Radio+Television Business Report

His legal name is Keith Stover. For a generation of Pittsburgh radio listeners, he’s also known as Keith Clark. In recent years, Keith has been a minority owner of a pair of FM radio stations serving the Columbia, S.C., market.

Now, he’s taking majority ownership interest in the five-year-old Midlands Media Group.

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On December 10, 2020, the Commission released a Report and Order in its proceeding to
encourage the provision of new and innovative Broadcast Internet services enabled by ATSC 3.0 — the “Next Generation” broadcast television standard often referred to as Next Gen TV — that can complement the nation’s 5G wireless networks.

The rule revisions clarify and update the regulatory landscape in order to foster the efficient and robust use of broadcast spectrum capacity for the provision of Broadcast Internet services consistent with statutory directives.

The R&O revised section 73.624 of the Commission’s rules, and made other changes.

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News Corp has agreed to acquire Investor’s Business Daily from O’Neil Capital Management.

Once the deal closes, the venerable financial news and research business will be operated by News Corp subsidiary Dow Jones.

Investor’s Business Daily (IBD), which operates the Investors.com website, was founded by William J. O’Neil in 1984. Today, digital represents more than 90% of IBD’s revenues and subscriptions.

The transaction is valued at $275 million. The valuation, News Corp says, represents nearly 100,000 digital subscribers across its platforms, and “minimal overlap” with Dow Jones’s existing subscriber base. IBD publishes a weekly print edition.

Baker Hostetler served as legal advisor to the purchaser in the transaction.

Investment Bank, Canaccord Genuity, served as financial advisor, and Norton Rose Fulbright served as legal advisor to O’Neil Capital Management, the seller, in the transaction.

DuJuan McCoy has become known across the U.S. as the owner and day-to-day leader of two Indianapolis TV stations.

Now, McCoy is widening his territory just a little bit. He’s just agreed to purchase low-power TV stations in two other Indiana DMAs from HC2 Holdings.

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On Sept. 20, 1988, after nearly four years as an Adult Contemporary station serving Western New York’s biggest market, “97 Rock” returned to the airwaves.

Under new call letters that eventually became WGRF-FM, the station’s switch to Classic Rock programming was warmly received. Its morning host Larry Norton became a Buffalo institution through his December 2015 retirement.

Today, “97 Rock” and its owner, Cumulus Media, are dealing with a different type of notoriety for the longtime leader. One of its current morning hosts made a poor decision during a bit on Wednesday. Twenty-four hours later, the host was no longer a Cumulus employee, and the “Morning Bull” show was pulled in favor of music and liners.

A FORTY-FIVE SECOND MISTAKE

Rob Lederman lost his job for saying something during Wednesday’s installment of the “Morning Bull” that raised eyebrows, the blood pressure of many, and the attention of one Marcel Louis-Jacques, who shared an audio clip of what Lederman said via Twitter.

Louis-Jacques is the Buffalo-based reporter for ESPN NFL Nation and covers the Buffalo Bills.

To exacerbate matters for local Cumulus Media management, Louis-Jacques didn’t catch the utterance live: Its on the 52-minute condensed “Morning Bull Podcast” for March 24, and starts at the five minute mark.

The topic at hand: the settings on a toaster. Lederman, responding to Rich ‘Bull’ Gaenzler, ironically prefaced his comments by noting, “I may get into trouble for this.”

Lederman explained, “I have them to the attractiveness of the women that I find to be attractive. So, I will never go to a Serena Williams level, but I’m very comfortable with … a Halle Berry level … I need a little bit of mulatto still coming through.”

Lederman was asked by a female morning show member if Gayle King wasn’t in his realm. Lederman replied, “Gayle King is not even on my toaster level.”

The hosts then continue on with the conversation.

A direct link to the March 24 podcast is no longer available.

That said, the “Morning Bull” twitter feed remains active, frozen in time from Wednesday morning. Gaenzler’s Twitter feed was last updated March 21. Meanwhile, the “97 Rock” Twitter feed as of 3:45pm Thursday continued to feature as its featured photo a photo of Gaenzler and Lederman promoting the “Morning Bull.”

Gaenzler and a third co-host, Chris Klein, were suspended. On Thursday morning, WGRF offered music in-between station liners and IDs. By 10:30am, midday host J.P. was on the air. Afternoon host Carl Russo took over at 3pm.

While WGRF did not address the incident on the air, Buffalo’s news media treated Lederman’s firing as a lead story ahead of Wednesday’s 11pm newscasts and the publication of Thursday’s edition of The Buffalo News.

Asked for comment, a Cumulus Media spokesperson said the company “operates from a clearly defined set of programming principles and there is no question that Rob Lederman’s comments made on The Morning Bull show are in direct violation of those principles. We swiftly terminated him and suspended the remainder of the show’s on-air talent. We apologize, and deeply regret the incident.”

In response to follow-up questions regarding what’s next for WGRF, the company spokesperson said Cumulus has no additional information to share beyond the statement.

According to the Buffalo News, WGRF lost Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center as an advertiser as a direct result of Lederman’s comments.

Meanwhile, the newspaper spoke with Lederman, who said he was “horrified” by his commentary after listening to a recording of it. “I could easily see how someone could be offended by that. I get that. It sounds terrible, and it is terrible.”

He added that his words were guilty of “ignorance as opposed to malicious intent … I never saw myself as anything close to even thinking a racist thought. It’s just not who I am. So when I heard that, and heard how it sounded, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that sounds terrible.’ Now, can I take back those words? No. If you listen to them, were they meant to be hurtful? Absolutely not.”

Lederman has been associated with “97 Rock” for 30 years and worked alongside Norton.

While Gaenzler was suspended, and is assumedly returning to “97 Rock,” Pegula Sports & Entertainment moved forward with dismissing him as the official Key Arena host for NHL Buffalo Sabres games, and for the Buffalo Bandits of the National Lacrosse League. Concurrently, the University of Buffalo Division of Athletics decided not to bring back Gaenzler as a public address announcer for football games in 2021-2022 and beyond.

Add three more low-power TV properties to the list of stations that HC2 Holdings is paring down from a roster that will live on as a leaner, but still active, set of broadcast facilities it intends to operate.

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The state of California’s corporate HQ count has been the subject of many debates and discussions in recent years. In September 2020, The Hoover Institution noted that even in the economic boom years of 2018 and 2019, 765 commercial facilities left the Golden State.

You can now add the nonprofit owner of the fast-growing KLOVE and Air1 Christian music networks to the mix.

In all fairness to California, however, the move makes sense: It’s packing up and moving to the epicenter of the CCM world.

Educational Media Foundation (EMF), which in addition to the new broadcast radio networks owns and operates the AccessMore podcast hub and WTA Media, is embarking on a three-year initiative that will relocate the company’s leadership hub from Rocklin, Calif., to the Nashville region.

Rocklin is in Placer County, to the northwest of Sacramento on the I-80 corridor connecting California’s state capital to Reno, Nev., and points east.

In an announcement made late Wednesday (3/24), EMF said its global headquarters staff will grow in multiple phases, both from relocating employees and local hiring. A new permanent campus is to be constructed; the exact location is yet to be finalized.

“After much prayer, extensive discussion and research, the EMF Board and leadership team are in unanimous agreement that relocating our headquarters to the Nashville area will position us to fulfill our mission of creating compelling media that inspires and encourages audiences to have a meaningful relationship with Christ,” EMF CEO Bill Reeves said. “This move will enable us to better serve our audiences and deepen our relationships with faith-focused artists, content creators and the recording, film and publishing industries as we continue to broaden our media offerings through radio, film, streaming, live events, books and more.”

While its another blow to California, it’s not exactly a surprise to Sacramento lawmakers: EMF has been growing its Tennessee presence over the last several years. It recently expanded its studio, from which the K-LOVE morning show and Air1 programs now broadcast. The promotions department, AccessMore podcasting, live events and WTA Media teams already have offices in the Nashville market.

Members of EMF’s content division will begin moving into the existing offices and temporary space this summer.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee welcomed the shift of EMF’s headquarters to his state with open arms. “Our state is home to some of the top music, media and entertainment companies, and EMF will be a respected addition to this important sector,” he said. “We thank EMF for its investment in Middle Tennessee, which will strengthen our reputation as a leader in the music industry.”

Reeves added, “The State of Tennessee, the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development and the Tennessee Valley Authority have been outstanding partners as we considered, and now pursue, this exciting new chapter in the life of EMF. The Nashville area is the right place for us to be.”

EMF is in the final stages of selecting land locations, architects and building developers.

Once the move is complete, a 39-year history in Northern California will conclude. EMF began life in 1982 with a single radio station in Santa Rosa, Calif. Today, that is KLVR-FM 91.9, the originating KLOVE station for many years. Air1 dates to 1995.

Much of EMF’s growth has come in the last 20 decades, concurrent with growth in Christian Contemporary and worship music’s popularity across the U.S.

One of the nation’s biggest owners of Sports Talk radio stations, with a stable that includes the first-ever broadcast radio facility to adopt the format — WFAN in New York — has agreed to a multi-year partnership surrounding several sports betting audio initiatives with a top online casino and sports betting in the U.S.

It’s the operator of the BetRivers and PlaySugarHouse mobile plaforms.

The agreement between Entercom and Rush Street Interactive makes BetRivers the official title sponsor of the Entercom-owned “You Better You Bet” podcast, hosted by Nick Kostos and Ken Barkley. The program was recently relaunched as part of Entercom’s recently acquired BetQL Audio Network.

Kostos will also serve as a brand ambassador for BetRivers and as the voice of the “BetRivers Sports Betting Minute,” heard on Entercom’s all-sports stations in legalized sports betting markets. Through this vehicle, Kostos and BetRivers will provide sports betting news and information each weekday

“RSI is an ideal partner for You Better You Bet,” said Mike Dee, Entercom’s President of Sports. “The company’s authentic approach to the sports betting marketplace aligns well with Nick, Ken and the hardcore betting audience that consume the nation’s No. 1 fully dedicated daily sports betting podcast.”

“You Better You Bet content” includes a weeknight podcast and video simulcast, available live on Radio.com and on demand where podcasts are heard, as well as the “Bet Rivers Sports Betting Minute,” which are custom content editorial segments on BetQL Audio Network stations nationwide.

For the third consecutive trading session on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market, ViacomCBS shares moved downward. By 12:45pm Eastern, volume surpassed the daily average for VIAC, as investors continued to express concerns tied to a huge equity offering while also suggesting that streaming growth trends may be a tad exaggerated.

The company led by Bob Bakish has now priced its stock offerings. And, it now has to deal with a downgrade from one of Wall Street’s most respected media analysts.

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The Nielsen Total Audience Report’s March 2021 edition is now available for public consumption. And, it’s filled with informative new insights on advertising across today’s media.

Peter Katsingris, SVP of Audience Insights at Nielsen, chats with Adam R Jacobson about some of the key findings in this fresh podcast, presented by DOT.fm.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Peter Katsingris, Nielsen” on Spreaker.

In a first for a television network, Fox Corporation has opted to enable programmatic trading of addressable set-top box (STB) Video on Demand (VOD) by partnering with Comcast-owned FreeWheel.

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The pact allows advertisers using FOX to reach consumers what the network calls “a path to execute addressable household-level campaigns on any of its content viewed On Demand within the Comcast Xfinity footprint.”

This adds to the programmatic trading capabilities for the FOX portfolio, including free advertising-supported Video on Demand platform Tubi, available on Xfinity X1, Xfinity Flex and Cox Contour devices.

Dan Callahan, SVP of Data Strategy and Sales Innovation for FOX, commented, “As audience viewing patterns increase across more platforms, FOX continues to focus on expanding our addressable capabilities and offering advertising partners multiple solutions for their media plans. Our partnership with FreeWheel enables us to deliver targeted advertising to Comcast households who are watching FOX’s popular series on their VOD
platform.”

The Trade Desk is the first demand side platform (DSP) to complete the integration, enabling advertisers to execute addressable guaranteed campaigns on FOX VOD inventory.

VOD viewing represents an increasing portion of most programmers’ total viewing hours, enhancing the importance of bringing greater data-enablement and automation to this segment of the viewing population.

“Advertisers continue to crave more inventory from TV networks and their supply side partners, which is why this combined solution from FOX and Freewheel hits the mark,” said Jon Tabak, GM of Strategic Partnerships at The Trade Desk. “Historically, TV has been somewhat of a blind spot from a digital advertising perspective. By further expanding our platform’s reach in the TV ecosystem, our clients have a clearer picture of their advertising investment and total impact across screens and devices, especially the biggest screen in the room.”

The partnership with FOX is part of FreeWheel’s overall effort to build programmatic capabilities for addressable television. These capabilities will allow demand partners to target audiences against a programmer’s VOD inventory on a guaranteed, fixed price, fixed volume basis. The goal is to allow advertisers to transact on television and premium video inventory in new ways that continue to meet their buying objectives, while opening up additional scale and increasing demand for media companies’ valuable audiences.

FOX and FreeWheel expect additional integrations with demand partners in the coming months.

By Joshua Dudley
Podcast Business Journal

Podcast attribution helps marketers understand how well their advertising dollars are working in their podcast campaigns. Podcast advertising attribution platform Podsights just announced the close of a $4M oversubscribed Seed+ round, led by Newark Venture Partners with participation from Graham Holdings, Aglaé Ventures, and existing investors Greycroft, Supernode Global, BDMI, and Betaworks.

Streamline Publishing’s Podcast Business Journal spoke to Podsights founder Sean Creeley about podcast attribution. It was an exclusive interview.

PBJ: Who do you usually work with?
Sean Creeley: We usually work with some of the larger heads of the market like an NPR, New York Times, or Hubspot to help them understand what is working in podcast advertising. There was a recent survey that measurability and attribution are still the leading reasons why people don’t buy podcast ads, and we’re trying to change their minds and sort of open up the floodgates a little bit to say that podcasting is measurable. We partner with leading ad servers like Megaphone News and Nielson to bring those insights into campaigns.

PBJ: How long have you been in the podcast advertising segment?
Sean Creeley: We started in 2018, and we did really well in 2020 and raised about a million and a half a year ago. We had really good growth through the pandemic, and podcasting, like all industries, was hidden at the beginning of it and then had a nice resurgence come q3 q4 when everybody started to figure out their routines and started looking for additional content in the world.

PBJ: So you think podcast advertising is going to continue to grow?
Sean Creeley: Absolutely. It’s a very powerful medium. I’m sure you can name a couple of brands that you’ve heard because of really high ad recall with specifically some host read first-run ads or host endorsed reads. For the advertisers that need scale, the dynamically inserted ads are even programmatic to an extent. So there’s a little bit of everything for marketers out there, and it’s getting to be a more diverse set of content, which is great to see. We’re just starting to see scale, and with more and more people listening to podcasts, a rising tide lifts all boats.

PBJ: What would you recommend for anyone looking to invest in podcast advertising?
Sean Creeley: Here’s the thing, marketers tend to be biased towards the shows that they listen to, assuming that people that buy their product are like them and listen to the same shows. But what happens is they find out their audience doesn’t like the same shows and those advertisers are never to be seen again.

What we’re advocating for here is more of a thoughtful approach of finding out about the audience a little bit before we push through an ad buy rather than find out after the fact.

The publishers do an incredible job of advocating for podcast advertising and talk about the benefits of the medium, and our job is to put data behind that because at the end of the day, discount codes are not the standard of attribution anymore and we’re seeing a lot more of the big advertisers enter the space.

I think what we’re going to start seeing more of again are the traditional companies that do well and then the larger brand advertisers that want high ad recall in the favorability of these ads.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On February 18, 2020, RBR+TVBR reported on the departure after a decade of American University from the Salisbury-Ocean City, Md., market. AU’s Board of Trustees on Jan. 31, 2020, signed off on the sale of WRAU-FM 88.3 in Ocean City.

That deal never transpired. Now, it’s found a new buyer.

And, it’s the owner of another big FM in the Nation’s Capital that seeks to do what AU did in 2010.

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Discovery Inc. has invested heavily in the promotion of its Discovery + OTT platform, launched January 4.

With some Wall Street watchers newly concerned that streaming revenue and subscriber growth may be lagging, the company’s stock on Wednesday was swept up in a wave of downward activity on Wall Street.

At the Closing Bell, DISCA completed the trading session at $61.94, a 13.6% day-over-day decline.

In early after-hours trading, however, some value investors were already in buy mode. This put DISCA at $62.15 as of 4:14pm Eastern.

With a $46.80 target price, Discovery shares may be a little overheated — similar to what some are saying about ViacomCBS’s recent run-up in value and subsequent two-day collapse.

For Discovery, its share price is where it was on March 3. Further, DISCA had been regularly trading in the low $20 range across the pandemic. It wasn’t until early November 2020 when the big growth spurt started.

With ViacomCBS‘s March 23-24 stock plunge largely fueled by a gargantuan $3 billion equity offering, there’s another angle to the decline some Wall Street observers have suggested.

With Paramount + not living up to its hype, in their eyes, companies with heavy investments in streaming could suffer from slower-than-anticipated growth. While that’s a leap and based purely on speculation, some key radio station owners have been caught up in the sell-offs.

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MIAMI — Grow with our audience, and grow with us.

That’s the pitch presented to new and returning brand managers and CMOs across a digitally delivered event that was one-part Upfront presentation and another part a full introduction to two new key members of the largest multimedia company superserving U.S. Hispanics today.

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They’ve sued Entravision Communications for copyright infringement. A court fight against the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) continues. Then, in early March, it handed Radio a decree straight out of the film Goodfellas: “pay up, or else” if you want to play any GMR artists on your stations from April 1.

Now, one of the nation’s biggest radio broadcasting companies has agreed to a “long-term partnership” with Global Music Rights (GMR), the eight-year-old music license lion founded by Irving Azoff.

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It was once a construction permit owned by notable radio industry figure Randy Michaels. Since its February 2010 sign-on, its been owned and operated by the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Now, eleven years and two months after its debut, this Class B1 FM with a signal stretching as far north as the Buffalo Bills’ home stadium and into the Twin Tiers of Pennsylvania and New York is set to sign off the air.

There’s no buyer, or format change in the works. Rather, the station is going dark.

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Luken Communications no longer exists. The purveyor of digital multicast networks targeting niche audiences is now known as Get After It Media, and it seeks a bigger outlet for its offerings than on a DT signal a cord-cutter would tune to.

Get After It is jumping into the over-the-top space.

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Better sound and audio quality. Data capabilities designed to bring new revenue streams to broadcast TV. Those are the principal promises of ATSC 3.0 and the arrival of NEXTGEN TV in a local marketplace.

Buffalo recently ushered in the NEXTGEN TV era. Now, a DMA two hours to the east along the ol’ Erie Canal has made the move into TV’s future.

Now offering ATSC 3.0-powered broadcast signals are Nexstar Media Group-owned ABC affiliate WSYR-9; WTVH-5, the CBS affiliate operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group that is the legacy of the defunct Granite Broadcasting; and Sinclair-licensed WSTM-3, the NBC affiliate in Syracuse.

Interestingly, Cox Media Group-owned WSYT-68 is not participating in this rollout.

As was the case in other market rollouts, BitPath led the planning process and coordinated efforts across the three television stations.

— RBR+TVBR, in Hurley, N.Y.