2012 Giants of Broadcasting Honorees Announced

RADIO ONLINE | Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The 10th annual staging of the Giants of Broadcasting, a yearly event sponsored by the Library of American Broadcasting and celebrating distinguished leadership or performance in television and radio, is scheduled for October 18 in New York's Grand Hyatt Hotel. The Library has announced the first nine professionals who will be recognized in 2012 for their contributions to those media in the last half-century. The distinguished honorees join 140 Giants of Broadcasting who have been honored by the Library since 2003.

Radio will be represented this year by George Beasley and Erica Farber. Beasley is chairman, CEO and founder of Beasley Broadcast Group Inc. and one of the earliest adopters of HD Radio digital technology. Beasley built his first radio station, WPYB-AM, in Benson, NC, in 1961 while serving as an assistant principal at a Virginia high school roughly two hours away. He sold the station five years later to buy the larger WFMC-AM in Goldsboro, NC, the first of several "trade-up" transactions during his career. Beasley broke into the major markets in 1976 with his purchase of WDMT-FM Cleveland. In 1989 Beasley's acquisition of KRTH-AM-FM Los Angeles marked his entry into the nation's top-10 markets. The group now owns 42 radio stations in 11 markets. He is in the Hall of Fame of both the North Carolina and Nevada broadcasters associations.

Erica Farber is credited with being the first woman to become general manager of a major-market radio station (RKO's WROR-FM Boston in 1976, a post that led to the vice presidency-general managership of WXLO-FM New York). Farber has been knocking them out of the radio park ever since, entering the station representation market at McGavren Guild in 1980 and being named VP/GM of the radio marketing division of the parent company, Interep, just three years later. In 1992 she left Interep to join Radio & Records as executive VP of sales and marketing. She was promoted to chief operating officer in 1994 and publisher and CEO in 1996. In 2009, after completing the due diligence process for, and subsequent acquisition of, the publishing company by the Nielsen Company, she founded The Farber Connection LLC, dedicated to building an internet-based information company. She has held a number of positions in industry organizations, among them AWRT and PROMAX, the latter as chairperson, and is a past president of the Country Radio Broadcasters. Farber joined the Radio Advertising Bureau as executive VP in 2011 and became president and CEO this year, charged with leading a renaissance of the $17 billion-plus radio industry, which had suffered revenue declines in recent years.

Other nominees include, writer/producer Norman Lear, PBS' Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer, Soul Train's Don Cornelius, CBS's Andy Rooney, Sir Howard Stringer, and Turner Broadcasting's Ted Turner.