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Volume 23, Issue 21, Jim Carnegie, Editor & Publisher

Tuesday Morning January 31st, 2006

Radio News ®

Adam Carolla gets ire of 3AF, AAJC
over Asian awards parody
CBS Radio KLSX-FM LA morning man Adam Carolla has angered both the Asian American Justice Center (AAJC) and Asian American Advertising Federation (3AF) for mocking the Asian Excellence Awards show on his 1/24 show. Carolla joked about the awards show and used "ching-chong" sounds in a parody of the sound of the Awards show. Both groups are threatening boycotts. AAJC President Karen Narasaki says Carolla "Demeaned the work of Asian American actors, directors, and producers and perpetuated the stereotype of Asian Americans as foreigners...Unless Carolla is strongly reprimanded, and the station and CBS Radio apologize, we will be forced to ask advertisers to withdraw their support of his show." CBS Radio spokesperson Karen Mateo tells us the bit was meant to be humorous and they didn't mean to offend anybody with the comments. No word yet if there was an apology issued.
| Read 3AF President's letter here |

Weston grows regional group
1 Chronicles 14, a radio group started by Gregg Weston in 2004, is back on the acquisition trail. Active in Texas and New Mexico, its latest strike entails only one unrated radio market but both states. It's getting KICA-AM/KKYC-FM Clovis NM, KMUL-AM/KICA-FM Farwell TX and KMUL-FM Muleshoe from Broadcast Entertainment Corporation. According to Media Services Group's Bill Whitley and Tom McKinley, the value of the five station cluster is 1,367,500. The acquisition adds to Weston's group, which includes 2004 acquisition KVRP AM & FM near Abilene TX, KBHT-FM Crockett TX and KBIM AM & FM Roswell NM. The Crockett and Roswell stations were bought in 2005.

RBR observation: The Clovis cluster is in and alongside the Texas panhandle. If you imagine a baseball field where Lubbock is home plate and Amarillo is second base, Clovis is third. According to the Whitley/McKinley number for this deal and documents filed with the FCC, the Clovis expenditure brings Weston's total recent investment in station ownership to just under 2.4M.

Change at the top set for Meredith
Meredith Corporation has only one radio station (WNEM-AM Saginaw, MI) operating alongside its 14 TV stations and 25 magazines, but the entire operation is about to get a new boss. Steve Lacy will move up to CEO on July 1st as current Chairman & CEO William Kerr relinquishes the CEO part of his title to become non-executive Chairman of the Board of Directors. Lacy has been President and COO since May 2004, having held several top management positions at Meredith after joining the company as VP & CFO in 1998. In a statement, Kerr had praise for his successor, saying Lacy had "collaborated with me on every key strategic initiative and decision over the last five years and is extremely qualified for this position."

Meredith boosts dividend
Meredith Corporation is the latest media company to kick off the new year with a dividend boost. The 14% increase will boost the quarterly dividend by two cents to 16 cents per share. The new, higher dividend will be paid March 15th to shareholders of record on February 28th. Meredith began paying a dividend 59 years ago and has increased it each year for the past 13 consecutive years.

Barton wants DTV transition
to stay on schedule
The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee listened to a parade of New Orleans hospital execs last week, who agreed that communications failures were one of the primary hurdles they had to get over after Hurricane Katrina hit and the levees failed. Although most in Congress and affected industries seem to be on the same page regarding the hard date for the DTV transition, the hearing gave Energy and Commerce Chairman Joe Barton (R-TX) a chance to renew the call for keeping to the deadline. In a release, his office said, "Legislation authored by the Energy and Commerce Committee offers great promise to enhance first-responder communication capabilities. S. 1932 requires TV and radio broadcasters to vacate critical radio frequencies by Feb. 17, 2009, clearing the way for emergency workers to adopt cutting-edge communications equipment to use over those wavelengths. The bill, which also makes up to one billion available to help public safety agencies obtain and deploy interoperable communications systems, is expected win final passage in early February and has the backing of President Bush."

RBR observation: And our question is this: Just what radio broadcaster spectrum give-back is the gentleman from Texas referring to?

Ad Business Report TM

Mercedes launches new S-Class
with campaign
As Mercedes-Benz prepares to deliver the 2007 S-Class to dealer showrooms, the company has debuted a new campaign that includes broadcast, print and internet. The effort for the new S-Class, now in its ninth generation, kicks off on such top-rated programming as Lost, Desperate Housewives, CSI, Grey's Anatomy, Two and a Half Men, 24, as well as the State of the Union Address. The broadcast campaign includes two brand ads and a launch ad for the new S-Class.
| Read More... |

RAB holding NYC forum on radio advertising
New Rules For Radio: What's The Frequency, a one-day advertising summit the RAB says will shatter the old images of radio, takes place 3/15 at the Grand Hyatt in New York City. The first-ever event features marketing and media experts who will share their proven strategies for building brands and increasing sales with radio advertising. William Lamar, Jr., Chief Marketing Officer for McDonald's USA, will deliver a keynote address during the closing luncheon, which is sponsored by Media Monitors. Additional agenda topics include: Radio In A Digital World, The ROI Advantage Study from the Radio Ad Effectiveness Lab (RAEL), Meet Multicultural Radio, and Not Just Spots, a look at creative Radio plans.

Hill Holliday commits to Nielsen Monitor-Plus
and Nielsen's Product Placement Service
Nielsen Monitor-Plus announced it has signed a multi-year agreement with Hill Holliday, to be the agency's provider of advertising information services. Under the multi-year agreement, Nielsen Monitor-Plus will supply U.S. competitive advertising intelligence to Hill Holliday. Hill Holliday is a Top 20 U.S. agency with billings of 850 million. Hill Holliday is the latest IPG agency to sign for Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Other IPG agencies that rely on Monitor-Plus for their competitive advertising intelligence include Dailey and Associates, FCB, and Lowe. Nielsen Monitor-Plus currently provides advertising intelligence to many of the top advertising organizations, media specialists and advertising agencies in the U.S. The client list includes Omnicom, Havas, Starcom MediaVest Group, Carat, Mediacom, Doner, Wieden & Kennedy, WestWayne, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Colle+McVoy, Barkley Evergreen, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, davidandgoliath, and other Top 100 Agency Brands. As part of the new agreement, Nielsen Monitor-Plus will supply Hill Holliday with Ad*Views, its software interface that offers reporting capabilities including digital snapshots of all TV and magazine creatives, trending of ad dollars, brand detail to the variant level, POD Positioning and Magazine Forward Placement Reports.

FCC disagrees with Bid4Spots
The FCC contacted RBR/TVBR with the news that a recent claim remnant inventory auction house Bid4Spots made was incorrect (1/27/06 RBR #19). Bid4Spots claimed the FCC has said that rates for remnant airtime sold through its site are exempt from the equal-access, political rate guidelines. From the FCC's Rebecca Fisher: "We have spoken to the people at Bid 4 Spots and they have agreed to take it off of their website."

Media Business Report TM

New magazine to target
Hispanic sports fans
Fox Pan American Sports has cut a licensing agreement with Cuatro Media Inc. to produce and distribute a monthly magazine in the US to be called Fox Sports en Espanol. Ad sales will be led by Cuatro Media Director of Sales Jeffrey Duque in close cooperation with PUBLICIAS-LHM and the sales team at the Fox Sports en Espanol cable operation, led by Tom Maney, Sr. VP of Advertising Sales. The partners say the magazine will kick off March 23rd with a circulation of 750,000. It will initially be available in New York, Chicago, Miami, LA Dallas and Houston through local Hispanic newspapers - - and nationally via subscription. "Among Hispanics, sports are a deep rooted passion. We created a magazine that respects our readers and takes this passion very seriously. We are particularly excited about launching in this very special year when the soccer and baseball world cuts coincide," said Luis Vinuales, Editor in Chief of the new publication. This magazine is just the first half of a two-part launch. Later this year the partners plan to launch a second magazine aimed at sports enthusiasts through the Spanish-speaking Americas. Fox Pan American Sports is an international sports programming and production entity jointly owned by Hicks, Muse, Tate and Furst and Fox Sports International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.

Media Markets & Money TM

Radio Seoul sells to S & S
Radio vets Dean Sorenson and Art Sutton are teaming together to buy a Georgia FM on the fringe of the Atlanta market from Radio Seoul. The company name under which the station will be acquired is Sorenson Southeast Radio. WHEL-FM Helen GA will amount to a geographical stretch for Sorenson, whose 22-station group is scattered in midwest outposts in the states of South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. However, it's in Sutton's backyard - - his Georgia-Carolina Radiocasting is based about 20 miles away from Helen in Toccoa GA. The new owners-to-be plan to refocus the station on local programming.

RBR observation: No price was announced for this acquisition. However, when Radio Seoul agreed to buy it from Clear Channel last summer, the deal was pegged at 650K (6/6/05 RBR #110).

Washington Media Business Report TM

FM Auction tops 70M
Virtual bidding for 165 sticks has gone over the 70M mark as Round 55 of FM Auction No. 62 was put in the books. Of that, 54.2M was in cold, hard cash, thanks to bidding credits among those possessing provisional winners. Six stations are currently bereft of any bidder attention. 16 stations have attracted over 1M virtual dollars; three of them drop into six-figure territory when credits are factored in.

Internet Media Business Report TM

Blog deal for Olympics
No doubt there will be many, many bloggers following the Winter Olympics in Torino, but NBC has made a deal designating an official Olympics blog to be created by About.com, owned by the New York Times Company. The "About Olympics" blog will be featured on both About.com and NBCOlympics.com, the network's online home for the 2006 Olympic Games. The blog will be written by James Martin of About.com's Guide to Europe. According to the joint announcement, Martin's blog "will cover the human stories behind the scenes at the Olympic Games."

Ratings & Research

Tech bottlenecks crimp sports deals for mobile phones
Early deals licensing mobile rights for sports content favor medium-range terms of 2-5 years, exclusivity, minimum guarantees instead of revenue-sharing and are constrained by technology, industry leaders said in a Kagan Research mobile sports rights audio conference 1/26.
| Read More... |

Transactions

30M KTBU-TV Houston (Conroe TX). 100% of Humanity Interested Media Inc. from Lakewood Church to HIM GP LLC, a subsidiary of US Farm & Ranch Supply Co. Inc. d/b/a USFR MEdia Group (Gregory L. Brown). 500K escrow, balance in cash at closing. Station is indy on Channel 55 (DTV 42). [File date 1/13/06.]

230K WPJX-AM Chicago (Zion IL) from Multicultural Broadcasting Inc. (Edward Rim, Juilet Rim, Elizabeth Gaffney) to Polnet Communications Ltd. (Walter Kotaba). Cash. Superduopoly with WNVR-AM Vernon Hills, WEEF-AM Highland Park, WKTA-AM Evanston, all IL. [File date 1/13/06.]

N/A FM CP Indianapolis (Lebanon IN) from Horizon Christian Fellowship of Indianapolis Inc. (William Goodrich) to Horizon Christian Fellowship (Michael MacIntosh). Donation. CP is for Class A on 91.5 mHz with 130 w @ 144'. [File date 1/13/06.]

Stock Talk

Waiting for the Fed
Stock prices were mixed on Monday as traders waited to see what develops as the Federal Reserve's policy making board meets today. The Dow Industrials were off seven points on Monday to 10,900, but the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were up slightly.

Radio stocks were also mixed. The Radio Index slipped 0.035, or 0.02%, to 177.945. The biggest movers were CBS Class A, up 2%, and Journal, down 4.9%.

Radio Stocks

**Here's how stocks fared on Monday**
Company	Symbol	Close		Change	Company	Symbol	Close		Change
Arbitron	ARB		39.57	-0.60	Hearst-Argyle	HTV		23.91	-0.07
Beasley	BBGI		13.80	-0.23	Interep	IREP		0.45	+0.06
CBS CI. B	CBS		27.27	+0.47	Jeff-Pilot	JP		57.61	+0.48
CBS CI. A	CBSa		27.38	-0.01	Journal Comm.	JRN		12.31	-0.64
Citadel	CDL		12.36	+0.19	Radio One, Cl. A	ROIA		10.61	+0.04
Clear Channel	CCU		29.28	-0.01	Radio One, Cl. D	ROIAK		10.61	+0.01
Cox Radio	CXR		14.12	+0.14	Regent	RGCI		4.72	-0.06
Cumulus	CMLS		13.25	+0.17	Saga Commun.	SGA		10.05	-0.02
Disney	DIS		25.46	+0.38	Salem Comm.	SALM		15.30	-0.38
Emmis	EMMS		17.69	+0.16	Sirius Sat. Radio	SIRI		5.86	-0.01
Entercom	ETM		30.13	+0.43	Spanish Bcg.	SBSA		5.51	-0.04
Entravision	EVC		7.09	-0.01	Univision	UVN		31.82	+0.41
Fisher	FSCI		42.90	+0.59	Westwood One	WON		14.97	+0.15
Gaylord	GET		43.56	+0.21	XM Sat. Radio	XMSR		26.43	-1.04

Bounceback

Send Us Your Opinions We want to
hear from you.
This is your column, so send your comments and
a photo to [email protected]

I don't get a chance to listen to much radio while I'm working, but I did hear New York station WAXQ-FM (Q 104.3) host Jim Kerr mention recently that the station is now transmitting on HD-2, inviting listeners to tune in. Commercial free and Fee free. Why am I not seeing outside advertising from the New York metro stations and area electronics retailers about the availability of HD-2 signals and sets to pick them up? I'm ready to buy a receiver, but I don't see them advertised - newspapers, TV. And I don't really know which stations in the New York market are transmitting these extra channels. And I certainly am not seeing anything in automobile ads in any medium telling me that I can get HD-2 and not pay a monthly fee. What's wrong with this picture?

Michael B. Levine
Director of Affiliate Relations
Matrix Media Inc.

Below the Fold

Ad Business Report
Hill Holliday commits to Nielsen
Signed a multi-year agreement...

Media Business Report
Print deal for Fox Sports
en Espanol has cut a licensing agreement w/ Cuatro Media...

Media Markets & Money
Radio Seoul sells to S & S
Radio vets Dean Sorenson Art Sutton teaming up...

Internet Media Business Report
NBC sets official blog
For Olympics made a deal created by About.com...

Radio Media Moves

Macleod to
Greater Media
Don Macleon has been named Senior Marketing Executive of Greater Media Philadelphia, responsible for seeing the four-station cluster's branding initiatives, idea creation and cume generation. He was previously Marketing Director for Clear Channel's WKTU-FM & WWPR-FM New York.

Agovino joins MusicToGo
MusicToGo, a software development company for the radio industry, announced that former Interep Co-COO Michael Agovino has joined the company as a partner. Additionally, MusicToGo also announced that it has signed another group-wide agreement; this one is with Citadel Broadcasting. Under the agreement, Citadel's stations will have their own customized digital music downloading stores reached via their individual station websites.

Stations for Sale

Northern NewEng
AM & FM stations. Separate
operations. Gross 450K+-.
Good upside. 850K.
[email protected] or
lv msg @ 781-848-4201

S.E. AM/FM $700 K.
Outdoorsman's Delight
Fish, Hunt & Work
Ken Hawkins 334-514-2241
[email protected]

More News Headlines

Richard Klaus
dead at 86
Long-time Ohio broadcaster Richard Klaus has died at age 86, according to obituaries in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Akron Beacon Journal. During his 60 year career in broadcasting, Klaus managed a number of radio and TV stations in the Cleveland and Akron markets. The company he founded, Media-Com Inc., currently owns WJMP-AM & WNIR-FM Akron, along with LPTV stations in Akron and Cleveland.

TVBR - TV News

Analyst sees big bucks for CBS in retrans
What will retransmission consent payments be worth to CBS Corporation as CEO Les Moonves negotiates new deals with cable MSOs over the next few years? Moonves has said repeatedly that he will insist that the CBS O&O stations will be paid by local cable systems to carry their signals. According to Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente, those payments could add up to about two bucks worth of value per share for CBS stockholders. Depending on the average monthly payment per subscriber by the MSOs, DiClemente sees CBS raking in 60-300 million in annual retransmission consent payments. CEO Les Moonves revealed last week that the company is already receiving 25 million annually from MSOs under deals cut when it was paired with Viacom's cable nets. Here are DiClemente's calculations.
| View the Chart |

TVBR observation: Attacking the math in a different way, Bear Stearns analyst Victor Miller came to a similar conclusion in a report issued earlier this month. He figured that retransmission consent payments would add up to about 147.5 million annually for CBS and add 1.6-1.7 billion to the company's value - - ultimately representing about two bucks a share. So, we're all agreed on how much CBS should be getting from the MSOs. Now it's up to Les Moonves to go out and actually collect!

RBR Radar 2005

Radio News you won't read any where else. RBR--First, Accurate, and Independently Owned.

CBS looks to buy, even as it sells
Although CBS Corporation is looking to sell Paramount Parks and perhaps a few of its smaller radio stations, CEO Les Moonves is also on the hunt for acquisitions. "We're looking into getting into new media. Obviously we're strong in content and if there's the right content acquisition that fits with what we do and helps our distribution properties, then we would look! at that. I wouldn't mind expanding a bit internationally if there's the right opportunity there."
01/30/06 RBR #20

Retail Sales Manger
This is where the new money is today and for the future. Not selling spots that can be erased. Clear Channel- Minneapolis, top 20 market, has this unique opening and seeking a unique person to teach with leadership. This is not a spreadsheet position but one of growth to build a retail team.
See Radio Careers

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