The axe swings again at Entercom, this time across the company’s country and alternative stations.
1 Like
Thanks so much for the kind words, a sad day for radio in the US indeed.
3 Likes
Howard Stern has extended his long-running deal with SiriusXM for his flagship show by five years.
1 Like
When voice tracking goes wrong. Listening to a US station the other day and the song was announced 30 minutes before being heard.
3 Likes
yep … only in America 
2 Likes
Hurricane Ida causing havoc in New Orleans - had taken all iHeartMedia and Cumulus Media stations off air last Monday.
4 Likes
4 Likes
Canadian radio survey data to no longer be released to the public - perhaps the US could be next considering they too are fairly limited in their data releases anyway (only releasing the raw 6+ numbers).
https://radioinsight.com/headlines/241871/numeris-ceases-making-canadian-ratings-data-public-2/
2 Likes
Lance’s editorial in that link is correct.
In a world of ever increasing measurement via electronic data gathering/big data, this is a dinosaur, myopic decision that CRA would be in lockstep with.
To remove transparency of audience currency to the public will undermine sales confidence and integrity for clients.
I can’t see this being sustainable long term.
3 Likes
1 Like
The satellite radio company SiriusXM plans to cut 475 jobs, or 8% of its workforce, as part of broader restructuring efforts due to new business investments and economic uncertainty, according to a Monday SEC filing.
The layoffs will impact nearly every department and follow a November review to identify areas where the company could improve agility and efficiency, CEO Jennifer Witz said in an email sent to employees Monday morning (US time).
2 Likes
Last year Audacy bought KDWN 720 AM Las Vegas as part of a convoluted station and property deal with KDWN’s previous owner Beasley, giving them both KDWN and KXNT, the two biggest conservative talk stations in the market, albeit not rating anywhere near what they once did.
As of March 1 this year, Audacy has shut down KDWN’s AM signal, leaving it on its FM translator 101.5 FM.
KDWN historically had been a 50kW blowtorch heard quite easily across much of the western United States (although more recently dropped to 25kW when Beasley moved transmitter site in 2020) and was the original home of Art Bell’s Coast To Coast AM. It was also the primary entry point for the Emergency Alert System for southern Nevada.
The EAS primary entry point has been moved to KXNT 840 AM, which is 50kW by day and 25kW by night, with plans to reduce nighttime power further to 10kW.
4 Likes
The sign offs (readily searchable through YouTube) were quite interesting as they didn’t happen as soon as they had originally specified, plus KDWN (not sure about the other one from the recordings I’ve seen) kept their daytime power through the night on the day of the sign off for a true DX test - complete with morse code at the very ending minutes!
3 Likes
Bell Media switches off 6 AM stations, cuts 1300 jobs.
4 Likes
Relating to the AM stations - hardly surprised about that, most of those were former sports radio stations (connected to Bell’s TSN brand and CHUM’s “The Team” before that) that they then cut back to eastern Canada [Edmonton remained an outlier in that] - and their replacement formats (particularly the full-time stand up comedy ones) always seemed a bit of a stop-gap while Bell worked out what to do with them.
CJBK unfortunately looks like just a victim of the thinning out of content outside the main centres - I think we’re all too familiar with that in regional AUS. They still serve London via news on the local CTV 2 station, but I wonder how much longer those types of bulletins will survive for. [That probably also speaks of the state of Canadian media given London, Ont. is about the size of Canberra population-wise, although it is rather disconnected from the GTHA.]
Thirteen hundred jobs are across the Bell mothership [a.k.a. BCE]'s entire workforce; the cut at Bell Media looks like a bit more than 300 jobs, per a CBC report stating a 6% cut there; much of it in the news department. (I suspect a lot of early reports focused only on Bell Media, but it looks like a large chunk will be cut from Bell’s phone/mobile/cable side too.)
4 Likes
Really sad to read of the underinvestment and terminal decline of AM that didn’t need to happen. Literally throwing licences away.
This could always happen in Australia. Who will be keen to acquire the licences and innovate?
2 Likes
I guess the first answer in the current moment is “SEN probably”, not exactly too many other buyers of cheap radio “wherever they can get them from” right now, especially in AM… but that’d probably completely fail the second part of your question. 
On the other hand, with how concentrated and integrated (across TV, radio, and especially pay TV) Canadian media is, and the fact that English-language media in particular is struggling to pay their way - Canadian content usually doesn’t rate, and the likes of Netflix and Disney+ exist to compete with local cord-cutting options like Bell’s Crave - it almost seems inevitable that things go via the wayside there - and losses in TV are inevitably going to spill over into radio.
(Francophone media perhaps less affected, given how much of its reach is concentrated in Montreal, and a lot of everything else in Quebec province have been semi-satellites for decades, and they seem to prefer Franco-Canadian content as opposed to content from France… but regardless)
2 Likes
Bell Media confirmed in a separate internal memo late last week that it intends to sell 45 of its 103 radio stations to seven buyers, with the sales subject to Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission’s approval and other closing conditions. The affected radio stations are in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada.
3 Likes
Interesting move. Wonder what their main drivers are
1 Like