Industry News

Alec Drake, the Director of Sales for Cumulus Media’s radio stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, is retiring.

The company revealed August 17 that he will depart the stations at the end of August. This puts the wheels in motion on a series of promotions, with a VP/Sales named as two other individuals take key posts.

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There’s a new Vice President and GM for Nexstar Media Group‘s FOX affiliate in DMA No. 139.

He’ll also oversee the operational agreements Nexstar holds with the Mission Broadcasting-owned ABC affiliate serving this market.

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Independent Out of Home (OOH) media specialist Talon is rolling out a new connected video offering that unifies over-the-top (OTT) and digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertising.

As such, Talon is joining forces with MadHive to connect digital audiences across two of the fastest growing advertising channels in the U.S. — OTT and DOOH.

Madhive joins Hivestack as a strategic partner to enhance its services and solutions to serve their current and prospective clients.

Talon will utilize MadHive’s proprietary platform to connect advertisers to premium connected TV (CTV) inventory and its end-to-end campaign planning tools for audience targeting, measurement, and attribution. “Combining OTT and DOOH makes perfect sense,” said Adam Helfgott, CEO of MadHive. “It allows buyers to plan, activate, and measure two rapidly expanding media channels that represent an even larger percentage of marketers spend. The cross-channel platform will deliver a more holistic picture of the customer journey by creating new currencies and insights on a single audience — all while simplifying brand workflow.”

DOOH domestic advertising spend is projected to reach $3.84 billion by the end of 2023, according to Statista. Further, eMarketer notes that U.S. programmatic DOOH ad spend doubled last year and is projected to reach $533.8 million by 2022.

“The growth of digital video is fueling the movement from in-home to out-of-home and we’re empowering advertisers to activate their cross-channel video strategy of reaching high-value audiences at scale, whether it’s a traditional managed service or a self-service approach,” said Jim Wilson, CEO of Talon America. “As marketers look for measurable incremental reach and the ability to tie campaign spending to business results, we’re enabling advertisers to start an OOH journey in-home. By bringing to market new solutions with MadHive and Hivestack, we’re connecting audience data across OTT and DOOH to deliver outcome-based campaigns as advertiser demand on each channel reaches new heights.”

Hivestack’s Supply Side Platform (SSP) will programmatically feed DOOH screen inventory to MadHive, that will serve as the demand-side platform (DSP) for activation across OTT and DOOH leveraging Talon’s Ada audience segments.

Believe it or not, students in Palm Beach County, Fla., are in their second week of school while neighboring Broward County welcomes students back on Wednesday.

In other parts of the nation, there’s still plenty of time to plan for the start of the school year. And, that led Walmart to bump up its spot plays at the TV stations tracked by Media Monitors.

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It’s a rarity these days — a Director of Engineering for a licensee of AM and FM radio stations.

Yet, a media company known for experiential marketing opportunities across the Empire State and its collection of radio stations has one. And, he’s celebrating 20 years on the job.

Tim Backer, who holds the Director of Engineering title at Galaxy Media Partners, joined the company on August 11, 1981.

He’s still with the company today.

“Many — if not most — broadcast stations don’t have engineers on site anymore,” said Ed Levine, President and CEO of Galaxy Media.  “Galaxy not only has an engineer on site, but we have also had the same engineer for 20 years. Tim has and continues to be a huge part of the Galaxy Media Team.  We appreciate all his hard work and dedication to our local company.”

In recognition of his two decades of service, Backer will receive a brand-new engineering vehicle of his choice for his 2am drives to remote engineering sites during the Central New York winters, Levine says.

Galaxy owns 13 radio stations, all located in New York.

Dear RW,

Cris Alexander’s delightful reminiscing on changes in audio processing (“Air Chains Then and Now” ) brought back memories of when I was hired by GAF Corp. in 1976 to rebuild and manage New York’s Classical WNCN, 104.3 FM.

We started with a blank sheet, and the first thing GAF’s chairman did was to retain the services of the legendary Dick Sequerra to handle all aspects of the audio chain. 

The chairman was an audiophile, and had one of the amazing Sequerra FM1 tuners in his home. Of course, we had one in our main studio as an off-air monitor, too.

As our studios and offices were located in a building on Sixth Avenue, and the building’s foundation went straight down to the Sixth Avenue subway, the studios were built as rooms within rooms, with the inner rooms mounted on rubber dampers that resembled hockey pucks.

Sequerra hired WFMT Chicago CE Al Antlitz to design and fabricate the boards used in each studio. Their performance was far superior to anything available in the marketplace and greatly added to the very clean sound that he wanted to achieve.  

Sequerra hoped to broadcast the way that the BBC did with its Classical channel, requiring the announcers (presenters) to ride gain, with no processing. AFTRA, the announcers’ union, mandated that wasn’t about to happen, so we ended up with the then-new Orban processors, which really were superior to anything else on the market. 

As part of his passion for excellence, Sequerra went into the bowels of Manhattan and rebuilt the telco amplifiers going from our studios to the Empire State Building, unknown to New York Telephone, of course.

After the new Gates transmitter was delivered to our space in the Empire State Building, Sequerra spent three days tearing the transmitter apart and rebuilding it to his specs. The performance was just spectacular! My memory is not absolutely perfect here, but as I recall, with the Orban bypassed, the lines were clean to something in the –90 dB area. 

There is no doubt that Dick Sequerra’s passion and expertise made WNCN the best-engineered FM station in the country. The programming team was led by a Julliard graduate, and the combination made WNCN a leader in the country’s Classical music FM stations.

Thanks for the memories.

The post Letter to the Editor: Air Chain by Dick Sequerra appeared first on Radio World.

There’s a new leader on the latest Spot Ten Radio report from Media Monitors.

And, it demonstrates that one auto insurance brand isn’t trimming its ad commitment to broadcast radio.

As shown below, Progressive is the top paid advertiser using spot radio to reach consumers for the week ending August 15. It’s thanks to just shy of 50,000 spots.

By comparison, Babbel saw a play count of 48,806 as Indeed accounted for 46,368 spot plays.

Nautel’s “Transmission Talk Tuesday” series continues this month with discussions on MPX over AES, Building with Raspberry Pi, and a special session on “Best Practices – Dashboard Presence.”

The sessions are designed to be interactive, with attendees contributing their thoughts and questions throughout each session.

Getting the sound from here to there, over AES or IP, will be the topic on Tuesday (8/17).

The Telos Alliance’s Kirk Harnack will join Nautel’s Jeff Welton to talk about the various forms of MPX delivery and will include practical examples of implementation in the field. microMPX will also be discussed.

An August 24 session will delve into Raspberry Pi. Welton will bring in Nautel’s Alex
Hartman, who will show some of the designs he has done using Raspberry Pi and Arduino
technology.

The last session of the month, taking place on August 31, covers a topic that is not normally discussed in technical sessions: how to configure your RDS for optimal presence on the car dashboard.

“In this session, we’ll discuss how what you put on your RDS can make a big difference in the appearance on the dashboard – and going forward, it will make a significant impact on your stations’ ability to work with hybrid radio,” said Welton.

Joining him is NAB VP of Advanced Engineering David Layer, and Lawrence Galkoff, General Manager of Radioplayer Worldwide Ltd.

All Transmission Talk Tuesday sessions begin at noon Eastern; pre-registration is required.

For more information and to register, visit Nautel.com/webinars/. Sessions are also posted online for those who are unable to join the live chats.

As with traditional Nautel Webinars, ½ SBE recertification credit is available for attending each session.

Marketron, the provider of enterprise revenue management and digital software solutions, will host a free webinar on August 25 demonstrating how broadcasters’ sales teams can leverage video, OTT, and CTV ads to increase the size and quantity of their digital orders.

During the live event, “Video Explosion! How to Sell More in 2021,” Marketron representatives will explain the differences between these critical digital tactics and how sales teams can use them to enhance the value of their proposals and capture a greater share of rapidly growing video advertising revenues.

The webinar, which begins at 1pm Eastern, features Jeff Ulrich, Marketron senior manager of digital transformation and enablement, and Mark Weidel, Marketron senior training and onboarding associate. Ulrich and Weidel will delve into the details of how broadcasters and sales teams can plan, prepare, produce and promote campaigns that leverage the latest video, OTT and CTV ad tactics to deliver stronger results for advertisers.

Ulrich is a 35-year local broadcast industry veteran, having held sales and sales management roles in both Top 10 and mid-sized markets, working closely with local business owners, ad agencies, media sales managers and salespeople across radio, television, print and digital media. In 2018 he was recognized by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) with its Education in Excellence Award.

Weidel has spent more than three-and-a-half decades in general management and directorial positions in the sports broadcasting and media management fields. The two Marketron experts will conclude the webinar with a Q&A, taking questions submitted by attendees during and after their presentation.

The National Association of Broadcasters on Monday distributed via email a request for attendee input for its upcoming NAB Show, which will see the NAB/RAB co-produced Radio Show staged at the Las Vegas Convention Center in October.

While the NAB reiterates that it welcomes the opportunity after a year and a half for “Coming Together, Safely,” it’s also asking its audience to weigh on potential mask and/or vaccination mandates for all participants.

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