E.W. Scripps has completed its sale of eight radio stations, which marks the final steps of divesting its radio division. The media company sold stations in Boise, ID and Tucson, AZ to Lotus Communications for $8 million. Continue Reading
Veritone announced that it has entered an agreement to provide advertising insights to Univision Communications’ nationwide Spanish-language radio network. Univision stations will be able to leverage Veritone’s aiWARE artificial intelligence service to access near real-time insights and advertising performance intelligence. Continue Reading
Tencent Music Entertainment has launched its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, making the long-awaited move to go public just before the year’s end. The Chinese music company has priced its shares at $13 a piece for a total of $1.1 billion. Continue Reading
Pandora has hired a new member of its programming team. Akim Bryant joins the audio company in the role of top 40 coordinator, curation programming. He will be based in Pandora’s New York office and will work closely with Tiana Lewis. Continue Reading
In a milestone that potentially moves the podcast measurement needle away from downloads and toward listens, NPR has formally launched RAD (Remote Audio Data). It has been in development for a year, supported by a broad consortium of podcast hosting and content companies. Continue Reading
For years, radio professionals have started their day by reading Tom Taylor NOW Newsletter, delivered promptly at 4:00am (ET). After December 21, that habit could be a memory. In today’s edition of NOW (December 11) entitled A Radio Goodbye, Tom Taylor announced his retirement, and the final edition of the newsletter. But is it really the end? Continue Reading
Brief news items and worthy reads from around the web: Broadcasting to British millennials. Two journalism awards for WNYC podcasts. Unqualified finds a home at WeWork. Continue Reading
AWAL, the artist services company owned by Kobalt, announced plans to open an office in Canada. The new location in Toronto is currently hiring for several positions. The office is scheduled to open in early 2019. Continue Reading
Deloitte has released its 2019 predictions and is forecasting a big year ahead for smart speakers. The company projected that the smart speaker market will be worth $7 billion in 2019, a spike of 63% for total industry revenue. The report also gave a positive outlook for radio and artificial intelligence. Continue Reading
Results of a major new consumer research study performed by Edison Research, supported by Pandora and Omnicom MediaGroup, has been released today. top-line takeaways include frequency of station switching among AM/FM listeners, and desire for digital technology in dashboards. Continue Reading
Tencent Music Entertainment is facing yet another hurdle as its planned IPO date approaches. Investor Hanwei Guo is suing Guomin Xie, the company’s co-president, claiming that the exec allegedly coerced him into selling his equity stake in Ocean Music, which later became Tencent Music Entertainment. Continue Reading
Diversification and digitization were the twin keynotes for Australian radio in 2018, according to Josh McDonnell writing in AdNews. There, he presents predictions from leaders in Australia’s biggest radio groups Nova Entertainment, Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), Macquarie Media, iHeartRadio Australia & Asia, and trade group for the Aussie radio industry Commercial Radio Australia (CRA). Continue Reading