Radio+Television Business Report

A pair of WideOrbit alumni is landing at RCS Worldwide. Tammy Halcomb, most recently of Gemini XIII, will run the company’s product organization, and Merideth Kelly, who started in newsrooms before building a career in software, will lead global client experience under CEO Susan Larkin.

The Crystal Radio Awards entry deadline has been extended to Friday, November 6, giving NAB radio member stations an extra week to showcase their outstanding community service. 50 finalists and 10 winners will be chosen and then honored in Washington, DC, during the NAB State Leadership Conference.

A year ago, the FCC said it wouldn’t set a firm end date for ATSC 1.0. Sinclair is asking it to change course and issue a sunset order, and that has the low-power TV world on alert. The LPTV Broadcasters Association is now telling the FCC to keep its stations out of any potential mandate.

The people who keep broadcasting on the air, and the ones pushing its technology into the future, will once again get their chance to shine in fabulous Las Vegas as the National Association of Broadcasters has opened nominations for the 2027 NAB Technology Awards.

The name is familiar to most, but the face is especially familiar to Sinclair Boise, as Jennifer Lopez returns to the station group to serve as Vice President and General Manager of KBOI, KYUU, and KNIN. She makes the move after serving as General Sales Manager of KOMO/KUNS in Seattle since 2023.

Shae Hopkins, who rose from a temporary pledge production job to the top post at Kentucky Educational Television, has died. Public television leaders are remembering the 40-year KET veteran, who had planned to retire at the end of this year after nearly 17 years leading the network.

Ismael Faro, former VP of Quantum and AI at IBM, has partnered with a visual effects artist and engineer who has worked at Industrial Light & Magic and Apple, and a builder of cloud and high-performance computing infrastructure at HPE and Fujitsu to bring to market an AI-fueled ad creation platform.

FOX’s television business carried the company to a record fiscal first quarter, with the World Cup, a busy political calendar, and Tubi’s growth lifting broadcast advertising. The gains pushed company revenue and EBITDA to first-quarter highs and left the Television segment far ahead of last year.

Select Beantown listeners could soon hear something different on 104.5 XLO (WXLO). Cumulus Media plans to bring ZoneCasting to the station in the first quarter of 2027. In partnership with Aktira, Cumulus says the approach lets the station serve specific parts of Greater Boston

The Chief Telecommunications Counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee is headed back to the FCC, this time to run the Space Bureau, where Chairman Brendan Carr says she will play a key role in advancing America’s leadership in connectivity, technology, and national security.

Three Boston TV employees who hauled cameras and live gear ahead of a blizzard get to make their case that the prep was paid work. A federal judge says the clock may start earlier than WHDH-TV believes, and most of the suit survives.

Thirteen years after first taking over the programming under an LMA, a South Texas broadcaster is lining up to outright own three Alice, TX signals serving the Corpus Christi area with Spanish-language Christian and Tejano music programming.

Disney Entertainment Television’s new money chief didn’t have to move far for the job. A finance executive with nearly a decade at the company, most of it around Freeform and ABC, is now the division’s CFO, with the networks, stations, and news group under his purview.

Clocks fall back this weekend, which means everyone gets an extra hour on Sunday. How’d you like an extra $300, too? Forecast 2027 early bird pricing ends on Halloween night at the stroke of midnight, right before the clocks change. Don’t sleep on your chance to save!

A law firm that worked on iHeartMedia’s 2018 bankruptcy is preparing to shut down after 95 years. Weil, Gotshal & Manges has recommended an orderly wind-down, with a partner vote expected within days, following failed merger talks and a string of high-profile partner departures.

Some FM stations that lose a tower can’t move to another one because the FCC’s spacing rules say no. A petition now open for comment would let them, as long as the move causes no added interference and Urban One’s chief executive is among its backers.

A SportsCenter anchor with more than three decades of credits is getting the Alliance for Women in Media’s Gracies Icon Award. ESPN’s Hannah Storm will be among those honored at the Gracies Leadership Awards on November 16 at Tribeca 360° in New York City.

Hubbard Radio has brought back a former Alexandria operations manager to run the shop. Kris Valentine returns as General Manager of its Alexandria and Wadena, MN stations after a stop at Leighton Broadcasting, and he and Chelsea Valentine are restarting their morning show on KIKV-FM.

Radio’s ad return jumped 27 points in a 2012 study, then a recent do-over came back flat. A new IAB guide explains why audio keeps getting shortchanged in media mix models, and names the one party with the power to change that.

The Broadcasters Foundation of America is widening a college scholarship that once reached only broadcast families. Students with no industry ties can now apply, and six new awards join the original $10,000 scholarship, bringing the yearly total to $25,000 across seven awards.