Radio+Television Business Report

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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SANTA MONICA, CALIF. — An entertainment industry legal veteran who has been the associate general counsel at Amazon Studios until today has returned to Davis Wright Tremaine LLP after more than 20 years.

It’s a return for an individual who was a DWT associate in the late 1990s.

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An “expansive collaborative effort” is now underway to launch NEXTGEN TV service in the Nation’s Capital, and it is calling on the academic resources and tech team of Howard University‘s public broadcasting TV station in Washington, D.C., to get the ball rolling.

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From atop Red Mountain in Birmingham, a 130-watt FM translator blankets the metropolitan area of Alabama’s biggest city with Alternative music and the Premiere Networks’ syndicated offering The Woody Show in morning drive.

This microstation has been on the air since 2017. Soon, it will disappear. In its place: Christian Contemporary music.

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One of the nation’s key advocacy groups for African American broadcasters has 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.”

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Educational Media Foundation has scooped up yet another station, as it solidifies its ranking as the No. 2 licensee of radio stations in the U.S. behind iHeartMedia.

It’s grabbing an Indiana Class B1 FM, bringing the cities of Normal and Bloomington into EMF’s expanding universe of Christian Contemporary Music networks.

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With a three-tower transmitter array putting a market-wide signal over the Kansas City metropolitan area, a Class B AM has been serving this Mid-America market with “Real Country” programming.

That’s poised to change, as a Hispanic-focused broadcast entity is purchasing this facility.

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Nearly half of Gen Zs aren’t old enough to drive a car, yet they are driving global marketing and retail strategies around the world.

It’s no wonder: Gen Z is poised to be the most influential generation in human history. The oldest members of Gen Z are just graduating from college, while its youngest members are still in grade school. Despite that, they account for 20% of all U.S. consumers, with an estimated direct buying power of $143 billion.

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He’s been the leader of the company he founded with the purchase of an AM radio station in Secaucus, N.J., in the early 1980s — a property that served as the foundation of Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) instead of the one he really wanted, the FM that today is Z100.

Now, Raúl Alarcón Jr. is handing his Presidential title to the individual that serves as SBS’s Chief Operations Officer.

Adding the role of President is Albert Rodriguez. 

He’ll retain his COO title, as Alarcón focuses on his role of Chairman/CEO.

As President, Rodriguez will manage all aspects of SBS’s operations and oversee the future growth and financial performance of SBS’s radio, TV, digital and experiential businesses and brands.

In addition to its broadcast radio stations, SBS’s assets include the Aire radio network; Hispanic streaming app LaMusica; the MegaTV operation; and concert promoter SBS Entertainment.

Alarcón said, “Albert has demonstrated an amazing ability to deliver industry-leading financial results for the company during the most extraordinarily challenging times in the history of electronic media. He has personally spearheaded a number of corporate initiatives which have been instrumental in establishing the Company’s leadership standing, while adroitly handpicking an executive team which is second-to-none in the industry.

“After nearly a quarter century of dedication and loyalty in building a track record of
stellar achievements, no one is more qualified than Albert Rodríguez to expand upon
this Company’s treasured legacy of nearly four decades of service to the nation’s Latino
community. I congratulate him on his many accomplishments and very much look
forward to his firebrand leadership of SBS in the future.”

Rodriguez commented, “I am honored that Raúl is entrusting me with these added
responsibilities, particularly at this time of universal recognition and acceptance of the awesome power of the Latino consumer. I look forward to continue executing our
Chairman’s vision, which has created extraordinary value for the Company and its
shareholders, and to working with our amazing team of content and sales professionals
as we together write the next exciting chapter in the history of SBS as the preeminent
entertainment destination for U.S. Latinos.”

SBS also notes that it will be implementing “additional management initiatives” in
the coming weeks “as part of its ongoing efforts at solidifying and expanding its
competitive standing in the U.S. media marketplace.”

The company did not elaborate on what that may entail.

The accelerative impact of COVID-19 on digital transformation has led to improvements in mobile marketing capabilities for advertisers. Growth in “m-commerce “and use of social media have provided brands with new opportunities to reach consumers, driving up mobile marketing budgets set to be worth $230 billion globally in 2021.

That’s the latest finding from WARC Data.

There’s just one caveat: privacy concerns could hamper mobile’s growth potential.

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Thanks to exceptional growth in its digital segment, Entravision Communications Corp. stock has enjoyed a six-month surge.

Entering Christmas Eve 2020, shares were priced at $2.70. As of midday trading on Tuesday (6/15), EVC is up 104% since then.

That has Zacks Equity Research asking if it is time for investors to cash out.

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