Radio+Television Business Report

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF. — With 100 watts from a small broadcast tower on city-owned property, Morro Bay, Calif.-based KEBF-FM serves this bucolic Central Coast community as low-power locally focused “The Rock.” It simulcasts on a 9-watt signal overlooking Paso Robles, famed for its vineyars.

It’s just one of many LPFMs that could benefit from a rule change brought forth by the FCC this week.

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He’s the President of Carroll County Broadcasting and of related entity Bunyard Northwest Properties.

Now, Jay Bunyard is adding an additional Arkansas radio property to his stable of stations.

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The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB), in partnership with the ANA’s Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing (AIMM) and presented by Univision, will host a weeklong virtual summit next week that provides “a virtual stage for new voices and candid conversations, featuring video advertising industry professionals whose experiences can inspire real shifts in mindset and offer practical guidance.”

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One month ago, a licensee headed by Matthew Davidge and Julie Huang agreed to purchase a trio of yet-to-be-constructed low-power TV stations serving small communities in Illinois, New Mexico and North Dakota, respectively.

They’ve now struck a series of bigger deals with the entity that in May agreed to spin those three unbuilt LPTVs — HC2 Broadcasting.

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A former U.S. Surgeon General has agreed to join the medical reporting team of the CW Network affiliate serving Indianapolis owned by African American broadcast station owner DuJuan McCoy.

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In late May, the head of sales for Fox Television Stations’ owned-and-operated station serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, who added SVP/Market Manager duties in December 2014, packed her bags and relocated to the company’s Seattle-Tacoma operations.

Now, her successor has been chosen, and it is a promotion from within.

Marian Davey, the VP/News Director for KMSP-9 and MyNetwork TV sibling WFTC (KMSP-9.2), has risen to SVP/GM of the Twin Cities siblings.

Davey succeeds Sheila Oliver, who took the Seattle SVP/GM post, overseeing KCPQ-TV “Q13,” and “Joe TV” KZJO-TV.

Davey reports directly to FOX Television Stations CEO Jack Abernethy, who called out Davey for “a stellar job in leading the KMSP-FOX 9 news team for the past eight years. Her past success and understanding of the market, coupled with her local news expertise and results-driven attitude, make her the natural choice to lead our Minneapolis duopolies.”

Davey has been with the FOX-owned duopoly in Minneapolis for nearly 20 years. She ascended to her most recent role in August 2013, and previously served as Managing Editor and Assistant News Director for the stations. Prior to joining FOX, she spent fourteen years at WCCO-4 in Minneapolis, in various roles ranging from intern, to Producer, and Managing Editor at the CBS O&O.

“Getting the opportunity to lead these incredible stations, KMSP/WFTC is a dream come true,” Davey said. “I’m honored and excited to bring both stations continued growth and success.”

The parent company of FOX News Media, FOX Sports, FOX Entertainment and FOX Television Stations is moving forward with an authorization of incremental stock repurchases.

This could see FOX Corporation snap up hundreds of millions of its own Class A and Class B shares.

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In addition to owning a formidable portfolio of over-the-air television stations across the U.S., Atlanta-headquartered Gray Television is the parent of video production companies such as Raycom Sports, Tupelo Honey, and RTM Studios.

Now, Gray is seeking to better monetize its internal content production portfolio when presenting to CMO, brand managers and advertising agencies.

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“SuperFrank” Copsidas has gained attention over the years for his television industry activity across New England.

Now, he’s decided to invest in a low-power TV station in a popular area of Texas due northwest of San Antonio.

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Some four years ago, Jimmy Johnson’s Johnson Broadcast Ventures reached an agreement to sell a Class C radio station serving the city of Roanoke Rapids, N.C.

However, some 17 months after the transaction was consummated, the deal cratered due to the buyer’s default on a Promissory Note agreed upon in order to get the sale in motion.

Now, Johnson has tried again, and has a new asset sale agreement in place for this AM facility.

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WOODBRIDGE, VA. — For seven years until 2012, he was President/GM of ABC Radio’s stations serving the National Capital Region.

Now, after leading Alpha Media‘s four radio stations in nearby Fredericksburg, Va., Jeff Boden is on an express VRE train heading north, and will be back in Friendship Heights to lead what are now Cumulus Media‘s radio properties serving Washington, D.C.

Boden is taking the role of VP/Market Manager, and will lead a much different group of properties than what ABC Radio ran until nine years ago. Gone are Smooth Jazz WJZW and Hot Adult Contemporary WRQX “Mix 107.3.” Today, the station group is comprised of Talk powerhouse WMAL-FM 105.9, and “ESPN 630” WSBN-AM.

Still, it’s a homecoming for Boden, who spent more than three decades in D.C. radio and holds a communications degree from American University.

And, it is bittersweet, as Boden is succeeding the late Ken Roberts, who unexpectedly passed away in April.

Commenting on Boden’s return to Jenifer Street in far Northwest Washington, Cumulus EVP/Operations Dave Milner said, “WMAL and WSBN are exceptional stations and demand an exceptional leader at the helm. Jeff is the perfect choice to take these D.C. stations into the future, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to have him on the Cumulus Media team. His deep experience and relationships in the market, along with his past experience, make him our ideal choice. Jeff is respected and appreciated by those in and out of the company.”

Boden commented, “I am truly honored to have this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rejoin the exceptional team at Cumulus in Washington, D.C. It’s wonderful to come back to serve the local community and our advertising partners. I look forward to working with so many people I have known for years, as well as with newer additions to the team.”

— RBR+TVBR Washington News Bureau

For 39 years, Kagan has offered an up-close look at where broadcast radio and TV is heading, with respect to revenues and station valuations.

This continued on Thursday (6/17) in virtual fashion, as the 2021 Kagan Media Summit kicked off with a spotlight on the U.S. broadcast station industry from Senior Research Analyst Justin Nielson.

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In March and April 2020, the revenue picture looked rather bleak for Sinclair Broadcast Group. Today, things couldn’t be more different — and more positive.

Even with chip shortages hampering new auto inventory, squelching advertising dollars, Sinclair is hitting all cylinders. With mid-term political dollars on the horizon and sports betting revenue projected to be significant, Sinclair’s chief executive is excited about the “big uplift” that’s already underway.

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This week, one of the nation’s key advocacy groups for African American broadcasters  called on Members of Congress to support the Local Radio Freedom Act, a resolution that would “protect” AM and FM radio stations from “being forced to pay significant additional new performance royalties.”

The call to back the LRFA came from National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters President Jim Winston, on a day when the U.S. House of Representatives voted 415-14 to make Juneteenth, or June 19, the nation’s twelfth federal holiday.

With President Joe Biden’s signature set to affirm Congress’ vote, and renewed attention to the African American community, we are pleased to share this encore RBR+TVBR InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM, featuring Adam R Jacobson’s interview with Winston.

Listen to “RBR+TVBR INFOCUS: Jim Winston” on Spreaker.

A global designer and manufacturer of broadcast infrastructure has successfully collaborated with a PBS Member in the extension of its transmission reach by investing in a “future-proofed infrastructure” tied to an “Alternative Method of Education” initiative.

It’s just one more way educational, noncommercial television is serving the community, in particular across Arkansas.

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Software platform MadHive has attracted broadcast media companies such as FOX, TEGNA and The E.W. Scripps Co., which have elected to go with the tech company to power their linear reach extension offerings.

Now, MadHive has announced it will be the first partner to license “the only cross-screen and cross-walled garden dataset” in the U.S.

It’s the result of a pact between MadHive and HyphaMetrics, and allows MadHive to license HyphaMetrics’ panel data. This, MadHive says, gives its customers exclusive access to “robust cross-screen insights, allowing them to seamlessly prove the value of their campaigns.”

MadHive CEO Adam Helfgott explains, “Advertisers today are struggling to understand the impact of their omnichannel campaigns. In order to be effective, device graphs need a powerful, privacy-friendly source of truth to validate their assumptions. Madhive sanity checks our device graph of 100 million households against Hypha’s validated truth set of media consumers daily in order to provide the most accurate campaign planning and performance insights across channels, devices, and individuals.”

The HyphaMetrics panel covers connected devices universally used among consumers.

As MadHive sees it, the partnership will give its advertiser and broadcaster clients access to real time data about who is watching what content and in what format they’ve chosen to view it in — live, time-shifted, or streaming.

Individual viewing data across every network, program, advertisement, product placement, streaming app, gaming environment for every device in the household will also come from the partnership, as will granular data identifying time spent in apps, simultaneous app usage, multitasking metrics, and more across mobile media environments.

HyphaMetrics CEO Joanna Drews notes, “Panels play an integral role in the media ecosystem, but legacy measurement approaches were not built to solve for the fragmentation and technical complexities that come with modern viewing behaviors. HyphaMetric’s patented approach to cross-platform, person-level measurement was built from the ground up to provide a holistic understanding of who is watching what, when and how – covering all aspects of the modern viewing environment including video gaming, secondary device usage, and walled gardens.”

BOCA RATON, FLA. — On May 12, 2020, Nielsen Audio released its Miami-Fort Lauderdale April 2020 ratings report, along with station cume data, to radio industry trade publications including AllAccess.com.

The numbers were ugly. Between February and April, as measured by Nielsen through the Portable People Meter (PPM), Cox Media Group‘s top-rated WFEZ “Easy 93.1” saw its cume slide from 1.038 million to 536,100. That station wasn’t alone: Huge cume dips were seen for every station in the Top 10 by cume. And, Miami wasn’t the only market experiencing this pandemic-fueled slide in broadcast radio consumption.

Today, Nielsen Audio data suggest radio’s return to pre-pandemic audience levels in nearly complete. The remaining challenge? Recouping lost advertising dollars.

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The VAB, the broadcast television industry’s sales advocacy organization, has released a White Paper that finds that, based on the input from more than 200 marketers, 92% of these ad budget decisionmakers are adopting audience-based buying — at least to some degree.

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On Dec. 23, 2020, iHeartMedia shares finished the day at $11.99. It was a good finish, as IHRT in early July was trading in the mid-$6 range.

With Wednesday’s Closing Bell on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market, investors who have had IHRT for the past year will certainly be celebrating.

Why? They’ve more than quadrupled their dollars.

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A low-powered TV station offering Azteca América programming to Nevada’s second-largest market is being sold.

It marks an 11-year end of ownership by a group that grabbed the facility from the bankrupt Equity Media Holdings in 2009.

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