NEW YORK — An advertising technology business providing media buying and media accounting products via a cloud-based SaaS platform has completed a series D financing initiative.
Led by data and analytics firm Ascential plc, the financial fundraiser provides up to $63.5 million in Hudson MX funding.
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Saranac Lake, N.Y., is a small city in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains of far Upstate New York. In recent years, it has gained attention for the acquisition of a failed radio station, silenced by its licensee, by two foreign citizens. It has also received attention for a UHF channel that’s been the subject of a coverage battle with Comcast.
That channel is today owned by Gray Television. And, it serves the Burlington, Vt.-Plattsburgh, N.Y. market. A petition Gray has just submitted to the FCC now brings the company the potential to fully complete, on par, with in-market competitor Hearst Television.
An Engineering Exhibit prepared for Gray by Chesapeake RF Consultants LLC, obtained by RBR+TVBR, confirms that it is submitting for regulatory approval an application that would give it a Construction Permit to operate WYCI-DT as a Distributed Transmission System (DTS) by adding another transmitter site to its current operation.
It’s a major move for Gray, and essentially makes the company a full player in the Burlington-Plattsburgh market. Furthermore, WYCI would enjoy an over-the-air signal as far north as Montréal, which historically has received Burlington-Plattsburgh “Big Four” TV stations on local cable TV systems.
Importantly, it puts Hearst on notice that it has a fight on its hands locally.
And, it’s a battle that is five years in the making.
WYCI, which has a PSIP of 40 and uses digital channel 34, in October 2016 was a property of Cross Hill Communications. The station’s then-owner wanted WYCI placed on Comcast’s Xfinity channel lineup across the Burlington-Plattsburgh DMA. Comcast protested, and fought a “must carry” request by filing a cable special relief petition (CSR) with the FCC. This would have allowed Xfinity to become exempt from a pending market modification of the station to Burlington-Plattsburgh.
At the time, WYCI was a RetroTV affiliate, purchased by Cross Hill in December 2013 from Donald McHone’s Channel 61 Associates LLC. It paid $225,000 for what was WNMN-TV.
Interestingly, Comcast in December 2016 abandoned its fight against Cross Hill and WYCI. Was it privy to a potential sale of the station?
On October 14, 2019, Cross Hill agreed to sell WYCI to Gray for $1.1 million. But, the deal came after Gray in May 2017 paid $29 million for the Burlington-Plattsburgh market’s CBS affiliate WCAX-3.
The 2019 sale of WYCI created a duopoly that passed muster with the FCC’s local ownership rules, and the Commission approved the deal in February 2020.
By that time, WYCI had shifted its programming by placing the Heroes & Icons multicast network on its DT1 signal. It is also a secondary MyNetwork TV station for Burlington-Plattsburgh.
THE COMING DTS BOOST
Now, WYCI is poised to employ a new antenna system to be side-mounted on an existing tower structure associated with FCC Antenna Structure Registration number 1003384.
No change to the overall structure height will result.
WYCI will continue to operate as licensed from “DTS site No. 2.”
The proposed antenna for DTS site No. 1 is an elliptically polarized directional Dielectric model TFU-16DSB-B/VP-R, with 30% vertical polarization.
The proposed antenna height above ground is 738.19 feet; the antenna HAAT is 1,735.6 feet.
With a tower site that’s a 90-minute drive to Rue Crescent in the heart of Montréal, effective radiated power of 200,000 watts would easily reach the city — let alone the entire Burlington-Plattsburgh DMA.
Mutual interference would be mitigated by “considerable terrain blockage,” Chesapeake RF Consultants notes.
For those familiar with the region, DTS site No. 1 will be built on Terry Mountain. It is where Hearst’s NBC affiliate, WPTZ-5, had its tower for some 40 years. It’s just 17 miles southwest of Plattsburgh,
When up and running, the signal will stretch as far into Vermont as Montpelier.
And, thanks to that mountainous terrain, it will enjoy coverage of the most populous areas of Montréal.
With WCAX and WYCI, Gray will compete against Hearst’s WPTZ and The CW Network affiliate in Burlington-Plattsburgh, WNNE-31.
The two stations currently use a tower atop Mt. Mansfield, the highest peak in Vermont.
Hearst has owned WPTZ and WNNE since July 1998; the stations were previously owned by Heritage Media, and in the span of 12 months starting in 1997 were sold to Sinclair Broadcast Group, and then to Sunrise Television. Sunrise then engaged in an asset swap that brought WPTZ and WNNE into the Hearst family.
At the end of August 2020, Anthony Bucher and his Hitmaker Music Group LLC struck a deal giving it ownership of a pair of AM radio stations and an FM translator in the heart of Florida’s “Gator Country.”
Now, Bucher is officially the licensee of the stations in the Gainesville-Ocala market.
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A war of words has erupted between DirecTV owner AT&T and Apollo Global Management-controlled Cox Media Group in the wake of an impasse over a new retransmission consent agreement — a move that forced AT&T, by law, to block its subscribers from receiving any CMG-owned station.
On Tuesday (2/2), CMG pointed fingers at AT&T. Now, AT&T has fired back at the owner of such stations as KIRO-7 in Seattle, the market’s CBS affiliate and home to Super Bowl LV.
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On October 2, 2019, Sinclair Telecable officially acquired all of Emmis Communications’ 50.1% controlling stake in six Austin, Tex. radio stations and two FM translators in the Lone Star State’s capital.
The transaction gave Bob and David Sinclair full control of properties now operating as Waterloo Media, leaving its Sinclair Communications arm the licensee of stations in its home market of Norfolk, and in the heart of Northern California’s Wine Country.
Now, the Sinclair family is saying goodbye to the Golden State.
BE SURE TO FOLLOW RBR+TVBR ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER!
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Ten months into the COVID-19 pandemic, “radio hosts on FM still matter.”
Imagine that.
It simply took NuVoodoo Media Services to confirm it in a recent “Ratings Prospects Study.”
RBR+TVBR RELATED READ:
Thirty Years Later, Has Pop Radio Learned Anything? Adam JacobsonSeeking airchecks from WHTZ “Z100” in New York, our Editor-in-Chief stumbled across an article in The New York Times from July 28, 1991 discussing pop radio’s “midlife crisis.” The story addressed issues that are still pressing for CHR/Pop stations some 30 years later. Why?
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In the early part of the 2010s, it was part of Davidson Media Group‘s assets targeting Spanish-language consumers.
Today, this Virginia AM retains its branding from those days. But, it is now under new ownership — an entity formed by two of the station’s veteran air personalities.
SAVE YOUR SEAT AT THE TABLE TODAY! SEPT. 22-23, 2020 — DORAL, FLA. REGISTER NOW!
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January 2021 is in the history books, and the road to what many hope will be a major recovery for Radio is underway.
As far as veteran programming consultant Clark Smidt sees it, “It WILL all come together. We deserve it and are working for it.”
But, it may require some fresh thinking.
In this column, Smidt writes about “Smooth transitions, new styles, new challenges, adjustments, attitude, cooperation and teamwork.” It could prove to be a catalyst for positive growth at your radio or TV stations.
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In mid-March 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic’s full arrival in North America, Townsquare Media delivered its Q4 and full-year 2020 financial results. On Wall Street, TSQ stock hemorrhaged, dipping to $3.95 after starting the month of February at $10.25.
With Tuesday’s closing bell on the NYSE, TSQ has now fully erased all of its COVID-19 stock woes.
On volume of 102,224 shares (average volume is 37,790 shares), Townsquare Media shares finished at $10.17; in early after-hours trading, TSQ was up to $10.18.
This marks a 157% improvement for TSQ, climbing from the depths of 2020, when the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic punctured media stocks severely.
Analysts have pegged a $13.33 1-year target estimate on Townsquare stock, and the latest growth is likely tied to an announcement 8 days ago that it would repurchase at least 10 million shares.
The growth further puts into question why Purcell Julie & Lefkowitz LLP, which describes itself as “a class action law firm dedicated to representing shareholders nationwide,’ is investigating “a potential breach of fiduciary duty claim involving the board of directors of Townsquare Media.”
The law firm made the announcement January 18.
Wall Street shrugged.
He’s been the Market Manager for NRG Media stations in Wausau-Stevens Point, Wisc. Most recently, he served as Market President for iHeartMedia in Wichita.
Now, this veteran radio station cluster leader has joined Cumulus Media to oversee its group of broadcast properties in Montgomery, Ala.
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Nearly one year after the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the U.S., it is clear that Chief Marketing Officers and media buyers and planners were hardly in unison with respect to how to react while protecting the brand.
What’s the impact on audio media, including radio and online streaming? We get fresh insight on the topic from Armando Guerrero, of digital ad agency Ntooitive, in the latest RBR+TVBR InFOCUS Podcast, presented by DOT.FM.
Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Armando Guerrero, Ntooitive” on Spreaker.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A group of bipartisan U.S. Senators has reintroduced legislation in the upper body of Congress designed to address “the shortage” of trained workers necessary to fill next-generation jobs in the telecommunications industry in communities throughout the country.
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The FCC has entered into an agreement with the National Science Foundation and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to support NSF’s Spectrum Innovation Initiative.
NSF launched the initiative last year to seek innovative advancements in research and development on the biggest challenges facing the United States due to increased demand for electromagnetic spectrum access.
“This Memorandum of Agreement between the National Science Foundation, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and the Federal Communications Commission is one step toward revitalizing the interagency coordination process so that it once again is able to produce results for American consumers and the economy,” said FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “Better coordination between these agencies ultimately means more spectrum and more innovation to help restore American wireless leadership and build the 5G future.”
The Memorandum of Agreement between the agencies is intended to ensure that FCC and NTIA staff can provide their subject matter expertise to help ensure that NSF’s Spectrum Innovation Initiative investments in spectrum research, infrastructure, and workforce development are in alignment with U.S. spectrum regulatory and policy objectives, principles, and strategies.
Key research areas include spectrum flexibility and agility, working towards near real-time spectrum awareness, and improved spectrum efficiency and effectiveness through secure and autonomous spectrum decision-making.
The first key goal will be establishing the U.S.’s first National Center for Wireless Spectrum Research.
Univision has joined the consortium of U.S. media companies created to establish a common technology for dynamic, addressable advertising management for TV.
The multimedia company superserving Hispanic audiences will serve as a member of the primary Steering Committee on Project OAR, dedicated to creating a standard by which all parties in the TV ecosystem can collaborate and unite on addressable advertising.
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Advanced TV platform company Cadent has expanded its current agreement with the TEGNA-owned premium CTV/OTT advertising platform for regional and local advertisers.
Under the terms of the new agreement, Cadent Viewer Graph, the company’s proprietary and cookieless matching technology, will be employed to unify audiences across Premion’s inventory of branded networks and providers.
This, the TEGNA-owned Premion says, is being done so advertisers may activate cross-screen campaigns against custom segments.
Cadent Viewer Graph uses patented technology, as well as a combination of first- and third-party data, to connect multiple TV devices back to viewing households. This empowers TV advertisers to deduplicate and map any audience segment to television with minimal drop-off and maximum reach, as well as resolution and match rates.
Cadent Advanced TV Platform will provide Premion with a complete suite of audience solutions and tools, including first-party data onboarding, audience building, insights, analytics, reporting, and campaign deployment. Advertiser CRM files will be onboarded for direct matching with all the consumer TV devices within Cadent Viewer Graph’s 104 million household graph, allowing Premion to activate an advertiser’s first-party data and create unique datasets for targeting and lookalike modeling.
Premion will leverage Cadent’s proprietary, location-based, syndicated audience data as its primary dataset for targeting purposes. In addition, Premion will have access to other third-party behavioral datasets from leading data partners within Cadent’s Data Marketplace to help advertisers build a fully comprehensive view of their audiences.
“True audience-based targeting tied to real-world business outcomes is critical for marketers today,” said Tom Cox, President of Premion. “Our agreement with Cadent allows us to better understand the value of our audiences so that we can provide best-in-class solutions to advertisers.”
On January 29, word first surfaced that Cox Media Group — fresh off a victory in getting some of its broadcast TV stations restored to Suddenlink systems thanks to the signing of a new retransmission consent accord — would soon face a new retrans “blackout.”
Lo and behold, that has transpired. On Monday evening at 11:59pm local time, all CMG stations were blocked from viewers who get their TV services from AT&T‘s direct broadcast satellite service: DirecTV.
It marks the second retrans-related scuffle of 2021 for Cox, and puts a black mark on Apollo Global Management, the majority owner of CMG. Since the completion of Apollo’s takeover of CMG, CEO Kim Guthrie exited. Then, EVP of Radio Bill Hendrich announced his retirement — just as several high-profile programming and air personalities were no longer at some of CMG’s biggest station in Florida, WFEZ “Easy 93.1.”
This dispute sees the prevention of all Cox-owned stations from reaching DirecTV users.
The stations potentially impacted include its legacy properties, and several properties once owned by Brian Brady‘s Northwest Broadcasting:
The loss of KIEM and KVIQ, and of KAYU, from DirecTV is especially frustrating, as some local TV consumers switched to that service during Suddenlink’s blackout of those stations during the first three weeks of January 2021.
In a statement appearing on the website for KIEM — a statement mirroring one posted to all CMG TV station websites — Cox put all of the blame once again on AT&T and DirecTV.
CMG assailed DirecTV, which it said “refused to agree to a fair agreement.”
Then came a statement that’s simply untrue:
We cannot force AT&T/DIRECTV to keep retransmitting our stations – we are dark because AT&T/DIRECTV has chosen to remove KIEM and KVIQ from its service. We are hopeful that AT&T/DIRECTV will abandon its blackout of our stations to the detriment of viewers in favor of meaningful negotiations that lead to a mutually beneficial deal for all parties.
By law, a MVPD cannot bring a broadcast TV signal to its customers without a retransmission consent accord. And, it takes the cooperation of both parties to get it signed.
As such, CMG is taking a highly aggressive approach in its quest for much higher rates for its TV stations.
In a statement appearing across all Cox station websites, the company said, “During these times of uncertainty, it is more important than ever that our viewers know their trusted local stations are there for them, providing the news and information they need to make critical decisions for their families. CMG stations take pride in being trustworthy resources for our communities, and we will fight to continue to fulfill this responsibility.”
Yet, they are not there if the viewers subscribe to DirecTV.
What does AT&T have to say? In a statement provided to consumer bog TV Answer Man, the DirecTV owner said in late January, while negotiations were still ongoing, “We’re disappointed to see Cox Media Group put our customers in the middle of a private business matter. We want to keep the Cox stations in their local lineups, but Cox alone has exclusive control over which homes are allowed to receive ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and CW in certain cities.”
AT&T then assailed Cox for its “long history of either threatening or pulling the Super Bowl and other important events from our customers and other providers.”
With the release early Tuesday (2/2) of Sirius XM‘s fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 results, specific data tied to its Pandora segment were shared.
How is Pandora performing? It is perhaps the weakest link in the Sirius XM family. But, it could be worse.
Full-year ad revenue at Pandora, which includes off-platform results such as the company’s AdsWizz business, declined by 1% year-over-year to $1.18 billion.
Sirius XM’s C-Suite is happy, as this small decline was registered “despite significant weakness in the advertising market” resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic earlier in 2020.
Monetization of $79.24 per thousand hours at Pandora was down “just 1%” year-over-year, Sirius XM adds.
In Q4, Pandora ad revenue increased by 22% to $425 million from $348 million, on a year-over-year basis.
With its Pandora for Business arm likely hampered by shelter-at-home edicts in markets across the U.S., Monthly Active Users (MAUs) at Pandora were 58.9 million at the end of 2020, down from 63.5 million at the end of 2019. Total ad supported listener hours were 12.50 billion in 2020, down from 13.44 billion in 2019.
But, there’s some good news: Pandora added 133,000 net new self-pay subscribers to its Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium services in 2020, ending with nearly 6.3 million self-pay subscribers to those services.
Strong operating and financial results.
Adjusted EBITDA growth of 6% for the year, compared to 2019.
For an audio media company, such achievements could be the stuff of dreams, considering the battering COVID-19 and the pandemic, entering its 12th month, has brought to Radio.
Yet, that’s exactly what Sirius XM is touting, as its fourth quarter and full-year 2020 results released early Tuesday paint a rosy picture that will certainly make newly appointed CEO Jennifer Witz happy.
For the three months ended December 31, 2020, Sirius XM enjoyed growth in both its subscriber and advertiser revenue — incredible accomplishments given the pandemic and its initial impact on radio’s cume due to fewer in-car occurrences.
This speaks to Sirius XM’s ease of accessibility outside the vehicle, perhaps — exposing a weakness of Radio it has not fully come to terms with.
Q4 2020 subscriber revenue for Sirius XM grew to $1.62 billion, from $1.57 billion. Advertising revenue in the quarter grew to $474 million, from $403 million.
Along with an equipment revenue gain to $60 million from $46 million and “other revenue” of $40 million compared to $44 million a year ago, total consolidated revenue in Q4 grew to $2.19 billion, from $2.06 billion.
Sirius XM’s expenses ballooned to $2.69 billion, from $1.66 billion.
However, a $976 million impairment charge is a big reason for this increase. If not for that, there’s only one other category where the cost of services noticeably increase.
Thank you, artist advocates and recording industry royalty increase lobbyists.
Sirius XM’s revenue share and royalty fees grew to $662 million, from $607 million, in Q4.
Including the impairment charge, Sirius XM swung to a net loss of $662 million (-$0.16 per diluted share), from net income of $243 million ($0.05).
On an unaudited pro-forma basis, adjusted EBITDA increased to $660 million, from $587 million. That translates to EPS of $0.07, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.05.S
Also on an adjusted basis, Q4 Free Cash Flow grew to $448 million, from $408 million.
And, that’s what Wall Street watchers will likely cheer about across Tuesday’s trading on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market. SIRI started the day at $6.26, and has largely been in the $6 range for the last 50 weeks.
On a year-over-year basis, FY2020 results show Sirius XM’s consolidated revenue at $8.04 billion, a 3% increase from FY2019. Adjusted EBITDA grew to $2.58 billion in 2020, an increase of approximately 6% from $2.43 billion in 2019.
SLOWING THE CHURN
For years, analysts and radio industry execs traditionally looked closely at Sirius XM’s subscriber count, and then ask the question, “How many subscribers did Sirius XM lose, compared to how many it gained?”
Here’s the answer: “ending subscribers” decreased 1% for the full year of 2020.
That’s correct: Sirius XM lost fewer subscribers in the pandemic-plagued year of 2020 than in the go-go days of 2019.
Wait, there’s more: As the percentage of paid promotional subscribers fell by 22% year-over-year to 3.83 million, the amount of self paid subscribers increased by 3%, to 30.89 million.
In Canada, however, where Sirius XM penetration has largely been seen in big markets such as Toronto and Calgary, subscribers decreased by 3% to 2.62 million; the Canadian economy, coupled with more stringent COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions in Ontario, could be factors there.
Looking specifically at Q4, self-pay subscriber rolls surged by 19% year-over-year.
And, that all-important self-paid monthly churn is at 1.6%.
A FAMILIAR WORD FOR RADIO
In prepared comments, Sirius XM Chief Financial Officer Sean Sullivan, who landed the role on Oct. 26, 2020, used a word that broadcast radio has incorporated into dozens of quarterly earnings calls — reach.
“The tremendous reach of SiriusXM’s platforms, the company’s unique business model, and the quality of its people attracted me to join the company last fall as CFO,” he said. “All of these attributes have been affirmed in the past three months since I came on board, and it has been a pleasure to partner with Jennifer as she made the transition to CEO.”
That reach story seems to be working for Sirius XM.
SiriusXM increased its regular quarterly dividend by 10% in November for the fourth consecutive year; some radio companies have retained their deeply slashed or suspended dividends.
At the end of the fourth quarter, SiriusXM’s debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 3.3x.
And, Sullivan concluded, “We have tremendous liquidity to continue investing in the business and returning capital to stockholders.”
2021 GUIDANCE
The company reiterated its 2021 guidance for SiriusXM self-pay net subscriber additions, revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow originally issued on January 7, 2021:
The technology behind one of the most respected brands that helped ignite today’s streaming media landscape is back as an independent, sharply-focused company.
Newly formed Antix Digital Inc. has acquired the live streaming and compression solutions portfolio from Imagine Communications.
Led by Tony Huang, the former head of product management for the same product family at Digital Rapids, the new company will accelerate future development of the solutions while taking over service and support for existing customers and systems.
The transaction encompasses software-based compression, processing and streaming solutions that enable leading media enterprises to efficiently and profitably engage audiences across delivery platforms ranging from mobile and OTT services to linear broadcast and cable channels.
The foundation of the product line was developed by streaming solutions developer Digital Rapids, which Imagine Communications acquired in 2014. Imagine continued to evolve the portfolio with enhanced features and new products, but with streaming media delivery now deeply entrenched in today’s society far beyond commercial media and entertainment applications, it became clear that there are broader opportunities.
“Imagine Communications has been a great steward of the technology and solutions it acquired with Digital Rapids, but the ubiquity of multiscreen media consumption creates opportunities beyond Imagine’s core focus, from social media streaming to immersive, interactive training,” said Huang. “Transitioning the product family to Antix lets each company focus on their strengths, primary markets and best opportunities. We are excited to kick-start a new era for these solutions while bringing their powerful benefits to new customers and applications.”
The transaction also marks the return of the portfolio’s original “StreamZ” product branding.
Products making the transition to Antix Digital ownership include:
Imagine will continue to sell the Antix-acquired products to their customers as a non-exclusive Antix reseller, while Antix will honor Imagine Communications’ existing customer support contracts for these solutions.
Prior to Digital Rapids, Huang worked in product management for DTV compression products at broadcast vendor Evertz.
With nine television stations, 18 radio stations, and a multi-faceted website, Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) strives to educate, entertain, and enrich the lives of its audience with programming that includes statewide radio news, current affairs, and educational resources.
Already using the SGrecast SaaS platform from StreamGuys to efficiently manage their podcast publishing workflows, the broadcaster recently leveraged SGrecast’s new development API for seamless integration with GPB’s website content management system (CMS).
The result has unified GPB’s audio publishing, storage, and delivery processes while further simplifying operations at a time when its digital media properties are seeing their highest traffic ever.
Prior to the new integration, GPB used two distinct workflows for different types of audio content. SGrecast was used only for pre-produced podcast episodes, which operators uploaded directly into SGrecast along with corresponding metadata for automated publishing and distribution. Non-podcast audio clips such as sound bites and story reads, which accompany articles on GPB’s news website, were handled separately. When the broadcaster merged its dedicated news portal into the main GPB.org site last year, the team took the opportunity to combine its behind-the-scenes audio processes.
“Our main GPB.org site wasn’t set up to serve audio files, so we needed a good place to host its new audio content,” said Carl Zornes, director of digital media, GPB. “We were already using SGrecast very successfully to host our podcasts, so we decided to expand its use to both content types. Bringing our podcasts and news audio clips together in our website CMS would also remove some manual steps for our podcast producers.”
GPB and its website developers, Lullabot, used StreamGuys’ just-released API to let producers and news reporters submit both podcasts and general audio content to SGrecast through the same CMS interface.
“Uploading audio clips to SGrecast is now fully automated through the CMS,” explained Zornes. “When creating an article, a user clicks to add audio just as if they were uploading an image to the website. If it’s only intended for the website, the user doesn’t need to go through any podcast-related steps – the audio is automatically sent to SGrecast for storage and hosting, and it will be rendered within the article on our site. However, if the user checks the option in the CMS to make the audio part of a podcast, they can also get a list of all the podcasts available in SGrecast. They select which podcast to attach the audio to, and once the content is approved by an editor and published in the CMS, an automated API call triggers SGrecast to add the content to the podcast feed and distribute it to our target outlets. The only time a podcast producer now goes manually into SGrecast is to insert ad markers.”
A second SGrecast integration simplifies the creation of website landing pages for GPB’s podcasts. When crafting such pages in the website CMS, an API call embeds an instance of StreamGuys’ SGplayer multimedia player using SGrecast’s unique ID for that podcast. When listeners subsequently visit the published landing page, the player appears automatically, including a dynamically updated episode list.
GPB’s new API-driven audio publishing workflow went live in June 2020, just as demand for their digital content took off. “With students learning from home because of the pandemic, our partnership with our State Department of Education is bringing more people to our website,” said Zornes. “We also stream live press conferences for our Governor and Secretary of State, and with Georgia’s key role in the 2020 elections, all eyes and ears have been on our state. It has been a banner year for our content.”
In addition to the time savings afforded by the new API integration, Zornes praises the rich metrics provided by StreamGuys’ software suite and the overall publishing efficiency of SGrecast. “I love the analytics we get from SGrecast and SGreports,” he elaborated. “I like to slice and dice our metrics to understand our audience better, and the data we get from StreamGuys is phenomenal. I also appreciate that we can build one podcast feed and identify all the different providers we want to send it to. We only have to do that once, and we’re covered everywhere, whether it’s five places or two dozen.”
GPB’s key initiatives for 2021 include further expansion of these distribution outlets, with plans to add Google News and Apple News alongside roughly 20 existing partnerships that include Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify. Zornes notes that as GPB’s digital reach continues to grow, so too will its use of SGrecast. “SGrecast makes it so easy for us to expand to new outlets,” he concluded. “My responsibility is to make our content available wherever our users expect us to be. Whatever’s next, we’ll be using StreamGuys to reach it.”
— Brian Galante
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