Industry News

While it’s certainly exciting that a big user of Spot Cable has now appeared at Spot Radio, heating up the auto insurance category, the presence of a popular language-learning online platform in the top three advertisers by play count is perhaps the biggest takeaway of the latest Media Monitors Spot Ten Radio report.

For the week ending Jan. 3, 2021, Babbel ranks third by play count, behind Bank of America and State Farm.

It is thanks to 55,701 spot plays.

Meanwhile, Liberty Mutual Insurance is present with just shy of 37,500 spots — dwarfed by leader State Farm but ahead of GEICO.

The gecko, Progressive and Allstate are not present in the latest report.

SANTA CLARITA, CALIF. — Travel to the northwest of the greater Los Angeles area, via Interstate 15 or Pearblossom Highway, and you’ll officially reach the “High Desert” — home to dusty, and growing, communities including Victorville, Apple Valley and Hesperia.

This region, the Victor Valley, is officially ensconced within the vast Los Angeles DMA. But, “local” TV is hardly local, and it’s been decades since a broadcast signal covered the region. Newspapers are largely focused on San Bernardino, to the south or Southern California’s more populous communities.

One radio group decided to tackle the local news void, both on-air and online.

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With the Black Lives Matter movement and its hyperfocus on the African American consumer, Urban One shares skyrocketed in the summer of 2020. While values have receded since that big surge, they are still nearly four times the average price for UONE seen before June 1.

However, there’s a slight problem with Urban One, and the Nasdaq stock market has sent the company a notice that it needs to remedy it. Otherwise, it could face delisting.

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The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has joined a national assembly of experts and organizations working on unified action against the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s being called the COVID Collaborative, and NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith will serve on the collaborative’s National Advisory Council.

The COVID Collaborative is a non-partisan group of the nation’s leading experts in public health, education and the economy working together with associations representing state and local leaders and vulnerable communities to take unified action to defeat the pandemic and sustainably and safely reopen the country.

“Radio and TV broadcasters have devoted tremendous resources to keeping their audiences safe and informed throughout the pandemic,” Smith said. “Now, as vaccines roll out and the nation’s recovery begins, local broadcasters will play an important role in educating and engaging viewers and listeners. NAB looks forward to working with the Collaborative in leveraging broadcasters’ connections to local communities across America to inform the public and defeat the virus.”

COVID Collaborative co-founder and CEO John Bridgeland added, “Having the voice of the nation’s radio and television broadcasters could not come at a more critical time as our country works together to defeat COVID-19 and emerge better and stronger.”

Chaired by former governors Dirk Kempthorne (R-Idaho) and Deval Patrick (D-Mass.), the Collaborative recently announced a “Call to Action Compact” between a bipartisan group of governors calling for a common, comprehensive approach to defeating COVID-19, emphasizing the need for state and local leaders to engage with vulnerable communities to ensure that efforts to defeat the virus are both equitable and effective.

The NAB also recently shared research findings regarding local media’s critical role in educating the public about vaccine distribution. The organization will unveil a toolkit in early 2021 providing the resources, research and messaging local journalists need to effectively educate their diverse audiences.

Davina Sashkin now has something in common with Matthew H. McCormick and Dan A. Kirkpatrick.

That would be her job title at noted Washington, D.C.-area telecommunications, media, and technology law firm Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth.

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As Wall Street officially began the 2021 trading year, a company that heavily invested in broadcast television spectrum across the end of the 2010s completed the sale of three full-power TV stations and a low-power TV translator.

It marks the company’s exit from a trio of major markets.

It also heralds a turning point for a company that quietly installed a new CEO in late November, after an activist investor at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic asked the company’s board to oust its prior leader — Philip Falcone.

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Some 2.2 million Asian Americans reside in the San Francisco Bay Area. A broadcast TV station led by GM Jack Schwartz has responded by offering news and information, along with entertainment programming, in over seven Asian languages on a station owned by Lincoln Howell.

Howell’s over-the-air channel offers Mandarin-language programming, and offers Ravi Kapur‘s Diya TV on its DT2 signal.

Now, Howell and Schwartz are committing to “a comprehensive suite of measurement services” enabling Lincoln Broadcasting Co. to better compete against all broadcast channels in one of the nation’s biggest markets.

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On December 29, a provider of cable television services went on the attack, using the public — and the media — to curry favor in what appeared to be shaping up for the latest retransmission consent impasse of the season.

Verizon Fios started to notify its customers that they could lose some channels “in the coming days.” Those channels are owned by a Baltimore-based broadcast media company and include the ABC affiliate serving Boston.

The TV station owner declined comment, as negotiations continued.

Guess what? A new deal was reached before any “blackout” and another verbal battle impacting viewers was sparked.

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If you watch NBC‘s affiliate in markets such as Buffalo and Portland, Ore., you’re in no danger of facing any sort of channel change. The same can be said for NBC affiliates serving the Tampa Bay region and Columbus, Ohio.

That’s because the Peacock parent is starting 2021 with two valuable new affiliation agreements — with some of broadcast TV’s biggest players.

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Early Monday (1/4), Nexstar Media Group confirmed that it and its operating partners have come together to renew the existing NBC network affiliations for 33 DMAs across the U.S.

The agreement covers a total of 29 Nexstar O&Os and four stations Nexstar operates via Shared Service Agreements with other owners, in order to comply with the FCC’s current media ownership concentration rules.

The stations include former Media General, and Clear Channel Communications, NBC affiliate in Tampa, WFLA-8. Other stations include WCMH-4 in Columbus, Ohio; KXAN-36 in Austin; WOOD-8 in Grand Rapids; WAVY-10 in Norfolk; KSEE-24 in Fresno; and WBRE-28 in Scranton-Wilkes Barre.

“We are pleased to renew our affiliation with Nexstar Media Group to serve these 33 markets,” said Philip Martzolf, the president of NBC Affiliate Relations. “We have a strong partnership with Nexstar and look forward to our continued collaboration to bring NBC programming to millions of households across the country.”

Nexstar President/COO and CFO Tom Carter added that the company, the largest broadcast TV company in the U.S. by number of stations, is “delighted” to extend its partnership with NBC on a long-term basis.

The news came just two hours after TEGNA, the broadcast media company formerly known as Gannett, signed its own “comprehensive, multi-year deal” that renews station affiliation agreements for 20 DMAs.

The agreement includes renewals for WXIA-11 in Atlanta; KPNX-12 (and Flagstaff-based repeater KNAZ-2) in Phoenix; KING-5 in Seattle; KARE-11 in Minneapolis; KUSA-9 in Denver; WKYC-3 in Cleveland; KGW-8 in Portland, Ore.; WCNC-36 in Charlotte; KSDK-5 in St. Louis; WTHR-13 in Indianapolis; WTLV-12 in Jacksonville; WGRZ-2 in Buffalo; and affiliates serving Knoxville; Portland, Me.; Waco, Tex.; Boise, Idaho; Twin Falls, Idaho; Odessa-Midland, Tex.; Beaumont, Tex.; and Bangor, Me.

It’s a major agreement for Comcast and NBCUniversal: The 20 markets renewed cover 17% of the U.S. audience and nearly 21 million households, and TEGNA is the largest independent owner of NBC affiliates.

“We are proud of our longstanding partnership that serves our communities,” TEGNA President/CEO Dave Lougee said. “This new multi-year agreement allows our stations to continue providing consumers and advertisers with premium network content such as TODAY, Sunday Night Football and the Tokyo Olympic Games. We value our collaboration, which enables us to provide must-have national content alongside our award-winning local news, weather and sports.”

NAB’s PILOT technology initiative recently posted technology predictions for the coming year.

A sampling of those related to radio:

PILOT Executive Director John Clark wrote that consumers will have one-on-one conversations with their preferred local news providers over voice platforms.

“Chatbots and messaging apps with these kinds of personalized ‘conversations’ are already prevalent in other areas (e.g., customer service apps), including news. As these interactions extend to voice platforms, we’ll see local news being delivered not just as a request for a headline but as a conversation about a headline.”

David H. Layer, NAB vice president, advanced engineering, said U.S. broadcasters will embrace RadioDNS, as hybrid radios for vehicles become more prevalent. He called on stations to create a RadioDNS Service Information file so they will display properly.

“Broadcasters can do this themselves or work with a number of service providers who can assist free of charge. It’s vital for broadcasters to do this so that automakers can be assured that their investment of time and resources in developing great radio receivers is appreciated and supported.”

Jeremy Sinon, VP of digital strategy for Hubbard Radio, says companies are “waking up to digital channels that have been available to us all along and getting serious about maximizing their potential.” Key trends, he wrote, will include “doubling down on podcasting and social media, producing more digital video (live and recorded) and taking advantage of the built-in discoverability potential of YouTube.”

Joe D’Angelo, senior vice president of radio at Xperi, said the past year demonstrated broadcast radio’s vital role “to inform, calm and entertain.” With the FCC’s approval of optional all-digital transmission on AM, he said, “look out for launch of some very exciting all digital AM formats.” He also highlighted the company’s rollout of DTS Connected Radio.

Beyond radio, Jason Friedlander, senior director of product marketing at Verizon Media, said that “edge compute” will begin to make personalized experiences a reality. Mike Kelley, vice president and chief information security officer at E.W. Scripps, said ATSC 3.0 will begin to have dramatic and unexpected impact.

And Sam Matheny, NAB’s chief technology officer and executive vice president of technology, wrote, “NAB Show will roar back as the world’s largest trade show for media, entertainment and technology in October. With the benefit of a vaccine and time, it will be an early success story leading the way for large-scale in-person gatherings.”

Read their comments and others.

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