was assessed a two-stroke penalty because he was late for his first-round tee time. Gray spoke to Johnson about it later in the round, something that Brown and others in the group took issue with.

Gray, a freelancer reporter, was involved in ESPN's airing of LeBron James' publicly announced decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers last summer to play for the Miami Heat. Gray interviewed James during that broadcast.

Read more here.

Obama Talked R&D With Jobs, Zuckerberg

Research spending and technology exports were some of the menu items Thursday evening when President Barack Obama sat down for dinner with corporate chieftains from Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Google In.

At the home of venture capitalist John Doerr just outside San Francisco, Mr. Obama met with Apple's Steve Jobs, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Eric Schmidt, among others. According to Jared A. Favole at wsj.com,  the overall aim of the meeting was for Mr. Obama to discuss his competitiveness agenda, and to find new ways the government and private sector can work together to lift the shaky economy.

Things did get specific, however. "The president specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to reporters traveling with the president.

The president's budget, released this week, included billions of dollars for new R&D spending. Mr. Obama has also secured a measure to allow businesses to fully expense business investing for 2011.

Mr. Obama's meeting with the technology executives fits into his renewed effort in recent months to work closely with the private sector on ways to lift the economy. Mr. Obama vowed, in a speech earlier this month to business leaders, that he would knock down barriers to growth. He said he needed the private sector's help to revamp the corporate tax code, expand the economy and make government run more efficiently.

It is unclear how specific discussions got on areas such as taxes. The business community, and technology companies in particular, have raised concerns about Mr. Obama's proposal to boost taxes on overseas income.

List of attendees at the dinner Thursday evening:

• John Doerr, Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
• Carol Bartz, President and CEO, Yahoo Inc.
• John Chambers, Chairman and CEO, Cisco Systems Inc.
• Dick Costolo, CEO, Twitter Inc.
• Larry Ellison, Co-Founder and CEO, Oracle Corp.
• Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix Inc.
• John Hennessy, President, Stanford University
• Steve Jobs, Chairman and CEO, Apple Inc.
• Art Levinson, Chairman and former CEO, Genentech Inc.
• Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google Inc.
• Steve Westly, Managing Partner and Founder, The Westly Group
• Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook Inc.

Read more here.

Who Gives the Most Trusted Recommendations?

According to emarketer.com, Social media has put power in the hands of the consumer, giving everyone a publishing platform to push out their thoughts and feelings to the world at large. This has given great power to word-of-mouth, typically considered the most trustworthy form of marketing. But social behavior is changing as it matures.

The GlobalWebIndex “Annual Report 2011,” which includes data from Trendstream and Lightspeed Research, outlines a shift in consumer behavior on social media. As usage of social sites increases around the world, the landscape is maturing. According to the report, usage is shifting to focus on distributing content rather than creating it. Social media users disseminate and share professionally created content more often on microblogs, social networks and video-sharing platforms.

But the human element remains key to engendering trust. Internet users worldwide reported a nearly 50% increase in their trust of social network contacts giving product recommendations, and a 21% increase for microblog contacts. Even though many of those contacts are likely sharing some professional content with or alongside their personal recommendations, professional sources of information like newspapers and TV barely gained any trust over the same period.

Read more here.

Facebook, Twitter Are Changing the Middle East

In an interview with WSJ's Alan Murray, social media expert Clay Shirky discusses the effect of Facebook, Twitter and other social media in the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and what it could mean for the Middle East at large.

CBS News Grows Online Audience

CBSNews.com has been building a growing audience, passing ABC News and Fox News in online traffic late last year.

According to beet.tv, part of the success around the network's growth has been by streaming programming on popular live portals with channels on Livestream and Ustream, in addition to the network's live player.

Time Inc. Chief Exec Jack Griffin Out

The chief executive of Time Inc., Jack Griffin, is leaving the company after less than six months on the job — forced out over what company executives said was a widespread sense that his management style was brusque and did not fit the corporate culture there, according to Jeremy W. Peters at Media Decoder at nytimes.com.

Mr. Griffin, 50, drew an unusual public rebuke from Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of Time Inc’s parent company, Time Warner, who said in an e-mail to employees on Thursday evening that the situation had become unworkable.

“Although Jack is an extremely accomplished executive, I concluded that his leadership style and approach did not mesh with Time Inc. and Time Warner,” Mr. Bewkes wrote.

Mr. Griffin’s selection as chief of Time Inc., the world’s largest magazine publisher, surprised many in the industry when the appointment was announced in August. Mr. Griffin had been head of the magazine division at Meredith, the Des Moines-based publisher of magazines like Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle and Ladies’ Home Journal.

He was the first chief executive in Time Inc.’s history to come from outside the company, replacing Ann S. Moore, who had been with Time for 30 years.
Read more here.

Bieber Ruffles The Ladies On 'The View'

When Justin Bieber opened up to Rolling Stone about his views on premarital sex and abortion, he probably didn't expect the co-hosts of "The View" to vilify him for it, according to a story by Shari Weiss at nydailynews.com.

But some of the talk show's stars did just that Thursday morning, when they debated whether 16-year-old Bieber had any business discussing such adult matters.

The teen heartthrob is quoted in the magazine's March issue as saying "you should just wait" until you're in love to have sex, and "I really don't believe in abortion … It's like killing a baby."

When asked about situations in which women become pregnant after being raped, Bieber said he believed "everything happens for a reason," but noted, "I haven't been in that position, so I wouldn't be able to judge that."

As guest co-host KaDee Strickland pointed out, "He won't be in that position because he cannot give birth."

"He doesn't have a choice like that," she added. "He's a 16-year-old boy, as I understand it. That's a very hot-button thing to be talking about."

Joy Behar said Bieber's "everything happens for a reason" comment is "really insulting to people who have been raped or victims of incest. There is no 'reason' for that."

Both Strickland and Behar said they were "concerned" about the influence the singer's comments might have on young girls – his core fan base.

His lone defender? Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

"I don't think we can discount somebody's opinion because they happen to be 16," she said. "We have brilliant minds who are young [and] young minds who have created things that are now changing the world. To discount his opinion simply because he's 16, I think, is a disservice."

Read more here.

Lakers Leaving Fox

Houston and Los Angeles were cornerstones of Fox Sports Net when it was created in the mid-1990s, and now Fox has suffered a blow in LA with this week’s announcement that the Lakers will leave after the 2011-12 season for English- and Spanish-language regional sports networks owned by Time Warner Cable, according to a column by David Barron at chron.com.

If estimates valuing the deal at $3 billion over 20 years are reasonably correct, cable bills in LA are about to go up big-time. However, Time Warner in LA, like Comcast in Houston with its Rockets-Astros network launching in 2012, now must sell the new channel in a marketplace that has substantial numbers of households serviced by providers and about 620,000 households with no pay TV.

DirecTV has more than a million customers in LA, which, along with other providers and uncabled households, together account for more than half of the households in the LA market. Another remarkable element of the deal is that Time Warner is paying so much money for, given the Lakers’ popularity with the NBA’s national outlets, maybe 60 to 65 exclusive telecasts each year.

Fox Sports Net, meanwhile, isn’t going out of business, but is remarkable to consider the extent to which it is fading as a force in Top 10 markets.

It still has a full run of teams in Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth and, until the Lakers leave, Los Angeles. But in addition to team-owned outlets like NESN in Boston and YES in New York, Comcast is now a dominant Top 10 player with MLB/NBA/NHL deals in the San Francisco Bay Area, Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, D.C., with Houston soon to follow, plus the Mets in New York and the Celtics in New England.

Read more here.

GM To Offer Pandora iNet Radio

General Motors Co will launch a new system to stream online radio from Pandora in upcoming Chevrolets starting with the Volt and Equinox.

Reuters is reporting the new partnership comes as the top U.S. automaker looks to make up for lost ground against Ford Motor Co in the increasingly competitive market for digital entertainment systems in vehicles.

GM said the 2012 Chevrolet Volt and the Equinox would come equipped with a new system dubbed "Chevy MyLink" anchored by a seven-inch, color touch-screen display in the dashboard.

The system will allow Chevy drivers to stream music from Pandora Media Inc by syncing the vehicle to a smartphone and using an existing Pandora account.

Chief Executive Dan Akerson, who has a background in telecommunications, has said one of his priorities was to sharpen the automaker's focus on vehicle electronics.

Read more here.

PA School District Wants DJ To Apologize

Lakeland School District wants a radio personality to apologize for allegedly reporting "false and defamatory" information about the district.

According to a story by Caitlin Heaney at thetimes-tribune.com, the school board unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday night, authorizing its attorneys to send letters to radio station Froggy 101 (WGGY) and its affiliates to demand an apology from host Jacob Navarro.

The district claims Mr. Navarro erroneously reported on Dec. 17 and 20 that a Lakeland student had taken a gun to school and school officials covered up the matter. Those actions were "irresponsible, malicious, unethical and damaging to the community and represent the worst in smear tactics," according to the resolution. Board Vice President Richard Koruszko said the statements were "completely false."

After Mr. Navarro allegedly made the reports, parents contacted Lakeland about pulling their students from school, and one person told a school board member she almost crashed her car when she heard the statement, said Superintendent Margaret Billings-Jones, Ed.D.

Mr. Koruszko said the board passed the resolution for the community because Mr. Navarro's alleged comments caused a disservice to the public.

"It's a very serious matter, and there (were) many, many concerned parents who, when they heard that news, they were upset," he said.

The resolution also authorizes the district's attorneys to contact the Federal Communications Commission and other authorities about the matter and to ask Mr. Navarro to "cease and desist from such irresponsible broadcasting."

Read more here.