Twitter and its billionaire owner, Elon Musk, have backed off a controversial description of NPR as “state-affiliated media,” relabeling the news organization’s social media account as “government funded.”
The Washington Post reports the change, quietly made by the San Francisco-based company late Saturday, follows complaints from NPR and others that Twitter’s designation of NPR’s account as “state-affiliated” last week was an effort by Musk to disparage the Washington-based news organization. The state-affiliated label has traditionally been used by Twitter to describe government-run propaganda outlets, such as Russia’s Sputnik and RT and the Chinese Communist Party’s People’s Daily.
In addition to its unsavory connotation, the label appears to have been inconsistently applied. Several news organizations that receive government funding, as NPR does, have not been so labeled by Twitter.
NPR chief executive John Lansing formally protested the designation, saying NPR’s news operations are overseen by independent journalists and not by government officials. In response to Twitter’s unilateral decision to add the description, NPR declined to tweet and changed its Twitter bio to say that it was an “independent” news organization.
NPR didn’t respond to a request for comment Sunday. Twitter responded to an email seeking comment with a poop emoji, its automated response to all press inquiries.
The “government funded” label appears to be a new one for Twitter, representing a kind of compromise from Twitter’s previous labeling. It follows Musk’s admission that he actually didn’t understand NPR’s relationship to the government when he ordered NPR to be designated as state-affiliated.
In an email exchange with an NPR reporter on Thursday, Musk acknowledged that he was unclear about NPR’s relationship with the government when the platform affixed the state-affiliated label. Told by the reporter that NPR receives only about 1 percent of its annual revenue from the federal government, Musk replied: “Well, then we should fix” the designation.
A settlement has been reached in a Venezuelan businessman’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News and host Lou Dobbs over statements accusing him of helping tilt the 2020 presidential election according to The Hill.
In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Louis Lee Stanton filed in the Southern District of New York over the weekend, lawyers for the two parties wrote they had reached an agreement to resolve the matter. Financial terms of the agreement were not specified.
Majed Khalil filed his lawsuit in 2021, alleging statements made on Dobbs’s social media and by pro-Trump attorney Sidney Powell on Dobbs’s Fox Business show defamed him by accusing the businessman of executing an “electoral 9/11” and helping change ballot counts in voting machines.
“The 2020 Election is a cyber Pearl Harbor: The leftwing establishment have aligned their forces to overthrow the United States government,” Dobbs wrote in a Twitter post that remains online.
According to Khalil’s complaint, as Powell was appearing on one of his shows, the host asked, “You say these four individuals led the effort to rig this election. How did they do it?”
Dobbs and Fox’s attorney had moved to have the case dismissed on First Amendment grounds, a motion the judge denied last fall.
“This matter has been resolved amicably by both sides,” a Fox News spokesperson said when contacted Sunday by The Hill. “We have no further comment.”
Recent layoffs at ABC News were not business as usual, some staffers say. “It feels personal,” an insider told The Ny Post's Page Six.
ABC News president Kim Godwin announced layoffs at the network last month — and multiple sources believer it was a form of payback to people she thought were leaking stories about her at the network.
The cost-cutting move was part of parent Disney’s plan to cut 7,000 jobs.
Several senior execs were included in the 50 workers that ABC News will let go. Some suspected that Godwin was targeting “people she thought were not on her team, or people she suspected either wanted her job or [were] trying to take her down,” another source said.
Kim Godwin
The names of axed staffers subsequently ended up in media reports almost immediately after they were given their pink slips.
“It was like a this is a nail-in-your-coffin type of thing,” the second source speculated.
The Post reports that “seeing the names published in articles” felt like someone was out “to humiliate these people — and they’ve accomplished it.”
The source further claimed that the “news division was treated differently than the rest of the company. It was vindictive, targeted and mean.” But a third source close to the situation insists the layoffs were “done in a fair manor.”
Godwin has been the target of several hit pieces in media trades since she took over the top job from James Goldston in 2021. “She was supposed to be change agent. A big reason they brought her in was to clean up the snake-pit culture,” the second source said.
At ABC’s news division last year, a scandal hit “Good Morning America” thanks to former “GMA3” anchors T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach’s off-screen affair being revealed.
Godwin was criticized for how she handled the scandal that ultimately cost the lovebirds their lucrative ABC jobs.
Cumulus Media announces that it has appointed award-winning Sports broadcaster David Kelly as Program Director, Wildcats Radio 1290/KCUB-AM in Tucson. Kelly will also be heard on-air as Host, Afternoon Drive, Wildcats Radio 1290, weekdays from 4:00pm-6:00pm, beginning Monday, June 12, 2023.
Kelly joins Cumulus Media and Wildcats Radio 1290 from KVOA-TV in Tucson, where he was Sports Anchor/Reporter. Prior to that, Kelly was Sports Anchor/Reporter for Tucson’s KMSB/KOLD-TV and was a radio network Anchor and Play-By-Play announcer with IMG College at the University of Arizona. His more than 20-year career in Sports Radio has included roles as Sports Director, Play-By-Play Announcer, Producer, and Sports Anchor/Reporter in markets including Memphis, TN, Cleveland, OH, and Bakersfield, CA.
David Kelly
Kelly has garnered five Associated Press first place honors for his work in radio and has been honored as Ohio’s Best Sports Broadcaster (Major Market) and for Best Regularly Scheduled Sportscast and Best Spot News. He holds a B.A. degree in Sports Information/Broadcast Journalism from the University of Southern California.
Herb Crowe, Operations Manager, Cumulus Tucson, said: “I couldn’t be happier to welcome David to the Cumulus family. His experience covering all of the University of Arizona athletic programs for television, combined with his years of radio experience, make him the perfect person to lead Wildcats Radio 1290.”
David Kelly commented: “When I came here to Tucson 15 years ago, my hope was that I’d have the chance at some point to lead coverage of the high-profile collegiate sports program at UA. The opportunity to head programming for Wildcats Radio 1290 gives me the chance to do that, as well as set the pace for delivering the best sports, news and information to our listeners in Southern Arizona.”
Nashville officials are poised to vote Monday to reinstate one of the two Black Democratic lawmakers expelled by Republican colleagues for their gun control protest on the Tennessee House floor after a deadly school shooting — essentially, sending him back after a long weekend. Nashville’s metro council has called the meeting to address the vacancy left by the expulsion on Thursday of former Rep. Justin Jones. Many councilmembers have publicly commented that they want to send Jones back to the statehouse. The vote will happen as state lawmakers hold their first floor sessions since last week’s expulsion votes. Expelled Memphis Rep. Justin Pearson, meanwhile, could be reappointed at a Wednesday meeting of the Shelby County Commission. Special elections for the seats, which have not yet been set, will take place in the coming months. Jones and Pearson have said they want to be reappointed and plan to run in a special election.
Expelled Tennessee lawmakers ripped for blaming racism on expulsion: 'Threw you out for violating the rules' https://t.co/UJCLr3ECPY
➤DOJ PROBES INTEL LEAK: The Justice Department is investigating the leak of secret documents from the Pentagon on the war effort in Ukraine that show sensitive data on military activities, including U.S. drone spy planes in the region and use of ammunition by Ukrainian forces. The Justice Department, at the Pentagon's request, has launched an investigation of the leak and who is responsible for the intelligence breach. It's unclear, officials said Saturday, if more documents could be released or the motivation for leaking them. “The Department of Defense is actively reviewing the matter, and has made a formal referral to the Department of Justice for investigation," Sabrina Singh, the Pentagon's deputy press secretary, said in a statement. The leaks, first reported by The New York Times, include documents released on social media sites, including Twitter.
Dozens of leaked Defense Department classified documents posted online reveal details of U.S. spying on Russia’s war machine in Ukraine and secret assessments of Ukraine’s combat power. https://t.co/9LeZYawkNZ
Detailed information on Ukrainian weaponry: One document appears to have come from the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is dated March 1, and is labeled secret and not for distribution to foreign governments. It details U.S. forces in the region on the ground, air and at sea. The document also includes how many artillery shells Ukrainian forces have fired, including rocket-assisted missiles that have been used to devastating effect on Russian command posts and supply depots. The Times also reported Saturday that more documents had been released that show the U.S. spying on allies.
➤WSJ JOURNALIST FORMALLY CHARGED: Russia has formally charged Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich with spying, Russian state media reported, citing people familiar with the case. The reported charges by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, come more than a week after the US citizen was detained during a reporting trip to Ekaterinburg in Russia’s Ural Mountains region. Gershkovich has denied the changes, Tass reported. Gershkovich, 31, was brought to Moscow and is being detained in the city’s Lefortovo Prison. It wasn’t clear until now whether the New Jersey native had been formally charged, although various Russian officials have referred to “charges” against him. The Wall Street Journal issued a statement Saturday saying the charges against Gershkovich are false
➤RUSSIAN FORCES STEP-UP STRIKES: Russia's forces kept up a barrage of attacks along the front concentrated in two Ukrainian cities in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine's military reported, as Kyiv said it repelled more than 40 enemy strikes over the past 24 hours. Fighting was heaviest along the western approaches to Bakhmut, the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said on Sunday, one of the two cities in the east, along with Avdiivka, that Russia's military has been targeting. Russian forces have been besieging Bakhmut for months in the longest battle in more than a year of war. In a nightly weekend video address, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced Russian air strikes coinciding with the observance of Orthodox Palm Sunday, saying Moscow was further isolating itself from the world.
The good news is the time consumers spend using media continues to grow in both the U.S. and worldwide. The bad news, according to the latest edition of an annual forecast released this morning by PQ Media, is the share of time they spending with ad-supported media continues to decline.
While the share of time spent with ad-supported media fell to less than half in he U.S. in 2018, it won't reach that mark worldwide until 2027, according to the new forecast. according to MediaPost.
And while the shift toward consumer-supported media has been driven by increased consumption of premium media services, especially subscription video streaming services that were accelerated during the pandemic, PQ sees a deceleration on that front as well, as overall time spent with media reaches a saturation point, especially amid growing economic uncertainty.
“As consumers continue to cut discretionary spending in 2023 amid current consumer sentiment and other key macroeconomic conditions, media companies have had to readjust projections and act accordingly," explains PQ CEO Patrick Quinn, noting, "For example, streaming video services reported in the first quarter of 2023 that they're cutting back production schedules of original content, other than live sports, as the average consumer is dropping to only four subscription OTT services from six last year, shaving off excess content subs that were added during the apex of the pandemic in 2020-21.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the growing cost of streaming. Now we have a new study from Parks Associates showing that cord cutters are spending less on average now than they did back in 2021.
According to Parks Associates, the average cord cutter now spends just $69 on streaming services, down from a high of $90 in 2021.
“Consumers are trying new services – they’re hopping in and out based on the season for sports, fresh content offerings, and the deals and bundles offered,” said Elizabeth Parks, President and CMO, Parks Associates. “Currently we see 32 million US internet households hopping around with various services, and retention and churn will continue to challenge the industry.”
From the study, it seems that during the pandemic, cord cutters were willing to subscribe to more services. Now in 2023, they are cutting back and paying for fewer services.
Surveys of Cord Cutters readers have shown that the average cord cutter now subscribes to 3 to 4 paid streaming services. During the pandemic, with everything shut down and people, home customers subscribed to more, now they subscribe to fewer services.
CNN Kaitlan Collins will be anchoring the embattled network’s 9 p.m. hour this week, prompting speculation that a job change could be in her future.
Collins, who normally co-hosts the ratings-challenged “CNN This Morning” with Don Lemon and Poppy Harlow, will be anchoring the coveted primetime slot starting Monday, CNN confirmed to The NY Post.
Kaitlin Collins
Although one source close to Collins denied that the move is a “trial run” to permanently helm the 9 p.m. show, another insider said “anything is possible.”
“I think it’s fair to say Chris Licht and leadership have been impressed,” said a source close to network boss Licht.
“She’s his favorite,” added another source, who said Collins has quickly become CNN’s “It girl,” much to the frustration of some network veterans including Lemon.
Collins’ primetime stint was reported earlier by media news site Puck.
Lemon, who was moved to the morning show after Licht canceled his 10 p.m. program, has been embroiled in a slew of bad press over his difficult behavior.
Lemon screamed at Collins in December after a tense broadcast, rattling staff and upsetting higher-ups. In February, the outspoken anchor sparked outrage when he declared that 51-year-old GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley was not “in her prime.”
Independent journalist Matt Taibbi sparred with MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan on Thursday over the Twitter Files and Hunter Biden’s laptop.
The Daily Caller reports Hasan questioned Taibbi’s recent appearance before Congress, where he refused to reveal his sources despite Democratic Texas Rep. Sylvia Garcia repeatedly demanding answers.
Hasan played a clip from Taibbi’s 2021 appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience where he said that as a journalist, once you start getting handed stories, it’s a bad line to have crossed.
“The hilarity of this coming from MSNBC which did nothing but vomit up fake Russian hit stories that came straight from the FBI for six consecutive years, you guys still haven’t apologized for it.”
“I wasn’t there in that period so I’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Hasan said. “I’m asking you your words, did you cross a line? It’s a very simple question, you can ‘what about’ and deflect, it’s a simple question, we played a clip for you, I’m giving you a chance to answer. Did you cross the line, your words?”
“No I did not,” Taibbi said. “The stories are self-contained stories that hold up in themselves and what I was talking about in the Joe Rogan story, I was quoting a passage from Seymour Hirsch’s book ‘Reporter’ when he was talking about when he was given a story by the CIA about an Israeli spy that they had caught and he was saying something to the effect of I who had always gotten the material, was being handed the material. So yeah, look, it sounds bad, but this stuff is clearly in the public interest, it’s real, it’s true and I’m doing the best I can to report it.”
Urban One, Inc. reports that it received a letter from the Listing Qualifications Department of the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC notifying the Company that it was not in compliance with requirements of Nasdaq Listing Rule 5250(c)(1) as a result of not having timely filed its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2022, with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").
This notification has no immediate effect on the listing of the Company's common stock on the Nasdaq. However, if the Company fails to timely regain compliance with the Nasdaq Listing Rule, the Company's common stock will be subject to delisting from Nasdaq.
Under the Nasdaq rules, the Company has 60 calendar days to file the 2022 Form 10-K or to submit to Nasdaq a plan to regain compliance with the Nasdaq Listing Rule. If Nasdaq accepts the Company's plan, then Nasdaq may grant the Company up to 180 days from the prescribed due date for filing the 2022 Form 10-K to regain compliance. If Nasdaq does not accept the Company's plan, then the Company will have the opportunity to appeal that decision to a Nasdaq Hearings Panel.
The Company is working diligently and expects to file its 2022 Form 10-K within the 60-day period, which ends on June 2, 2023, which would eliminate the need for the Company to submit a formal plan to regain compliance.
The NAB Show will partner with Broadcast Beat Studios to run a live remote-production broadcast from the Show Floor that will air internationally over the internet. NAB Show LIVE will run each day of the 2023 NAB Show, April 15-19, from 9 a.m.-6 p.m. PDT in Las Vegas, Nev., creating an immersive experience for viewers who want to see exhibitor interviews, demos, new product spotlights, Experiential Zone experiences, and other on-floor events.
“We are honored to be part of another year producing NAB Show LIVE. This exciting live stream showcases innovative technologies and forward-thinking industry professionals that reshape the broadcast, media and entertainment marketplace,” said founder of Broadcast Beat and Broadcast Beat Studios Ryan Salazar. “This year's focus is to bring spontaneous 'from-the-floor' experiences while covering exciting industry announcements and celebrating NAB's Centennial.”
As a major showcase of the latest television innovations, the remote-production, IT-enabled workflow will combine several cutting-edge technologies to connect events on the Show Floor in Las Vegas to Broadcast Beat Studios' central control room, located 2,500 miles away in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Two camera crews on site will capture footage throughout the Las Vegas Convention Center using portable video transmission units. After being decoded, four simultaneous video feeds from various cameras at NAB Show will transfer via bonded cellular system to Fort Lauderdale. There, the automatically recorded video will be edited within moments for online viewing.
The livestream will be available at the NAB Show website, nabshow.com. A selection of NAB Show Main Stage sessions will also be available for video-on-demand.
For the second time in four years, the Reading, PA radio station is back on the market.
Station owner Bob Lowe confirmed that WEEU 830 AM is currently up for sale, reports WFMZ-TV69.
Lowe, owner of Twilight Broadcasting, purchased the station in 2019 when the Reading Eagle Company, longtime owner of WEEU, filed for bankruptcy protection.
"I bought WEEU at the verge of it being shut down four years ago," said Lowe. "It's a really good station and there's a good product, but I don't have time to devote to it anymore. Right now, we're looking for people that might be interested in purchasing it."
WEEU 830 AM (20Kw-2DA)
Lowe said he's working to keep the station under local ownership, and that loyal listeners shouldn't worry about it disappearing from their AM dial.
"There are local and regional broadcast people interested, and who have continued to express an interest in purchasing the station through a broadcast media broker. The station's not going off the air," said Lowe.
Employees at the Florida Times-Union spoke out Friday about their pay and cuts in newsroom staff which they said impacts all local news.
According to JAX4TV you normally don’t see reporters and others that work in the Florida Times-Union, which is owned by Gannett, in front of cameras. That changed Friday when they held a rally near Jacksonville City Hall. The employees who attended said the reason they are speaking out is pay and what they say is the lack of pay raises.
Everyone at the rally Friday is a member of the Times-Union Guild, part of the Communications Workers of America Union (CWA). Times-Union reporter David Bauerlein spoke for the group.
“We’re asking for Gannett to support local journalism, to invest in our newsroom and invest in the local journalists who are doing the work. That means paying journalists who have been faced with year-after-year increases in the cost of living, no wage increases in 2018, it makes it much harder for us to get by to do the job we love and continue doing the job we’d love,” Bauerlein said.
Bauerlein said in 2019 the newsroom had 63 employees. Now that number is down to 22. Those left are now fighting for a fair contract.
➦In 1915...Actor Harry Morgan was born Harry Bratsberg (Died at age 93 – December 7, 2011) His career spanned six decades.
Morgan's major roles included Pete Porter in both December Bride (1954–1959) and Pete and Gladys (1960–1962); Officer Bill Gannon on Dragnet (1967–1970); Amos Coogan on Hec Ramsey (1972–1974); and his starring role as Colonel Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H (1975–1983) and AfterMASH (1983–1984). Morgan appeared in more than 100 films.
Morgan also hosted the NBC radio series Mystery in the Air starring Peter Lorre in 1947.
➦In 1922...WBT Charlotte, NC signed-on.
The station actually dates back to December 1920, when Fred Laxton, Earle Gluck and Frank Bunker set up an amateur radio station in Laxton's home. Four months later, the station received an experimental license as 4XD. The trio decided to go commercial in 1922, and incorporated as the Southern Radio Corporation.
On April 10, the station signed on as the first fully licensed radio station south of Washington, D.C. WSB in Atlanta was the first station in the Southeast to actually broadcast, a month before WBT. However, the Commerce Department only authorized WSB to broadcast weather reports until it received its license a few months after WBT.
In 1925, the original owners sold WBT to Charlotte Buick dealer C.C. Coddington, who promoted both the radio station and his auto dealership with the slogan "Watch Buicks Travel." Coddington built a transmitter at a farm property he owned on Nations Ford Road in south Charlotte, where it remains today. He sold WBT to the two-year-old CBS network in 1929; CBS wanted to make WBBM in Chicago full time on 780 AM, which was a shared frequency with KFAB in Omaha, Nebraska and in order to do that they moved KFAB to 1110 AM. That was accomplished by directionalizing the signal of WBT. A series of power increases brought WBT to its current 50,000 watts.
New FCC regulations forced CBS to sell the station to Jefferson Standard Life Insurance Company, forerunner of Jefferson-Pilot, in 1945, though it remained a CBS affiliate.
For much of its history, WBT aired a variety of programming including news, sports, soap operas, and musical programs such as "Arthur Smith and the Crackerjacks." Smith, best known for writing the song that became the Deliverance theme "Dueling Banjos", went to work at WBT at age 20 at the invitation of station manager Charles Crutchfield. He played guitar and fiddle for musical programs on WBT before getting his own show. Crutchfield believed that Charlotte, not Nashville, could have ended up being the country music capital because of the station's early "Briarhoppers" and "Carolina Hayride" shows, which may have inspired The Grand Ole Opry.
WBT's Grady Cole
Grady Cole was WBT morning host for 32 years, replaced in 1961 by Ty Boyd, who hosted the morning show until 1973, playing such artists as Duke Ellington, Peggy Lee and Petula Clark. Then he moved to WBTV. He returned to WBT in 2008 to co-host the morning show while its regular hosts took time off.
WBT was the number one station in Charlotte for many years; among its employees were Charles Kuralt and Nelson Benton. But by 1970, WBT was down to number nine, and national advertising representative Blair Radio Network wanted ratings to improve. Jefferson Standard did not like the idea of change, but Blair enlisted Mel Goldberg to research what programming Charlotte needed. Even Crutchfield gave in, and WBT let go 28 staffers and spent $200,000 on changes that included new studios. It also canceled many programs that advertisers supported but which didn't attract enough listeners.
WBT's H.A. Thompson
Henry Boggan
On March 15, 1971, WBT switched to adult contemporary music during the day; Rob Hunter and H. A. Thompson were new DJs. Bob Lacey started at WBT in 1972 with a nighttime talk show "Lacey Listens". Two years later, WBT had reached number one again, reaching the highest Arbitron numbers on record to this day. Around the same time, the station dropped its longtime affiliation with CBS Radio and joined ABC. WBT won Billboard adult contemporary station of the year in 1976 and 1978. In 1979, "Hello Henry" Boggan began his nighttime talk show.
WBT made changes to its format on December 10, 1990, hoping to attract more women. The station dropped James K. Flynn, Thompson and Tom Desio, generating numerous protests.
Don Russell had hosted "Russell & Flynn" in the morning; the show was renamed "Russell & Friends." John Hancock became midday host, and WBTV personalities Mike and Barbara McKay began an afternoon program. Boggan, whose show had run in the afternoon, returned to his evening slot, replacing Desio, but was sometimes pre-empted by sports programs.
