Industry News

Sinclair Broadcast Group hired an individual some 17 years ago who has risen through the sales and operations ranks at its flagship TV station in Baltimore.

Now, he’s been selected to lead FOX affiliate WBFF-45 — and the two other stations Sinclair runs, but doesn’t own, in Charm City.

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For three hours on Wednesday, Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media Strategies conducted a virtual tour of the all-online Consumer Electronics Show — CES 2021.

With presentations from Amazon Alexa Auto and Xperi ahead of those scheduled from LG, Ford, Triton Digital and Mercedes Benz, Jacobs recalled how, normally, some 180,000 people congregate in Las Vegas for one of the biggest events in the world.

In recent years, the radio industry’s leadership has been there. This year, they — and Jacobs — are among those connecting from home and “table hop.”

The three-hour tour saw some 350 industry members registered for participation, and more than 200 watching live as Jacobs began the event at 1pm Eastern.

Among those in attendance: Bud Walters of Cromwell Group, Nielsen Audio leader Brad Kelly, Brian Beasley of Beasley Media Group, programming veteran Dave Beasing, and Salem Media Group‘s Dave Santrella, among others.

The cool tech shared by Jacobs began with a Vuzix wearable smart/augmented eyeglass/earpiece hybrid.

This preceded a conversation with Shawn DuBravac — a global futurist and trendsetter — who noted that we are at an “interesting inflection point” in a year where digital was forced upon us, giving us an opportunity to decide what to keep when the pandemic ends, and what will fade.

This includes at-home gym and workout platforms. Will consumers go back to gyms in-person or continue to prefer a mirror-like device, or Peloton, or video-delivered instruction?

He says, “It is important to think not just how does this change radio, but also how does this effect the things that isn’t radio. Ultimately, radio is getting disrupted by these second-order effects of these new technologies and new services.”

Today, broadcasting from home is a “new normal.” This could very well continue past the end of the pandemic, given the technology put in place and the services that can continue to be deployed by radio broadcasting companies.

That said, DuBravac says, audio is overshadowed by video.

“The screen real estate continues to explode,” he believes.

That’s no understatement: Televisions including HDMI 2.1 and 8K technology are looking to capitalize on interest in the new generation of video game consoles that will support those technologies. Shipments of consoles exploded at the end of 2020, with imports of consoles increasing 123.2% year over year in the three months to Nov. 30, 2020.

Fred Jacobs quickly interjected that voice has become bigger than ever. DuBravac agrees, with AI technology fueling it to such things as a connected faucet. “We are getting into a much deeper integrated to where artificial intelligence in many ways is defining the product,” he says.

This is a key feature of the Mercedes Benz dashboard, in which they will deploy prediction-based suggestions based on consumer use, likes and dislikes, and other voice-recognized personalization, DuBravac adds.

AMAZON’S AUTO 

Arianne Walker, the “Chief Evangelist” for Alexa Automotive, offered a presentation on how the voice activation platform largely known for its in-home use, can be additive to one’s car, too.

Integration of Alexa into OEM in-dash systems is focused on entertainment, voice communication to phone or online virtual meeting platforms, gasoline monitoring and filling station searches, and basic automotive functions including defrost and heating/cooling.

XPERI IN THE SPOTLIGHT

Joe D’Angelo, SVP/Broadcast at HD Radio parent Xperi, offered a review of what’s new for consumers that may have an HD-equipped in-car audio entertainment system.

It shared statistics on advertiser recall, and it’s current availability by automaker and trim.

The DTS Auto Stage, another Xperi offering, was also featured in a pre-recorded video.

Even as social media companies struggle to combat misleading information on their platforms, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that 53% of adult American respondents receive their news on social media sites “often,” or “sometimes.” 

And, of the 11 social media sites asked about as regular sources of news in the study, Facebook sits on top.

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The National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE), which is staging a virtual NATPE Miami conference in 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is presenting the President of Hearst Television with one of four Iris Awards.

The 2021 Iris Awards ceremony will take place as part of NATPE Virtual Miami on January 21 at 1pm Eastern.

Among the honorees is Hearst head Jordan Wertlieb. He will be receiving the Lew Klein Award for Leadership.

NATPE’s Iris Awards were created to recognize best-in-class executives, program producers, creators, talent and content that makes a significant impact on the industry and our culture.

The Award for Excellence in Performance will be presented to Kelly Clarkson, while long-running syndicated entertainment news magazine  Entertainment Tonight will be honored with the Award for Excellence in Programming as host Kevin Frazier is given the Award for Career Achievement.

It’s clear from two recent reports that podcast listeners love audio and want to hear more.

That’s the consensus from the new Westwood One 2021 Audioscape report, which looked at podcast consumer trends using data from Q3 2020 Share of Ear report by Edison Research.

While AM/FM radio continues to dominate much of the audio landscape, podcasting is one area that continues to see significant growth. According to the Audioscape survey, podcast listeners are dedicated audiophiles. On a typical day podcast listeners spend 41% more time listening to audio during the day as compared to the average U.S. consumer, which spends a little more than three and a half hours with all forms of audio on a daily basis.

[Read: Share of Listening to Podcasting Hits All-Time High]

When people listen to podcasts, they remain a devoted bunch, the Westwood One report said. Among those that listen to the podcast format, podcasting becomes the listener’s number one platform. Once people become regular podcasts customers, nearly one-third of their daily total spent with audio is devoted to podcasts.

The surveys also found that the podcast audience is significantly younger than the listeners of other media. The median age of the podcast audience is 34. According to the Westwood One survey, the current median age of podcast listeners is 13 years younger than AM/FM radio and two decades younger than broadcast television network audiences.

The Edison survey also found that most podcast listening occurs at home throughout the day, with a 60% share as compared to podcast listening in the car (21%), at work (15%) or at some other locale (4%).

The Edison Research report also looked at how much time is spent with four audio content types: music, sports, news and talk/personality. The Edison survey found that podcast listeners are twice as likely to listen to news and three times as likely to listen to personalities and sports formats when compared to nonpodcast consumers. “It is not surprising to see podcasting’s share of time spent soaring over time among those who use spoken word formats such as talk/personality, news, and sports,” wrote Brittany Faison, the insights manager at Cumulus Media/Westwood One in a blog about the two surveys.

The post Reports Offer Insights on the Podcast Listener appeared first on Radio World.

Once again, retransmission consent negotiations gone bad generated many news headlines over the last six weeks. Yet, ACA Connects President/CEO Matthew M. Polka notes, those talks have mostly concluded.

Not surprisingly, he says, the results “were consistent with what was expected as broadcasters continued to impose unconscionable rate hikes on consumers for what they call ‘free TV.’”

Oh, boy … What else does Polka have to say about retransmission consent — still a sore subject for Suddenlink and Cox Media Group, and for Frontier Communications and Gray Television?

“In addition to big rate hikes, we’ve also seen more than a few TV station-initiated blackouts without much warning and a lot of miffed customers,” Polka opines in commentary distributed Wednesday (1/13) by the pro-small MVPD lobbying group.

The only bright side, Polka says: “It could have been even worse for many smaller cable operators had the door not been opened for buying groups to enter the picture.”

How so? Polka explains, “The FCC just released a report showing, in 2019, that cable operators paid more than $5.5 billion dollars in retransmission consent fees — once again, for the right to deliver ‘free’ over-the-air television stations. This represented a 19.2% increase over fees paid the previous year at a time when the general rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, was 2.5%.”

The report, Polka adds, showed that smaller cable operators were “disproportionately harmed” financially by retransmission consent. Small cable operators paid on average $178.13 per subscriber, per year in retransmission consent payments, while large cable operators paid on average $124.67 per subscriber, per year, he says. “In other words, small cable operators paid on average at least 43% more than larger operators,” Polka says. “And, according to the FCC, the disparity between small and large cable systems is getting only bigger.”

Polka also shares that in 2019 there were 219 instances of “blackouts,” a number likely tied to an individual channel’s prevention, by law, from reaching MVPD subscribers without a retrans consent pact in place.

What about 2020? “[All] the anecdotal evidence we have seen suggests that the magnitude of rate increases has gotten only worse in last year’s negotiations,” Polka believes.

Among the ACA Connects members that refuse to accept new agreements as suggested by broadcast TV stations, many of whom have increased value for their properties thanks to investment in local news operations across a pandemic, are BOYCOM Vision, NNTV, Mediacom, TDS, GCI, Shentel, WOW! and Cable One/Sparklight.

As Polka sees it, the MVPDs have done nothing wrong in their negotiation process, putting all of the blame on a two-sided arrangements on broadcasters and their “unreasonable demands for higher fees.”

While the blame game will likely continue for months, if not into 2022, Polka is pleased that 2020 saw the implementation of the first set of retransmission consent negotiations conducted after passage of the Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 — a law that ACA Connects and its members “fought hard to pass.”

The TVPA requires large TV station ownership groups to negotiate retrans in good faith with buying groups like the National Cable Television Cooperative (NCTC).

Polka’s not entirely pleased with the TVPA’s results, but he’s more than satisfied.

“Make no mistake, the broadcasters still have an incredible amount of leverage and the terms and conditions of these deals were not great for the small cable operators opting into them,” Polka says. “But those deals involved lower transaction costs than individual negotiations would have had.  And, hopefully, they resulted in lower rates than individual negotiations would have produced.”

The bottom line for Polka: “Most of what’s awful about retransmission consent stayed the same, and it’s getting worse for consumers,” he says. “The old and outdated federal retrans rules from the 1990’s need to be reformed or, better yet, thrown out.  Change through laws like the TVPA is a terrific start, and ACA Connects will continue to fight for reform — just as it successfully did with the TVPA.”

From our Who’s Buying What page: Dielectric reported the installation of an antenna for Educational Media Foundation in Puerto Rico, and pointed out some unusual aspects.

EMF installed a broadband model DCR-M antenna for noncommercial WJKL(FM) in San Juan, to serve WJKL on 105.7 MHz and a second station at 104.7 FM) in the future.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

“The center-fed DCR-M accommodates both frequencies (with 1 MHz separation) through a special reduced bay-spacing design that eliminates the need for future field tuning,” the manufacturer stated in an announcement.

“EMF also added a new, specially designed two-station branch combiner to serve both transmission frequencies, and prevent intermodulation issues from signal mixing inside the transmitters.”

The antenna is side-mounted to a mountaintop tower with a center of radiation at 118 feet above ground level. Its design was developed with storms in mind, including hurricanes.

“The project was in fact delayed due to several harsh storms including Hurricane Maria in 2017, which caused widespread devastation to the island,” Dielectric stated. “The project was revived once power was returned to the remote site and the general infrastructure was restored.”

Dielectric worked with Sabre to develop a custom mounting system that could support the antenna’s unusual bay-spacing design.

“This included a standoff pole for the tapered tower architecture, and a bracket design that eliminated complex anti-rotation elements for the antenna bays,” it said. “Dielectric also added its ‘funky elbow’ design to reduce ground radiation from the DCR-M, through a robust inter-bay feed system that optimizes signal coverage without directing radiation downward from the tower.”

Send news for Who’s Buying What to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post EMF Installs Custom Antenna in San Juan appeared first on Radio World.

It was a cavalcade of achievements that went on for hours. This included a review of the Media Bureau and Incentive Auction teams’ accomplishments since late January 2017.

All of the presentations, however, couldn’t overshadow the biggest takeaway from the Zoom-delivered highlight reel of The FCC’s Past Four Years: Ajit Pai, Chairman of the agency overseeing media regulatory policy in the U.S., has presided over his final Open Meeting before departing next week.

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Its broadcast properties include such CBS affiliates as WPEC-12 in West Palm Beach.

And, that affiliation — along with those for 12 other stations — won’t be changing anytime soon.

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It’s a big deal for attracting institutional investors, and Townsquare Media had previously announced that its CEO, Bill Wilson, would be presenting.

Now, two of its audio media industry peers have revealed they, too, will be presenting at NobleCon17.

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