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Radio Station Gets Bomb Threats Over Playlists, Police Say

By Maya Rajamani | February 8, 2016 6:25pm
 iHeartRadio aggregates contents from hundreds of stations it owns across the country, as well as streaming AM/FM stations.
iHeartRadio aggregates contents from hundreds of stations it owns across the country, as well as streaming AM/FM stations.
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Facebook/iHeartRadio

MIDTOWN — An Internet user threatened last week to blow up an iHeartRadio station if the streaming-music service didn’t broadcast certain playlists, police said.

An employee working at the iHeartRadio headquarters at 125 W. 55th St. was checking website requests around 5 p.m. on Friday when she came across a message from someone traced to South Carolina making bomb threats against all of the platform’s stations

The message sender claimed he or she had planted tiny bombs in all of iHeartRadio’s stations that could be “detonated from anywhere in the world” and “destroy an entire studio,” according to a police report.

If iHeartRadio’s stations did not play the exact playlists the sender included in the message between midnight and 6 a.m., the sender would detonate one or more of the bombs, the message claimed.

An investigation tracked the sender’s IP address to South Carolina, but found there was no immediate threat to any of the stations, police said.

Police did not say which playlists the individual requested that iHeartRadio play.

The radio provider — which aggregates contents from hundreds of stations it owns across the country, as well as streaming AM/FM stations — did not respond to requests for comment Monday.