Aggregator

.

A missed deadline led the Federal Communications Commission to issue a monetary forfeiture for $1,500 to the licensee of an FM translator station — despite the licensee’s protestations that the Media Bureau had overstepped its bounds.

The FCC rules require that station license renewal applications be filed no later than the first day of the fourth month prior to the expiration of the license. For FM translator W275CC in Macon, Ga., the application for renewal should have been filed by Dec. 2, 2019, prior to the expiration date of April 1, 2020. The licensee, LLF Holdings, filed the application on March 17 and provided no explanation for its untimely filing, the Media Bureau said in its forfeiture order.

Violations like these have a base forfeiture of $3,000. But the Media Bureau reduced the proposed forfeiture in this case to $1,500 because the station is one that provides a secondary service. The bureau gave the licensee 30 days to either pay the full amount of the forfeiture or submit a written statement seeking reduction or cancellation.

[Read: Another Translator, Another Fine]

Soon after, LLF Holdings responded to the bureau to admit that while it did not file its renewal application on time, it had had several points of contention with the Media Bureau’s decision. The first, LLF said, was that the bureau erred in not granting its renewal application at the same time it issued the Notice of Apparent Liability.

Secondly, LLF said that the proposed forfeiture should simply be cancelled outright. Specifically, the licensee argued that section 504(c) of the Communications Act of 1934 actually bars the commission from “making the payment of a civil forfeiture a condition precedent to the grant of an application.” LLF went on to say that civil forfeitures are only recoverable in new proceedings brought in federal district court.

LLF had a few other concerns: one, that FCC rules and its forfeiture policy statement do not include a forfeiture provision for late-filed renewal applications. Secondly, LLF said the bureau did not put it on notice about the potential forfeiture, which the licensee claims is in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act. And finally, LLF argued that the commission has treated other licensees differently, like when it granted late-filed renewal applications for translator stations in Georgia and Alabama without imposing a fine.

But the Media Bureau rejected all of LLF’s arguments. It said that sending out the Notice of Apparently Liability was part of the renewal process and that withholding the grant of the renewal until a forfeiture is paid is consistent with statute and case law. The Communications Act gives the commission the authority to impose a forfeiture against any licensee that fails to comply with its rules, the bureau said. “The commission expects, and it is each licensee’s obligation, to know and comply with all of the commission’s rules.” Moreover, the bureau said it has a long made it clear that failure to file a timely renewal application is grounds for the issuance for a monetary forfeiture.

As to LLF’s other arguments, the bureau said no case law was provided to show that the bureau is precluded from withholding a renewal application pending payment of a forfeiture issued in the same proceeding involving that application.

When it comes to the FCC not imposing a fee on other late filed application, the bureau reminded LLF that the bureau gives licensees a 30-day grace period in which to file renewal applications following the filing deadline without imposing a monetary forfeiture. The Georgia and Alabama stations cited by LLF filed their applications within 30 days of the filing deadline. LLF did not file its renewal application until March 17, 2020, the bureau said, well over three months past the filing deadline and outside the 30-day grace period.

As a result the Media Bureau found that LLF is still liable for a monetary forfeiture of $1,500.

 

The post Licensee Claims FCC Overstepped Its Bounds By Issuing $1,500 Forfeiture appeared first on Radio World.

The value of iHeartMedia shares continues to reach new heights. On Friday, IHRT gained another 3% to finish at a fresh post-bankruptcy high.

The bigger news: IHRT is up 236% from exactly one year ago.

A review of the last 12 months for iHeartMedia shares shows that, aside from a momentary blip in June, the value of IHRT has steady grown since the Independence Day holiday of 2020, when a $6.65 closing price was seen.

Come Election Day 2020, a $10 closing price was seen by iHeart.

Then, the engines went into overdrive, with March 1 seeing IHRT’s first $15-level finish. By March 15, a $16.87 closing price came.

The following two months have been nothing short of exceptional for the nation’s largest audio media company on Wall Street. On Monday, intrasession trading pushed IHRT as high as $23.49, before settling at $22.90.

With a $22.64 opening price set to start next week as Upfront presentations begin for the television industry, iHeart’s spot at the marketer’s planning table is perhaps more of a possibility than ever.

 

 

It’s Friday night, and the De’Lacy track “Hideaway” is booming out of the speakers. It’s a song featured as part of the Club Classics show heard on national Hot Adult Contemporary network Heart, found at 106.2 MHz across London.

If the mid-1990s “banger” isn’t your style, there’s always contemporary dance tracks over on CHR network Capital FM; love songs on Smooth Radio; Friday Night ’50s on Gold; or L’Heure Exquise with Emma Johnson & John Lenehan on commercial Classical network Classic FM. 

Still not satisfied? How about a little Elastica, Doves and classic David Bowie over on Radio X? What about Krept & Konan & WizKid offering up some U.K.-flavored hip-hop on Capital Xtra? 

Music not your thing? “Leading Britain’s Conversation” is popular Talk network LBC discussing holidays to Portugal, now open from a COVID-19 travel ban.

No matter your choice, consumption to each of these eight radio brands means you’re supporting a British audio media giant that wants a greater stake in iHeartMedia.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

Michelle Bradley is the founder of REC Networks and a regulatory advocate representing LPFM and other citizen’s access to spectrum initiatives.

Those who know me know that I am a supporter of the new MA3 all-digital AM service and like Larry Langford, I am very much opposed to the MA1 hybrid system. Unfortunately, the bad experiences from MA1 has left a bad taste in people’s mouths regarding IBOC digital radio in the AM broadcast spectrum. The main dilemma with MA3 of course, is the flash cut. If you flash cut to digital, you completely cut off analog listeners. This is why some of us worked on assuring that there were protections to consumers as well as protections to other impacted broadcasters by calling for a 30-day notification period before a AM station can flash cut to digital.

Right now, there are many smaller AM stations in rural and suburban areas that have been successful at getting FM translators with fairly decent coverage within their service areas. At the same time, there are many community groups in suburban, urban and deep urban areas who desire to have a nonprofit independent voice; a voice that does not compete with, but instead complements the selection of other stations on the local dial. With more listeners abandoning radio for streaming services, we shouldn’t be focusing on having the same voice in more than one place, but instead, more choices and more voices.

[Read: Sweeten the Pot to Entice AM Digital]

The idea of allowing another 250-mile move opportunity for AM stations that flash cut will do absolutely nothing to help improve LPFM. If anything, it will further foreclose on opportunities for new community voices, in favor of a duplicate version of an existing voice available elsewhere. Many of these “satellators,” which Larry speaks of are in more rural areas, areas that still have some LPFM availability. Therefore, moving these translators out of those areas and towards more urban and suburban areas will not do anything for LPFM growth, but will create increased interference to existing LPFM stations, especially considering that there is no proof of performance enforcement on FM translators with directional antennas and there have been many cases where the translator was built with a nondirectional or other noncompliant antenna, despite the construction permit calling for a specific directional pattern. Because of how valuable urban translators are (because of the toxic HD over analog culture that has been established), a small AM broadcaster would never be able to afford to move a translator out of an urban area, up to 250 miles for use as an AM HD crutch. Again, this does nothing to help increase opportunities for LPFM broadcasters.

If we are getting to this point of where HD receiver penetration is starting to increase, then we need to address the other major waste of duplicating spectrum that could be better used for local voices, and that is the use of an FM translator to provide “fill-in” service for a primary FM station’s HD multicast stream. If the commission, the National Association of Broadcasters and the rest of the industry is really serious about diversity and more efficient spectrum use, then we need to remove the incentive for FM stations to use their HD capacity as nothing more than an overglorified STL for translators. If we are increasing the HD receiver penetration, not only will it increase for AM, as Larry would like to see, but it will also increase for FM. And, if that is the case, then there would be no need for more or moved translators. Instead, listeners looking for other services (including co-owned AM station streams) could simply tune to the HD2/3/4 of a full-service FM station, which can provide a better digital coverage than a 250 watt translator in most cases.

We, as an industry, both radio and television, need to better look at how the spectrum is used and make appropriate changes. We have been seeing a lot of rulemaking activity where existing VHF television stations are asking to move to UHF. Currently, TV Channel 6 has only 10 full-service stations. Of those 10, two have already asked the FCC to move to UHF due to reception issues and receiver antenna compatibility with other stations in their market. With the opportunities that ATSC3 can provide, including mobile and portable viewing, there is no room for a service that requires a larger antenna to receive (also thinking of the whole cellphone FM receiver debacle with the headphone as the antenna). The industry needs a long term plan to revitalize AM and that plan should be is to migrate stations to FM spectrum. While other countries, like Mexico have been very successful in migrating AM stations to FM, there is simply not enough room at the inn to migrate even the Class C and D AM stations into the existing 100 channels. We need to follow the lead of Japan and Brazil and start phasing in facilities on spectrum outside of the existing FM band. This would mean at the minimum, reallocating the Channel 6 spectrum to provide 30 new FM channels or better yet, Channels 5 and 6 for 60 channels. The radios are readily available as they are marketed in Brazil and Japan. Some existing receivers could be modified with a firmware change. A lot of low-band spectrum is going to waste and could be better used for other purposes. I am pretty sure some hams out there would be very appreciative to have access to Channel 2 (54–60 MHz), especially for amateur television use during sunspot cycle peaks. I know I am one of them.

The automotive and radio receiver industry needs to make HD Radio, standard equipment, not a “luxury option” like with some manufacturers. Our culture needs to embrace the HD subchannels and not use them like a crutch for analog translators, but instead, use them the best we can to provide the most choices and the most voices on the original app made for listening to audio.. radio. This way, everyone has a place on the dial, one place on the dial.

 

The post Even More to All-Digital AM appeared first on Radio World.

Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB), BMI and the Mentoring and Inspiring Women in Radio (MIW) Group will stage the 13th annual “Rising Through the Ranks” program virtually for 2021.

The program will be split into five days and will be held each Tuesday of the month of August, from Noon-3pm Eastern starting August 3.

BMI will offer 20 scholarships for this year’s program, which will cover the cost of the professional development course designed to foster and educate current and emerging female radio managers within broadcast radio.

“Rising Through the Ranks is a priceless opportunity for our scholarship recipients and we are excited to be bringing the event back this year,” said RAB President/CEO Erica Farber. “With the tools and experience we’ve all had with virtual events, we know that this year’s program will be as engaging and inspiring as our in-person event.”

This year’s agenda and speaker lineup will be announced at a later date.

Scholarship applications and registration are available on www.rab.com and will be accepted April 26, through 6:00 p.m. CT on May 28, 2021. Scholarship recipients will be notified of their selection by the week of July 1, 2021. 

Some 60 miles from Omaha is the town of Firth, Neb.

Here, a Class A Sports Talker is trading hands, with paperwork filed following the May 11 signing of an asset sale agreement.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

MIAMI — “Our quarterly results demonstrate that Univision’s transformation is continuing to gain momentum.”

That’s a statement made Friday by Univision Communications CEO Wade Davis, as the privately held company focused on superserving Spanish-speaking Hispanic consumers released its first quarter results.

How did the company do in Q1? Adjusted EBITDA was up slightly, while its recently launched PrendeTV over-the-top offering is off to a roaring start.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

No, Tony Stark has nothing to do with it.

But, it could prevent a super new way for audio media purveyors to profit from what AI experts at Veritone are calling “hyper-realistic synthetic voices.”

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

With pre-market trading not as brutal as after-hours action had been for The Walt Disney Co.‘s stock, investors are now perhaps looking beyond shaky Disney+ OTT subscriber rolls and less-than-hoped for theme park attendance and revenue by looking at other segments of the company.

Among them, of course, is Broadcast. And, the fiscal Q2 tale shows network growth on a balance beam with owned-station revenue slowdowns.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

By Jeffrey Hedquist

Every day you can see and hear commercials that were created by committee: politically correct, watered-down, automatically written ads that offend no one…and motivate no one.  Commercials that sound like…well, like commercials.  They make you want to change the station, or at best, ignore the message.

If you want your spots to make it all the way from the senses to the brain, you’ll need to take a few risks.Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

As anticipated, the radio industry took “a very big hit “in 2020 due to the pandemic and subsequent cutbacks in overall spending activity.

Over-the-air advertising revenues dropped to $9.7 billion, a 23.6 percent decline from $12.8 billion in 2019.

That’s according to the first quarter edition of BIA Advisory Services’ 2021 Investing In Radio Market Report.

To little surprise, BIA also determined that Digital ad revenues at stations demonstrated their continued strength, posting only a slight decline to $939 million in revenue in 2020 versus $1 billion in 2019.

“Local radio stations have been feeling the impact of new competition for the past few years; unfortunately, the pandemic just exacerbated the problem and it will take some time to recover,” said Dr. Mark Fratrik, BIA Advisory Services’ SVP and Chief Economist. “The shining star continues to be radio’s online digital advertising revenues, which will outpace over-the-air growth this year and moving forward. Those broadcasting groups that have invested-in and oriented their companies toward digital will benefit faster from that foresight.”

Fratrik forecasts 2021 total local radio revenues to reach $11.7 billion, with $1 billion coming directly from online revenues; a 9.7% increase over 2020.

Transactions Down

“Mirroring the economic climate in 2020, radio station sales fell to levels that hadn’t
been seen in years,” BIA notes.

Only 534 stations were sold in 2020 for an estimated value of $139 million — a
stark contrast from the 1,080 sold in 2011 for $1.1 billion.

You can’t put lipstick on a pig. And you can’t make business year 2020 look any better for the commercial radio industry in the United States. It simply sucked.

And here’s a new chart that shows the big hurt that COVID-10 put on the industry.

“As anticipated, the radio industry took a very big hit in 2020 due to the pandemic and subsequent cutbacks in overall spending activity,” said BIA Advisory Services in its announcement.

“According to the first quarter edition of BIA Advisory Services’ 2021 Investing In Radio Market Report, over-the-air advertising revenues dropped to $9.7 billion, a 23.6% decline from $12.8 billion in 2019.”

Even hardened radio sales veterans may swallow hard when they hear that the industry’s revenue fell below the $10 billion mark.

BIA said digital ad revenues at stations “demonstrated their continued strength,” declining only slightly to $939 million in 2020 versus $1 billion in 2019.

Still, that’s the first time in memory when the digital portion of our radio industry’s revenue went south in a given year.

SVP and Chief Economist Mark Fratrik said in the announcement, “Local radio stations have been feeling the impact of new competition for the past few years; unfortunately, the pandemic just exacerbated the problem and it will take some time to recover.”

Even though those blue digital columns are still pretty small compared to the green OTA ones, he called online digital advertising radio’s “shining star.”

“Those broadcasting groups that have invested-in and oriented their companies toward digital will benefit faster from that foresight.”

The green lines in that chart start to grow again because Fratrik thinks 2021 total local radio revenue will be $11.7 billion, with about $1 billion from online revenues, a 9.7% increase.

Another measure of the economic lockup: BIA said station sales transactions fell “to levels that hadn’t been seen in years.”

It counted 534 stations sold in 2020 for an estimated value of $139 million, “a stark contrast from the 1,080 sold in 2011 for $1.1 billion.”

The post On-Air Radio Revenue Tanked ~24% in 2020 appeared first on Radio World.

NextGen TV provider Evoca is partnering with a skills-to-jobs marketplace to develop “a critically missing piece of national educational infrastructure for adult learners.”

It will see Evoca work with Unmudl to create “the first locally relevant television channel for adult learners seeking short-term courses and credentials to advance their job prospects and navigate the future of work.”

Unmudl and Evoca will curate and produce multi-platform programming and services to inform learners about training and job opportunities and to connect them with community and technical colleges, employers, and social supports.

This new channel, called Path, enables research and development opportunities for interactive experiences and “seamless handoffs” to educational providers and employers, extending Unmudl’s online marketplace to the new medium.

In partnership with others, the pair will design and test the effort in Phoenix and in the Idaho cities of Boise and Twin Falls.

Initial efforts as part of this collaboration include highlighting stories and voices of learners and their educational and career experiences, changing the narrative around skills and technical education based paths.

“Television has been a missing piece of the picture in reaching adult learners. We can actually do something about that with the reach, efficiency, capacity and interactivity of our platform,” said Evoca President/CEO Todd Achilles. “The current approach leaves many unaware of their options and their potential. We are excited to work with Unmudl and their collaborative network of community colleges and employers.”

On February 12, 2021, the Media Bureau, Video Division (Bureau) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in response to a petition for rulemaking filed by Gray Licensee, LLC (Licensee), the licensee of WRDW-TV, channel 12 (CBS), Augusta, Georgia, requesting the substitution of channel 27 for channel 12 at Augusta in the DTV Table of Allotments. For the reasons set forth in the Report and Order referenced below, the Bureau amends FCC regulations to substitute channel 27 for channel 12 at Augusta.

On February 12, 2021, the Media Bureau, Video Division (Bureau) issued a notice of proposed rulemaking in response to a petition for rulemaking filed by Gray Television Licensee, LLC (Petitioner), the licensee of KFVS-TV, channel 11 (CBS), Cape Girardeau, Missouri, requesting the substitution of channel 32 for channel 11 at Cape Girardeau in the DTV Table of Allotments. As a result of the Commission's Incentive Auction and repacking process, KFVS was repacked from channel 12 to channel 11. For the reasons set forth in the Report and Order referenced below, the Bureau amends FCC regulations to substitute channel 32 for channel 11 at Cape Girardeau.

.

Issued a Forfeiture Order in the amount of $1,500 to LLF Holdings, LLC, for failure to timely file a license renewal application for FM Translator W275CC, Macon, Georgi

.

.