Cbs Radio

It may take two shock jocks to hold Howard Stern's microphone at CBS Radio. Two years after firing Greg "Opie" Hughes and Anthony Cumia for broadcasting an alleged sexual encounter as it was taking place in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral, CBS Radio is in talks to bring them back. David Lee Roth, the former Van Halen frontman who replaced Stern four months ago, has clashed openly with his bosses, fighting over his show's format and engaging in angry, on-air rants.

Like Levi Strauss, who got rich selling goods to immigrants during the Gold Rush, the founders of Triton Digital are making their fortune by providing the technology to radio companies wanting to mine digital gold. Neal Schore and Mike Agovino, two old-school radio executives and onetime competitors, launched their Sherman Oaks company in 2006 to give traditional radio stations and webcasters a way to distribute their content online and on mobile devices. The partners also devised a way for these companies to make money by automatically inserting ads into radio programs and measuring audience engagement.

CBS Radio Inc., a unit of CBS Corp., said it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs at its radio stations in the U.S. as part of a previously announced plan to manage costs. The company, based in New York, declined to specify the number of jobs it would cut. A source familiar with the matter said CBS was eliminating about 115 out of more than 8,500 full- and part-time positions at its 179 stations. CBS had announced plans more than a month ago to divest several stations in smaller markets.

Rollin Post, who covered generations of local, state and national politicians from his perch as one of the Bay Area's most enduring and respected TV journalists, has died. He was 81. Post died Monday at his home in the Marin County suburb of Corte Madera from complications arising from Alzheimer's disease, his family announced. In an era of fluffy news and blow-dried personalities, Post remained a throwback to the era of his broadcast hero, Edward R. Murrow. He was not always perfectly coiffed or properly pressed.

Arbitron Inc., a company that provides ratings for radio stations, made a breakthrough toward establishing its new electronic audience measurement system with an announcement that CBS Radio had signed a seven-year deal to use its system. Arbitron has been facing resistance from broadcasters for months against adopting its "portable people meter" electronic ratings system, and a 24-member group of radio broadcasters and advertisers set up to evaluate new ratings methods has yet to endorse it.

CBS Radio Inc. agreed Thursday to pay $2 million to nonprofit New York music programs to settle an investigation by state officials that some employees received vacation trips, gift cards and merchandise from record labels to play their songs. The deal marks the first settlement that New York Atty. Gen.

In the wake of declining radio revenue, CBS Corp. said Monday that it was replacing Joel Hollander, chief executive of CBS Radio, with a former president of the group, Dan Mason. The nation's second-largest radio group announced this year that revenue declined 7% in the year ended Dec. 31 after shock jock Howard Stern was lured from CBS to Sirius Satellite Radio Inc.

Larry LeSueur, whose vivid dispatches brought World War II into America's living rooms as a member of the fabled band of CBS radio correspondents led by Edward R. Murrow, died of Parkinson's disease Wednesday at his home in Washington, D.C. He was 93. He was one of the last two members of the group of erudite, adventure-seeking reporters who came to be known as "Murrow's Boys." The group, which included Charles Collingwood, Eric Sevareid and Howard K.

In the last 18 months, CBS Radio has lost two of the most influential, provocative and lucrative talk show hosts in radio history. And with them, loads of money and profit. First, Howard Stern defected to satellite radio in December 2005. The shock jock's departure cost CBS an estimated $100 million in annual revenue and was a major reason behind the company's 7% drop in sales in 2006.

CBS Radio and MSNBC are suspending Don Imus' radio program for two weeks in an effort to staunch the furor after the controversial talk show host called the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."

Slacker Inc., a San Diego-based digital music service, has ousted CBS Radio in a multiyear deal to deliver online radio to AOL Inc.'s 6 million listeners. The agreement, announced Tuesday and scheduled to take effect later this summer, will more than double Slacker's audience of 5 million monthly users. Slacker's listeners are just a fraction of the 34 million people a month who tune in mostly for free to Pandora, a rival Internet radio service whose parent company began selling shares on the New York Stock Exchange two weeks ago. Unlike Pandora, which makes most of its money from selling ads, Slacker has focused on getting its listeners to pay for its premium subscription services.

Joseph Wershba, a pioneering CBS reporter and producer whose work on Edward R. Murrow's "See It Now" series in the 1950s helped expose the McCarthy era's communist witch hunt and demonstrated the power of television, has died. He was 90. Wershba, a two-time Emmy Award winner who was one of the original segment producers on "60 Minutes," died Saturday of pneumonia at North Shore Hospital on Long Island, said his wife, Shirley. In what became a more than 50-year career in broadcast and print journalism, Wershba joined CBS radio as a news writer in New York in 1944 and later worked on Murrow's "Hear It Now" radio series before it moved to television in 1952 as "See It Now. " Wershba was the on-camera reporter and field producer on "The Case Against Lt. Milo Radulovich A0589839," a 1953 "See It Now" segment that demonstrated the excesses and dangers of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist crusade and the effects of guilt by association.

Himan Brown, the pioneer radio producer and director of "Grand Central Station," "Inner Sanctum Mysteries" and other popular shows of the 1930s and '40s who returned to the airwaves three decades later with " CBS Radio Mystery Theater," has died. He was 99. Brown died Friday of age-related causes at his longtime apartment on Central Park West in Manhattan, said his granddaughter Melina Brown. In a career in radio that began in the medium's infancy in the late 1920s, the prolific Brown's credits include "The Adventures of the Thin Man," "Bulldog Drummond," "Dick Tracy," "Flash Gordon," "The Adventures of Nero Wolfe," "Terry and the Pirates" and many others.

The anemic advertising market drained the profit from CBS Corp. The broadcasting company, which owns the CBS network, television and radio stations and a bevy of billboards, on Thursday reported a first-quarter net loss of $55.3 million, or 8 cents a share. That compared with net income of $244.3 million, or 36 cents, for the same period last year.

KLSX-FM (97.1), the L.A. talk station that is home to Adam Carolla, Tom Leykis and Tim Conway Jr., will switch to a music format at 5 p.m. Friday. The station will call itself AMP Radio and, like top-rated KIIS-FM (102.7), will feature contemporary pop hits by the likes of Beyonce, Kanye West, Justin Timberlake and Kelly Clarkson. In announcing the switch Wednesday, CBS Radio said the new station will "combine the power of its on-air position with myriad online and digital applications."

CBS declared itself "Mentally Strong" in a news release the other day, trumpeting the big ratings for the network's latest hit drama, "The Mentalist." Fiscally fit, however, is the question. The broadcasting giant today reports quarterly results, and Wall Street is bracing for grim numbers -- and looking for CBS Corp. to outline a strategy for how it will navigate the choppy waters ahead.

Like Levi Strauss, who got rich selling goods to immigrants during the Gold Rush, the founders of Triton Digital are making their fortune by providing the technology to radio companies wanting to mine digital gold. Neal Schore and Mike Agovino, two old-school radio executives and onetime competitors, launched their Sherman Oaks company in 2006 to give traditional radio stations and webcasters a way to distribute their content online and on mobile devices. The partners also devised a way for these companies to make money by automatically inserting ads into radio programs and measuring audience engagement.

Nancy C. Widman, with CBS since 1972, has been named president of the CBS Radio Division. Widman, who will start her new job on Aug. 1, currently is vice-president for CBS-owned radio stations. She will succeed current CBS Radio president Robert L. Hoskings, a 30-year CBS veteran who is taking early retirement at the end of July.

Yahoo Inc. is plugging its Internet radio service into CBS Corp.'s webcasting network in a move driven by dramatically higher fees for airing music online. Yahoo's retreat from operating a stand-alone service, announced Wednesday, makes it the second major website this year to flee the rising royalty rates by hitching its radio operations to CBS. AOL Radio, owned by Time Warner Inc., hooked up with CBS in June.

For CBS Corp., it wasn't video that killed the radio star -- but a severe downturn in local advertising. The New York-based broadcasting company, controlled by billionaire Sumner Redstone, said Thursday that it planned to sell 50 radio stations in a dozen mid-size markets as ad revenue continued to slide in a weak economy. The company's once-mighty radio division continued to produce static and a drag on the company's earnings. Revenue rose barely 1% to $3.