WASHINGTON, D.C. — Prominent telecommunications, media, and technology law firm Fletcher Heald & Hildreth has elected a new Member of the firm. It’s an active litigator who first joined the firm in January 2020 and continued to have a substantial hearing and deposition schedule — remotely — through the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The future of television arrived Thursday in Western New York, as five local television stations, owned by The E.W. Scripps Co., TEGNA, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and Nexstar Media Group, are the latest in the U.S. to begin broadcasting with NEXTGEN TV.
For those across Lake Ontario in Toronto, a taste of ATSC 3.0-powered television is that much closer to fruition.
With a promise of improved audio and video for consumers and the benefit of data services for TV station licensees, the stations saw planning and rollout of NEXTGEN TV coordinated by BitPath.
While competitors, the participating stations worked together to ensure that current programming remains available to all viewers, regardless of whether their television service is provided over-the air or by a cable or satellite company.
The stations now using NEXTGEN TV delivery are WGRZ-2, WIVB-4, WKBW-7, and Sinclair dup WUTV-29 and WNYO-49.
Those stations, with the exception of WNYO, can be viewed across much of Southern Ontario, including the GTA, where Rogers includes WGRZ, WIVB, WKBW and WUTV as part of its local channel lineup.
As cord-cutting began to rapidly increase in recent years, Wall Street became increasingly focused on looming National Football League television rights negotiations.
Why? As MoffettNathanson Senior Analyst Michael Nathanson points out, “the singular importance of this sport on the Pay TV eco-system” is a vitally important topic to flush out.
With Thursday’s announcement that the NFL has handed exclusive rights for Thursday Night Football match-ups to Amazon, Nathanson has some “significant takeways” that need to be discussed.
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In 1974, Steven C. Roberts teamed up with his brother, Michael, in creating a minority-owned business consulting and construction management firm headquartered in St. Louis. Fifteen years later, they expanded beyond commercial real estate investments with the creation of a broadcast media operation, serving the biggest city in Mississippi.
Now, Roberts is ready to demonstrate how a much-debated new technology the FCC could soon authorize for voluntary use by an FM radio station can aid a minority or women-owned station.
A ZoneCasting demonstration is on track for “The Beat of the Capitol.”
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After amassing a formidable stable of low-power and full-power television properties between the first quarter of 2017 and third quarter 2019, HC2 Holdings appears to be in the midst of a significant asset paring.
The company now led by Chief Executive Officer Wayne Barr Jr. has signed off on its fourth divestment deal since the start of 2021.
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The nation’s No. 1 audio media company, iHeartMedia, has made another notable move in the podcasting arena. Three new shows will shine a light on the “curious tales, historical oddities and stranger-than-fiction true stories that are often left out of history books.”
“We are excited to share our newest slate of iHeartRadio Original Podcasts focused on the curious true stories left out of history books,” said Jason English, Lead Executive Producer of iHeartRadio Original Podcasts. “This spring you can spend time with the Black cowboys who found freedom on the high plains after the Civil War; get a first-person account of the most insane government project in American history; and meet desperate World War I veterans who camped outside the White House for months during the Great Depression.”
The first historical podcast in the slate, “Black Cowboys,” available now, tells the story of what freedom looked like for Black Americans after the Civil War. The podcast shares a more honest version of the settling of the Wild West and shines a light on the one-in-four cowboys who were Black. Upcoming podcasts include “Operation Midnight Climax,” which details the stranger-than-fiction events that took place at a CIA-run brothel in the 1950s; “The White House Coup,” which chronicles a club of powerful Wall Street millionaires in a plot to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR); and other little-known odd histories of historical figures and events.
New and upcoming iHeartRadio Podcast Originals include “Operation Midnight Climax,” just launched, and “The White House Coup,” coming in April.
The National Football League has reached new long-term deals with its media partners, and the head of the lobbying group representing the interests of small MVPDs is less than pleased with what it will do for cable customers.
As ACA Connects President/CEO Matthew M. Polka sees it, it only strengthens the need for Congress to pass legislation that eliminates retransmission consent.
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According to Magellan AI, which monitors how much advertisers spend on podcasts, BetterHelp spent $4.3 million in February on 386 podcasts.
One of radio’s favorite advertisers, GEICO, was second with $2.6 million spent on 260 mainly sports podcasts.
Here are the top five:
Its earnings per share increased 57.58% over the past year in Q4. And, it beat the Wall Street consensus estimate by a penny.
While that’s a positive feat in COVID-19 times, investors have soured of late on Veritone Inc., the technology company that has built a reputation on harnessing media sales growth opportunities through AI attribution in audio and video content — including advertising.
On Thursday, Veritone shares were down by nearly 11%. What’s upsetting shareholders?
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RALEIGH — Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC) has launched a new agency that promises to offer clients in the Triangle region of North Carolina, and beyond, strategic brand, marketing, and creative services.
It’s an expansion of services offered since 2017 by its WRAL Digital Solutions.
“However, the needs of clients have continued to evolve, and CBC realized there was an unmet need in the market,” it explains.
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An AM/FM combo serving a small Mississippi town southeast of Memphis could be liable for a cash penalty for failing to submit its license renewal applications to the FCC in a timely manner.
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JACKSON, WYO. — Across Thursday, a group of local radio stations in Jackson Hole led their newscasts by trumpeting how gas prices were rapidly escalating, putting a tinge of fear in the report.
It appears such fretting may be premature. Crude oil prices plunged 8%, with European demand now less than anticipated. This, coupled with inflation concerns and the news that another 770,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims for the week ending March 13 sent U.S. financial markets downward.
Several publicly traded media companies were swept up in the tide.
Among the bigger dips was that seen by iHeartMedia, the audio media giant that is poised to benefit from the pending acquisition of a significant non-voting stake in the company by Global, the parent of several leading U.K. radio brands.
At the closing bell, IHRT was down 6%, with downward activity accelerating after the noon hour, Eastern time.
Also down significantly: Saga Communications, which continues to suffer from pandemic-related revenue dips across its radio stations. SGA finished Thursday’s trading at $25.12, down 6.7% from Wednesday.
On the TV side, Sinclair Broadcast Group gave up 5.4% of its value to finish the day at $35.89.
Hudson MX, the provider of next-generation media buying and accounting programs for broadcast media, has launched an “enterprise solution” designed to give the half-trillion-dollar media industry “a modern, cross-media, cloud based media management platform.”
As Hudson MX sees it, FinanceAssist can replace “outdated legacy systems that previously monopolized the market.”
Described as a “one-budget, one-invoice platform,” FinanceAssist can enable agencies to manage omnichannel campaigns with “greater flexibility, efficiency and transparency.”
Hudson MX adds, “With these end-to-end capabilities, Hudson MX provides new infrastructure built for today’s omnichannel reality and can agilely evolve in-step with how the industry transforms in the future while empowering the next generation of creativity and effectiveness for agencies and the broader advertising industry.
JT Batson, CEO of Hudson MX, commented, “Legacy systems don’t support agencies and their media partners’ creativity and innovation ambitions, hampering them with artificially increasing transaction costs and high volume of work that is a distraction from delivering results to clients. As an industry, we can and must do better to fix the ecosystem’s fundamental underpinnings for the sake of our industry’s future. With Hudson MX solutions like FinanceAssist we are doing just that through an agile, digital-first platform unencumbered by legacy technology so clients can eliminate process inefficiencies, allowing them to focus on higher-impact strategic work and unlocking revenue for their businesses.”
It’s a new day for HC2 Holdings Inc., which quietly installed a new CEO in late November and has been divesting stations that it no longer deems essential to an ATSC 3.0 spectrum play launched under former leader Philip Falcone.
Under Wayne Barr Jr. as Chief Executive, HC2 has sold TV stations to Weigel Broadcasting and, most recently, to Gray Television. HC2 is adding to more TV stations to the sell pile.
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Get ready for another fiery day on Wall Street for Urban One.
The company on Thursday morning released its fourth quarter and full-year 2020 earnings. And … they’re spectacular.
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The local TV via IP service that the NAB and the Big Four TV networks despise for what they assail as a guise is entering its 31st market.
Starting March 19, viewers across the Pacific Northwest’s second-largest market can stream 39 local broadcast channels through a service operated by a non-profit entity that’s rapidly expanding across the U.S.
In an e-mail sent Wednesday to its followers, Locast revealed that Portland, Ore., is its newest market — an addition that comes as the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament (“March Madness”) commences on ViacomCBS-owned properties and CBS affiliates, such as KOIN-6, owned by Nexstar Media Group.
Also viewable: Nexstar’s home for The CW Network in Portland, KRCW-32; Meredith Local Media‘s FOX affiliate, and MyNetwork TV sibling, KPTV-12 and KPDX-TV; Sinclair Broadcast Group‘s ABC affiliate, KATU-2; public media giant OPB‘s local PBS member station; and TEGNA‘s dominant NBC affiliate, KGW-8. Also available: ION Network; local feeds for Telemundo, Univision and Azteca América; and several digital multicast offerings.
The service is geo-fenced: If you’re outside of the Portland DMA as determined by your location services information, you can’t watch the stations on the 39-channel lineup.
The Portland DMA includes Clark County, Wash.; and extends within Portland to the capital, Salem, and to coastal communities including Astoria, where classic films “The Goonies” and “Kindergarten Cop” were filmed.
More market additions are on the way.
“We continue to work hard to launch more markets so stay tuned,” Locast said.
It also took care in noting that Locast is “a nonprofit” and relies on user donations “of just $5 per month” to support the ongoing operations and expansion of its “nonprofit” service.
As a non-profit, Locast believes it operates outside the scope of retransmission consent. That’s irksome to the NAB and every broadcast TV network, as their affiliates and owned stations are increasingly reliant on retransmission consent fees to offset a decline in advertising stemmed from the rise of local digital media solutions.
At 89.1 FM on the dial in one of the most beautiful places in the world is “Jackson Hole Community Radio.” It’s fiercely independent – so much so that KHOL-FM seeks new members by asking listeners to “support independent media.”
To learn more about this unique station and the continued importance of local non-commercial radio in the U.S., RBR+TVBR Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson spoke with knewjack, a.k.a. Jack Catlin, KHOL’s Music Director, in this new InFOCUS Podcast presented by DOT.FM.
Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Jackson Hole Community Radio” on Spreaker.
The Media Bureau has extended a temporary freeze, originally announced on
March 20, 2020, on the acceptance of any AM minor change application that conflicts with the most recently licensed facilities of four now-deleted AM radio stations in the St. Louis market.
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Sinclair Television Group has announced that it intends to amend and extend the existing term loan B-1 tranche under its credit agreement.
This, Sinclair says, includes the incurrence of new term loans in order to refinance such term loan B-1 tranche.
This tranche currently has a maturity date of January 3, 2024.
The goal for Sinclair is to reach new term loans which will provide for, among other things, a maturity date that is seven years after the effectiveness of the amendment.
Sinclair notes that this credit facility amendment is subject to market and other customary closing conditions.
RBR+TVBR EXCLUSIVE
On Tuesday, it was widely reported that Global, the U.K.-based media company that boasts such British radio brands as Heart, Capital, Radio X, LBC, Gold and Classic FM, wants a greater stake in iHeartMedia.
In fact, its Washington-based counsel wrote to the FCC to advance regulatory approval for the acquisition of nearly 50% of non-voting equity in iHeart — five times what iHeart sought from the Commission.
RBR+TVBR has now learned that there’s a bit more to the story: iHeartMedia found itself in violation of FCC’s foreign ownership rules only after learning of Global’s initial investment.
What a company does when faced with a situation may be the biggest new concern for every publicly traded radio or TV entity in the U.S. today.
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