Radio+Television Business Report

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The recently launched nonprofit industry organization representing Low Power, Translator and Class A TV Stations is giving its seal of approval to the “Local Journalist Sustainability Act.”

Says association executive director Michael Lee, “This legislation is surely a sensible investment in the all-important issue of local media trust and transparency.”

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Riverfront Broadcasting, led by Carolyn Becker, has attracted national attention for its operations in the Heartland of America.

With operations in such markets as Yankton, S.D., Riverfront is now scaling back in a small way. It is saying goodbye to an AM, FM and FM translator serving a small city in Iowa.

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Kagan, the media research group within the TMT offering of S&P Global Market Intelligence, has just released its review of all of the broadcast media transactions seen between January 1 and June 30, 2021.

For RBR+TVBR readers, the results aren’t much of a surprise. Yet, Kagan’s Volker Moerbitz’s assessment is still a striking one: the first half of 2021 registered a total deal volume that was less than the average monthly deal volume in any of the years between 2011 and 2019.

Thank the Lord for the brokers involved.

COMING OCTOBER 4: HAS COVID-19 FOREVER IMPACTED MEDIA DEAL VALUES?

 

The Fall 2021 RBR+TVBR Special Report, available to all subscribers of the RBR+TVBR Afternoon Headlines E-mail, features an in-depth report on the state of the transactions marketplace. Adam R Jacobson chats exclusively with some of the nation’s leading brokers, and gets their assessment of the deal-making landscape as 2022 nears. IT’S ONLY IN THE DIGITAL AND PRINT EDITIONS OF THE FALL 2021 RBR+TVBR!

Subscribe now to ensure you get your copy on October 4.

 

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Less than 48 hours after a New York Federal District Court Judge declined to honor its request for summary judgment in a case focused on copyright infringement brought against the operation by the nation’s “Big Four” broadcast TV networks, Locast on September 2 suspended its operations.

Now, that suspension has become a permanent cessation of business activities, thanks to a ruling Wednesday from the 93-year-old judge overseeing the case.

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Nearly one year ago, the radio industry, along with the NAB, started their salute to Radio’s 100 years of service in the United States. While radio stations exited in the 1910s, it was the might of Westinghouse and its KDKA in Pittsburgh that brought Radio into the 1920s as a force to be reckoned with.

One of those early radio stations that predates KDKA didn’t get its commercial license until its relocation to Boston in 1931. Before then, it was located in Springfield, Mass.

That could explain why the current owner of that Bay State giant, WBZ-AM 1030, is sparking a 100-day centennial celebration for the station on Sunday.

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A provider of AI-driven audience engagement and sales intelligence solutions for media has unveiled a selection of principal conclusions from a just-released study conducted in partnership with SmithGeiger.

The biggest finding? There are “tectonic shifts” in how Americans perceive, consume and pay for media content. There are also big changes in how media executives see the sector progressing into the 2020s, putting clouds over their confidence in their ability to address emerging challenges.

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By Rob Dumke

A new television viewership report from the spot cable arm of the company that owns Peacock, NBCUniversal and Universal Studios, as well as Comcast, finds that streaming “consistently” serves as a strong complement to traditional TV ad campaigns.

This was based on research conducted during the first half of 2021 from Effectv, the ad sales division of Comcast Cable.

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The two individuals at the helm of the nation’s largest audio content production and distribution company are preparing for a presentation on Wednesday at the Goldman Sachs 30th Annual Communacopia Conference.

Bob Pittman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Rich Bressler, President, Chief Operating Officer & Chief Financial Officer, of iHeartMedia will participate in a question and answer session at the highly regarded investor event.

They’ll be chatting it up starting at precisely 2:05pm Eastern on Sept. 22.

A live webcast of the session will be available to the general public at the start of the session through a link on the Investors homepage of iHeartMedia’s website (https://investors.iheartmedia.com/).

A replay of the video webcast will be available in the Events & Presentation section of iHeartMedia’s Investors homepage.

 

What did iHeartMedia stock close at on September 16? Visit the Wall Street Report now at RBR.com’s homepage for a quick glance at all of broadcast media’s publicly traded stocks.

According to Nielsen, the return to the classroom had an effect on monthly TV and streaming viewing.

The Gauge, Nielsen’s snapshot of viewing trends, showed a leveling of viewership after three months of steady growth.

The August data reveals that streaming maintained a 28% share of total TV viewing, compared with broadcast TV (24%) and cable (38%).

Children 6-17 years old viewed about 7.5% less than the previous month.

Nielsen said that drop was offset a bit by a 0.5% increase in overall TV viewing. The slight uptick was attributed to adults tuning in to broadcast programming such as the Olympics.

By Rob Dumke and Adam R Jacobson

“Broadcasting locally but driving national results,” Davis Broadcasting Inc. has stood out in the markets in which it operates radio stations in for its commitment to localism.

Now, its President and CEO has personally written to those in favor of a resolution that would prevent the levying of any new performance royalty payments on Radio.

While the biggest piece of legislation on Capitol Hill designed to do this is largely dead, recording industry advocacy group musicFIRST on Monday will seek to resuscitate it.

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ATLANTA — Gray Television’s dedicated investigative team is readying the launch of a new weekly program featuring “watchdog reports” about government corruption, consumer alerts and health care issues.

The show takes the name of the investigate team and will premiere during this week across all of the broadcast media company’s stations.

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By Rob Dumke

The importance of fact-based broadcast radio and television journalism at a time when misinformation is running rampant on social media is a key mission for local news organizations across the U.S.

It’s also integral to the NAB, which has unveiled a new ad campaign giving a boost to local  stations in particular.

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On its surface, a follow-up report to the U.S. Latino Podcast Listener Report, released in July by Edison Research, offers rather encouraging findings on the percentage of U.S. Hispanics who’ve listened to a podcast.

Now, Edison believes the growth opportunity is even stronger.

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By Rob Dumke

The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation is the latest organization to institute a “COVID Change” for an upcoming in-person gathering.

The 46th Annual Gracie Awards will now be a virtual affair.

The online event is scheduled for October 5.

This year’s awards coincide with AWM’s 70th anniversary. Since its inception in 1951, AWM has been committed to inspiring, educating, celebrating accomplishments and expanding networks of women across all segments of media.

The event will be hosted by actress and comedian Lauren Ash and feature performances by Jewel and Gospel and R&B performing artist Cece Winans.

The AllWomenInMedia page on Facebook will serve as the principal viewing point for the now-virtual affair.

By Rob Dumke

A new study, authored by Ph.D. Economist Hal Singer and Ted Tatos, has examined whether large technology companies should start contributing to the agency’s $9 billion a year program that supports efforts to bridge the digital divide.

It comes following a May 2021 suggestion by one FCC Commissioner that Big Tech should start paying its fair share toward the Universal Service Fund.

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ViacomCBS’s BET unit has formally launched BET Studios, with a pledge of offering equity ownership for Black content creators.

The principal partners are Kenya Barris, Rashida Jones and Aaron Rahsaan Thomas.

Barris is an award-winning writer, producer, and director who created the “ish” multiseries franchise (Black-ish, Grown-ish and Mixed-ish). Jones is an actress, director, writer, and filmmaker, known for her appearances on “The Office” and in the 2010 feature film “The Social Network.”

Thomas is a television, film screenwriter and producer who has worked on numerous CBS TV series.

“The demand for premium content from Black creators has accelerated dramatically as a result of both the rapidly changing media and social landscapes. BET, with our 40-year legacy of celebrating Black culture, and the full power of the ViacomCBS ecosystem—is uniquely positioned to service this demand,” said BET President Scott Mills. “As a company with its origin in Black entrepreneurship, we are incredibly excited to create the first major studio to provide Black creators with ownership, creative freedom and the unparalleled partnership and support of BET.”

BET Studios will be headed by Aisha Summers Burke, who was recently appointed EVP/GM of the new venture.

With the decision on Sept. 15 by the National Association of Broadcasters to cancel the 2021 NAB Show, RBR+TVBR welcomes vendors who planned on hosting exhibit booths to share their product announcements with us for publication in RBR.com and our Weekly Tech Roundup.

Exstreamer audio over IP codecs from Barix are widely considering for radio broadcasters’ technical infrastructures, with its applications ranging from studio-to-transmitter (STL) and studio-to-studio (SSL) links to remote contribution from the field.

Now, Barix has launched the Exstreamer M400 IP audio decoder, the first model in a new generation of Exstreamer solutions.

“Radio broadcasters large and small have long depended on the robust reliability, outstanding audio quality, and rich feature set of our previous Exstreamer products for their critical audio transport requirements,” said Davide Nossa, Product Manager at Barix. “The Exstreamer M400 delivers these benefits on a next-generation hardware platform with more processing power, enhanced security features, and greater extensibility, alongside expanded support for audio formats and technology standards including Opus and AES67.”

The Exstreamer M400 features stereo, line-level, analog audio output with RCA-type connections and can decode streams in MP3, AAC-HE, FLAC, PCM, Opus, and Ogg Vorbis formats. Newly added AES67 support enables the Exstreamer M400 to instead be configured as a dedicated AES67 receiver and decoder, enabling seamless integration into AES67-based audio-over-IP networks plus interoperability with Dante-compatible devices. The Exstreamer M400 incorporates the full AES67 interoperability guidelines including RTP audio delivery, multicast addressing, and PTP-based synchronization with a separate master clock device. Supported discovery methods include SAP (Session Announcement Protocol), mDNS (multicast DNS), and RTSP, enabling the decoder to automatically identify and list available streams from Dante, Ravenna, and other audio over IP solutions that use these protocols. SDP (Session Description Protocol) information can also be manually inserted for interoperability with third-party solutions that do not support these standards.

Powered by Barix’s high-performance, Linux-based IPAM 400 audio module, the Exstreamer M400 features significantly higher processing power than earlier Exstreamer models and a more programmable, software-driven architecture that enables easier expansion, rapid prototyping, and greater customization. A larger buffer size and advanced buffer management technology can be configured to further bolster the Exstreamer M400’s resilience to network performance disruptions in applications where minimizing latency is not critical.

Expanded support for IT security standards includes HTTPS: support for audio streams and the web-based management interface, plus secure, encrypted SIP communication links using TLS and SRTP. Other new features relative to earlier Exstreamer models include IPV6 support and internal audio file storage with externally triggered playback.

The Exstreamer M400’s Linux-based architecture enables extensive upgradability, supporting Barix’s mission of continually enhancing its products while enabling Barix engineers to quickly customize functionality to meet specific customer project requirements. A modern API is planned for future release for developers, replacing previous Exstreamer models’ older CGI control specification as part of Barix’s commitment to support the latest technology standards.

The Exstreamer M400 with AES67 support is now shipping.

Distributed Tuesdays at 8am Pacific via email by RBR+TVBR.

Brad Smith, the Founder/CEO of Simplecast, is the new Head of Podcast Products for SiriusXM.

Simplecast was acquired by SiriusXM in 2020.

In the newly created role, Smith and his team will be responsible for SiriusXM’s podcast product strategy across all of its owned platforms – including SiriusXM, Pandora, and Stitcher — for both creators and listeners.

A female client in Colombia, a senior insurance executive, recently told veteran PR executive and virtual meeting expert Rosemary Ravinal that she wears her favorite pearl necklace and a silk blouse every time she fires up her video to join a meeting.

Another mid-level manager in healthcare with a dozen direct reports throughout Latin America said she dresses from head to toe for Zoom as if she were back at the office.

A male CEO in fintech wears a shirt and tie without fail to every Teams call.

“All three recognize that what they wear brings their confidence and executive presence to another level,” Ravinal notes in this column. “Large numbers of office workers continue to work remotely with video conferencing at the heart of the workday.  So, the image you project can be critical to your success.”

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With all eyes set on a big Q4 and 2022, Netflix Inc. has revealed when it will post its third quarter 2021 results and business outlook on its investor relations website.

With its shares trading close to $583 per share, Netflix is trading at near record-levels — still. And, that’s not likely to slow down.

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