Companies from Lyft to T-Mobile are pulling ads from Breitbart News, the controversial Website formerly run by Stephen Bannon, joining the list of retailers, consumer brands and even governments following suit, according to MediaPost.
"One of Lyft's core values is to uplift and support one another in all that we do," Lyft's director of communications Adrian Durbin told CNET. "We strive to ensure that our advertisements appear only on sites that share this value."
According to a report from CNET, a secretive organization called Sleeping Giants is on a mission to shame companies and organizations advertising on Breitbart News.
Bannon, now a top White House adviser, has described Breitbart as a “platform for the alt-right,” a term commonly associated with racism, fascism, anti-Semitism and white supremacy.
“We are trying to stop racist Web sites by stopping their ad dollars. Many companies don't even know it's happening. It's time to tell them,” Sleeping Giants tweeted in November.
Sleeping Giants claims about 820 companies have blacklisted Breitbart, including big consumer brands like Kellogg’s, BMW and Visa, as well as retailer Warby Parker and insurance company Allstate. The list, available on a public Google Doc, continues to be updated.
In addition, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo and Autodesk will no longer advertise on Breitbart. Other tech giants, like Uber, Amazon and AT&T, continue to display ads on the site.
Ads generally appear on Web sites through programmatic advertising, an automated process that often leaves marketers unaware of where ads are appearing. Ads are placed based on algorithms that target specific audiences.
Breitbart editor Alexander Marlow told The Wall Street Journal there has been “little to no impact” on the site’s advertising revenue as a result of the blacklisting. Marlow claims traffic to the site is currently at an all-time high.
Actress Melissa McCarthy who stole the show on Saturday Night Live with an ill-fitting suit to play Sean Spicer, Trump’s aggressive press secretary whose briefings have been marked by their combative tone with reporters.
"Before we begin, I know that myself and the press have gotten off to a rocky start," McCarthy's Spicer said to open the skit. "When I say ‘rocky start’, I mean it in the sense of Rocky the movie because I came out here to punch you."
Shd mocked Spicer’s recent problems with the truth, saying that when the news was announced that Trump would nominate Judge Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, “The crowd greeted him with a standing ovation, which lasted a full 15 minutes. And you can check the tape on that. Everyone was smiling. Everyone was happy.”
“Those are the facts forever,” McCarthy’s Spicer continued.
After accidentally reading her own email password at the podium (Spicer appeared to tweet out a password last week), McCarthy fought with a New York Times reporter Glenn Thrush (played by cast member Bobby Moynihan) over the use of the term “ban” to describe Trump’s controversial immigration order that prohibited travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
It was a good weekend for McCarthy as she starred in a series of KIA Commercials during Sunday's Sunday Bowl.
Sunday, President Donald Trump recorded a one-on-one interview with Westwood One host Jim Gray for today’s pregame and halftime shows of the Westwood One broadcast of Super Bowl LI.
During the halftime interview, President Trump talked about sports gambling, concussions in the NFL, use of medical marijuana by NFL players, how his immigration policy might affect the 2024 L.A. Olympic bid, and more.
Westwood One’s broadcast coverage of Super Bowl LI was heard live across more than 650 radio stations and 150+ FM translators nationwide and worldwide via the American Forces Radio Network, which serves over one million men and women in uniform, Department of Defense personnel, American Embassies and Consulates in over 175 countries and territories, as well as on more than 200 U.S. Navy, U.S. Coast Guard and Military Sealift Command ships at sea.
Westwood One is the official network radio partner for the National Football League. For more information, visit westwoodonesports.com.
Cumulus Media announces that it has appointed seasoned radio broadcasting executive Don Pollnow as Vice President/Market Manager for its six-station group in Green Bay, WI.
The cluster includes: Sports WDUZ 1400 AM, Sports WDUZ 107.5 FM, Classic Hits WOGB 103.1 FM, Alternative WKRU 106.7 FM, Country WPCK 104.9 FM and AC WQLH 98.5 FM
Pollnow joins Cumulus from LM Communications in Lexington, KY, where he was National Sales Manager. Prior to that, he held General Manager positions for NRG Media in Wausau/Stevens Point, WI and for Renda Broadcasting In Oklahoma City, OK. Pollnow was also General Manager for Clear Channel Radio in Little Rock, AR, and was General Manager for Cumulus Media-Topeka, KS, from 1999-2004.
Mark Sullivan, Regional Vice President, Cumulus Media said: “I’m excited about the experience and track record of success that Don brings to us in Green Bay. It’s great to have him back in the Cumulus family.”
Pollnow said: “I am fortunate to have the chance work with the talented programming staff and great sellers with Cumulus in Green Bay. I’m thrilled to be back in Wisconsin and working with Cumulus again.”
WXOS 101.1 FM ESPN – the Pride of St. Louis Sports – has announced that native St. Louisan and veteran media professional Chris Rongey is join the PM Drive show “The Fast Lane”.
Rongey’s first day on “The Fast Lane” will be Wednesday, February 8th, 2017.
Chris Rongey joins the St. Louis sports-talk radio station after 14 years spent on the air at WSCR-670 AM 6 The Score in Chicago, where he served as pregame and postgame host for White Sox games, as well as update anchor, occasional play-by-play analyst and Chicago’s Daily Herald columnist.
Rongey was born and raised in Granite City, Illinois. He graduated from Granite City High School and then attended Illinois State University, earning a B.S. in Mass Communication/Broadcast journalism and an M.S. in Communications. While at Illinois State University, Chris worked at the college radio station (WZND) and TV station (TV-10). Chris was a Weekend news anchor at WJBC 1230 AM in Bloomington, Illinois.
After college and graduate school, Rongey spent one year as a marketing assistant for National Sports Agency in St. Louis, before he moved to Chicago in October 2002 to work as an anchor at WSCR The Score 670 AM, as well as taking on a Total Traffic Chicago reporter job. Chris was the studio host for the White Sox from 2006-2015, hosting pregame and postgame and a weekly Sox show (while WSCR was the team's flagship) He also served as an alternate play-by-play/color commentator for White Sox radio broadcasts.
WXOS 101.1 FM (100 Kw)
Rongey stayed at WSCR after the White Sox's contract ended with the station and continued to anchor and host shows at The Score from October 2015 until the end of January 2017.
According to Chris Rongey, “As you can imagine, I can’t wait to work with Randy, Brad, and the rest of the crew. It’s a solid group of people at 101 and this is a great opportunity to be a part of the premier sports station in St. Louis while also being able to live closer to my family.”
Commenting on the addition of Chris Rongey to the 101ESPN team, 101 ESPN Program Director Chris “Hoss” Neupert notes, “We are excited to welcome Chris Rongey home he is a tremendous talent and will be a great addition to the 101 ESPN team.”
For weeks, syndicated radio personality Tom Joyner has been urging fans who are upset about Harvey meeting with Donald Trump to tune into his radio show instead. Now, according to the NY Daily News, Harvey has fired back by hiring Joyner’s sidekick, J. Anthony Brown.
It was announced on Dec. 1 that Brown, who’d been with “Tom Joyner Radio Show” for more than 20 years, would be leaving with one month still remaining on his contract. Shortly after his departure from Joyner’s show, where he didn’t get to say goodbye on the air, Brown took to Twitter to say why he left.
“Sometimes people just disagree and part ways,” he wrote. “That’s just what happened.”
It’ll be interesting to see how Harvey and Brown get along now that they’re on the same team. In a 2015 interview floating around YouTube, Brown claims he prefers working for Joyner because he can take a joke.
“Tom has built a niche of a show where any minute, anyone can be the butt of the joke,” Brown said in his comically raspy voice. “I can listen to some other shows, where if you joke, the star of the show, I’m not calling anybody’s name — Steve Harvey — but he’s going to do another 20 minutes on you about how he didn’t like the joke you did about him.”
Harvey, who’s ending one TV show in May and starting a new one in the fall, reportedly plans to move his radio show from Chicago to Los Angeles.
The podcast has clearly entered the media mainstream, and the range of its uses can only grow.
There’s just one problem, according to MediaPost. Unlike these other areas of digital radio, podcast listening has yet to take off, and there’s a real question as to when and if it ever will.
No one knows.
For now, though, MediaPost provides a look at what we do actually know about podcast listeners. (All data from Scarborough Research unless otherwise noted.)
According to Scarborough Research, just 25 percent of the population listened to a podcast in the past 30 days. While that’s a big increase over just a few years ago – Edison Research and Triton Digital put the number at 8 percent in 2008 – that still means three in four Americans do not listen to podcasts.
By contrast, 39 percent listen to their local stations online; 49 percent listen to internet feeds from iHeartRadio, Radio.com and others; and 69 percent listen to online music from Last.fm, Spotify and others.
They are young Three-quarters of podcast devotees are under the age of 49, including 37 percent who are Millennials. This is important and explains why advertisers are so interested in this group of listeners despite its relatively small size. It’s become more and more difficult for advertisers to connect with young men through traditional media, so they’re desperate to find alternative ways to reach them. Podcasting offers just such a means.
They are educated and employed Forty percent graduated from college, and podcast listeners are 69 percent more likely to be attending college right now than the average person. The majority hold a full-time blue- or white-collar job.
They don’t have kids The majority, 62 percent, are childless, which reflects their relatively young skew. This is something else advertisers like about them – no kids often means more disposable income.
They are affluent Twenty-eight percent of podcast listeners have household incomes above $100,000, with 4 percent above $250,000.
They are active and healthy The majority describe their health as excellent or very good, and no wonder – they are more likely than the average adult to swim, bike, jog and play team sports such as basketball and soccer.
A Russian-tied tech firm named in a controversial dossier containing uncorroborated allegations about President Donald Trump and the hacking of Democratic National Committee email accounts announced late Friday that it has filed defamation suits against the online news site BuzzFeed, its editor in chief and a former British intelligence agent.
According to mcclatchydc.com, the lawsuits were brought by XBT Holdings, a Cyprus-based company owned by Russian tech magnate Aleksej Gubarev. Lawyers for his firm filed complaints Friday in London against the former spy and his company, and against BuzzFeed and its editor in chief, Ben Smith, in Broward County Circuit Court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where XBT’s subsidiary Webzilla is headquartered.
“The dossier included libelous, unverified and untrue allegations regarding XBT, Webzilla and Gubarev. The lawsuits seek yet undetermined compensation for the damages suffered by XBT, Webzilla and Gubarev as the result of the publication of the dossier,” a statement said.
New York-based BuzzFeed Inc., which published the dossier in full on Jan. 10, wasn’t alone. Former spy Christopher Steele and his company Orbis Business Intelligence in London were named as defendants in the London suit.
In a statement to McClatchy, BuzzFeed spokesman Matt Mittenthal said Friday night, “We have redacted Mr. Gubarev’s name from the published dossier, and apologize for including it.”
Steele is a former British intelligence agent who conducted opposition research on behalf of Trump’s political opponents from both major U.S. parties. The dossier, which was shared privately with reporters, lawmakers and law enforcement, exploded into the national debate after FBI director James Comey presented it to President Barack Obama and then President-elect Donald Trump.
Among other things, the document alleged, without corroboration, that the Trump campaign had worked with the Kremlin on penetrating Democratic National Committee computers. The dossier alleges XBT’s involvement and names Gubarev, saying he cooperated with Russian spy agencies under duress.
Leading radio mobile app developer, jacapps, has announced an expansion of its sales force by adding former radio programmer, salesperson and on-air talent, Sari Zalesin, to focus on new product lines for radio. The company is shifting Alex Burnstein, who has held that role for the past seven years, into the newly created position of Director of Marketing.
jacapps President Paul Jacobs said, "Sari brings a unique set of skills and relationships to our company. She'll provide hands-on advice to our radio clients about how to promote and increase the effectiveness of their mobile apps, how to implement apps in platforms like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and much more."
Sari Zalesin
Adds jacapps COO Bob Kernen, "Sari's deep experience in radio will help the managers tasked with making key decisions around mobile strategy. She has an understanding of the challenges they face, as well as how to execute mobile promotions in key sectors that include on-air, programming, and sales. She will be a valuable resource to jacapps clients as she helps them optimize their mobile apps strategies."
Zalesin will focus on bringing jacapps' unique mobile solutions for audio content providers to the rapidly expanding market for mobile. That includes radio, but also digital pure-plays such as streaming radio and podcasters. "I'm excited to be joining this innovative, dynamic team that have long been leaders in the mobile space," says Zalesin.
Sari comes to jacapps with nearly three decades of radio broadcasting and voice over experience. She has held the title of Music Director/Talent Liaison and National On-Air Talent at XM Satellite Radio, as well as legendary radio brands that include WLLZ/Detroit, WCSX/Detroit, KZPS/Dallas, and WLUP/Chicago. Sari made national history when she became the first female public address announcer during the Dallas Stars' inaugural NHL season. Most recently, she has been an Account Executive for The Walt Disney Company/Radio Disney, CBS, and Michigan.com.
Alex Burnstein
Alex Burnstein is taking on the leadership of jacapps' newly formed marketing team. "Alex has been with us since the beginning," says Jacobs, "and her knowledge of our clients and their businesses will help us to better serve them, while also helping us to open up new markets for our company. jacapps is undergoing a tremendous growth spurt, not only in radio, but across other verticals that include health care, B2B, and others. Alex is one of the most experienced players in the mobile apps space whose broad knowledge of our business will help us continue that growth."
"From my sales experience at jacapps," comments Burnstein, "I am privileged to have a unique understanding of how our clients can benefit from a properly implemented mobile strategy. I'm excited to share this knowledge with all of the different businesses that we work with."
The new co-host of ESPN’s “SportsCenter” says she has a keen understanding of the legacy that previous anchors such as Chris Berman, Dan Patrick and Stuart Scott have left.
“‘SportsCenter’ is ESPN’s baby,” said Jemele Hill, who begins anchoring with her former “His & Hers” co-host Michael Smith at 6 p.m. Monday. “They’re leaving their baby in the hands of Mike and me. What we’re trying to do, while being ourselves, is carry on the tradition.”
Hill and Smith had been paired as hosts on ESPN2 since June 2013; their show became “His & Hers” a year later and concluded last month. Hill said they share sensibilities as former print journalists and have a strong allegiance to journalism while doing commentary.
Jemele Hill
In an ingterview with the Orlando Sentinel, she also stressed they are equals in driving the show with their opinions. She has never been afraid to offer her opinion, she added, because as a woman and a person of color, she has been getting hate mail since college.
“I realized a long time ago in college that it didn’t really matter what I wrote about, a negativity was going to be there,” she said. “Why not just say what I wanted to say? Let the backlash be damned.”
She dismissed as fantasy the view that politics and sports don’t mix.
“Politics have always been in sports, always,” she said. “People who say we should just stick to sports, it’s a very privileged position to come from. I wish I could have peace of mind to stick to one thing and not think about anything else in the world. I’m just not built that way.”
She tied ESPN’s ratings losses to established trends in an on-demand society and said Nielsen’s approach to measuring “is kind of antiquated.” ESPN’s expectations for the new “SportsCenter” team have never been spelled out, she added.
“We don’t talk ratings. We talk relevancy and content,” she said. “That’s all we really care about. We are in a great spot with ‘PTI’ as our lead-in. That’s arguably the best show on ESPN.” Read More Now
Since the 1970s, the term “information overload” has captured society’s anxiety about the growth in the production of information having potentially bad consequences for people as they struggle to cope with seemingly constant streams of messages and images. The advent of the internet, it was thought, would only exacerbate this, with the onset of ubiquitous connectivity turning information overload into something even more debilitating.
A recent Pew Research Center survey finds that, for the most part, the large majority of Americans do not feel that information overload is a problem for them. Some 20% say they feel overloaded by information, a decline from the 27% figure from a decade ago, while 77% say they like having so much information at their fingertips. Two-thirds (67%) say that having more information at their disposals actually helps to simplify their lives.
The survey shows that most Americans are comfortable with their abilities to cope with information flows in their day-to-day lives. Moreover, those who own more devices are also the ones who feel more on top of the data and media flows in their lives. Those who are more likely to feel information overload have less technology and are poorer, less well-educated and older.
The New York Times has launched a new daily podcast hosted by Michael Barbaro called “The Daily.” The show is billed as “a reimagining of a daily audio report for a digital audience." It will include a text messaging component and will be available on Alexa-enabled devices.
Each 15-20 minute weekday show will publish at 6 a.m. and will focus on the news of the day, featuring two to four stories.
Listeners can tune in on the Times’ site and mobile apps, or subscribe on Apple’s Podcast app or podcast app of choice.
A unique element of this audio show is Barbaro, who will communicate with listeners via text message. He will “share context, analysis and thoughts” on the day’s news with readers via SMS, as well as “act as a personal guide” to the news.
When you subscribe to his text messaging service, an automated text reply reads, “Michael Barbaro here from the NYT, ready to help you make sense of the news… More soon!”
The Times has recently upped its investment in audio shows. The newspaper hopes to introduce up to five new podcasts this year, adding to its existing seven series. Last year, the it launched four podcasts.
Bob “Notorious B.O.B.” Shoudt, the 50-year-old favorite coming in, downed 409 wings to win Wing Bowl 25, stage Friday at Sports WIP 94.1 FM.
“I’m happiest to be the oldest Wing Bowl champion, as well as the first champion from Pennsylvania in 20 years,” Shoudt said.
In a move that shocked both the crowd and WIP host Angelo Cataldi, Wingette Catherine was named the Wingette of the Year.
“I honestly don’t even have words, “ she said following her win. The good news is Catherine already knows how she plans to spend her $5,000 prize.
“I’m going to pay for school,” she said.
For 25 years, Angelo Cataldi, Al Morganti, and the 94WIP Morning Show have been throwing Philadephia’s biggest party which has turned into the biggest non-concert radio event in the world.
Wing Bowl 25 took place Friday, February 3rd at the Wells Fargo Center and there were plenty of attractions.
Sonny Geraci, whose voice can be heard on such classics as Time Won't Let Me by the Outsiders and Precious and Few by Climax, died on Sunday at the age of 69.
He had been in poor health since 2012 when he suffered an aneurysm, according to vintagevinylnews.com.
Salutes quickly appeared online from Dennis Tufano of the Buckinghams and the group The Shadows of Knight.
Originally known as the Starfires, a band from Cleveland that started in the late-50's that included Geraci, Mert Madsen, Richard Kriss, Al Austin and Jim Fox, later of the James Gang, they changed their name to the Outsiders in 1965.
The band signed with Capitol and their first single, Time Won't Let Me, went to number 5 in early 1966 followed by three more top 40 hits, Girl in Love (1966 / #21), Respectable (1966 / #15) and Help Me Girl (1966 / #37).
After the Outsiders broke up, Geraci formed a new version as The Outsiders Featuring Sonny Geraci and released a few singles on Bell but, after a legal battle, he was forced to change the band's name to Climax.
This band's biggest hit, Precious and Few, was originally recorded in 1970 but reworked by producer Larry Cox (Jefferson Starship). The record company didn't have a lot of confidence in the record so they test marketed it in Hawaii for six months. Precious and Few began to gain traction in the eastern U.S. before eventually breaking nationwide and going to number 3 in 1972.
Climax only had one other charting song, Life and Breath (1972 / #52 Pop / #15 Adult Contemporary). In total, they released nine singles under both the Outsiders and Climax names and had a number of other tracks in the vaults that were never used on a second album. They disbanded in 1975.
Les Alexander, a WCAO 600 AM disc jockey who was a well-known on-air personality in the rock 'n' roll era of the 1960s and early '70s, died Jan. 27 at the Commons at Brightmore, a Wilmington, N.C., retirement community.
Alexander Leslie Paternotte, who was known professionally as Les "The Beard" Alexander, was born in Stamford, Conn. He completed his freshman year at Princeton University and developed an interest in radio at the campus station, WPRB. He enlisted in the Army and served in Europe during World War II.
In 1911...Ronald Wilson Reagan was born. H who served as the 40th President of the United States from 1981 to 1989. Prior to his presidency, he served as the 33rd Governor of California from 1967 to 1975, following a career as an actor and union leader in Hollywood.
Raised in a poor family in small towns of Northern Illinois, Ronald Reagan graduated from Eureka College in 1932 and worked as a sports announcer on several regional radio stations. After moving to Hollywood in 1937.
In 1924…the first worship service heard over radio was aired
by the British Broadcasting Corporation in England. The service originated from
St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in London.
In 1925…WMCA signed-on at 880 AM. In 1928 it moved to the 570 kHz frequency, sharing time for
the next three years with municipally-owned WNYC.
In 1945, host Barry Gray began dropping music and adding
talk with celebrities and later call-in listeners; he is thus sometimes
considered "The Father of Talk Radio", and his show lasted on WMCA
through several decades and format changes.
WMCA began playing rock music in the late 1950s with a Top
40 format. Among its disc jockey staff were future legends Scott Muni and
Murray "the K" Kaufman.
In 1960, WMCA 570 AM began promoting itself by stressing its
on-air personalities, who were collectively known as the Good Guys.
Led by
program director Ruth Meyer, the first woman to hold the position in New York
City radio, this was the era of the high-profile Top 40 disc jockey with an
exuberant personality aimed at a certain audience segment. With the advent of
the Good Guys format, WMCA became more"on top" of new music and
started to become known for "playing the hits."
In the early 1960s, the top 40 format was still young, and
the field was crowded in New York City. Two major 50,000-watt stations, WMGM
1050 AM (now WEPN) and WINS 1010 AM, had battled each other for years. Then in
1960, WABC 770 am joined the fray and started featuring top 40 music.
Ultimately, it was WMCA's earnest competition with rival WABC that forced WMGM
(in early 1962) and then WINS (in spring 1965) to abandon the top-40 format.
There was so much attention on the high-profile WMCA-WABC battle that WMGM and
WINS were each summarily forced to find a new niche.
In 1926..Flashback 91-years and find out what was going on with radio...Click Here
In 1929…RCA Victor formed. Radio Corporation of America (RCA) purchased the Victor
Talking Machine Company, then the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs
(including the famous "Victrola") and phonograph records (in British
English, "gramophone records"). The company then became RCA-Victor.
With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the famous Nipper trademark.
In September 1931, RCA Victor introduced the first 33⅓ rpm
records sold to the public, calling them "Program Transcriptions".
These used a shallower and more closely spaced implementation of the large
"standard groove" found on contemporary 78 rpm records, rather than
the "microgroove" used for post-World War II 33⅓ rpm "LP"
(Long Play) records. In the depths of the Great Depression, the format was a
commercial failure, partly because the new playback equipment they required was
expensive. After two or three years the format was abandoned and two-speed
turntables were no longer offered in consumer products, but some Program
Transcriptions lingered in the company's record catalog throughout the decade.
In 1943…Frank Sinatra first appeared as a vocalist on the CBS radio show, "Your Hit Parade."
In 1950...“Dangerous Assignment” starring Brian Donlevy found a weekly timeslot on NBC Radio. The adventure show, set in many international venues, had tested well as a summer replacement six months earlier, and continued for about five years.
That same evening in 1950, also on NBC Radio, “Nightbeat” starring Frank Lovejoy as a newspaper reporter with an eye for human interest stories, began a two-and-a-half-year run.
Paul Harvey
In 1951...radio commentator Paul Harvey was arrested for trying to sneak into the Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago, to prove that security was lax at this top secret installation.
In 1974…the "CBS Mystery Theater" premiered on the
CBS Radio Network. Writers were paid a flat $350 per hour-long script, actors got the union scale of $73.92 per show.
In 1986...Radio consultant Bob Hattrick was found stabbed to death at his St. Louis home. Get the news and Flashback to 1986 through the pages of Radio&Records..Click Here
In 1991..Comedian, Singer, radio/TV personality Danny Thomas, whose career spanned five decades, died of a heart attack at age 76.
Danny Thomas and Doris Day 1952
Thomas first reached mass audiences on network radio in the 1940s playing shifty brother-in-law Amos in The Bickersons, which began as sketches on the music-comedy show Drene Time, co-hosted by Don Ameche and Frances Langford. Thomas also portrayed himself as a scatterbrained Lothario on this show. His other network radio work included a stint as Jerry Dingle the postman on Fanny Brice's The Baby Snooks Show, and appearances on the popular NBC variety program, The Big Show, hosted by stage legend Tallulah Bankhead.
Thomas also had his own radio program, The Danny Thomas Show. The 30-minute weekly variety show was on ABC in 1942-43 and on CBS in 1947-48.
As a "starving actor", Thomas had made a vow: If he found success, he would open a shrine dedicated to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of hopeless causes. Thomas never forgot his promise to St. Jude, and after becoming a successful actor in the early 1950s, his wife joined him and began traveling the United States to help raise funds to build his dream - St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. He fervently believed “no child should die in the dawn of life.” With help from Dr. Lemuel Diggs and close friend, Anthony Abraham, an auto magnate in Miami, Florida, Thomas founded the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1962. Since its inception, St. Jude has treated children from all 50 states and around the world, continuing the mission of finding cures and saving children.
In 1998...Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys died of cancer. He was 51
Joe O'Brien
In 2000…Former WMCA Good Guy Joe O'Brien retired. A Yonkers native, he began his career in 1935 when he got his first radio job with WMCA-AM in New York City.
He worked at the station for 34 years and became one of the Good Guys team of disc jockeys in the late 1960's. They played Top 40 hits and became nearly as popular as the music they played.
They had the same clean-cut hairstyles, wore matching suits and worked together at record hops and personal appearances. They also sang as a group and released an album. During that time, Mr. O'Brien was the No. 1 morning man in New York City.
In 1970 he left for WNBC-AM, where he handled morning duties until he was replaced by Don Imus in 1972. Mr. O'Brien then went to WHUD in Peekskill, N.Y. He retired in 1986, but continued to do weekend specials for WHUD until 2000.
O'Brien was killed in an auto accident July 26, 2005 at age 90.
In 2006...Buffalo’s WWKB 1520 AM ended their music era as Classic Hits station with “Yesterday’s Gone” by Chad & Jeremy.
In 2005...Karl Haas, host of the long-running syndicated classical music radio program "Adventures in Good Music," died of multiple organ failure at 91. Haas began his radio program Adventures in Good Music on WJR in Detroit, Michigan in 1959. Syndicated broadcasts of the show across the United States began in 1970 on WCLV, Cleveland, Ohio. The show was eventually syndicated to commercial and public radio stations around the world and became the world's most widely listened-to classical music radio program.
In 2006….ABC announced plans to sell 24 radio stations to
Citadel.
In 2014…Baseball announcer/former MLB outfielder (Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians)/Baseball Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner, who was a New York Mets broadcaster for more than 50 years, died while battling Bell's palsy at the age of 91.
