Radio+Television Business Report

In a first for a television network, Fox Corporation has opted to enable programmatic trading of addressable set-top box (STB) Video on Demand (VOD) by partnering with Comcast-owned FreeWheel.

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The pact allows advertisers using FOX to reach consumers what the network calls “a path to execute addressable household-level campaigns on any of its content viewed On Demand within the Comcast Xfinity footprint.”

This adds to the programmatic trading capabilities for the FOX portfolio, including free advertising-supported Video on Demand platform Tubi, available on Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex and Cox Contour devices.

Dan Callahan, SVP of Data Strategy and Sales Innovation for FOX, commented, “As audience viewing patterns increase across more platforms, FOX continues to focus on expanding our addressable capabilities and offering advertising partners multiple solutions for their media plans. Our partnership with FreeWheel enables us to deliver targeted advertising to Comcast households who are watching FOX’s popular series on their VOD
platform.”

The Trade Desk is the first demand side platform (DSP) to complete the integration, enabling advertisers to execute addressable guaranteed campaigns on FOX VOD inventory.

VOD viewing represents an increasing portion of most programmers’ total viewing hours, enhancing the importance of bringing greater data-enablement and automation to this segment of the viewing population.

“Advertisers continue to crave more inventory from TV networks and their supply side partners, which is why this combined solution from FOX and Freewheel hits the mark,” said Jon Tabak, GM of Strategic Partnerships at The Trade Desk. “Historically, TV has been somewhat of a blind spot from a digital advertising perspective. By further expanding our platform’s reach in the TV ecosystem, our clients have a clearer picture of their advertising investment and total impact across screens and devices, especially the biggest screen in the room.”

The partnership with FOX is part of FreeWheel’s overall effort to build programmatic capabilities for addressable television. These capabilities will allow demand partners to target audiences against a programmer’s VOD inventory on a guaranteed, fixed price, fixed volume basis. The goal is to allow advertisers to transact on television and premium video inventory in new ways that continue to meet their buying objectives, while opening up additional scale and increasing demand for media companies’ valuable audiences.

FOX and FreeWheel expect additional integrations with demand partners in the coming months.

By Joshua Dudley
Podcast Business Journal

Podcast attribution helps marketers understand how well their advertising dollars are working in their podcast campaigns. Podcast advertising attribution platform Podsights just announced the close of a $4M oversubscribed Seed+ round, led by Newark Venture Partners with participation from Graham Holdings, Aglaé Ventures, and existing investors Greycroft, Supernode Global, BDMI, and Betaworks.

Streamline Publishing’s Podcast Business Journal spoke to Podsights founder Sean Creeley about podcast attribution. It was an exclusive interview.

PBJ: Who do you usually work with?
Sean Creeley: We usually work with some of the larger heads of the market like an NPR, New York Times, or Hubspot to help them understand what is working in podcast advertising. There was a recent survey that measurability and attribution are still the leading reasons why people don’t buy podcast ads, and we’re trying to change their minds and sort of open up the floodgates a little bit to say that podcasting is measurable. We partner with leading ad servers like Megaphone News and Nielson to bring those insights into campaigns.

PBJ: How long have you been in the podcast advertising segment?
Sean Creeley: We started in 2018, and we did really well in 2020 and raised about a million and a half a year ago. We had really good growth through the pandemic, and podcasting, like all industries, was hidden at the beginning of it and then had a nice resurgence come q3 q4 when everybody started to figure out their routines and started looking for additional content in the world.

PBJ: So you think podcast advertising is going to continue to grow?
Sean Creeley: Absolutely. It’s a very powerful medium. I’m sure you can name a couple of brands that you’ve heard because of really high ad recall with specifically some host read first-run ads or host endorsed reads. For the advertisers that need scale, the dynamically inserted ads are even programmatic to an extent. So there’s a little bit of everything for marketers out there, and it’s getting to be a more diverse set of content, which is great to see. We’re just starting to see scale, and with more and more people listening to podcasts, a rising tide lifts all boats.

PBJ: What would you recommend for anyone looking to invest in podcast advertising?
Sean Creeley: Here’s the thing, marketers tend to be biased towards the shows that they listen to, assuming that people that buy their product are like them and listen to the same shows. But what happens is they find out their audience doesn’t like the same shows and those advertisers are never to be seen again.

What we’re advocating for here is more of a thoughtful approach of finding out about the audience a little bit before we push through an ad buy rather than find out after the fact.

The publishers do an incredible job of advocating for podcast advertising and talk about the benefits of the medium, and our job is to put data behind that because at the end of the day, discount codes are not the standard of attribution anymore and we’re seeing a lot more of the big advertisers enter the space.

I think what we’re going to start seeing more of again are the traditional companies that do well and then the larger brand advertisers that want high ad recall in the favorability of these ads.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On February 18, 2020, RBR+TVBR reported on the departure after a decade of American University from the Salisbury-Ocean City, Md., market. AU’s Board of Trustees on Jan. 31, 2020, signed off on the sale of WRAU-FM 88.3 in Ocean City.

That deal never transpired. Now, it’s found a new buyer.

And, it’s the owner of another big FM in the Nation’s Capital that seeks to do what AU did in 2010.

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Discovery Inc. has invested heavily in the promotion of its Discovery + OTT platform, launched January 4.

With some Wall Street watchers newly concerned that streaming revenue and subscriber growth may be lagging, the company’s stock on Wednesday was swept up in a wave of downward activity on Wall Street.

At the Closing Bell, DISCA completed the trading session at $61.94, a 13.6% day-over-day decline.

In early after-hours trading, however, some value investors were already in buy mode. This put DISCA at $62.15 as of 4:14pm Eastern.

With a $46.80 target price, Discovery shares may be a little overheated — similar to what some are saying about ViacomCBS’s recent run-up in value and subsequent two-day collapse.

For Discovery, its share price is where it was on March 3. Further, DISCA had been regularly trading in the low $20 range across the pandemic. It wasn’t until early November 2020 when the big growth spurt started.

With ViacomCBS‘s March 23-24 stock plunge largely fueled by a gargantuan $3 billion equity offering, there’s another angle to the decline some Wall Street observers have suggested.

With Paramount + not living up to its hype, in their eyes, companies with heavy investments in streaming could suffer from slower-than-anticipated growth. While that’s a leap and based purely on speculation, some key radio station owners have been caught up in the sell-offs.

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MIAMI — Grow with our audience, and grow with us.

That’s the pitch presented to new and returning brand managers and CMOs across a digitally delivered event that was one-part Upfront presentation and another part a full introduction to two new key members of the largest multimedia company superserving U.S. Hispanics today.

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They’ve sued Entravision Communications for copyright infringement. A court fight against the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) continues. Then, in early March, it handed Radio a decree straight out of the film Goodfellas: “pay up, or else” if you want to play any GMR artists on your stations from April 1.

Now, one of the nation’s biggest radio broadcasting companies has agreed to a “long-term partnership” with Global Music Rights (GMR), the eight-year-old music license lion founded by Irving Azoff.

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It was once a construction permit owned by notable radio industry figure Randy Michaels. Since its February 2010 sign-on, its been owned and operated by the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Now, eleven years and two months after its debut, this Class B1 FM with a signal stretching as far north as the Buffalo Bills’ home stadium and into the Twin Tiers of Pennsylvania and New York is set to sign off the air.

There’s no buyer, or format change in the works. Rather, the station is going dark.

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Luken Communications no longer exists. The purveyor of digital multicast networks targeting niche audiences is now known as Get After It Media, and it seeks a bigger outlet for its offerings than on a DT signal a cord-cutter would tune to.

Get After It is jumping into the over-the-top space.

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Better sound and audio quality. Data capabilities designed to bring new revenue streams to broadcast TV. Those are the principal promises of ATSC 3.0 and the arrival of NEXTGEN TV in a local marketplace.

Buffalo recently ushered in the NEXTGEN TV era. Now, a DMA two hours to the east along the ol’ Erie Canal has made the move into TV’s future.

Now offering ATSC 3.0-powered broadcast signals are Nexstar Media Group-owned ABC affiliate WSYR-9; WTVH-5, the CBS affiliate operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group that is the legacy of the defunct Granite Broadcasting; and Sinclair-licensed WSTM-3, the NBC affiliate in Syracuse.

Interestingly, Cox Media Group-owned WSYT-68 is not participating in this rollout.

As was the case in other market rollouts, BitPath led the planning process and coordinated efforts across the three television stations.

— RBR+TVBR, in Hurley, N.Y.

Investors appear a tad nervous about the full reopening of the U.S. economy from the year-long COVID-19 pandemic.

And, if any setback occurs, companies with the most fragile profit plans are the most vulnerable. Is Entercom Communications among that group of companies? Tuesday’s Wall Street performance suggests the answer is yes.

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Following Monday’s Closing Bell on Wall Street, ViacomCBS shares topped $100 a share — an incredible feat for a company whose stock bears a 52-week low of just $11.85.

Now, the powers that be at Spongebob’s employer are responding to the incredible growth of ViacomCBS stock by initiating a mammoth $3 billion equity offering.

Specifically, ViacomCBS commenced concurrent offerings of $2 billion of its Class B common stock and $1 billion of its Series A Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock.

Furthermore, ViacomCBS granted the underwriters separate 30-day options to purchase up to an additional $300 million of Class B common stock and up to an additional $15 million of Series A stock. In the latter, such a transaction would occur solely to cover over-allotments, if any.

ViacomCBS says it intends to use the combined net proceeds from the offerings for general corporate purposes, including investments in streaming.

Each share of Series A stock will have a liquidation preference of $100.00 per share.

And, unless earlier converted, each share of this Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock will automatically convert into a variable number of shares of Class B common stock on April 1, 2024 — subject to postponement for certain market disruptions or other events.

The conversion terms, dividend rate and other terms of the Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock will be determined at the time of pricing of the Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock offering.

ViacomCBS intends to apply to list the Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol “VIACP.”

Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan are acting as joint book-running managers for the offerings.

The announcement cooled off ViacomCBS’s hot growth on the Nasdaq market, with shares in VIAC off 5.7% at 2:50pm Eastern, to just below $95 a share.

Still, it was February 26 when shares were trading at $61.35. Across September and October 2020, VIAC was mired in the $28 range.

Then came the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, and slow, steady improvement. When VIAC really began to rocket ahead was at the start of 2021.

Viacom’s shares are up 154% year-to-date, should today’s closing price remain in the $94.50 range.

Thus, The Motley Fool‘s reporting that ViacomCBS shares “crashed again today” is simply false, when one looks at the full trajectory of the company’s performance since Viacom and CBS Corporation reunified.

He’s been the VP/GM of the NBC affiliate serving Colorado Springs and Pueblo for the last decade.

Starting April 12, he’ll be overseeing a co-owned FOX affiliate in the fastest-growing portion of the Sunshine State, a place where he’s spent much time across his 30-year career.

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You’ve seen it. Your morning show hosts have likely discussed it.

That horribly embarrassing Zoom gone wrong has become the stuff of lore, likely to represent an indelible look at COVID-19 times in the decades to come.

How can you and your colleagues prevent a repeat of these Zoom fails? Veteran public relations executive Rosemary Ravinal has some great advise to share on preventing you — or perhaps your more well-known team members — from becoming the latest social media humor vehicle.

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The company founded by Daniel Anstandig devoted to AI-driven audience engagement and sales intelligence tech platforms for media, has selected a new Chief Technology Officer.

Now in the CTO slot at Futuri is Jason J. Sosa.

This puts Sosa in a leadership position in which he will oversee Futuri’s product team and work cross-functionally to develop new features, technologies, and products.

Sosa is the founder and, most recently, CEO of Blackbox AI, an innovation advisory for platform development, remote work, and strategy. Sosa is also a recognized speaker, having participated in TEDx (4 times), MIT Enterprise Forum, and Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Buried within an asset purchase agreement filed Tuesday (3/23) with the FCC is the usual information reflecting the legal counsel representing both buyer and seller. For the buyer, the lawyer’s name is a very familiar one. However, there was one major eye-popping difference from prior filings featuring this attorney’s name — she’s at a new law firm.

So is a former colleague, as both communications law experts have set up shop at BakerHostetler.

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Its mission is simple: To re-purpose 600 MHz and other spectrum and rapidly deploy a world-class 5G network in the United States.

This could explain why the individual behind Landover Wireless, a 30-year veteran of the global wireless telecommunications industry, has decided to part ways with 20 unbuilt LPTV construction permits.

The buyer? An individual with a presence stretching from the Grand Strand through Georgia’s Coastal Empire.

Laurence Zimmerman and his Landover 2 LLC have struck a deal to send the unbuilt LPTVs to Jeff Winemiller, and his Lowcountry 34 Media.

The stations trading hands are as follows:

Winemiller, who is based in Beaufort, S.C., near Hilton Head Island, is paying $850,000 for the CPs; a $150,000 deposit has been made by the buyer.

The broker involved in this transaction: Greg Guy of Patrick Communications.

The legal counsel in this deal has its own bit of newsworthiness: While veteran Aaron Shainis of Shainis & Peltzman represented Landover 2, Davina Sashkin served as Winemiller’s attorney at her new firm — Baker Hostetler. She had been with Fletcher Heald & Hildreth as recently as January 2021.

The sale of the LPTV CPs for Zimmerman concludes a spectrum license play for Landover Wireless; Zimmerman acquired and developed national and regional footprints of 38 GHz, 3.5 GHz, 2.6 GHz and 1600 MHz/MMDS licenses across the last three decades and developed strategic relationships creating additional value in the spectrum assets.
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Zimmerman is also known for founding Advanced Radio Telecom Corp., which became Fiber Tower and was ultimately sold to AT&T; and National Wireless Holdings Inc. He was also an early seed investor and one-time largest individual shareholder of Winstar Communications, which became StraightPath and was ultimately sold to Verizon.

Programmatic video platform Tremor Video is close to bringing to market a new data-driven TV Intelligence offering that builds on the company’s Connected TV (CTV) and addressable TV measurement and cross-platform targeting efforts.

The product, the company says, allows advertisers to reach “the most relevant consumers with precision using a greater breadth and depth of audience data assets.”

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Impressions-based buying and selling in the television universe is an imperative for marketers today. And, broadcast TV is responding. But, what of the measurement needs for the media buyer and media planner putting the cross-platform mix together based on reliable data?

Comscore is devoting its short-term and long-term future to local cross-platform and says groups and agencies are shifting from talk to action.

EVP of Commercial Steve Walsh shares how Comscore is driving the way media and marketers are mastering the ability to match homes with the actual purchase behavior seen in those homes in this fresh InFOCUS Podcast, presented by DOT.FM.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Steve Walsh, Comscore” on Spreaker.

As of today, the CEO at Nielsen is no longer holding double duty as the company’s Chief Diversity Officer.

That’s because the dominant audience measurement and consumer data company in the U.S. has selected a woman who joined the company in January 2020 to direct diversity and inclusion initiatives to hold the position.

Sandra Sims-Williams will take over CDO duties from CEO David Kenny, who has held the CDO title in addition to CEO since February 2019.

She will continue to lead Nielsen’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I) team, working to develop a more inclusive culture for the company and increase diverse representation, while rising from Senior Vice President of Diversity & Inclusion (D&I).

Prior to joining Nielsen, Sims-Williams led diversity and inclusion efforts at Publicis Groupe as Chief Diversity Officer and has a deep background in diverse leadership development, retention programming, analytics and effectiveness, supplier diversity, multicultural talent acquisition, and corporate initiatives that drive diversity and inclusion cross-functionally.