Industry News

Where Arkansas meets Oklahoma via U.S. Highway 412 sits a dormant broadcast tower that’s home to a transmitter for a 5kw daytime/31 watt nighttime AM that has been owned by regionally known licensee Jay Bunyard for nearly 13 years.

Most recently, this station was an ESPN Radio affiliate. Now, it’s being sold — and a change in language is most likely on the way for this forlorn station.

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With the last broadcast transaction of the year — a $55.8 million TV deal — the broadcast deal volume for 2020 passed the $1 billion line, closing with a total of $1.02 billion.

That’s an 87% drop from 2019, Volker Mörbitz of S&P Global Market Intelligence notes, clearly highlighting the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is, however, a volume 27% higher than that of 2010 when the deal market felt the full impact of the 2008-2010 financial crisis.

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Summit Technology Group says it has added features to its ATMOS Weather Reporting product, including an IPAWS integration that provides more natural-sounding emergency alerts.

“Stations that choose to ignore optional EAS alerts can instead provide an unobtrusive, natural-sounding announcement in its place to convey the same message,” the company said.

“Furthermore, users can use ATMOS’ advanced scripting language (known as ATMOS Markup Language) to create scripts that suit their station branding and include their station name or slogan. When integrated with automation, the product can produce an alert announcement and gracefully insert it into the playlist.”

ATMOS is used by radio and TV stations to automate weather reports in a natural-sounding manner. It uses customizable script templates and AI-powered synthesized speech.

Summit President Paul Stewart was quoted in the announcement saying the intent of the IPAWS integration was to improve public safety in creating alerts that deliver the message without a robotic voice and are delivered without preempting a station’s programming.

“We heard far too often that optional alerts were being ignored on account of the National Weather Service voice engines sounding too robotic and jarring,” he said.

Summit worked with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to implement the interface needed to receive IPAWS alerts, he said. The interface is built on a cloud-based process that is hosted by redundant, geographically-separated tier-3 data centers.

Also new, Sponsor Manager provides a tool to manage advertisers and underwriters and appending their messages to weather reports.

“The new tool allows a user to create a sponsor, write a script, schedule the message and even track the number of times the weather report was performed. This is important considering each weather report may be aired numerous times an hour as prescribed by a station’s format and audience behavior,” the company said.

While the concept isn’t new, Stewart said, the environment makes it easy to edit, synthesize and schedule messages.

Also, ATMOS can now integrate with EAS equipment manufacturers, providing the ability to automate Required Weekly Tests from within ATMOS or through most automation or playout software suites. “This functionality is especially useful when inserted into a playlist to provide graceful execution of RWTs that do not interfere with programming or traffic breaks.”

ATMOS can be configured to provide a linear PCM (wav) file for ingest into automation or can be configured to play out the audio report directly. Subscribers are delivered a desktop application compatible with Windows 7, 8, 10, and Server 2014 or newer.

The post Summit Integrates IPAWS in ATMOS appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Broadcasters announced a digital campaign called “Voices From the Field,” that is intended to highlight stories of broadcasters using first-person accounts.

The first segment features Shomari Stone, general assignment reporter for WRC-TV in Washington, who talks among other things about his experiences covering the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

“The campaign, part of NAB’s ‘We Are Broadcasters’ initiative, will spotlight how broadcasters are using their expertise, experience and dedication to local broadcasting to serve their audiences and uplift their communities,” the NAB stated in a press release.

Subjects will share why they became broadcasters and what they are passionate about in their careers.

“The campaign will focus on local reporters, on-air radio talent, photojournalists, broadcast engineers, producers and editors to highlight the people responsible for delivering news, weather, emergency information and public affairs programming to local communities.”

NAB said the campaign will use podcasts, video interviews and Q-and-As.

The post NAB Celebrates Broadcast Voices appeared first on Radio World.

February 11 saw the release of the second in a series of Borrell Associates reports that examine 2021 spending plans for a dozen different types of local ad buyers.

This 14-page analysis, drawn from a survey of 373 local businesses that buy TV ads, shifts focus to Broadcast TV Advertisers.

To share additional insights into the findings, Gordon Borrell spoke exclusively with RBR+TVBR in this fresh InFOCUS Podcast presented by DOT.FM.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Gordon Borrell” on Spreaker.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The NAB has officially launched a new digital campaign highlighting stories of local broadcasters through first-person accounts.

The “Voices From the Field” campaign, part of NAB’s “We Are Broadcasters” initiative, is designed to spotlight how broadcasters are using their expertise, experience and dedication to local broadcasting to serve their audiences and “uplift” their communities.

Using first-person storytelling features such as podcasts, video interviews and Q&A dialogue, “Voices From the Field” seeks to provide a platform for subjects to describe why they became broadcasters, what makes them passionate about their career and what they love most about being a local broadcaster.

The campaign, the NAB says, will focus on local reporters, on-air radio talent, photojournalists, broadcast engineers, producers and editors to highlight the people responsible for delivering news, weather, emergency information and public affairs programming to local communities.

“Every day, thousands of local broadcasters work tirelessly on-air, online and behind the scenes to deliver invaluable service to their communities,” NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith said. “This campaign will celebrate the real people who are providing vital information from the front lines to keep Americans safe, informed and engaged, even when they themselves are in harm’s way.”

The first “Voices from the Field” story focuses on Shomari Stone, the distinguished general assignment reporter at NBC O&O WRC-4 in Washington, D.C.

In the report, Stone shares the moment he knew he wanted to be a broadcaster, his insights into how he views his role as a journalist and his experiences covering the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building.

New “Voices from the Field” segments will be regularly available at WeAreBroadcasters.com.

With some companies, focusing on net revenue and earnings per share Street beats is core to determining just how healthy a company is. But, that’s not the arbiter for investors of Dish Network stock.

In the case of Dish, subscriber gains or losses is key to where the company’s health is, even as it swiftly tilts away from DBS television services to 5G telephony player. And, with the revelation Monday that Dish lost more subscribers than financial analysts expected, the company’s stock slumped.

That dip in value will likely continue in the short term, as a key analyst just downgraded DISH on that poor subscriber report.

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Record performance. It’s a statement some companies may state, yet only tells part of a story that’s inclusive of some blemishes and bruises.

That’s not the case with respect to Nexstar Media Group. With founder and Chairman/CEO Perry Sook beaming as he discussed “another year of record financial performance” as he opened the company’s quarterly earnings call, Nexstar surpassed consensus expectation by delivering impressive Q4 and full-year 2020 results.

With CFO Tom Carter on the call, Sook reviewed the key Q4 highlights.

Net revenue jumped to $1.38 billion, from $1.1 billion. Analysts expected revenue of $1.34 billion.

Net income attributable to Nexstar soared to $364.25 million ($7.97 per diluted share), from $113.21 million ($2.36), thanks in large part to the addition of Tribune Media properties into the fold.

The EPS smashed the analyst forecast of $6.07.

Total funded debt declined in 2020, to $7.67 billion from $8.49 billion. However, Nexstar’s unrestricted cash also fell, to $152.7 million as of Dec. 31, 2020 compared to $232.1 million a year earlier.

The debt includes partner Mission Broadcasting, licensee of such stations as WPIX-11 in New York.

“Despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, 2020 was a year of historic financial growth for Nexstar,” Sook said, noting that “sequential improvements in core advertising” — a story heard across the radio industry — is also a tale being told by Nexstar’s broadcast media properties and its WGN America TV network, soon to be rebranded as NewsNation.

Those challenges are reflected in a 9.9% Q4 core ad revenue dip to $473.5 million, from $525.5 million. That said, political displacement was significant, with political advertising revenue of $298.27 million against Q4 2019 political dollars of $36.53 million. Ownership of stations such as NBC affiliate WSAV-3 in Savannah, Ga.; the CBS affiliate in Columbus, Ga.; and the ABC affiliate in Augusta, Ga., helped in achieving this feat.

Then, of course, there is retransmission fee revenue, noted in the Q4 and full-year 2020 report as “Distribution Fee Revenue.”

For Q4, this increased by 18.4% to $527.99 million from $445.83 million.

What’s in store for Nexstar in the months ahead?

“While we continue to operate in a dynamic environment, full year 2020 free cash flow was in line with our pre-pandemic expectations and 2021 is off to a solid start,” Sook said. “As a result, we are reinstating guidance and expect to generate pro-forma average annual free cash flow of approximately $1.27 billion over the 2021/2022 cycle which supports our view that Nexstar’s path to growth, expanded returns of capital and enhanced shareholder returns remains on plan.”

How did investors respond to the results? Nexstar shares started Tuesday’s trading session with a 6.5% rise, to $136.81 as of 9:37am Eastern.

No matter where Nexstar finishes, it will be a new record high.

With the growth seen this morning, Nexstar has now surpassed its 1-year target estimate set by financial analysts. And, it marks a return to strong, steady growth that began at the start of 2013 and was only briefly squelched by the COVID-19 pandemic.

On that note, Nexstar shares have grown by roughly $85 per share since March 30, 2020.

In September 2019, NBCUniversal first announced a move to impressions. But, clients and agencies who were not trading on impressions were granted additional time to transition while they evaluated the impact the change would have on their business and clients.

That evaluation period is coming to an end very soon.

With the close of the transition period at the end of Q1, all of NBCUniversal’s owned TV stations and regional sports networks will be measured using CPMs only.

This means that as of April 1, all 42 NBC and Telemundo owned-and-operated broadcast TV stations and seven NBCUniversal-owned regional sports networks will officially move to 100% impressions-based buying for all local advertising campaigns.

“Our local businesses were among the first to put a stake in the ground around the move to impressions-based ad buys more than a year ago, giving local marketers a better currency for measurement,” said Frank Comerford, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations’ Chief Revenue Officer. “Utilizing impressions puts local TV on a level playing field with digital, since advertisers will no longer need to convert ratings to impressions in order to evaluate an overall ad buy. As always, our teams are ready to work hand-in-hand with local advertisers to deliver successful campaigns across all DMAs.”

The move to 100% use of impressions, instead of traditional ratings points, by stations and RSNs will, in NBCUniversal’s view, “enable marketers to plan holistically across platforms and screens, and will more accurately showcase the increase in viewers as a result of the addition of BBO households.”

As it turns out, Nielsen‘s introduction of broadband-only (BBO) homes into local market samples begins on April 1, answering questions one may have about Nielsen’s involvement or perhaps that of rival Comscore.

“Moving to impressions brings the added benefit of eliminating zero cell quarter-hours, which had previously resulted in a reduction in inventory,” EVP of NBC & Telemundo Owned Television Station Sales Michael Chico said. “Ratings, unlike impressions, are held to Nielsen’s minimum reporting standard thresholds. Ratings that do not meet these minimums are reported as zero viewership, while impressions are reported when viewing occurs in all quarter hours, effectively adding back anywhere from 5-20% of viewers depending on the daypart. This provides additional inventory for agencies and clients to reach their impressions goals on buys.”

NBCUniversal in December 2020 said it would expand its available digital inventory, addressable products, and advanced targeting by scaling NBC Spot On across One Platform. As a result, sales teams at NBC and Telemundo owned stations gained greater access to digital inventory from both NBC owned and operated properties and third parties.

That came following the February 2020 launch of advanced video advertising business NBC Spot On, which the company says is designed to give local, regional Connected TV and OTT access to premium video inventory.

“Given 2020’s extenuating circumstances, I am extremely proud of the company’s performance and the efforts of the entire Cumulus team to meet the challenges posed by COVID-19.”

That statement from Cumulus Media President/CEO Mary Berner set the tone for the audio media company’s release of its year-end and fourth quarter 2020 financial bill of health.

Just how healthy is Cumulus and all of its divisions, including Westwood One?

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