Envision Networks adds Power Country with Rich Miller to its Country Radio Network for distribution to affiliates nationwide. Rich Miller is a multi-award-winning air personality best known for his many years on America’s most legendary Country station, WSM AM/FM in Nashville, Tenn. Power Country provides listeners with “Straight Up Music & Encouragement!” as Rich delivers his positive attitude mixed with hit songs, hot new artists and specialty features.
The two-hour weekend show features music from Keith Urban, Carrie Underwood, Lady Antebellum, Blake Shelton, Miranda Lambert, Chris Stapleton and more. An encouraging mix of songs for positive listener engagement each week.
Power Country is 2-hour show produced in the heart of “Music City” Nashville, Tenn. by Tim Scott Productions and broadcasts every weekend on radio stations all over America.
For more information about Power Country with Rich Miller visit envisionnetworks.com or 216.831.3761
Google’s dominance raises troubling concerns for businesses and consumers, according to a bipartisan group of attorneys general representing almost every state who launched an antitrust investigation of the search giant Monday.
The Wall Street Journal reports Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, announced the probe in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building, joined by about a dozen other attorneys general. In all, 48 states are part of the investigation of the Alphabet Inc. unit, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
Paxton said the states for now would focus on Google’s practices in online advertising markets. “But the facts will lead where the facts lead,” he said, adding, “We don’t know all the answers.”
The states sent Google a civil subpoena on Monday seeking information about its ad practices, officials said.
Website publishers and advertisers alike say they have little choice but to use Google’s ad services, because the company operates the dominant tool for placing ads online and runs the main tech platform that connects buyers and sellers of ads.
The investigation is the latest challenge for major tech companies, which are under fire from both federal and state antitrust enforcers as well as from Congress, over concern about whether a handful of giant companies have outsize power and are using it to illegally stifle competition and harm consumers.
Google parent company Alphabet disclosed Friday that it received a formal request for information and documents from the Justice Department related to prior antitrust investigations that the internet search giant has faced.
A popular YouTube channel hosted by an eight-year-old boy is being probed over claims it is “deceiving” kids into buying toys., according to The Sun.
Schoolboy Ryan Kaji and his parents make a reported $22 million a year testing out new games and treats on the Ryan ToysReview channel.
But just months after being named the highest paid YouTube star, Ryan’s channel is now being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission.
Watchdog group Truth in Advertising complained that Ryan ToysReview does not declare its ads and sponsored content clearly enough.
Almost 90% of Ryan’s videos include at least one paid product recommendation aimed at kids, who are too young to tell the difference between an ad and a review, the complaint states.
The watchdog accused the channel of deceiving children through “sponsored videos that often have the look and feel of organic content”, the New York Times reports.
Ryan has worked with Walmart, Hasbro, Netflix and Nickelodeon — partnerships the watchdog says are not always declared clearly enough
➦In 1920...KNX Los Angeles began broadcasting as 6ADZ. Although KNX received its first formal broadcasting station license on December 8, 1921, the station has traditionally dated its founding to September 10, 1920, starting with broadcasts conducted by Fred Christian over his amateur station, 6ADZ. Christian was a former shipboard radio operator, who later explained that he began the broadcasts in order to provide something to listen to by customers who had constructed receivers from parts purchased at the store. Christian began making broadcasts with a five-watt vacuum-tube transmitter, operating on the standard amateur wavelength of 200 meters (1500 kHz).
Initially there were no specific standards in the United States for radio stations making transmissions intended for the general public, and numerous stations under various classifications made entertainment broadcasts. However, effective December 1, 1921, the Department of Commerce, regulators of radio at this time, adopted a regulation that formally created a broadcasting station category, and stations were now required to hold a Limited Commercial license authorizing operation on wavelengths of 360 meters for "entertainment" broadcasts or 485 meters for "market and weather reports" (833 and 619 kHz). By the end of 1922 over 500 stations would be authorized nationwide.
On December 8, 1921, the Electric Lighting Supply Company was issued a broadcasting station license with the randomly assigned call letters KGC, authorizing operation on the 360 meter entertainment wavelength. The station's location was listed as Fred Christian's Harold Way home. The shared 360 meter wavelength required times-haring agreements between an increasing number of stations needing exclusive time periods. On May 4th the Los Angeles Times reported that a total of seven local stations were slated to make broadcasts that day, comprising a schedule that ran from noon to 9:00 p.m., with KGC assigned 2:00-2:30 and 7:30-8:00 p.m.
KNX - 1925
On May 4, 1922, the Electric Lighting Supply Company was issued a broadcasting license for a station with the randomly assigned call letters of KNX, also on 360 meters. This was technically considered to be a second station in addition to KGC, however, after KGC was formally deleted on June 20, 1922, the Department of Commerce concluded that KGC and KNX were functionally the same station, and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) records list December 8, 1921 as KNX's "date first licensed".
The new authorization coincided with preparations for a move to the California Theater, with Fred Christian continuing as station manager. On June 12, 1922 the Los Angeles Times reported that "After more than two months of preparation, the new broadcast station at the California Theater had its opening program Saturday evening at 9:15, sending out a wavelength of 510 meters [588 kHz].
Bob Crane KNX - 1960
KNX's power was raised to 100 watts in early August 1922. In the fall of 1924, Guy Earl, Jr., owner of the Los Angeles Evening Express, arranged for the newspaper's purchase of KNX. The Express made significant upgrades, including increasing the power to 500 watts, and began broadcasting from the Paul G. Hoffman Studebaker building in Hollywood. KNX was one of the last stations to have stayed on the original 360 meter wavelength, and the newspaper engineered a move to 890 kHz. It remained on this frequency until November 11, 1928, when the station was reassigned to 1050 kHz, under the provisions of a major reallocation resulting from the Federal Radio Commission's (FRC) General Order 40.
In early 1928 KNX changed owners and was then operated by the Western Broadcast Company. In 1929 the station's transmitter power was upgraded from 500 to 5,000 watts, followed by an increase to 10,000 watts in 1932. In 1933, the station moved its studios to another part of Hollywood, after being granted permission by the FRC on June 7, 1932, to raise its output to 25,000 watts. The following year, KNX's transmitting power was raised to the nationwide maximum of 50,000 watts, which the station continues presently.
CBS purchased KNX in 1936 and began operating it as its West Coast flagship, which ended CBS's eight-year affiliation with KHJ. In 1938, the CBS Columbia Square studios were dedicated for KNX as well as West Coast operations for the entire CBS radio network. That October, the station carried Orson Welles' celebrated version of The War of the Worlds. In March 1941 the station was shifted to 1070 AM as part of the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement assignments, where it has been ever since.
In 2009, KNX adopted the slogan "All news, all the time." It was previously used for 40 years by KFWB, KNX's historic rival in the news radio wars before both became sister stations through the 1995 merger of Westinghouse Electric (KFWB's owner) and CBS. KFWB's format change to news-talk in September 2009 (and currently as a Regional Mexican station) now leaves KNX the only all-news outlet in the Los Angeles area, which is now emphasized in its alternate slogan, "Southern California's only 24-hour local news & traffic station".
On February 2, 2017, CBS agreed to merge CBS Radio with Entercom. The merger was approved on November 9, 2017 and consummated 8 days later.[ ➦In 1933…Early radio entertainer Jimmy Durante first appeared Eddie Cantor's "Chase and Sanborn Hour" with Eddie Cantor.
➦In 1935…The radio program "Popeye, the Sailor," debuted on NBC Red Network as a 15 minute, three-times-a-week feature. But instead of spinach giving him strength (as in the comics and cartoons), it was the sponsor’s breakfast cereal Wheatena. “Wheatena’s me diet / I ax ya to try it / I’m Popeye the Sailor Man”.
➦In 1945...KLS 1310 AM changed its call letters to KWBR and changed its format to focus on an African-American audience. In 1959, it was bought by the owners of Memphis radio station WDIA, and the call letters were changed to KDIA. During the 1960s through the 1980s, the station was the premier soul and funk station in the San Francisco Bay Area. The station helped launch the careers of such musicians as Sly and the Family Stone. Its tagline at that time was "KDIA, Lucky 13."
For twenty-five years, the call letters KDIA were synonymous with soul music in the Bay Area, according to the Bay Area Radio Museum. Descended from the pioneering Oakland station KLS — which itself was born from an early experimental station, 6XAM, in 1921 and became KWBR in 1945 — the 1,000-watt station had begun emphasizing programs that targeted the local African-American audience around the end of World War II.
By the late 1950s, while still known as KWBR, the station was competing with KSAN 1450 AM in San Francisco for black listeners with rhythm-and-blues music and popular disc jockeys, including Big Don Barksdale and Bouncin' Bill Doubleday. In July 1959, KWBR was sold for $550,000 to the Sonderling Stations group, operator of the legendary Memphis station, WDIA. On September 4, 1959, KWBR became KDIA, reflecting its new parentage. (Sonderling also owned KFOX in Los Angeles and WOPA in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park.)
Under Sonderling ownership and the management of Walter Conroy, KDIA directed its full programming effort toward the emerging black audience, keeping Don Barksdale and Bill Doubleday on its staff and adding high-caliber talent over the years that included Bay Area Radio Hall of Famer George Oxford (previously a competitor at KSAN), John Hardy, Belva Davis (later known for her television work at KRON, KPIX and KQED), Rosko (nom de radieux of William Roscoe Mercer), Roland Porter, Bob White, Bill Hall, Johnny Morris and Bob Jones. The station leveraged its dial position — 1310 AM — into its identity as "KDIA Lucky 13."
In 1965, KDIA's power was raised to 5,000 watts from a new transmitter facility near the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza which also housed the station's new studios and offices. The five-fold increase in power made KDIA a veritable powerhouse and helped to hasten the demise of the old KSAN, which had become KSOL in 1964. (Going full circle, it was another KSOL — this time on 107.7 FM — that would eventually end KDIA's supremacy in the late 1970s.)
The station thrived through the 1970s, but was sold by Sonderling to Viacom International in 1980. KDIA continued with an Urban Contemporary music format under Viacom until 1983, when the station was sold again (along with WDIA) to Ragan Henry. In 1984, KDIA changed hands once more, becoming the property of Adam Clayton Powell III, who flipped the station to All News KFYI.
After the failure of KFYI's news format, the station went off the air on April 9, 1985, only to be revived under new ownership as KDIA in October of that year. In subsequent years, the station was owned by future San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris, and by James Gabbert, who had also owned KIOI and KOFY. In 1997, Gabbert entered into an agreement to air the syndicated "Radio Disney" programming format on KDIA in advance of selling the station to ABC, Inc. The station's call letters were changed to KMKY on January 20, 1998, and ABC purchased the station for $6.25-million in May 1998.
The KDIA call letters are currently assigned to the religious-formatted station known as "The Light For San Francisco," licensed in the city of Vallejo and operating at 1640 kHz.
➦In 1948…WW2 Nazi radio broadcaster Mildred "Axis Sally" Gillars was indicted for treason. Originally charged with ten counts of treason, the U-S citizen was convicted on March 10, 1949 on just one count of treason. She was sentenced to 10 to 30 years in prison, and a $10,000 fine. She served 12-years.
➦In 1962...The BBC banned "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett finding it in poor taste. The novelty tune eventually went on to be a U-K No.3 pop hit after the ban was lifted in 1973.
➦In 1984...The Federal Communications Commission changed a ownership rule allowing broadcasters to own 12 AM and 12 FM radio stations. The previous limit had been 7 of each.
➦In 2001...Sean Hannity went into radio syndication. Hannity is a conservative political talk show that features Hannity's opinions and ideology related to current issues and politicians. The Sean Hannity Show began national syndication on over 500 stations nationwide. The program was made available via Armed Forces Radio Network in 2006.
Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. disclosed a $3.2 billion stake in AT&T Inc., criticized the company’s strategy and called on the telecommunications giant to shed unnecessary assets.
The Wall Street Journal reports the New York hedge fund wrote in a letter to the company released Monday that it would seek seats on the company’s board and challenged AT&T to sharpen its focus on its core assets, including its relatively healthy wireless business.
The fund didn’t ask AT&T to sell specific divisions but said the company should review any assets that lack a strategic rationale, including the DirecTV satellite service and Mexican wireless operations.
With a market value of more than $260 billion, the Dallas company is among the hedge fund’s biggest corporate targets to date. AT&T shares rose 4% to $37.80 in Monday morning trading.
Elliott assailed AT&T management for alleged missteps including the purchase of DirecTV and said it remains cautious about last year’s purchase of Time Warner Inc., a collection of TV and film businesses including HBO and CNN that was renamed WarnerMedia.
Valence Media, the parent company of famed entertainment-industry publication Billboard, is acquiring the music-industry data, software and analytics business of Nielsen Holdings Plc, according to Bloomberg citing people familiar with the situation.
The transaction would bring the music industry’s top chart and data providers under one roof. It’s expected to close later this year at a price in the eight-figure range, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the purchase hasn’t yet been announced.
The two companies have been partners for decades: Nielsen supplies song and album sales data to Billboard, which uses it to assemble its charts. But the deal would allow Billboard to do more with Nielsen’s information, the people said. Billboard could put Nielsen-based charts and data behind a paywall and generate more revenue, one of the people said.
For Nielsen, which traces its history to 1923, the deal is part of a strategy to sell off its business in parts. It held earlier talks to sell the whole company to private equity buyers, but those efforts have yet led to a deal. Nielsen, based in New York, announced a strategic review last year after a disappointing forecast and the retirement of its CEO sent its shares plunging. That review is ongoing.
Billboard -- best known for its pop-music charts -- is part of a media group that includes the Hollywood Reporter, Spin, Vibe and Stereogum. Earlier this summer, Valence Media also acquired the news-app startup Zig.
Billboard’s charts have been the music industry standard for decades. Though the company has struggled with turnover at the top in recent years, Billboard magazine remains a staple of record labels across the country.
Radio programmer “Hurricane” Dave Smith, who ran Radio One Atlanta for several years until he was dismissed last month, has filed a countersuit against a former WHTA Hot 107.9 air personality who accused him of sexual assault and harassment, according to Atlanta media watcher Rodney Ho at ajc.com.
In the lawsuit, filed September 5 in the State Court of Fulton County, he refuted and denied every single claim Feleg Abraham (who went by Shorty Mack on air) referenced in her original suit, which was filed in early August.
In Abraham’s lawsuit, Abraham claimed he had come on to her even before she was hired. She said he assaulted her at least twice, including a time in his office where he allegedly forced oral sex on her. She said he sexually harassed her numerous times from her time of employment December 12, 2016 until her resignation February 23, 2018.
“There is no other way to say this except bluntly: the allegations against Dave Smith are 100% false,’ said his attorney James L. Walker Jr. in a press release.
Shorty Mac
He also said that Smith was “not fired for sexual harassing any employee(s), as will become clear as this case progresses.” He did not state why Smith was fired.
In her lawsuit, she said while discussing possible employment after a concert, they walked to his office and he “abruptly and unexpectedly forced himself on Ms. Abraham and kissed her on the mouth. Ms. Abraham resisted the sexual advances of Defendant Smith.” In her suite, Smith said if she wanted a job, she would need to “get it popping,” which she understood to mean “have sex with Defendant Smith.” She said she began crying upon hearing his alleged “sex for hire proposition.”
His version: she was crying about the working conditions at WFDR Streetz 94.5, where she was employed at the time. He said he comforted her with “a tissue to dry her tears and some words of faith/encouragement.” He said he did not “make any romantic or sexual advances toward Abraham, make any unwanted or inappropriate physical contact with Abraham, make any suggestive or explicit comments to or around Abraham, or otherwise proposition Abraham in any way whatsoever.”
A year after entering the Buffalo Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame and 43 years since he started working at the same station when it had different call letters and names, Roger Christian has been let go by Entercom's WTSS-FM, Star 102.5.
The Buffalo News reports Christian has confirmed that shortly before the end of his Thursday shift he was told by local Entercom’s Buffalo market manager Greg Ried and program director Sue O’Neill that the position was being eliminated.
“They said something about (the shift) may be voice tracked but I didn’t want to go into it," said Christian, adding that other people in accounting and production who have been at the station for some time had been let go, too, within the past month or two.
Entercom has been making cost-cutting moves of personnel at stations across the country, most recently in Denver and San Francisco.
“I was a little shocked, but I just know that it's the nature of the business now,” said Christian, who was at the station when it was known as Rock 102 and Majic 102.5.
“I've got some balls in the air now, but I just don't want to jump on anything too soon,” he said.
According to the Buffalo Broadcaster's Association, Christian began his radio career as a teen disc jockey on WYSL-FM (103.3) in 1964. He went on to attend Franklin College in Indiana where he became the Station Manager of WFCI-FM, the college’s radio station.
After graduation, Roger returned to Buffalo and WYSL in 1970 as the overnight jock. Three years later in 1973, he joined a new start up Top 40 station, WGRQ (96.9), where Roger was both a DJ and the station’s Music Director. In 1976 he joined WBEN/WBEN-FM (Rock 102) as Music Director and later was promoted to Program Director and Morning Man in 1984.
Three years later Roger helped the station navigate a change in its call letters to WMJQ (Majic 102, then Q102). Shortly thereafter he became mid-day host – a role which he has held ever since, after 41 years and some 7 companies later.
Comedian and media mogul Byron Allen wants TV viewers to watch the channels his company produces. But while many distributors carry Allen's channels, two cable giants have refused.
Allen says the reason is that he's black, and so he's sued for racial discrimination. An appeals court has let his lawsuits go forward, but now the Supreme Court will weigh in and could deliver a setback.
The Associated Press reports the justices will hear arguments Nov. 13 in a $20 billion lawsuit that Allen filed against Comcast, with the outcome also affecting a $10 billion case he has filed against Charter Communications.
If Allen prevails, black-owned businesses will have an easier time winning suits that allege discrimination in contracting. If Comcast wins, the bar will be high to bring and succeed with similar suits.
The question for the justices is whether Allen needs to show that race was just a factor in Comcast's decision not to offer him a contract or whether it was the sole factor.
Justice Central is one of Byron Allen's cable channels, he also owns The Weather Channel
Allen said his case is about getting rid of institutionalized racism. Pursuing that claim, he said, "is one of the greatest things I've ever done in my life" and "one of the things I'm most proud of."
Comcast and Charter deny that race played any part in their business decisions not to distribute Allen’s cable networks over the last decade, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. They say they based their decisions on limited channel capacity on their systems, cost, popularity and ratings of Allen’s networks, and the cable giants’ First Amendment right to decide what they want their customers to watch.
“We currently carry more than 100 networks geared toward diverse audiences, including multiple networks owned or controlled by minorities. In 2018, we offered more than 18,000 hours of programming geared toward diverse audiences On Demand and Online,” Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice said in April.
Charter said in a statement that the lawsuit against it “is a desperate tactic and the allegations in it are entirely false. Race plays no role whatsoever in our programming decisions.”
Spotify's push into podcasting continues. Billboard is reporting that the streaming service has tapped former CBS News president David Rhodes as a consultant to assist with its broader push into news programming. The hire comes as part of Spotify's strategy to expand beyond music, which includes the company’s recent purchase of podcast networks Parcast and Gimlet, as well as the podcast creation app Anchor.
Sources have also confirmed the hire of Amy Hudson, who previously worked on sports partnerships at Facebook, to lead Spotify’s expansion into sports programming.
Rhodes served as president of CBS News from 2011 until January of this year, when he stepped down amid reports of sexual misconduct allegations against former CBS chairman and CEO Les Moonves and former CBS This Morning anchor Charlie Rose, as well as declining ratings for its news programs. Rhodes has also worked at Fox News and Bloomberg.
Rhodes is expected to secure more such partnerships as Spotify ramps up its efforts to become a dominant player in the podcasting space, as well as fend off rival streaming services like Apple Music and Google Play.
Farmers seeking government assistance knew where to make their case: on Fox News, in TV ads with tractors and corn stalks designed to snag the attention of President Donald Trump, reports Bloomberg.
U.S. airlines, opposed to subsidies for foreign competitors paid by Qatar, took the same broadcast route to the viewer-in-chief, urging him to oppose “trade cheating.”
While the ads generate a small portion of the network’s income—many are local spots airing only in Washington—the phenomenon points to the unusual symbiosis between a conservative president and conservative opinion programs that boosted his political fortunes. Trump’s penchant for sharing his viewing habits with regular tweets to his millions of followers in turn helps drive viewers to the shows.
Advertisers long have sought to reach influential people, such as legislators and their staff, for instance by running ads on Sunday TV talk shows that are viewed by the political class, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
What’s new is the certainty that a president would be watching a program such as "Fox & Friends," Jamieson said.
“The underlying problem isn’t that these folks have figured out to buy ads targeted to the president,” Jamieson said in an interview. “The problem is that the president gets his information from these shows.”
Nearly a week before the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration publicly backed President Trump over its own scientists, a top NOAA official warned its staff against contradicting the president, reports The Washington Post.
In an agencywide directive sent Sept. 1 to National Weather Service personnel, hours after Trump asserted, with no evidence, that Alabama “would most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated,” staff was told to “only stick with official National Hurricane Center forecasts if questions arise from some national level social media posts which hit the news this afternoon.”
A NOAA meteorologist who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution said the note, understood internally to be referring to Trump, came after the National Weather Service office in Birmingham contradicted Trump by tweeting Alabama would “NOT see any impacts from the hurricane.”
The Birmingham office sent the tweet after receiving a flurry of phone calls from concerned residents following Trump’s message.
The agency sent a similar message warning scientists and meteorologists not to speak out on Sept. 4, after Trump showed a hurricane map from Aug. 29 modified with a hand-drawn, half-circle in black Sharpie around Alabama.
“This is the first time I’ve felt pressure from above to not say what truly is the forecast,” the meteorologist said. “It’s hard for me to wrap my head around. One of the things we train on is to dispel inaccurate rumors and ultimately that is what was occurring — ultimately what the Alabama office did is provide a forecast with their tweet, that is what they get paid to do.”
An NWS spokesperson said, “NWS leadership sent this guidance to field staff so they (and the entire agency) could maintain operational focus on Dorian and other severe weather hazards without distraction.”
The son of former Cardinals pitching Dave Duncan, Chris reached MLB in 2005 and became a force in 2006, just as an injury-riddled Cardinals team started to flag. Duncan’s 22 home runs in his rookie season, 19 after the All-Star break, and his .977 OPS in that season’s second half helped carry an 83-win team that limped into the playoffs before finding its stride and winning the organization’s 10th World Series title. Duncan would play three more seasons with the Cardinals before being traded to Boston in 2009.
“We wouldn’t be here without him,” manager Tony La Russa said at the time.
Duncan was first diagnosed in 2012 with glioblastoma, the same sinister brain cancer his mother Jeanine had, and after surgery Chris was able to make significant progress and return to work as a co-host for WXOS 101.1 FM. In March 2018 he acknowledged, on air, that the tumor had come back.
He had been hosting shows, prepping opinions, and keeping the tumor’s return quiet for several months. Duncan took a leave of absence and, in January, made his departure from the radio station permanent so that he could “focus on health.”
“The Cardinals are deeply saddened by the passing of Chris Duncan and extend our heartfelt sympathy to his wife, Amy, the entire Duncan family, and his many friends,” Cardinals Chairman and CEO Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a statement from the team. “Chris was an integral part of our 2006 championship team and a great teammate and friend to many in the organization.”
➦In 1908...Early radio actor, announcer Ed Prentiss born (Died at age 83 – March 18, 1992). He was perhaps best known for portraying the title role on the radio version of Captain Midnight. He was announcer on another kid’s radio favorite, Jack Armstrong the All-American Boy.
He was also the narrator for a number of daily hour of NBC radio soap operas.
➦In 1926... the National Broadcasting Company was created by RCA, the Radio Corporation of America.
NBC is the oldest major broadcast network in the United States. In 1986, control of NBC passed to General Electric (GE), with GE's $6.4 billion purchase of RCA. GE had previously owned RCA and NBC until 1930, when it had been forced to sell the company as a result of antitrust charges.
Logo - 1926
After the 1986 acquisition, the chief executive of NBC was Bob Wright, who remained in that position until his retirement. He was succeeded by Jeff Zucker. The TV network is currently part of the media company NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, which formerly operated NBCUniversal in a joint venture with General Electric from 2011 to 2013 (and before that, jointly owned by GE and Vivendi). As a result of the merger, Zucker left NBC and was replaced by Comcast executive Steve Burke.
The radio network officially launched Nov. 15, 1926. On January 1, 1927, NBC formally divided its programming into two networks, called the Red and the Blue. Legend has it that the color designations originated from the push-pins early engineers used to mark affiliates of WEAF (red pins) and WJZ (blue pins), or from the use of double-ended red and blue colored pencils.
Logo 1926- 1931
The two NBC networks did not have distinct identities or "formats", and, beginning in 1929, they shared use of the distinctive three-note "NBC chimes". The NBC Red Network, with WEAF as its flagship station and a stronger line-up of affiliated stations, often carried the more popular, "big budget" sponsored programs. The Blue Network and WJZ carried a somewhat smaller line-up of often lower-powered stations and sold air time to advertisers at a lower cost. NBC Blue often carried newer, untried programs (which, if successful, often moved "up" to the Red Network), lower cost programs and unsponsored or "sustaining" programs (which were often news, cultural and educational programs). In many cities in addition to New York, the two NBC affiliated stations (Red and Blue) were operated as duopolies, having the same owners and sharing the same staff and facilities.
Logo 1931-1942
On April 5, 1927 NBC reached the West Coast with the launching of the NBC Orange Network, which rebroadcast Red Network programming to the Pacific states and had as its flagship station KGO in San Francisco. NBC Red then extended its reach into the Midwest by acquiring two 50,000–watt clear-channel signals, Cleveland station WTAM on October 16, 1930 and Chicago station WMAQ (coincidentally, a CBS Radio Network charter affiliate) by 1931. On October 18, 1931, Blue Network programming was introduced along the NBC Gold Network, which broadcast from San Francisco's KPO. In 1936 the Orange Network name was dropped and affiliate stations became part of the Red Network. The Gold Network adopted the Blue Network name.
In a major move in 1931, RCA signed crucial leases with the new Rockefeller Center management that resulted in it becoming the lead tenant of what was to become in 1933 its corporate headquarters, the RCA Building, at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Under the terms of the lease arrangement, this included studios for NBC and theaters for the RCA-owned RKO Pictures. The deal was arranged through the Center's founder and financier, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., with the chairman of GE, Owen D. Young, and the president of RCA, David Sarnoff.
In 1987 NBC sold its remaining radio network operations to Westwood One, which continued using NBC identification for some of its programming until 2014. Beginning in 2016, NBC Radio News has been distributed in conjunction with iHeartMedia.
Elvis outside the Lamar-Airways Shopping Mall in Memphis 1954
➦In 1954...Young Elvis Presley performed at the opening of Lamar-Airways shopping mall in Memphis, and met audience member Johnny Cash for the first time. In November 1954, Presley performed on Louisiana Hayride—the Opry's chief, and more adventurous, rival. The Shreveport-based show was broadcast to 198 radio stations in 28 states.
➦In 1956...Elvis made the first of three appearances on Ed Sullivan's CBS show. (Sullivan had previously announced he would never have such an act on, but ratings prevailed and Sullivan offered Elvis a record $50,000 for the three shows.) With actor Charles Laughton filling in for an ailing Sullivan. Elvis performed "Don't Be Cruel," "Love Me Tender," "Ready Teddy," and "Hound Dog." A record 54 million viewers -- nearly 83 percent of the nation's sets! -- were tuned-in.
➦In 1958...Stereo records and phonographs were introduced.
➦In 1965...The Hollywood Reporter printed an advertisement looking for ‘Madness rock & roll musicians, singers wanted for acting roles in new TV show. Parts for 4 insane boys.’ From the ad, The Monkees were born.
➦In 1974...George Michael aired first show at 77WABC. From December of that year...
➦In 1997…MLB Hall of Famer and Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster Richie Ashburn died. Starting in 1963 Ashburn became a radio and TV color commentator. He first worked with long-time Phillies announcers Bill Campbell and Byrum Saam. In 1971 Campbell was released by the Phillies and Harry Kalas joined the team. Ashburn worked with two future Ford C. Frick Award winners, Saam and Kalas, for the next few years. Saam retired in 1976, and Ashburn continued working with Kalas for the next two decades, the two becoming best friends. Kalas often referred to Ashburn as "His Whiteness", a nickname Kalas would use for the rest of his life for the man he openly adored.
According to his mother, Ashburn planned on retiring from broadcasting at the end of the 1997 season. He died of a heart attack at age 70 on September 9, 1997, in New York City after broadcasting a Phillies-Mets game at Shea Stadium.
➦In 2018...CBS announced the resignation of their longtime CEO Les Moonves amid accusations he sexually harassed and assaulted numerous women; a stunning downfall for one of the industry’s most powerful figures.
