FNC's Bret Baier Scores Harris Sit Down

FOX News Channel’s (FNC) chief political anchor Bret Baier will conduct an interview with Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris in the battleground state of Pennsylvania on Wednesday, October 16th. This week’s appearance marks her first formal sit-down interview on the network ever and will air during Special Report with Bret Baier at 6 PM/ET on October 16th. Baier will be anchoring Special Report from Pennsylvania that evening.

FNC’s chief political anchor and anchor and executive editor of cable news’ most-watched newscast Special Report with Bret Baier (weekdays, 6- 7PM/ET), is home to the largest and most politically diverse audience in cable news, averaging 2.3 million viewers and 233,000 in A25-54 with more Democrats and Independents tuning in to Baier than any show in its timeslot. 

This election cycle, Baier created the popular Common Ground segment which features political leaders from across the aisle discussing the issues of the day with the goal of finding middle ground. He is also host of FOX News Audio's "The Bret Baier Podcast" which includes Common Ground and The All-Star Panel.

Since joining FNC in 1998 as an Atlanta-based reporter, Baier has played an integral role in coverage of every major political event. Most recently, Baier co-led the network’s special Democracy 2024 coverage of the Democratic National Convention and the Republican National Convention.

Milwaukee Radio: 105.7 FM The Fan Relaunches

Audacy announced 1250 AM The Fan (WSSP-AM) in Milwaukee will return to FM and will once again be heard on 105.7 FM beginning October 14. The station will continue to be heard on 1250 AM.

Concurrent with the FM relaunch, the station will introduce two new local weekday shows. “The Pack-A-Day Radio Show” will air weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. CT. Hosted by Green Bay Packers insider Andy Herman, the show will serve as a destination for all things green and gold. Herman currently hosts the Pack-A-Day Podcast and Packer Report.

The station will also launch “The Mason Crosby Show,” starring 17-year NFL kicker, Super Bowl champion and Packers all-time leading scorer Mason Crosby, weekdays from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. CT. The show will also feature Mitch “Thunder” Nelles as co-host and veteran producer Tommy Wortz.

“We couldn’t be more excited to bring The Fan back to FM and expand the reach of the best sports talk in Milwaukee,” said Jason Bjorson, Senior Vice President and Market Manager, Audacy Madison and Milwaukee. “Milwaukee has long been a premier market for football coverage, and through the addition of ‘The Pack-A-Day Radio Show’ and ‘The Mason Crosby Show,’ coupled with our existing must-listen programming, we’re elevating the listening experience and keeping fans connected to their favorite teams.”

The station’s weekday lineup rounds out with “The Jim Rome Show” from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. CT and “Wisconsin Sports Daily” with Assistant Program Director Steve “Sparky” Fifer from 2:00 CT to 5:00 p.m. CT.

📻Listeners can tune in to 105.7 FM The Fan / 1250 AM (105.7 FM / WSSP-AM) in Milwaukee on air and nationwide on the Audacy app and website. Fans can also connect with the station via X, Facebook and Instagram.

Trump To Be Questioned During All-Women Fox Town Hall

Former President Donald Trump will attend an all-female town hall on “issues impacting women” just weeks before the November election. 

The town hall, which will air on Fox News, will be moderated by the outlet’s Harris Faulkner and consist of an all-female audience. The Q&A is expected to touch on women’s rights and issues such as IVF and abortion, as well as the economy and safe communities to raise families. 

“Women are not politically monolithic and want a thriving economy and safe communities," Trump campaign spokesperson Caroline Sunshine said in a statement on Friday. “President Trump is looking forward to hearing directly from the women of Georgia and discussing how he will bring down the cost of living and Make America safe, secure, and affordable again.” 

After announcing the town hall, which will air Wednesday, Faulkner said it is essential for women voters to understand where the presidential candidates stand on issues that matter to them. She pointed out that women comprise the most significant number of registered and active voters in the United States. 

Fox News extended an invitation to Vice President Kamala Harris to participate in a similar event. It is still being determined whether Harris accepted the invite. 

The NY Times reports the event, announced by Fox News on Friday, will focus on “issues impacting women ahead of the election,” the network said, including abortion, day care, child care, health care and the economy.

It will not be shown live. The event will be taped on Tuesday evening, in Cumming, Ga., and air on Wednesday at 11 a.m.

Trump’s Democratic opponent, Harris, is set to appear for her own town hall with Anderson Cooper on CNN on Oct. 23, with voters in Pennsylvania. That event will be aired live.

CNN has said Mr. Trump has an open invitation to appear on the network for a town hall.

Fox News on Friday said the same regarding Harris. “Fox News has a standing invitation to Vice President Harris for a town hall event of equal stature which has been extended to her campaign multiple times since she became a candidate for president in August,” the network said in a statement.

Can 'Call Her Daddy' Save SiriusXM?

Spotify is attempting to be all things audio. Based on its growing number of users, it's succeeding, according to Ed Ponsi at The Street.

Globally, Spotify boasts 626 million users, including 246 million premium subscribers, making it the world’s largest streaming music service.

As of the third quarter of last year, Spotify’s global market share was just under one-third of all streaming music listeners, according to Statista.com. Its closest competitor, China-based Tencent Music, controls 14.4% of the market -- less than half of Spotify’s market share. 

Spotify continues to steadily grow its premium subscriptions. For the first time, premium subs should exceed a quarter billion by the time Spotify reports earnings after the close on Nov. 12.

That growth is a testament to Spotify’s pricing power. The Stockholm, Sweden-based streaming service has raised prices twice within the past 12 months. 

Spotify hA lost one of its most popular podcasts, Call Her Daddy. The sex and dating podcast moves to SiriusXM after signing a three-year deal reportedly worth $125 million. 

To Ponsi, this seems like a move of desperation for SiriusXM. On July 9.  He's warned investors to avoid SiriusXM stock. In the three months since then, SiriusXM has fallen by 29%.

SiriusXM, which has lost over 55% year to date, performed a 1-for-10 reverse stock split on September 9. This raised the stock’s price from the low single digits.

Can Call Her Daddy save SiriusXM? For this deal to pay off, SiriusXM needs to keep the spotlight trained on its star, Alex Cooper, write Ponsi.

Satellite radio’s stars, like Howard Stern, have a tendency to disappear once they are behind the SiriusXM paywall. Instead of locking her away, the goal for SiriusXM should be to maintain and increase Cooper’s relevance and popularity. 

Meanwhile..

• 
  Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway went on a buying spree in shares of broadcasting and radio company SiriusXM last week.
• According to regulatory filing on Friday, the sprawling conglomerate in a three-day run picked up shares worth $86.73M, and boosted its total stake in the company to 108.72M shares.
• Berkshire purchased 869,800 shares in SiriusXM on Wednesday; 917,846 and 517,154 shares in two separate transactions on Thursday; and 1,259,259 shares on Friday.
• The Omaha, Neb.-based conglomerate disclosed a stake in SiriusXM (SIRI) back in November 2023. SiriusXM in September became an independent public company with a simplified capital structure following the closing of its transaction with Liberty Media.
• The broadcasting and radio firm is expected to report its first results since then on October 31.
• Berkshire has notably been on an unloading spree in Bank of America (BAC), having started to trim its position in the number two U.S. lender in mid-July and recently bringing it down to below 10%.

Report: CBS News Required to Get Woke Unit Okay For News Stories

CBS News’ Race and Culture Unit needs to sign off on show scripts that could potentially offend particular viewers, according to a former staffer with knowledge of the process. 

A former CBS employee told Fox News Digital the broadcast network's Race and Culture Unit vetted "basically every story" that could potentially be considered culturally sensitive. 

The former employee said show producers were "required" to send drafts of show scripts to an email chain with members of the Race and Culture Unit as well as the standards and practices unit and could only proceed if they signed off.

CBS News’ Race and Culture Unit has emerged as a hot-button issue in recent days after a report that "CBS Mornings" co-host Tony Dokoupil found himself in hot water for asking questions that were not cleared by the network’s Race and Culture unit. 

Dokoupil sparked an internal uproar earlier this month when he interviewed author Ta-Nehisi Coates about his book, "The Message," which delved into his travels to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Dokoupil told Coates his heavily anti-Israel book – which has been criticized for omitting significant context about Palestinian terrorism and the Jewish state's extraordinary security situation – read like something you would find in "the backpack of an extremist." Dokoupil, who is Jewish, also pushed him on whether he believes Israel has the right to exist. 

After news broke that liberal staffers objected to Dokoupil’s line of questioning, Puck media reporter Dylan Byers reported that the Race and Culture Unit didn’t approve of the anchor’s actions. 

"Last Tuesday, while the CBS News leadership was consumed with the network’s vice presidential debate, the issue was elevated to the network’s Race and Culture unit, which was formed in the summer of 2020, amid the George Floyd reckoning, and determines whether the ‘tone, content, and intention’ of any segment or package are suitable for the network’s air," Byers reported. 

"The unit, led by Alvin Patrick, determined that while Dokoupil’s questions and intentions were acceptable, his tone was not," Byers added. "Meanwhile, the network’s Standards and Practices division, led by Claudia Milne, determined that Dokoupil had not followed the preproduction process wherein questions are run through Race and Culture and Standards and Practices."

The CBS News Race and Culture Unit has "a four-pronged role at CBS News and Stations as a reviewer, an incubator, a producer and a library," according to the CBS website. The unit sees its primary role as a reviewer to "ensure all stories have the proper context, tone and intention." 

CBS News did not respond to a Fox News Digital request when asked if "basically every story" needs to be vetted by the Race and Culture Unit. 

The New York Times previously reported that Dokoupil ultimately had to meet with both the CBS News standards and practices team and the Race and Culture Unit following the interview. 

Dokoupil eventually expressed regret for the interview causing tumult, but not for his line of questioning, according to the New York Times.

Ashville Radio: CBS News Highlights Helene Coverage On WWNC

As Florida grapples with the destruction from Hurricane Milton, the people of western North Carolina know that reality all too well. Helene roared through the mountains, leaving more than a million people in the disaster zone without water, power and spotty cell service.

But, as CBS News reports, what they did have was the radio.

For days, iHeartMedia's WWNC host Mark Starling and producer Tank Spencer were a lifeline, serving as a proxy dispatch service to help coordinate wellness checks and connect the stranded with nearby resources.

"We didn't have any connection to the outside world except our radio stations, and we were the only two here. So we kind of had a mission of like, OK, well, we've got to walk these people through the storm," Starling said.

The Asheville AM radio station was inundated with phone calls, which meant dealing with the widest range of emotions imaginable. One caller was a man on the second floor of his house with his wife and grandchild, Starling said.

Since Helene hit, Starling and Spencer have been a guiding light on top of the radio tower for so many in the mountains of North Carolina.

"One of the memorable phone calls that we had was, for me, was when a guy called in. He says, 'You know, today's the first day that I've gone and checked on all my neighbors, and I didn't even ask who they voted for first,'" Starling said.

Spencer added, "This is the realest radio has ever been, and we're connecting with people in a way that most people don't ever get to connect with their audience, because this is our family."

R.I.P.: Liz Wilde, Influential Former Radio Personality

Liz Wilde (1971-2024)

Radio personality Liz Wilde has died from complications of cancer. She was 53. 

She left a significant legacy in the radio industry. Starting her career in 1985 at WIIS and WAIL in Key West, FL, she was initially known as "Ann with The Plan"1. Her big break came at WSHE in Miami, where she rebranded as Liz Wilde and launched The Liz Wilde Show, which became a game-changer in rock radio1.

Liz Wilde’s influence extended beyond her radio shows, as she was known for her connections with notable figures like Gene Simmons and Lenny Kravitz.

Wilde, born Anne Whittemore, was best known for her shock jock radio program Liz Wilde. After much success at WSHE as the evening air personality, Liz moved her show to the Northeast, taking over the night shift of rock station WAAF-FM in the Boston, Massachusetts radio market. After having great success in the evening slot for 18 months, The Liz Wilde Show was moved to afternoon drive-time setting record ratings for WAAF and making them competitive with rival rock station WBCN (FM) in that daypart for the first time. 

With her ratings success in Boston, Wilde moved to WLUP in Chicago, Illinois in March 1995. Her show aired in the morning drive-time slot from 6am-10am on WPLL in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She moved on to rock-and-roll pioneering station WMMS 100.7 FM in Cleveland, Ohio. Her show also aired on KLLI in the Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas market, and most recently on WRXK in Ft. Myers, Florida from November 2004 until March 2006.

At the pinnacle of the Liz Wilde Show's popularity, the show was nationally syndicated on over 34 radio stations in 2001 by radio company Fisher Entertainment. The company dropped the show after selling its Portland, Oregon stations KOTK and KWJJ to Entercom Communications, and merging the Fisher Entertainment division and other Fisher subsidiaries into the main company Fisher Communications.

St. Louis Radio: Buyer Hard To Find for KFNS

It was in July that legacy AM St. Louis sports-talk radio station KFNS 590 AM dropped local programming in a cost-cutting decision amid a search for a buyer. Now, nearly 3½ months later, owner Dave Zobrist said little progress has been made in trying to sell.

“There’s not much to report,” Zobrist said this week, adding that despite having hired a national broker, there have been “no serious leads.”

Stltoday.com reports he said he thinks a big hang-up is that the station still has 2½ years to go on a 10-year lease former owner Randy Markel executed with the landlord of the building in Kirkwood that houses KFNS’ studios and business operations.

“It’s pretty exorbitant,” Zobrist said. “That’s one of the reasons (the station) failed.”

After the local programming was pulled over the summer, Markel expressed interest in reinvesting in the operation that he considered unfinished business personally.

Dave Zobrist

“It’s the only thing that I started in that I didn’t finish,” Markel, a local businessman who was the longtime owner of the Chuck’s Boots operation, said then. “As people can testify, once I start something, I get it done.”

But his view has changed now.

“It’s out of sight, out of mind with me,” Markel said this week. “I had it all set before.”

Meanwhile, Zobrist said the plan is for KFNS to continue indefinitely by airing national shows from Fox Sports Radio as well as Illinois football and basketball contests plus some games played by the NBA’s Memphis Grizzlies.

“I want to keep it sports,” Zobrist said while adding that his deal with Fox Sports Radio is flexible and would allow a return to local programming. If that happens, it could be with a gradual buildup, not what basically had been a sunrise-to-sunset lineup of the station’s own shows.

But Zobrist made it clear that he wants to sell the station.

“Maybe it's AM. Maybe people are waiting until after the election or the new year,” Zobrist said. “I have not had serious discussions; it’s been slow.”

ESPN Has Ambitious Sports Streaming Plans

The flagship, direct-to-consumer version of ESPN will not be a mere streaming service, insists company chair Jimmy Pitaro, but rather a distillation of all the company’s various offerings and capabilities.

According to Front Office Sports, already the most pressing initiative for not only ESPN, but perhaps parent company Walt Disney Co., the forthcoming offering will feature a wide variety of enhanced features, including multi-screen viewing, full integration with ESPN Bet, ticketing, and merchandising, fantasy content, user personalization, and advanced statistics, among others. The existing ESPN+ will also be available within the flagship ESPN streaming service.

“It’s not just about flipping the switch [and making the network available direct-to-consumer],” Pitaro said, appearing Thursday at the Columbia University Sports Management Conference. “When we do this, it will come with significant product enhancements. Yes, you’ll be able to get all of our networks. But the shoulder experience around the video will be much more interactive and it will be much more personalized. …  I could go on and on, but we have an army of engineers and designers on all of this right now.”

The service, expected to cost around $30 per month, is still set to debut next summer, in time for the 2025 college and pro football seasons, as ESPN and Disney officials have detailed for many months.

New Round Of Lay-offs Reported At Allen Media

There’s more layoffs at Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group.

Deadline reports that the company, which owns a raft of network affiliate broadcast stations and The Weather Channel, has cut more employees.

Gone are:  key members of its weather, news and sports teams, impacting The Weather Channel, its AVOD service HBCU Go as well as its Entertainment Studios and ad sales divisions.

Byron Allen

A spokesman for Allen Media Group said, “This is a continuation of the reduction in workforce Allen Media Group announced back in May.”

However, sources have told Deadline that this is a new round and that employees have just been informed, impacting morale among certain units. It’s not clear how many people have been affected.

Privately operated Allen Media Group owns 36 ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox network affiliate broadcast television stations in 21 U.S. markets; digital network TheGrio; and a motion picture division that includes a distribution arm.

Allen himself made noise earlier this year, claiming that he was interested in acquiring Paramount Global for $30 billion, having previously bid for the Paramount-owned BET and its related assets.

Baby Boomers In Big Shift To Digital Content

• Baby Boomers are the world’s wealthiest generation, but brands are failing to keep up with their increasingly digital media habits, according to WARC Media’s latest Global Advertising Trends report.
• Global Advertising Trends: Baby Boomers’ big digital shift outlines key considerations for brands wanting to tap into this generation.

 

Why the shift matters

Baby Boomers, defined as those born between 1946 and 1964 (i.e. those aged between 60 and 78 today), do not spend ever-greater amounts of time on social platforms. Instead, older generations are switching from offline versions of content media to their online extensions – be it connected TV or online press. This matters to marketers, because these formats are traded and measured differently, requiring a fresh approach to media planning.

As Alex Brownsell, Head of Content, WARC Media, explains, brands are obsessing over Gen Z, while the affluent Baby Boomer generation is undergoing a media revolution. “This requires advertisers to revisit long-held assumptions, and ensure digital media plans are tailored to older consumers’ increasingly unique habits.”

R.I.P.: Wanda Smith, Beloved Longtime Morning Host At V103 Atlanta

Atlanta radio host Wanda Smith, who brought a bubbly, comedic side to V-103′s morning shows for more than 20 years, died Saturday, a day after her birthday.

Her daughter Janice confirmed the news to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Saturday night.

Smith, 59, worked with host Frank Ski at V-103 for two stints, first from 1998 to 2013, then again in 2018. She also worked with Ryan Cameron from 2013 to 2017. The show was No. 1 in Atlanta for much of that time.

(1963-2024)

“Wanda was special for her ability to connect with the average, everyday listener, especially the women of Atlanta,” said Jean Ross, the longtime news anchor for the Frank and Wanda morning show. “She was your ‘sister girlfriend’ on the radio.”

Cameron said “she never met a stranger. She was very much in tune with the community.”

Ski hired Smith as part of his morning show in 1998 after seeing her at a comedy club. “I was the serious person and she provided the light,” he said. “And whenever there was a natural disaster or people needed help, she was immediately on air to get help. We’d do diaper drives. She really understood the needs of the single mother.”

“She was a comedian before she was a radio host,” said Gary Abdo, who owned those clubs. “What drives a comic to do what they do is internal and it never goes away. She was a legend here.” She never complained about hosting comedy shows until midnight, then waking up at 4 a.m. for the morning show.

R.I.P.: Warren Wilson, Pioneering Black Journalist

Warren Wilson, who in 1969 became one of the first Black television journalists hired in Los Angeles, and who used the trust he accumulated in his work to help fugitives surrender safely to the police, died on Sept. 27 in Oxnard, Calif. He was 90.

The NY Times reports his son Stanley, a former news and documentary producer at CNN, confirmed the death, at an assisted living facility, but did not specify the cause.

Over more than 40 years as a reporter for wire services, a local radio station and the television stations KNBC and KTLA, Wilson covered the riots in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, the Hillside Strangler murders and the O.J. Simpson trial.

But over more than three decades, he also became involved in the lives of 22 fugitives who decided it was safer to surrender to him than to be abused, or worse, by the authorities during an arrest. Their surrenders were often shown on Wilson’s TV reports.

(1933-2024)

“People knew that if Warren Wilson was involved, that there would not be an incident where a person could be mistreated,” Bernard Parks, a former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, told The Los Angeles Times in 2005.

Warren Cereghino, a former editor at KTLA, wrote in a letter to Stanley Wilson after his father died that Wilson “had brought great acclaim to our news operation when he turned the news parking lot into the celebrated ‘safe surrender zone.’

“People who criticized that,” he added, “didn’t understand how easily things could have gone sideways.”

Warren Griffin Wilson was born on June 14, 1934, in Bethel, N.C., and grew up on a farm in segregated Greenville, where his parents, Lonnie and Lizzie (Edwards) Wilson, who were sharecroppers, reared nine children. When Lonnie Wilson was 19, Klansmen struck him with a pickup truck and left him to die in a ditch. He survived.

Radio History: Oct 14

➦In 1934..."Lux Radio Theater" premiered.

Lux Radio Theater, a long-run classic radio anthology series, was broadcast on the NBC Blue Network (1934-35); CBS Radio (1935-54), and NBC Radio (1954-55). Initially, the series adapted Broadway plays during its first two seasons before it began adapting films. These hour-long radio programs were performed live before studio audiences. The series became the most popular dramatic anthology series on radio, broadcast for more than 20 years and continued on television as the Lux Video Theatre through most of the 1950s.

Broadcasting from New York, the series premiered at 2:30pm, October 14, 1934, on the NBC Blue Network with a production of Seventh Heaven starring Miriam Hopkins and John Boles in a full-hour adaptation of the 1922–24 Broadway production by Austin Strong. The host was the show's fictional producer, Douglass Garrick (portrayed by John Anthony). Doris Dagmar played another fictional character, Peggy Winthrop, who delivered the Lux commercials. Each show featured a scripted session with Garrick talking to the lead actors. Anthony appeared as Garrick from the premiere 1934 episode until June 30, 1935. Garrick was portrayed by Albert Hayes from July 29, 1935 to May 25, 1936, when the show moved to the West Coast.

Cecil B. DeMille took over as the host on June 1, 1936, continuing until January 22, 1945. On several occasions, usually when he was out of town, he was temporarily replaced by various celebrities, including Leslie Howard and Edward Arnold.

Lux Radio Theatre strove to feature as many of the original stars of the original stage and film productions as possible, usually paying them $5,000 an appearance. In 1936, when sponsor Lever Brothers (who made Lux soap and detergent) moved the show from New York City to Hollywood, the program began to emphasize adaptations of films rather than plays. The first Lux film adaptation was The Legionnaire and the Lady, with Marlene Dietrich and Clark Gable, based on the film Morocco. That was followed by a Lux adaptation of The Thin Man, featuring the movie's stars, Myrna Loy and William Powell.

➦In 1939...BMI (Broadcast Music Incorporated) formed

➦In 1943...RCA (Radio Corporation of America) sold the NBC Blue Radio Network to Edward Noble for $8 million dollars. It was renamed ABC, the American Broadcasting Company.

Although RCA was identified as the creator of the network, NBC was actually owned 50% by RCA, 30% by General Electric, and 20% by Westinghouse. The network officially was launched at 8:00 Eastern time on the evening of Monday, November 15, 1926.

"The most pretentious broadcasting program ever presented, featuring among others, world famed stars never before heard on the air, will mark the Introduction of the National Broadcasting Company to the public Monday night," the press noted, with "a four hour radio performance by noted stars of opera, stage and concert hall".  The broadcast was made simultaneously on WEAF and WJZ. Some of NBC's programming was broadcast that evening on WEEI (Boston) WLIT (Philadelphia), WRC (Washington), WDAF (Kansas City), and WWJ (Detroit)., noted by the different background color. NBC Blue would utilize this logo until their 1943 sale.