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It’s code-name is “Project Guesthouse,” as documents filed with the FCC late last week indicate.

And, it involves the sale — rather than the surrendering of licenses to the Commission — of AM radio stations Cumulus Media no longer desires.

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Marketron says service has been restored to all of its traffic customers, following the ransomware attack that took its platforms down the weekend before last.

Those customers now have access to all of the data that was in the platform as of Saturday morning Sept. 18.

“Some business services, such as electronic invoicing and payments remain impacted; however, customers should be able to build to conduct their traffic operations. Our teams remain focused on fully restoring all services,” Vice President of Growth Marketing Bo Bandy wrote in an email on Sept. 25.

The image above shows the Marketron service status board as of Monday morning Sept. 25.

The company has posted a series of recommendations for clients whose service has been restored.

Bandy also said Marketron has hired forensic investigators and cybersecurity firms “to stand up an entirely new network environment, a gold standard in recovery from a security perspective. With the assistance of our third-party specialists, a state-of-the-art end point detection and response tool has been deployed to the environment, which is continuously monitored around the clock by security professionals.”

The post Marketron Traffic Services Are Back Up appeared first on Radio World.

Radio World presents a special webcast in which five technology vendors provide a fast-paced look at their newest offerings.

Representatives of RCS, Wheatstone, WorldCast Systems, Telos Alliance and Comrex talk with RW Editor in Chief Paul McLane about their new product introductions.

Paul will also update you on several stories that Radio World has been following including drones in radio, trends in shortwave, computational FM antenna pattern modeling and more.

Especially in light of the cancellation of several major trade shows, it’s important to stay on top of new products and technology.

The free webcast streams on Sept. 30 and is available on demand after that date.

Register for the webcast.

The post Radio Face-2-Face: A New RW Webcast appeared first on Radio World.

Among the many things disrupted by COVID-19 is the opportunity for the National Association of Broadcasters to celebrate the 75th anniversary of its Broadcast Engineering & IT Conference.

Radio and TV techies will have to wait another half-year to gather in person again now that the 2021 NAB Show has been cancelled. But knowing the interest that our readers have in this topic, here’s our  interview about the history of the engineering conference with NAB Senior Vice President, Technology Lynn Claudy.

Radio World: How did the BEITC get started?

Lynn Claudy: NAB consultant and former staffer Skip Pizzi wrote a NAB PILOT blog about this very subject in early August at nabpilot.org. Here’s an excerpt:

“The year: 1947. The place: Atlantic City, N.J. The event: The first NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference (BEC) — subsequently renamed the Broadcast Engineering and Information Technology (BEIT) Conference — held continuously on an annual basis thereafter, making the 2021 BEIT Conference the 75th such event.

“Prior to this conference, NAB’s Engineering department had collaborated with the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE), the University of Illinois and Ohio State University to produce a standalone broadcast engineering conference hosted by the universities, dating back to 1938. That event was curtailed after the 1942 program due to World War II, and NAB was involved again when it restarted in 1946.

“But the following year NAB decided to launch its own engineering conference, to be held in conjunction with the 25th NAB Convention in Atlantic City, and the NAB BEC was born. Among the presentations there was a demonstration of ‘Unusually High Frequencies in FM Relays’ by Major Edwin Armstrong.

“The first BEC was a one-day event, held on Sept. 15, 1947, at the Atlantic City Convention Center, renowned for its many years as the site of the Miss America Pageant. The conference grew to two days at the 1948 NAB Convention in Los Angeles, expanded to three days the following year and settled on a four-day length at the 1950 show in Chicago. It later expanded to a fifth day when partner content was added, a length it currently maintains.

“That growth over the years indicates the conference’s popularity, and historically it has had the highest attendance — and the greatest longevity — of any NAB Show educational offerings.”

RW: Lynn, who conceived it and who were the early drivers of its success?

Claudy: Much of the thinking and strategy behind launching the Broadcast Engineering Conference may be lost to antiquity, but a lot of credit should go to then-NAB President Judge Justin Miller and NAB Director of Engineering Royal V. Howard.

Miller, a former associate judge of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, served as NAB president from 1945–1951. Howard, former VP of engineering at KSFO in San Francisco, was director of the engineering department at NAB from 1947 to 1950.

In those early days, questionnaires were sent out to the broadcast engineering community each year seeking guidance as to topics for technical papers for presentation at the NAB Convention. The NAB Conference Committee, which still exists today with a slight name change, supervised the final conference agenda to conform as much as possible to the survey results.

RW: An anecdote from the early days?

Claudy: According to the conference transcripts, the first conference was opened by Royal Howard with the following auspicious statement: “My name is Howard. Most people think that I am the director of engineering for NAB; actually I am the coordinator of confusion.”

Right before lunch, the group was addressed by NAB President Judge Justin Miller, who said:  “Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to be with you this morning. I have not been going to most of these clinics, but I felt a particular obligation to the engineers, especially because NAB may seem to have been neglecting you during the last couple of years preceding this one. As a matter of fact, I have always been inclined to regard you folks more or less as the gods of the machines. I confess that if there is anything I do not know about in broadcasting, it is engineering.”

RW: Can you give us sampling of radio technology topics that appeared on the agenda over the years?

Claudy: The BEC and the current BEITC have always, by design, centered on the important topics of the day for broadcast engineers. Because of how papers and presentations are sought out and selected, it has been high on the relevance scale for technologists and engineers attending the show, and a great educational adjunct activity to visiting the exhibits on the show floor.

It’s pretty hard to pick out the important topics at any given point in time. But a sampling of four presentations might be illustrative of the value and, in retrospect, the perspective that the conference has provided over the years:

1. Going back to the first NAB Engineering Conference again, one of the talks was on “FM Broadcast Station Construction” presented  by Paul A. DeMars, a consulting engineer with the Raymond Wilmotte organization. He ended his talk with the following, which tells you something about the times:

“We hear a lot about the coming atomic age.  There have been a lot of serious and semiserious statements made that because of the vital importance of broadcasting in our national life, broadcasting stations, at least a certain number of the large key ones, may have to be put underground in order to prevent a national panic in the event that our present facilities should be totally wiped out,” he said.

“Possibly the large number of FM stations that are technically feasible and that will in all probability be built scattered all over the U.S. within the next decade may furnish the national service, even in the event of atomic war, that will take the place of the almost impossible problem of putting the old standard facilities underground.”

2. A talk from the 1957 conference titled “The Radio Station of the Future” presented by John M. Haerle with the Collins Radio Company showed a perspective on how radio might be changing in the future. Here are a few of the ideas from that talk, both prescient and otherwise:

“Would it be beyond the realm of possibility to envision a transmitter built in open fashion on the walls of its own building? The entire transmitting plant could be shipped to the site, the walls bolted together in typical prefab fashion and the various circuits joined by terminal boards. Ridiculous? Today, possibly … not in the radio station of the future.” …

“Monitors could be heading for obsolescence. Transmitter crystals have been improved to the point where it is actually true that some modern transmitters are more stable than the companion frequency monitors.” …

“The radio station of the future will eventually use some form or some adaptation of automatic programming. Many point to the operator who is required to be on duty and to the possibility that a so-called ‘robot’ operation would result in programming devoid of personality. Perhaps a compromise will be the semi-automatic operation, in which the operator on duty can select or cue any desired record by pushing a button.”

3. The NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference has long sought reports from standards organization and other groups to report their progress at the annual convention. For radio, the National Radio Systems Committee has been a consistent presence at the conference since the early 1980s, whenever announcements were timely.

Formed in 1958, though, there was another NSRC, which stood for National Stereophonic Radio Committee. At the 1960 conference, C.G. Lloyd, former NSRC chairman, presented the progress of that committee’s quest to deliver stereophonic broadcasting and had just delivered a report to the FCC on the subject. The NSRC had received 14 proposals for FM systems, at least seven for AM and four for TV sound. Each of these broadcast platforms eventually followed different circuitous paths to stereo — 1961 for FM stereo, 1984 for television sound and 1993 for AM stereo — but the NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference helped engineers understand the process from the beginning.

4. Radio has endured many technical controversies, with digital radio being a particularly salient example. At the 1991 NAB Broadcast Engineering Conference, NAB sponsored a demonstration of the Eureka-147 DAB system with transmissions from the top of the H on the Las Vegas Hilton Hotel next to the convention center (now the Westgate) and a repeater installed on the roof of the Golden Nugget Hotel downtown. A 40-seat bus fitted with a receiver and headphones drove attendees around Las Vegas showing the consistently crystal-clear audio quality of the system.

At the Broadcast Engineering Conference, an entire afternoon was devoted to the different technical approaches to digital broadcasting, Eureka-147 included, but also a presentation from Paul Donahue from Gannett Broadcasting and Tony Masiello from CBS titled “Project Acorn: Compatible DAB.”

Those who have been around awhile or studied radio history will recognize that this was the original concept for the system that eventually became HD Radio. At the time, NAB had officially endorsed the Eureka-147 DAB system and was favoring an allocation for DAB in the L-band. This issue was hotly debated at the 1991 convention at various levels, and of course, in-band, on-channel technology eventually won the argument for NAB and for U.S. broadcasters.

It’s notable, though, that the Broadcast Engineering Conference program did attempt to present all sides of the proponent technologies and kept the politics to a minimum, as the advocates had a forum where they could plead their respective cases on a technical basis.

RW: How is the BEITC different today?

Claudy: The conference has moved with the times, such as adding “Information Technology” to the title of the Broadcast Engineering Conference, recognizing the importance of IT skills in the modern broadcast plant.

Other than that, NAB Technology still has a committee of broadcast engineers that meets several times a year, albeit virtually these days, to organize topics, review papers, assign session chairpersons and so forth, all the things that go into planning a top notch technical conference.

This year the chair of the BEITC Committee was Jim DeChant, vice president, technology at News-Press & Gazette Broadcasting.

We also work with partner organizations including the Society of Broadcast Engineers, the IEEE Broadcast Technology Society and the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) to provide program content that will be relevant to the BEITC audience.

RW: Describe how BEITC content is found and chosen today, and by whom.

Claudy: In a normal year, a call for papers is released in the fall, and the BEITC committee and NAB Technology staff review the submissions and accept papers that will be presented late in the year.

Papers that will be published in the proceedings must be submitted by mid or late January. We will typically get submissions that would occupy at least twice the space that we can accommodate, so it’s a pretty competitive process. If there ends up being gaps in the program, or important topics identified where there weren’t any submissions, NAB Technology staff may solicit additional speakers.

The post BEITC Serves “The Gods of the Machines” appeared first on Radio World.

Regarding Larry Langford’s commentary “Sweeten the Pot to Entice AM Digital”:

My initial concern is what a 100% digital signal will do to co-channel and first-adjacent stations who are operating in analog with listeners in the fringe. Should these analog AM stations be given compensation for the loss of coverage? Should they be given companion channels of operation to replace lost coverage?

I still recall a rather contentious debate in a broadcast list some decade or more ago. The CE of a Class 1B station was bragging about his IBOC, while some people were complaining about how it chewed up analog stations some 100 to 400 miles away at night. The fellow justified the use of power and propagation as being “necessary to cover the station’s market area, roughly 45 miles in radius.”

So to cover a 45-mile radius of market, we have to ruin a 400-mile radius of spectrum? Isn’t this like playing your 250-watt stereo at full volume in an apartment complex because you’re deaf and unconcerned that it’s bothering the neighbors?

I still think that in the scope of protecting what we have and need for public service, the FCC should revise the frequency tables, using the recent incentive auction as a model.

Move TV broadcasters out of Channels 5 and 6. Allot that spectrum to digital radio broadcasters with a caveat that after five years on the air, they surrender their analog service. Mandate that all new radios (especially mobile) be outfitted with the new DM band. And since most 1A/1B broadcasters see no financial value in long-distance transmission, cap all transmissions to provide a 45-mile radius.

Working the math, you could get all the wannabe digital stations into the new band, and over time analog would pass. However it won’t be killed off by those wanting digital more than the need of listeners wanting analog.

Radio World welcomes letters to the editor to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Letter: Rethink the Radio Bands appeared first on Radio World.

We seem to be headed down two tracks on our way to the broadcast facility of the future.

One is the appliance track, where we are migrating away from the model of apps running on a Windows PC and moving functions instead onto one dedicated appliance that isn’t subject to the finicky PC. 

These are generally specialized AoIP or automation appliances that are Linux-based and therefore do not require Windows drivers, updates or PCs. Good examples are streaming appliances like Streamblade or Wheatstream that replace multiple PCs by putting everything streaming related into one AoIP Linux appliance. 

The other is the app track, which takes us to the cloud and away from hardware in the rack room. 

Here, we are offloading functions to the cloud where they can be remotely reconfigured, maintained and provisioned on a case-by-case basis. At its most ideal, centralized cloud-based applications will give us the ability to dial up encoding, IFB, routing, mixing, playback and even the kind of console needed for a given show or operator skill level. 

Wheatstone, Xperi and other broadcast product makers are working on cloud-based apps using cloud technologies such as container platforms like Docker that will make it possible to transition from the entirely fixed-location studio to a more virtual operation.

Already, many of these apps exist. We know of broadcasters who are containing audio drivers in a virtual machine onsite in preparation of eventually offloading that part of their operation to the cloud and others who are putting multiple studio workflows from multiple locations in a one-stop virtual interface.

Moving it all to the cloud can downsize space requirements in the rack room and shift engineering management to an offsite provider. Eliminating any piece of gear in the air chain along with its connectors and potential points of failure is a good thing, and that goes for specialized appliances too, because these can replace more generic PC-based functions and also reduce space requirements and engineering management.

There are advantages and disadvantages of both the cloud-based app model and the appliance model. 

Offloading functions to Microsoft, Amazon or other cloud provider takes away the cost and upkeep of hardware in the rack room but leaves you subject to third-party vulnerabilities. On the other track, having an appliance onsite gives you some of the consolidation benefits of an all-in-one rack unit similar to the cloud model, although at the additional expense of on-premise infrastructure and upkeep.

It doesn’t have to be one way or another, fortunately. There are many different ways to divide and subdivide that signal chain between functions in the cloud and functions onsite in an appliance.

For example, it’s possible to have automation and mixing functions in the cloud but maintain control from a local virtual or hardware interface. If your playback is being done mostly off a cloud server, you might have a virtual control surface in the studio that is talking to a mix engine in the cloud. Similarly, you could also be receiving your mic audio from a codec that’s in the cloud.

More likely, the broadcast facility of the future will use a combination of both: appliances for consolidating functions into a single 1RU box that eliminates a bank of Windows PCs yet the use of cloud for shared mixing, routing or removes streaming and automation without the real estate, upkeep and of the Windows PC. 

We’ll likely arrive at the future broadcast facility from both tracks, and not entirely from one or the other.

The post Appliance? or Cloud-based App?  appeared first on Radio World.

TUDN Radio, the rebranded and retooled service formerly known as Univision Deportes Radio, is about to get a serious boost in one of America’s most important Hispanic media markets.

Univision Communications‘ Houston station group is flipping the switch on Monday to bring Houstonians “the market’s only Spanish-language sports radio station.”

With ESPN Deportes Radio now defunct, aside from a couple of podcasts; Fox Deportes Radio relatively quiet; and Unanimo Sports still seeking maximization of its offerings, sales could be a challenge for a Deportes-minded radio station.

For Univision, flipping KQBU-FM 93.3 to “TUDN 93.3 FM/1010 AM” is an opportunity for growth while maintaining the current programming in the market. As of today, KQBU is a simulcast partner of KAMA-FM 104.9, a Spanish Contemporary station branded as “Latino Mix.”

KAMA, a Class C2 FM licensed to Deer Park, Tex., will stay as “Latino Mix”; the station’s signal contour makes it a full Houston-market FM.

KQBU is really a Beaumont-Port Arthur station. Its 97kw Class C signal puts city-grade coverage over Houston’s east side. In the car, it’s audible across the metropolitan area.

As “TUDN,” KQBU will now simulcast Class B KLAT-AM 1010 in Houston. It’s already a TUDN-branded station. Hence, KQBU is switching simulcast partners.

For locals, programming will include Spanish-language coverage of the Astros (MLB), Houston Dynamo (MLS), Houston Rockets (NBA), and Texas A&M Aggie football. There are also simulcasts from TUDN Radio’s soccer portfolio.

Local programming includes a 10am-noon Central program hosted by Cesar Procel (pictured, top left), “Encanchados.”

KQBU-FM has been the home of “Latino Mix” since its December 2017 arrival in the market. Previously, it was “Qué Buena,” offering regional Mexican programming.

Jessica Rosenworcel wants members of a key advisory group to help the FCC “sort through some of the toughest security problems facing our country’s communications networks.”

The acting chairwoman recently reconstituted the Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council, seeking to “revitalize” it. And on Wednesday she spoke to the group to lay out her vision for its work.

She opened her remarks by citing a litany of recent notable cybersecurity events: a wireless carrier in the Netherlands whose traffic was susceptible to monitoring; a security breach of Exchange software that left bank, health and government servers vulnerable; the SolarWinds Breach that allowed hackers affiliated with the Russian government to access government and private networks undetected; the theft of data on millions of T-Mobile customers; and the ransomware attack on an Iowa farming co-op this month.

“This needs our attention because enough is enough,” Rosenworcel told the CSRIC members.

[Related: Rosenworcel Names Members to Revamped Advisory Group]

She said the FCC is pursuing a multipronged strategy to assure security as the use of 5G expands.

“In this environment, rechartering CSRIC was a no-brainer. This council is one of the nation’s most impactful cybersecurity partnerships. But we didn’t want to do it same-old, same-old. We wanted to make it better.”

She explained that for the first time the group will be co-chaired by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which leads a national effort to enhance the safety of the cybersecurity and communications infrastructure. “Earlier this year, CISA co-authored a leading report on potential threat vectors to 5G infrastructure. Their partnership here will help ensure a unity of effort between those responsible for protecting the country and those who own and operate the infrastructure that is so critical to that mission.”

She said the group also will reflect more participation from the public interest community. “The public and consumers also will have a voice on issues that ultimately affect their safety and security along with private sector stakeholders.”

The group is to prioritize 5G.

“That means we have a working group to explore the security and resiliency of Open RAN. We have a working group looking at more broadly leveraging virtualization technology to enhance network security. We have a working group looking at the technical issues involving the security of 5G signaling protocols. And building on CSRIC’s earlier work to remove untrusted hardware from our communications and infrastructure and building on lessons learned from the SolarWinds hack, we have a working group looking at the software side of supply chain security.”

Rosenworcel noted that Hurricane Ida knocked cell sites offline in Louisiana, so she wants the group also to make progress on the resiliency of communications networks. “We’ve got a working group to look at improving 911 — specifically 911 service over Wi-Fi. And we have yet another working group that will be looking at ways to improve Wireless Emergency Alerts.”

[Related: Marketron and Its Users Slammed by Cyber Event]

She called this “a to-do list of security challenges that we already know about,” and she asked the members of the group to be “on the lookout for threats that are just around the bend.”

Sectors represented on the group include local emergency officials, transportation, wireless and broadband companies, consumer electronics manufacturers, chip makers, public broadcasting and government agencies.

The post Rosenworcel Gives CSRIC Its New Charge appeared first on Radio World.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FCC on Friday confirmed that it will begin accepting applications from graduating law students and current judicial clerks for its Fall 2022 Attorney Honors Program.

The application window is now open, and it closes on November 1.

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In the Dallas-Fort Worth market, ViacomCBS owns and operates two broadcast TV stations, in addition to CBSN Dallas and CBSDFW.com.

As of Monday, these properties will have a new leader, and it is someone who is rejoining the stations after four years working across town — at TV stations broadcasting en español.

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Cumulus Media isn’t the only audio content and distribution company with a big stable of radio stations that enjoyed a strong week on Wall Street.

As Wall Street neared its closing bells, Audacy shares were on the rise, giving the company formerly known as Entercom its strongest stock price since early August.

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MIAMI — Tune to 99.1 MHz in morning drive, and you’ll suddenly find yourself asking if something isn’t right. Just weeks ago, a big billboard could be seen on Interstate 95 heading downtown promoting the Trina & Trick Daddy morning program.

As of today, the hosts are no longer a part of Cox Media Group. But, that’s just a small part of a Reduction in Force initiative that has claimed a host of programming and on-air positions. Meanwhile, another Miami FM owned by CMG has tweaked its format while apparently dismissing its entire air staff.

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With Monday’s Closing Bell on Wall Street, Cumulus Media shares officially erased five months of growth, negating a climb to $14.75 seen at the end of June — its highest value since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Who knew that the rest of this week would see Cumulus crush it on the Nasdaq?

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With Meredith Local Media poised to become a part of Gray Television by the end of the year, parent Meredith Corp. is apparently in serious conversations with the digital media company owned by Barry Diller to engineer a deal that would spin the majority of its lifestyle and female-friendly assets in a multi-billion deal.

Investors reacted by snapping up Meredith shares, leading to a sharp rise in value in Friday’s trading.

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A group of over two dozen U.S. Senators are urging President Biden to designate acting FCC Chairman Jessica Rosenworcel to a permanent position, making her the first woman to hold the office.

The chairmanship of the commission has been in limbo since Biden was sworn into office on Jan. 20, 2021, with Rosenworcel operating in acting capacity. Some of the group of Democratic Senators (and one Independent, Angus King of Maine) noted that they had voiced their support in a similar letter to Biden after he was declared winner of the 2020 election and said having a permanent chair is important, in light of Congressional efforts to provide funding for expanded broadband access nationwide as well as address the impacts of the 18+ month pandemic, part of the  “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021,” now being considered by the House.

“Given this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ensure all people have access to broadband, it is absolutely essential that there are trusted, qualified appointees leading these agencies to coordinate the deployment effort across your administration” the senators — representing 17 states — wrote in a letter to the president.

They asked President Biden to appoint her to the chairmanship “as quickly as possible,” adding that “further delay simply puts at risk the major broadband goals that we share and that Congress has worked hard to advance as part of your administration’s agenda.”

They added that Rosenworcel is the best person for the job.

“There is no better qualified or more competent person to lead the FCC at this important time than Acting Chair Rosenworcel,” the senators said. “We have long experience working with her and her team, and she has already shown an ability to steer the FCC through these extraordinary and difficult times. Importantly, we believe that Acting Chair Rosenworcel will face few obstacles to her confirmation.”

The delay in appointing a permanent FCC chair is “the longest in 44 years,” according to Telecom TV. Capitol Hill pundits speculate that the delay could surround the administration’s indecision on whether to have the commission’s first female chair or whether or not to nominate an African-American to the position.

The post Senators Urge President Biden to Make Rosenworcel Official FCC Chair appeared first on Radio World.

The Federal Communications Commission has extended the due date for FY 2021 regulatory fees to Monday night Sept. 27.

It’s a three-day extension and it applies to all annual regulatory fee payors. The announcement did not provide a reason.

Fees have been in the news in our industry because the commission had planned to raise them for most radio and TV stations, but it backed away from that after getting strong pushback from the industry.

[Related: “Broadcasters Get a Win on Regulatory Fees”]

The post FCC Extends Deadline for Regulatory Fees appeared first on Radio World.

Katie Hoyt was been named market president for Salisbury, Md., by iHeartMedia.

She reports to Brit Goldstein, area president for iHeartMedia Pennsylvania, whom she succeeds in the role. Goldstein was promoted in early 2020 but until now has retained the Salisbury reins as well.

[Visit Radio World’s People News Page]

Hoyt was senior vice president of sales in that market. In the announcement, Goldstein says Hoyt “has done an incomparable job inspiring and leading the Salisbury sales team.”

She is former regional digital sales manager for MediaOnePA, part of Gannett/USA Today, as well as former sales manager for Hanover/York, Pa., for the same organization, where she began her media career.

The iHeart Salisbury market on the Eastern Shore of the state comprises four FM and two AM stations as well as live events, data and digital businesses and platforms.

Send news of engineering and executive personnel changes to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Hoyt Is New IHM Market Leader in Salisbury appeared first on Radio World.

It’s no secret that available broadcast TV stations are few and far between for aspiring buyers.

As such, there could be some considerable interest in a low-power TV station being marketed by one veteran media broker that serves one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the Southeast U.S.

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In the words of veteran Boston-area radio programming and marketing pro Clark Smidt, “Speakers become smart when they say the right words or play the best music.

Who’s at the controls? This very question could make the difference between having a consumer call up a personality-free playlist on a streaming audio service, or your radio station’s easily accessible audio stream.

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In May, RBR+TVBR correctly predicted that Allen Media Group would end up purchasing an ABC affiliate that Meredith Local Media had agreed to divest in order for it to complete its $2.825 billion sale to Gray Television.

On Thursday (9/23), the group led by Byron Allen closed on its acquisition of that Meredith property — a move that suggests Gray’s closing on the Meredith properties is on track for a Q4 closing.

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