NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 12, 2026--
MediaCo’s HOT 97 (WQHT-FM), New York’s #1 multicultural station regardless of language, today announced the launch of its brand-new morning show, HOT 97 Mornings with Mero, premiering Tuesday, January 13, airing 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. ET. The show will be hosted by The Kid Mero, one of New York’s most recognizable and authentic voices in media and culture.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260112572967/en/
Hailing from the Bronx, The Kid Mero is a New York Times best-selling author, Writers Guild Award winner, and a Variety “Comic to Watch.” He currently hosts Victory Light with The Kid Mero and co-hosts 7PM in Brooklyn with Carmelo Anthony. Now, he brings his unmistakable energy, humor, and cultural perspective to mornings on HOT 97.
“HOT 97 has always been about representing the culture of New York, and Mero is New York,” said Kudjo Sogadzi, EVP of Content & Growth at MediaCo. “He’s authentic, hilarious, fearless, and deeply connected to the community. HOT 97 Mornings with Mero is going to set the tone for the city every morning and create must-listen moments for our audience.”
The announcement comes on the heels of a historic 2025 for MediaCo, a year marked by surging revenue and performance that outpaced every broadcaster in the nation, underscoring the company’s momentum, growing cultural influence, and continued investment in premium talent and franchise brands like HOT 97.
HOT 97 Mornings with Mero will feature Mero’s signature commentary on culture, sports, music, and current events, alongside conversations with today’s biggest artists, athletes, and influencers, all delivered with the unfiltered, unmistakable voice his fans know and love.
"HOT 97 is the station—it's been the voice of NYC hip-hop and culture for decades," said The Kid Mero. "I grew up listening to HOT 97, so to get the morning slot here isn't just a job—it's a responsibility to continue that legacy while bringing it into this next era of media. We're gonna laugh, we're gonna get into it, but it's always gonna be real, and a real good time!"
“This is a new era for HOT 97, one that reflects both where the culture is and where it’s going,” said MediaCo CEO Albert Rodriguez. “As the most listened-to station in hip-hop, we’re proud to announce The Kid Mero, Bronx-born comedian and cultural voice who’s captured a generation with his sharp wit and authenticity, as our new morning show host.” “With the continued growth of the HOT 97 brand alongside Hot TV, this is an integral moment for us to expand our reach and deepen our impact across platforms.”
The launch of HOT 97 Mornings with Mero marks a new chapter in HOT 97’s commitment to delivering culture-defining content and compelling personalities across radio and digital platforms. Listeners can tune in starting Tuesday, January 13, from 6AM to 10AM ET on HOT 97 and across HOT 97’s digital platforms.
About MediaCo
MediaCo Holding Inc. (Nasdaq: MDIA) is a diverse-owned, multi-platform media company serving multicultural audiences nationwide. Its powerhouse brands—including HOT 97, WBLS, EstrellaTV, Estrella News, Que Buena Los Angeles, and the Don Cheto Radio Network—reach more than 20 million people each month across television, radio, digital, and streaming platforms. Learn more at https://mediaco.now.
The Kid Mero
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
Here's the latest:
The department said Monday that the revocations, a 150% increase over 2024, have targeted foreign nationals “charged or convicted with crimes” ranging from assault and theft to driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It did not offer a breakdown of those who had been actually convicted of crimes or had only been charged with offenses.
It comes as the Trump administration has stepped up efforts to deport or otherwise remove foreigners it believes are a threat to the United States or U.S. citizens.
“The Trump administration will continue to put America first and protect our nation from foreign nationals who pose a risk to public safety or national security,” the department said, adding that it had stood up a “Continuous Vetting Center” to look at all visa holders and evaluate them for potential non-compliance with U.S. laws.
The department last offered an update on visa revocations in early December when it said more than 85,000 visas had been pulled.
The former Justice Department special counsel who investigated Trump and secured two grand jury indictments has opened a law practice with former colleagues.
The firm is called Heaphy, Smith, Harbach & Windom LLP.
Besides Smith, it includes David Harbach and Thomas Windom, two former federal prosecutors who also served on the special counsel team investigating Trump, as well as Tim Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney and chief investigative counsel to a special House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
The firm says it will represent individuals, businesses, universities, municipalities and state agencies.
Another Republican is speaking out against the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska says that if the DOJ believes an investigation into Powell is warrants based on project cost overruns, which she says are not unusual, then Congress needs to investigate the DOJ.
“The stakes are too high to look the other way: if the Federal Reserve loses its independence, the stability of our markets and the broader economy will suffer,” Murkowski wrote on X.
She also notes that she spoke with Powell on Monday morning, adding “it’s clear the administration’s investigation is nothing more than an attempt at coercion.”
London’s murder rate fell in 2025 to its lowest level in decades, officials said Monday. Mayor Sadiq Khan said the figures disprove claims spread by President Trump and others on the political right that crime is out of control in Britain’s capital.
Police recorded 97 homicides in London in 2025, down from 109 in 2024 and the fewest since 2014. The Metropolitan Police force says the rate by population is the lowest since comparable records began in 1997, at 1.1 homicides for every 100,000 people.
That compares to 1.6 per 100,000 in Paris, 2.8 in New York and 3.2 in Berlin, the force said.
“There are some politicians and commentators who’ve been spamming social media with an endless stream of distortions and untruths, painting an image of a dystopian London,” Khan told The Associated Press. “And nothing could be further from the truth.”
▶ Read more about crime in London
The Democratic Party regained the partisanship edge when independents were asked whether they lean more toward the Democratic or Republican Party in a new Gallup poll.
Nearly half, 47%, of U.S. adults now identify as Democrats or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 42% are Republicans or lean Republican.
This is an indication of how Americans are feeling about their political affiliations, and it may not be reflected in voters’ actual registration.
Independents appear to be driven by their unhappiness with the party in power. That’s a dynamic that could be good for Democrats for now, but it doesn’t promise lasting loyalty. Attitudes toward the party haven’t gotten warmer, suggesting the Democrats’ gains are probably more related to independents’ sour views of President Trump.
That comes a day after President Trump threatened the Caribbean island in the wake of the U.S. attack on Venezuela.
Díaz-Canel posted a flurry of brief statements on X after Trump suggested Cuba “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not say what kind of deal.
Díaz-Canel wrote that for “relations between the U.S. and Cuba to progress, they must be based on international law rather than hostility, threats, and economic coercion.”
The island’s communist government has said U.S. sanctions cost the country more than $7.5 billion between March 2024 and February 2025.
Díaz-Canel added: “We have always been willing to hold a serious and responsible dialogue with the various US governments, including the current one, on the basis of sovereign equality, mutual respect, principles of International Law, and mutual benefit without interference in internal affairs and with full respect for our independence.”
Cuba’s president stressed on X that “there are no talks with the U.S. government, except for technical contacts in the area of migration.”
About 8 in 10 U.S. adults said the Federal Reserve Board should be independent of political control, according to Marquette/SSRS polling from September, while roughly 2 in 10 said the president should have more influence over setting interest rates and monetary policy. There was bipartisan consensus that the Fed should remain independent. About 9 in 10 Democrats and about two-thirds of Republicans said the Fed should not be subjected to political control.
That poll found about 3 in 10 Americans said they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in The Federal Reserve Board. Nearly half — 45% — had some confidence, and roughly one-quarter had “very little” confidence or “none at all.”
Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
▶ Read more about the financial markets
She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland
Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
