Radio Commentator Sez He Was Targeted By IRS

The following is a transcript of Todd Starnes ’s midday Fox Radio commentary – heard daily on hundreds of radio stations around the nation.

Todd Starnes

“By now you’ve heard that the Internal Revenue Service has been engaged in Nixonian-style investigations of conservative groups. 

Words like “Tea Party” or “patriots” trigged special scrutiny by government revenuers. That was back in 2011 — about the same time I started hosting this daily commentary. And based on my subject matter, it’s safe to say that President Obama and I are not exactly b.f.f.’s. 

Not too long after we launched the commentaries, I got word that I was being audited — all the way back to 2004. I hired an attorney and CPA and began the arduous task of battling the IRS. My CPA said he’s never seen the government agency so uncooperative. After months of hammering out a deal – they notified me last month that they re-tallied the numbers and discovered I owed twice as much as they originally said. 

My CPA said something just didn’t feel right. The IRS, he said, seemed overly aggressive. It was almost like they had an axe to grind — a vendetta. 

Friends, dealing with the IRS over the past few years has been nothing short of government-sanctioned bullying — a license to shakedown. 

And the latest revelations should strike fear into the heart and bank account of every American taxpayer. Because if the government can come after someone like me — you could be next."

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Report: Ryan Seacrest Says He WILL Remain ‘Idol’ Host

Talking with ExtraTV, Ryan Seacrest confirmed that he will be back as ‘American Idol’ host next season. “I'm staying next season, yes. I'm hosting 100%.”

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NYC Ratings: Nash-FM Attracting Younger Demos

UPDATE: Arbitron says a glitch prevented the listing of shar info CBS Radio’s all-sports WFAN-AM/FM. In New York, the Fan grew 2.4 - 2.7.

Earlier Posting....

New York:   The radio industry continues to closely watch the performance of Cumulus’ WNSH Nash 94.7 FM.  While the Country station's share remains steady 1.6 – 1.8 – 1.8;  NashFM grew 2.0 - 2.4 in 18-34 and inched up 2.6 - 2.7 in 12-24 in April, the station’s second complete month on the air.  25-54 NashFM  has an uptick 1.6 - 1.7.

On Long Island, Nash FM’s 6+ share rose 2.0 - 2.2  while 18-34 improved 2.6 - 3.3.  

Big Apple Cume 6+ continues a steady upward course, now at 875,700, up from 857,700.  That’s been accomplished from dial-flipping, word-of-mouth and some billboards.  It will be interesting to see when CEO Lew Dickey springs for marketing.  

Otherwise, the NYC market remains pretty stable, WLTW is still #1 6+.  Lite is down a bit 7.8 to 7.2.  So is CBS Radio’s WCBS 6.4 – 6.2, but still #2.  CC’s WHTZ Z100 continues its growth moving 5.1 – 5.6 – 6.0 for the past three months.

Arbitron also released April PPMs for Los Angeles, San Francisco and nine other markets. Click Here.

Special Note: Arbitron results omitted CBS Sports WFAN 660 AM/ 101.9 FM without explanation.  WFAN results were not included in Topline Results in NYC, Nassau and Middlesex markets.  They are expected to be released Tuesday.

LA Ratings: CC Stations 1, 2, 3, 4

Los Angeles: Clear Channel stations hold down positions 1 through 4.  AC KBIG is #1 5.5 – 5.5, followed by Top 40 KISS-FM 5.8 -5.4, AC KOST 4.6 – 4.7, good for #3 and N/TV KFI (4.2 -4.1) is tied at #4 with CBS Radio’s KAMP 4.3 – 4.1.

Arbitron released April PPMs for 11 markets yesterday. Click Here. 

Chicago Ratings: Hot AC Continues To Grow

Chicago: Hot AC is smokin’ in the Windy City.  Hubbard’s WTMX ‘Mix” ranks #2 moving 5.3 – 5.9.  Urban  WVAZ is #1 with a nice margin 6.5 – 7.0.  Third place goes to CBS Radio’s all-news WBBM 5.4 - 5.4. Tribune talker WGN has a slight uptick 4.7 - 4.8.

Arbitron released April PPMs for 11 markets yesterday. Click Here.

Rico Leaps From Market 64 To #2

Rick Thomas

Hawaii radio personality Rick Thomas has been appointed program director of stations in Los Angeles, the No. 2 radio market in the U.S., according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Thomas, currently Ohana Broadcast Company Director of Programming and “Quiet Storm” host on KUMU-FM 94.7, will begin a new job June 17 as Program Director for legendary radio station KRTH-FM 101.1 or “K-Earth” and sister-station KTWV-FM 94.7 “The Wave” in Los Angeles.

Broadcast industry trade publications are trumpeting the announcement via e-mail blasts as breaking news.

Honolulu is the 64th-largest radio market in the U.S., while Los Angeles is second only to New York City.

Thomas, who goes by “Rico” on the air, also has worked in San Francisco, Sacramento and San Diego.

Thomas will be filling the shoes of legendary LA programmer Jhani Kaye. Kaye’s stint with KOST-FM (1982 -2005) before moving to K-Earth and, later, The Wave also gave him the record for longest-running programmer at a single LA station.

Journalists' Phone Records Secretly Compiled By DOJ

The U.S. Justice Department has seized without notice comprehensive phone records for reporters and editors at the Associated Press, prompting the news agency to protest Monday directly to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, according to a USAToday story.

"I am writing to object in the strongest possible terms to a massive and unprecedented intrusion by the Department of Justice into the newsgathering activities of The Associated Press," wrote AP CEO Gary Pruitt, in a letter to Holder.

The Justice Department didn't explain why the records were subpoenaed, saying only in a statement that they were needed for investigation of an unspecified criminal matter. The statement said media organizations are notified in advance of such subpoenas "unless doing so would pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation."

The phone records date to April and May of 2012. The AP reported that they may have been collected for an investigation of a leak to the AP of information used in a May 7, 2012, story about a foiled terror plot, including details of a CIA operation in Yemen.

Read More Now.

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Report: Sean Hannity Finds Sanity In So. Florida

If Sean Hannity had his way, he’d be a full-time South Florida resident.

With a vacation home in Naples, the Long Island-based TV and radio personality dreams of a day when he can just relax and not think about cameras, mics and politics.

“I go there around Christmastime, and I’m coming from New York where everyone’s all bundled up, and you see people running outside in 75 degrees. It’s a healthier lifestyle,” Hannity, 51, tells the Miami Herald. “In May the weather here is still rainy and windy. It’s annoying. If I could, I’d live there like yesterday.”

But for now he can’t. Hannity has way too much going on with two eponymous shows on AM radio (610 WIOD) and the Fox News Channel. Hannity reaches a big milestone Wednesday evening: the 1,000th episode.

Barbara Walters Makes It Official

Barbara Walters, America’s first TV evening news anchorwoman, is retiring from the news business after 52 years of interviewing the world’s top leaders and celebrities.

Walters will anchor and report for the organization for one more year before retiring in May 2014. She will make the official announcement Monday on “The View,” an all women talk show she created in 1997.


“There’s only one Barbara Walters,” ABC News President Ben Sherwood said. “And we look forward to making her final year on television as remarkable, path-breaking and news-making as Barbara herself.”

R.I.P.: Radio/TV Personality Dr. Joyce Brothers

Dr. Joyce Brothers

Joyce Brothers, a former academic psychologist who, long before Drs. Ruth, Phil and Laura, was counseling millions over the airwaves, died on Monday at her home in Fort Lee, N.J.

She was 85, according to an obit at nytimes.com.

Dr. Joyce Brothers was widely described as the mother of mass-media psychology because of the firm, pragmatic and homiletic guidance she administered for decades via radio and television.

Dr. Joyce Brothers was widely described as the mother of mass-media psychology because of the firm, pragmatic and homiletic guidance she administered for decades via radio and television.

Historically, she was a bridge between advice columnists like Dear Abby and Ann Landers, who got their start in the mid-1950s, and the self-help advocates of the 1970s and afterward.

R.I.P.: CBS Correspondent Jan Petersen Was 63

Jan Peterson

Jan Petersen, a former foreign correspondent for CBS television and radio and the wife of CBS News correspondent Barry Petersen, died Saturday at age 63 from early-onset Alzheimer's disease.

Jan had worked at CNN, ABC and CBS News, with postings in Tokyo and Moscow, in a journalism career that began as a part-time news writer at CBS affiliate KIRO in Seattle, before rising to producer, reporter, and anchor, under her maiden name, Jan Chorlton.

Eight years ago she was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, a disease which affects approximately 250,000 Americans under the age of 65. The emotional story of how she and her family grappled with the effects of the disease were recounted in Barry Petersen's 2010 book, "Jan's Story," and in a "Sunday Morning" news story about how Alzheimer's changed the course of their nearly three-decade-long marriage.

"Jan was vivacious and lively, traits she kept even after her diagnosis in 2005, and took with her when I placed her into an assisted living facility in 2008," Barry Petersen wrote on Monday. "But it was a disease that had started taking her, in so many little ways, 10 to 15 years before all that. Such is the insidious, hideous way of Alzheimer's Disease."

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R.I.P.: Iowa Radio Personality Mark Vos Was 58

Mark Vos

Legendary KRNA radio personality Mark N Vos died on Sunday May 12th, 2013, after a long battle with heart disease.

His life was claimed by cardiac arrest at the age of 58, according to the UIowa City Press-Citizen.

Mark spent 40 award winning years in the radio business with many different radio stations, including KRNA, Iowa City and KFMG Des Moines. Many remember him as one of “those guys in the morning.” He was dubbed the “best voice in Iowa radio.”

Mark had a passion for baseball. He played his first game at the age of 7 in Otley, Iowa in 1961. His little league team still remains the only little league team to win the championship in Pella, Iowa. Mark was a life-long St. Louis Cardinals fan. He has passed that loyalty on to his children. He also had a passion for music. He played bass guitar with bands Jif and the Choosey Mothers and Snakes in the Hay. He took great pride in a CD he recorded of his own music with Snakes in the Hay titled “Postcard from the 70’s.”

Vos can be heard on this aircheck from October 1988 when KRNA switched from 93.9 to 94.1 FM.

iHeartRadio Claims 30M Registered Users

iHeartRadio and Clear Channel Media and Entertainment today announced that it has surpassed 30 million registered users. In achieving this milestone in less than two years since its launch, iHeartRadio becomes second only to Instagram as the fastest-growing digital service in Internet history -- a growth rate two times faster than Facebook.

Since iHeartRadio listeners are not required to create an account to stream broadcast radio stations, the number of registered users reflects only a small snapshot of the service's overall reach, particularly given the 175 million downloads of the iHeartRadio mobile app and more than 60 million monthly uniques across its digital network.

iHeartRadio's recent placement on the iTunes Top 20 All-Time Free Apps list and coupled with its rapid growth points to a larger trend in consumer listening habits, claims CCM+E.

As smartphones and tablets become more ubiquitous, easy-to-use, free applications like iHeartRadio provide consumers with access to their favorite music regardless of whether they're at home or on the go. iHeartRadio's additional add-in features like local weather and news, as well as "Perfect For" curated playlists, appeal to a diverse audience and have driven overall adoption of digital music, even as research shows that record numbers of consumers are also tuning in to their favorite over-the-air broadcast stations. Recent numbers from Katz Radio Group reported that broadcast radio comprises 92.4% of all audio listening, with digital claiming a 7.6% stake, indicating that iHeartRadio is bringing increased incremental listening to Clear Channel's 243 million monthly broadcast listeners.

Brian LaKamp

"iHeartRadio sets the standard for how radio continues to fit into people's everyday lives. This latest milestone is another clear indication how our full-featured iHeartRadio experience resonates with tens of millions of people - with more coming every day," said Brian Lakamp, President of Digital for Clear Channel Media and Entertainment.

"Being able to draw on Clear Channel's unparalleled range of resources allows us to continually innovate and improve on the user experience, while giving listeners access to both live radio and custom stations. When you combine this with the strong promotional power of Clear Channel's broadcast properties across the nation, iHeartRadio is well-positioned to continue or even surpass our current adoption rate."

iHeartRadio reached 20 million registered users faster than any digital service in internet history.

In addition to Clear Channel's 850 radio stations, iHeartRadio also includes a number of other radio groups, such as Univision, Cumulus, Greater Media stations, WNYC, EMF's Contemporary Christian Air1 and KLove stations, college radio, Cox, Emmis, Salem and others. With a library of more than 15 million songs and 400,000 artists, iHeartRadio's Custom Station feature offers listeners more music than any other service available.

iHeartRadio is available across all major platforms including web, mobile, tablets, automotive, television and gaming devices. Visit iHeartRadio.com for a complete list of app availability and to download.

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Aereo Lowers TV Streaming Fee

Aereo Antenna = The Size of a Dime

Aereo on Monday announced a new pricing structure for its upstart TV streaming service.  The "streamlined" structure does away with long-term commitments and with annual and daily offerings.

Now, according to a story at cnet.com, consumers can start with a base membership plan of $8 per month for use of Aereo's cloud-based antenna/DVR technology and 20 hours of DVR storage. For $12 a month, they can upgrade to 60 hours of DVR storage.

Aereo Antenna Farm

The New York-based company is further sweetening things by offering the first month of service at no charge.

The new plans go into effect Wednesday, the same day that Aereo plans to open up its service to residents of the Boston area, its second market. The company launched its service in 2012 in the New York metro area, and said in January that it plans to expand to 22 cities across the U.S. during 2013.

With Aereo's antenna/DVR technology, consumers can watch live, local over-the-air television broadcasts on some Internet-connected devices, including the iPad, iPhone, and Roku players. That capability has provoked lawsuits from TV broadcast giants including ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC Universal, and Telemundo, which alleged last year that the service violates their copyrights and that Aereo must pay them retransmission fees.

Read More Now

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ABC To Start Streaming Broadcast Shows

Disney's ABC network will become the first broadcast network to stream its shows live online through an ongoing service, starting with viewers of its TV stations in New York and Philadelphia on May 14 and expanding to its other stations by the end of the summer.

According to a Reuters story, to promote its WATCH ABC service, through the end of June Disney is allowing all viewers of its WABC station in New York and WPVI station in Philadelphia to watch live ABC programs online or on mobile devices by downloading the WATCH ABC app, Disney said in a statement.

The app will initially allow users to be able to watch the service on Apple's iPad and iPhone and on the Kindle Fire device, and later this summer on Samsung Galaxy devices.

Other networks are expected to follow Disney, as traditional broadcasters scramble to keep viewers watching its programs instead of drifting off to Netflix and other online services.

Starting on July 1, Disney will only provide its WATCH ABC service to subscribers of cable, satellite and other TV subscription services that have agreements with ABC to offer the service to their subscribers in New York and Philadelphia. Subscribers must provide an authentication code to be granted access to the shows.

Read More Now.

Tom's Take: You gotta believe broadcast affiliates are not too happy about this move.