The regional Mexican radio specialist headquartered in Ventura County, Calif., has secured an FM translator for an AM station it owns in the San Francisco Bay Area.
There’s just one catch, and it involves Audacy.
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With a deadline fast-approaching to build low-power TV stations or lose the license altogether, several companies have opted to sell the properties rather than rush to construct them.
Among the willing buyers is Jeff Winemiller.
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Add Cumulus Media to the list of audio content and distribution companies with radio at its roots that has all but recovered from the economic Slip-and-Slide brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Atlanta-based company on Thursday (6/24) submitted what’s called an “irrevocable paydown notice” to the administrative agent of its Term Loan to officially make a required paydown of $23 million.
The good news? This represents the remainder of the initial amount of the Cumulus’ Tender Offer that was not validly tendered prior to the expiration date.
For the groups that lent Cumulus the money, holders of the Term Loan are expected to receive their pro rata portion from the paydown on Monday.
With the payment, Cumulus completed its previously announced actions to pay down $175 million of debt — using cash on hand to do so.
Cumulus’ debt reduction actions began on May 17. That’s when the company completed a $60 million repayment of its ABL Revolver due 2025, which represented the entirety of the amount outstanding under the facility. Following the paydown, the ABL Revolver due 2025 is undrawn and available as liquidity for general corporate purposes.
Then, on May 25, Cumulus paid down approximately $89 million of its Term Loan Credit Facility due 2026 related to a mandatory prepayment obligation arising from the company’s sale of the former WMAL-AM tower site. The property, located in Bethesda, Md., was sold in June 2020 after years of wrangling with local leaders over the future use of the land for new home construction. Cumulus also completed a sale of towers and related assets in September 2020.
Pursuant to the terms of its 6.75% Senior Secured First Lien Notes due 2026, Cumulus one day later launched a tender offer to repurchase approximately $26 million of the Notes at par. This, Cumulus says, represents the pro rata amount required to be offered from the proceeds of the tower sale.
As of the expiration of the Tender Offer, approximately $3 million of Notes were validly tendered, accepted for payment and subsequently cancelled.
Giving effect to the impact of the Tender Offer, approximately $450 million principal amount of notes remains outstanding.
“As the improvement in economic and public health conditions continues to drive momentum in business trends, we felt it appropriate to accelerate several debt repayments in order to expedite our balance sheet de-levering, reduce interest expense, and increase our free cash flow generation,” said Frank López-Balboa, the EVP/CFO at Cumulus.
He believes this “better leverage and free cash flow profile,” along with more than $200 million of available liquidity “and solid rebound trajectory” are “significantly enhancing our financial flexibility.”
The liquidity represents $294 million of unrestricted cash on hand as of March 31, less $175 million used to paydown debt — plus $83 million of availability under the ABL Revolver due 2025.
With the news from Cumulus, its shares continued to rise, reaching levels last seen in January 2020. As of 2:18pm Eastern, CMLS was trading at $13.68, up 2.5% from Thursday.
On Aug. 3, 2020, a $3.94 closing price was seen for Cumulus.
That’s an incredible 247% gain in just 11 months.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FCC, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) have forged an interagency agreement to share information about and coordinate the distribution of federal broadband deployment funds.
In accordance with the Broadband Interagency Coordination Act, enacted as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, the respective Cabinet and agency leaders announced that their agencies will consult with one another and share information about the distribution of new funds from the FCC’s high-cost programs that support broadband buildout in rural areas, the USDA’s Rural Utilities Services grant and loan programs, and programs administered or coordinated by NTIA.
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Two years and five months after Tom Dobrez agreed to sell a Class C2 FM in Avon, Colo., and a Class C1 FM in Vail, Colo., the operator of CoolRadioStreaming.com in February 2020 moved forward with the sale of his remaining facility.
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. That deal never closed. Now, Dobrez has a new buyer lined up for Cool Radio LLC‘s last FM.
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Six over-the-air television stations serving the Baltimore market have initiated broadcasts using the ATSC 3.0-powered new digital broadcast standard.
The stations involved are owned by The E.W. Scripps Co., Hearst Television, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Cunningham Broadcasting and Maryland Public Television.
On Thursday, Scripps’ ABC affiliated WMAR-2 entered the NEXTGEN TV era, as did Hearst-owned NBC affiliate WBAL-11 and Sinclair’s flagship property, “FOX45” WBFF.
Also getting NEXTGEN TV — Sinclair-run and Cunningham-owned WNUV-54 and MPT stations WMPT-TV and WMPB-TV.
Noticeably absent from the NEXTGEN TV arrival in Baltimore: WJZ-13, the CBS O&O serving the market.
The launch in Baltimore follows a decade of development of the new technology and months of planning and preparation by the local stations.
BitPath, which is developing new data broadcasting services, led the planning process and coordinated efforts across the six television stations.
WBFF and WNUV will be charter members of the BitPath data broadcast network, launching later this year.
Weigel Broadcasting has gained national recognition for its ownership of the MeTV-branded digital multicast network and related Classic Hits radio programming, and for snagging The CW Network affiliation from WGN-9 for its over-the-air TV station in Chicago.
Now, Weigel, headed by Norman Shapiro, is expanding with a pair of unbuilt LPTV stations located in two key DMAs. It’s a steal of a deal.
Guess who’s the seller?
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RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION
This column was originally intended to offer commentary on what “Classic Hits” are in 2021, and how one overseas radio network has refined an era of pop music from 2000-2015 as the next wave of Oldies.
But, a funny thing happened along the way: full newscasts, and a lively host, to be precise. It led our editor-in-chief to pen a column not about revenue ignition through format revision, but about what it means to truly be live and local in an era where information sources devoted to the small towns of America could be severely lacking.
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Go northwest of Chicago’s Loop, and you’ll find such communities as Des Plaines, Norridge and Rosemont. Here, a 300-watt Class A FM using a tower in Schiller Park has offered listener-supported “Radio for the Jesus People” to the area.
That’s about to change, thanks to the sale of this tiny noncomm.
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For the past 11 years, he’s run a New York advisory firm consulting such entities as Premiere Networks, Viacom, Westwood One, and GeoBroadcast Solutions.
Now, Gary Krantz is joining an investment bank focused on the media, marketing, information and technology industries.
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Add Best Buy to the list of big consumer brands that have committed to spending billions of dollars over the next four years with “BIPOC” and minority-owned “diverse” businesses.
This pledge, the electronics retailer notes, “includes plans to increase all forms of spending” from nearly every corner of Best Buy — including marketing and how it advertises.
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LOS ANGELES — The free streaming platform owned by Byron Allen’s Allen Media Group is bulking up its lineup with the addition of a host of free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels.
The move is designed to increase awareness, and usage, of Local Now.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — It took exactly 60 minutes for the biggest lobbying voice for commercially licensed broadcast media to issue a statement that predictably pans the introduction in the U.S. House of Representatives of the “American Music Fairness Act.”
BE SURE TO FOLLOW RBR+TVBR ON FACEBOOK!
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He’s been “an integral part” of the Fox Television stations team for 14 years and was “a natural fit” for this position, says Fox TV Stations CEO Jack Abernethy.
Meet the new SVP of Digital Operations for the Fox owned-and-operated over-the-air stations.
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Until his surprising defeat in the 2018 Democratic Primary Election to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joe Crowley spent 20 years in Congress representing a working class section of Queens, New York. Today, he’s in the National Capital Region, settling into his first month as Chairman of musicFIRST — a lobbying group described by The Recording Academy as “a coalition that fights for fairness and equity for music creators.”
To say Crowley hit the ground running is perhaps an understatement. Just days after his appointment, he was Tweeting about how “it’s past time to pay artists for their work.” Now comes the introduction of the American Music Fairness Act — crafted in part with Crowley’s input.
In an exclusive interview, Crowley shares why this bill’s introduction is important, and how it differs from multiple failed attempts in recent years to get Congress to pass a radio royalty proposal.
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If at first you don’t succeed … then dust yourself off and try again.”
Those are the lyrics to Aaliyah’s early 2000 chart-topper “Try Again,” the first single to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 based solely on airplay. Without radio, would it have been a hit? Would Aaliyah’s place in the annals of rock ‘n’ hip-hop history be sealed?
The argument that Radio cements the success of recording artists continues to be debated, as does the belief by recording industry advocates that the artist isn’t getting its fair share of the royalties they deserve from the airplay of their songs. Numerous attempts at giving singers and musicians more money from Radio have come and gone in the last five years.
The latest effort, which takes a novel scaled royalty payment approach, has just been introduced in Congress. It’s a bipartisan bill from two Members who’ve tried before, and now seek support of what they’re calling the “American Music Fairness Act.”
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Penthera offers a suite of streaming products to OTT providers designed to improve the video experience for their users. Its technology assists in the reduction or elimination of buffering and video quality issues, ensuring that stream abandonment doesn’t happen.
The company has just released a study that looks at the habits and preferences of U.S. Hispanics toward streaming video. Given their role as first-adopters of technology, we believe the findings are important for all in the TV industry to understand.
What’s the biggest takeaway Penthera can share? Its Chief Marketing Officer, Jodi Susman, offers details in this InFOCUS Podcast presented by dot.FM.
Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Jodi Susman, Penthera” on Spreaker.
Advanced advertising company OpenAP has formed a new strategic alliance with AT&T’s ad technology platform that will enable OpenAP’s OpenIDSM audiences inside Invest TV, Xandr’s buyer self-service platform for linear television.
Buyers using Invest TV will now be able to activate unified audiences across all of the U.S.’s largest premium TV publishers and utilize those audiences in their Invest TV buying workflows.
Xandr will adopt the OpenID, a unique identifier launched by OpenAP that enables centralized activation of advanced audiences for use in campaign targeting, and OpenAP will accept demand from Xandr’s Invest TV buying platform. Invest TV will use OpenAP’s Audience Activation API, RFP and Proposal APIs, as well as its Campaign Post API, supporting interactions between Invest TV clients and publishers accepting demand through OpenAP’s platform.
The collaboration signals a commitment from both organizations to grow the market for audience-based advertising across the entire national video footprint.
With this integration, OpenAP and Xandr will enable a buyer to activate an audience target centrally with OpenIDs and use that OpenID audience within Invest TV to define deals, distribute and collect RFPs across publishers, review and request changes to proposals and analyze post-campaign reporting.
Advertisers will benefit from a consistent ID-based audience used for transacting on a national footprint of premium television advertising inventory, enabling deduplicated reach estimates and reporting.
“TV has and will continue to transform as Connected TV becomes more widely adopted, moving from tested to trusted across all types of advertisers.”
That’s the viewpoint of “the largest independent global measurement and attribution platform for converged TV.” While they certainly have a bias, TVSquared’s latest Connected TV report is worth a look.
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Each of ViacomCBS’ global content leaders have been elevated as part of a structure shift that places each of these executives in charge of their respective genres within Paramount+.
The big announcement: Tanya Giles has been selected to serve as a centralized programming head to chart content strategy for Paramount+ and Pluto TV globally.
Giles, who currently serves as General Manager of MTV Entertainment Group, will become Chief Programming Officer for Streaming. It’s a newly created role, in which Giles will oversee and execute “a holistic programming strategy” for the global content offering across both Paramount+ and Pluto TV, maximizing mix, prioritization, timing and impact of ViacomCBS resources, franchises and brands “to drive sustained audience acquisition and engagement.”
She will report to Tom Ryan, President and CEO of ViacomCBS Streaming. “Tanya is a stellar media executive who brings a deep familiarity with our brands and audiences, as well as an unmatched talent for harnessing data to make high-impact programming decisions,” Ryan said. “Our content leaders know their genres better than anyone and have been integral to building a strong slate for Paramount+ and growing its audience. Our new structure will enable us to tap into their collective expertise even more effectively, further cementing Paramount+ as a true super service that delivers the content audiences love, all in one place.”
The “global content leaders” mentioned at the top of this report?
Here’s what is about to transpire:
As part of the realignment, Kelly Day, President of Streaming and Chief Operating Officer, ViacomCBS Networks International (VCNI), will work closely with Giles and ViacomCBS’ content leaders “to ensure the company is executing against its global streaming strategy.” Day will continue to report to Tom Ryan and Raffaele Annecchino, President and CEO of VCNI.
Scott Mills will continue to oversee BET+ in his capacity as President, BET, reporting to Nevins.
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