Travel between Macon and Valdosta, Ga., along Interstate 75, and you’ll pass through the tiny town of Cordele. Here, an FM translator is being spun.
But, it’s originating AM isn’t a part of this end-of-year deal.
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The increased focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Corporate America is not going unnoticed among Black, Hispanic and other diverse audiences, a new Horowitz Research study shows.
As such, to resonate with the multicultural, “brands need to step up,” Horowitz advises. Does the concept of “brand” extend beyond the advertiser to the media outlets themselves?
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She’s been the Chief Information Officer for Audacy Inc. since joining the company then-known as Entercom in September 2020.
Now, the former FreeWheel and Imagine Communications executive has been promoted to the newly created role of Chief Technology Officer — a move that comes just as RBR+TVBR readers for the first time are honoring Broadcast Media’s Top Tech Leaders.
Who are Broadcast Media’s Top Tech Leaders? Is Audacy represented on this first-ever, reader-generated honor roll? Find out on January 24, exclusively in the all-new Winter 2022 Radio + Television Business Report print edition. It includes a cover story on the future of broadcasting and OTT for over-the-air TV, and interviews with a wide array of broadcast technology leaders — including GatesAir CEO Bruce Swail, Qligent’s Brick Eksten and CP Communications’ Kurt Heitman. It’s available to RBR+TVBR subscribers and as a digital download to all MWC Barcelona 2022 attendees.
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SUNRISE, FLA. — The warning signs started on Thursday, when headliner Megan Thee Stallion withdrew from the Atlanta “Jingle Ball” concert staged by iHeartMedia for its “Power 96.1” in the market, elevating The Black Eyed Peas, Tate McRae, Tai Verdes and Bazzi in rank of must-see acts on the bill.
Then, with just hours to go before the final scheduled “Jingle Ball” concert for iHeartMedia’s “Y-100” in South Florida, the event was scratched.
The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is to blame. Is this a warning sign that event revenue for broadcast radio remains shaky for an industry that has experienced a much slower recovery from the depths of the pandemic than broadcast television?
News of the Y-100 Jingle Ball cancellation, following announcements of similar cancellations and postponements of Broadway shows and Saturday Night Live in New York and sports matches in the NFL, NHL and NBA, brings a new wariness to the in-person mass gathering for radio. At the Audacy Beach Festival, held December 4 and 5 on Fort Lauderdale’s main beach, headliner Swedish House Mafia pulled out within 24 hours of its festival-closing performance due to COVID-19.
For the Y-100 “Jingle Ball,” the venue was the FLA Live Arena, home of the Florida Panthers pro hockey club. In a Tweet from the official Jingle Ball account, “the increased transmission of the new COVID-19 variant” led to the event’s cancellation.
In a follow-up post made by WHYI “Y-100” on Twitter, the longtime iHeartMedia Top 40 station said, “Our ticketing partners have relayed that refunds may take between 3 and 30 days to be reflected in your account.”
The Tweet was in stark contrast to the last one made by Y-100, which advised, “Everyone better hydrate and stretch before the #Y100JingleBall tomorrow because we’re gonna be shakin’ it, twerkin’ it and boom boom pow’in it all night with @Saweetie, @Anitta, @BEP, and @duttypaul.”
Megan Thee Stallion was being promoted as a performer on Saturday by iHeartMedia and Y-100 despite the act’s withdrawal from the December 16 Atlanta show. Meanwhile, artists Doja Cat and The Jonas Brothers had already withdrawn from the Jingle Ball series of concerts originated by WHTZ “Z100” in New York due to COVID-19 concerns.
At iHeartMedia, Events revenue is calculated under the rubric of the iHeartMedia Multiplatform Group, which is also comprised of the company’s broadcast radio, networks and sponsorships businesses. For the three months ending September 30, 2021, sponsorship and event revenue for iHeartMedia came in at $42.66 million, rising rom $28.9 million in Q3 2020.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel was the first local news organization to widely distribute news of the Y-100 “Jingle Ball” cancellation. The newspaper cited that 30% of new COVID cases in Florida are “breakthrough” cases, while quoting Dr. Anthony Fauci, who spoke Sunday morning on a national television newsmagazine and noted the Omicron variant is “just raging around the world.”
With CES 2022 just two weeks away in Las Vegas, one of the world’s biggest conferences and vendor expos is now suddenly in the COVID-19 crosshairs. “As many people are not attending CES, NAGRA is scheduling virtual meetings to share their news,” the portable audio recorder manufacturer shared in a press release released Monday.
Then, there is NATPE Miami, which begins January 18 at the Fontainebleau Resort on Miami Beach and traditionally attracts a large international crowd of program suppliers and vendors.
While these major events with global reach are very much on-schedule, and fully vaccinated attendees are not expected to be impacted, Omicron’s spread could very well cloud what transpires come January.
Just past 7:20am local time on Monday, a trio of FM signals serving a popular Colorado ski resort region were heard playing tunes from Post Malone and The Weeknd; Todd Rundgren; and Zac Brown Band.
Will this continue in 2022, as the three radio brands are being spun to a new ownership group?
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As the clock struck midnight on Friday, December 17 in New York, all Disney-owned channels, including ESPN and local ABC stations, became unavailable on YouTube TV. A monthly price reduction from $64.99 to $49.99 for its customers went into effect, a sign that a long-term retransmission consent impasse between the Alphabet Inc.-owned vMVPD and The Walt Disney Co. had come to fruition.
By Sunday evening, it was all over, with all Disney-related live channels and on-demand content back on YouTube TV.
“We’re happy to announce that we’ve reached a deal with Disney and have already started to restore access to channels like ESPN and FX, and Disney recordings that were previously in your library,” YouTube TV’s Twitter minders posted in the 3pm Eastern hour on Sunday. “Your local ABC station will also be turning on throughout the day.”
For “Members,” the monthly subscription will revert to $64.99. However, “all impacted members will still receive a one-time $15 discount,” YouTube TV said.
And just like that, a potentially bruising battle between two multimedia giants came to an end.
At 2am Eastern Saturday, that was hardly a prediction one could have safely made. In an e-mail communique to its Members, YouTube TV said, “We have held good faith negotiations with Disney for several months. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before our existing one expired.”
As such, anyone relying on YouTubeTV to watch such stations as KTRK-13 in Houston or “ABC7” in San Francisco, Chicago, New York or Los Angeles were out of luck. Furthermore, a “blackout,” by law in lieu of a retransmission consent agreement, prevented YouTube TV Members from accessing any previous library recordings from the impacted channels, including 4K content that is available as part of the 4K Plus add-on.
“We know this is frustrating news, and it is not the outcome we wanted,” the Google sibling said early Saturday. “We will continue conversations with Disney to advocate on your behalf in hopes of restoring their content on YouTube TV.”
It turns out that a swift resolution could be had after all.
The impacted channels off of YouTube TV for approximately 18 hours are:
Disney-owned channels no longer available on YouTube TV:
That’s a question noted Washington, D.C. communications attorney David Oxenford asks.
Oxenford shared details of a new joint letter posted on the Radio Music License Committee website in a blog post penned Friday by the Wilkinson Barker Knauer partner. In the letter, it is stated that GMR and the RMLC are discussing a settlement of their long-running litigation over the royalties that the commercial radio industry will pay for the public performance of music written by GMR composers.
GMR earlier this year extended their interim license offered to commercial radio stations once again. However, it came with “a substantial increase” in the amount that stations needed to pay to remain licensed during the litigation, Oxenford points out.
The new joint letter states that the interim license will be extended for another three months while the parties work on this possible settlement. “Stations will not receive any direct notice about the need to extend their licenses from GMR,” Oxenford says. Instead, stations are to go to the GMR website at https://globalmusicrights.com/interimextension to complete a form to remain licensed after the end of December.
The interim licenses have been signed because, over the last few years, GMR has been engaged in litigation with RMLC over whether GMR should be subject to any sort of antitrust regulation of the rates that it sets, Oxenford writes. “GMR has filed a countersuit over whether the RMLC itself violates the antitrust rules as a buyer’s cartel, by allegedly organizing all the buyers of GMR’s music to hold out for a specific price,” he explains.
A possible settlement would end any litigation. Is that on the horizon? “The joint letter looks like good news, as it indicates that some final resolution of GMR royalties may soon be at hand,” Oxenford concludes.
A marketing analytics and measurement company in the social media space has just been acquired by Comscore.
It’s a deal that closed on Thursday, and allows Comscore to expand both its Media Metrix and Video Metrix currencies.
How? Comscore bought Shareablee, allowing Media Metrix and Video Metrix to include Shareablee’s social media engagement and video insights.
This, Comscore says, “will bridge the industry gap of traditional digital and social measurement services that exists today.”
Integration plans call for Comscore digital products to benefit from Shareablee data, “allowing clients to broaden their digital footprint in products like Video Metrix with advanced social video insights, and for Shareablee clients to have additional advantages with curated views of Comscore digital data embedded in their Shareablee dashboards.”
Comscore plans to retain the Shareablee team after closing, with key members of Shareablee management, including Tania Yuki, Greg Dale and Jonathan Lieberman, continuing in leadership roles.
Shareablee provides analytics and intelligence to such clients as GroupM, ESPN, NBCUniversal and Vox Media.
— RBR+TVBR wire services
For 60 years until 2014, CBS Television Network coverage of the Fargo and Grand Forks, N. Dakota, area involved a broadcast facility that used the KXJB call letters. At that time, Gray Television shifted CBS programming to a digital LPTV facility and sold the former home of “KX4.”
The buyer? Ravi Kapur, the entrepreneur who has been snapping up low-power TV stations across the U.S. Kapur rechristened the station as KRDK-TV, and ownership of the COZI TV affiliate has had its challenges — namely, carriage on two MVPDs serving Fargo.
A fresh FCC decision will likely resolve that issue.
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For the last several years, a Texas licensee has been seeking to operate a Class A radio station at 92.7 on the FM dial. However, that hasn’t happened because another licensee, led by Roy Henderson, has been authorized to do so but never followed through with a shift to that frequency for a Class A FM at 106.1 MHz.
As such, the party that wants the 92.7 FM frequency wants the FCC to remove that channel assignment from Henderson’s company, and is even willing to construct a whole new Class A FM at 100.5 MHz to make it happen.
What does the Media Bureau’s Assistant Audio Division Chief, Nazifa Sawez, have to say about the request?
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It’s a 5kw Class B AM facility that until its 2007 sale to Curtis Media Group was owned by CBS Radio. Before that, it was owned by iHeartMedia predecessor Clear Channel Communications and has served the Greensboro and Winston-Salem area of North Carolina since April 1930.
What does the future hold for this station? That’s up to Stuart W Epperson Jr.
A deal consummated on December 9 and submitted this week to the FCC for approval sees Epperson’s Truth Broadcasting Corp. putting together an asset purchase agreement for WSJS-AM 600 in Winston-Salem. FM translator W276DS at 103.1 MHz is included in the transaction.
The seller is Curtis, but the licensee shown on the APA is related entity Crescent Media Group LLC.
A $625,000 purchase price has been agreed upon by the parties. Terms call for a $125,000 cash delivery at closing, pending any adjustments; the remaining $500,000 is represented via a promissory note.
Crescent, led by Donald Curtis, is represented by Brooks Pierce attorney Coe Ramsey. For Epperson, his legal counsel is Davina Sashkin of BakerHostelter.
WSJS will join a group of stations at include Christian Talk & Teaching WTRU-AM 830, Christian Full Service WPET-AM 950, and Gospel WPOL-AM 1340 in the Greensboro and Winston-Salem region.
NEW YORK — It’s been a busy week for Standard Media Index, with new data releases galore since Monday.
The latest info to come from SMI: Ad spend in November of 2021 grew 10% compared to the same time a year ago. The comparisons to 2019 are even rosier.
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Over the last two years, Spotify has taken great strides to “modernize” digital audio advertising and, in turn, “drive growth for creators and publishers while delivering impact for advertisers.”
This included the November 2020 acquisition of Megaphone, enabling Spotify to offer podcast publishers new ways to monetize their content. In 2021, new features for Streaming Ad Insertion, podcast ad buying in Spotify Ad Studio and the introduction of the Spotify Audience Network came to fruition.
With a commitment to continuing to help publishers around the globe grow their podcast businesses, Spotify has moved forward with the acquisition of an Australian podcast technology platform that the company says gives independent creators, publishers, broadcasters and brands “a cost effective, end-to-end platform to host, distribute, monetize and track on-demand audio.”
What does the purchase of Whooshkaa mean for publishers and advertisers, or for broadcast radio eager to thwart technology companies for stepping on its toes?
“With the integration of Whooshkaa’s broadcast-to-podcast technology into Megaphone, radio broadcasters will be able to more easily and quickly turn their existing audio content into a podcast and access Megaphone’s industry-leading, differentiated suite of tools and technology,” Spotify explains.
Thus, there is a big opportunity for broadcasters to grow their NTR through a platform powered by an on-demand audio source.
Megaphone is the podcast platform of choice for AdLarge Media, as well as The Wall Street Journal.
“Integrating Whooshkaa’s innovative broadcast-to-podcast technology means we’ll be able to bring even more third-party content into the Spotify Audience Network, helping advertisers to connect with even more audiences,” Spotify notes. “We believe we’re on the precipice of immense growth for the entire digital audio industry.”
He has spent the last 10 years as Electronics Research Inc. (ERI)’s Radio Account Manager for the Eastern United States and has been in the radio technology sector for nearly 50 years.
Now, Carl Davis is retiring, and his successor has been selected.
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The SVP of Distribution and Government Affairs for Hearst Television has been named to the NAB Television Board of Directors.
The appointment of Nick Radziul was made by Television Board Chair Perry Sook in accordance with NAB by-laws. The appointment is effective immediately.
Radziul joined Hearst in 2016 and is responsible for the broadcaster’s distribution rights agreements with all programming and distribution partners, including national program networks, multichannel video programming distributors, and television and digital syndication partners. He also serves on the Board of Governors of the ABC Television Affiliates Association.
Before joining Hearst, Radziul was VP/Strategic Transactions for CBS Corporation and served previously as Senior Counsel/Programming at Cablevision. He has also served as an associate at Davis & Gilbert LLP, focusing on media, advertising, corporate and entertainment clients, as well as an associate at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.
Radziul assumes the Board seat of Patrick McCreery, President of Meredith Corporation’s Local Media Group, which was recently acquired by Gray Television.
MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIF. — “From the desert to the sea, to all of Southern California” was a trademark phrase used by the late news anchor Jerry Dunphy. It signified the vast size of the Los Angeles DMA, which includes such High Desert communities as Barstow and Ridgecrest and Beach Cities bearing the names Manhattan, Redondo and Hermosa.
Now, everyone in the nation’s second-largest market has access to NEXTGEN TV, the ATSC 3.0-powered digital broadcast standard. Making it possible across the Southland: Nexstar Media Group and FOX Television Stations.
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The U.S. Ad industry lost billions of dollars in potential ad spend during COVID-19 lockdowns, with the worst impact — to little surprise — coming in Spring 2020.
Now, an analysis by Standard Media Index illustrates just how steep the decline was.
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In late September, Diponti Communications was handed a Notice of Apparent Liability from the Audio Division of the FCC’s Media Bureau seeking a $7,000 fine.
Why? The Rhode Island licensee apparently willfully violated section 73.3539 of the Rules by failing to timely file a license renewal application and for apparently willfully and repeatedly violating Section 301 of the Act by engaging in unauthorized operation of its FM translator after the license had expired.
The Media Bureau has ruled on the matter. A fine is being handed to Diponti, but it’s been reduced.
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A Washington-based Hispanic broadcast ministry has decided to spin an FM translator serving the eastern community of Moses Lake.
The buyer? A broadcast ministry that will retain the core values of the property.
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