Radio+Television Business Report

A plan has come to fruition that would see the issuance of senior notes due in eight years, and a series of senior notes due in 10 years, as a way the nation’s dominant audience measurement and data analytics company can prepay a series of term loans agreed to in June 2020.

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The owners of a Macy’s warehouse located on Gandy Blvd. midway between downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg, Fla., have moved forward with buying the neighboring property due east of the facility facing the Selmon Expressway.

It’s a multimillion-dollar deal. And, it will see the relocation of iHeartMedia’s radio stations serving the Tampa Bay region.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, the company will pocket $3.8 million from the real estate deal for 4002 W. Gandy Blvd.

The iHeartMedia/Tampa station group is comprised of Top 40 WFLZ, once Jacor’s famed “Power Pig”; Adult Contemporary WMTX “Mix 100.7,” Rock WXTB-FM “98 Rock,” Country WFUS-FM “US 103.5,” Hip-Hop/R&B WBTP-FM 95.7 “The Beat,” Sports WDAE-AM and FM Translator W237CW, Talk WFLA-AM 970, “Impact Radio” WHNZ-AM, “Throwback Tampa Bay,” and Tropical WRUB-FM 106.5 in nearby Sarasota.

According to the Times, Hillsborough County property records indicate the iHeartMedia facility was sold on April 29 to LBA LVF VII XII Company LLC. It shares an Irvine, Calif. address with the buyers of a 39-acre Macy’s warehouse property just to the west of the iHeart facility.

The Macy’s property sold in late December 2020 for $32 million.

Xperi subsidiary DTS and Cumulus Media have reached a deal that will see the integration of the audio media company’s AM and FM radio stations into a “connected car infotainment platform.”

That would be DTS AutoStage — described by Xperi as a global hybrid radio platform that’s currently coming to market in the new Mercedes-Benz S-Class series of vehicles.

The DTS AutoStage platform is open and available to all broadcasters at no cost, at this time.

Cumulus SVP/Technology Conrad Trautmann notes, “DTS AutoStage is helping elevate radio into the connected car future, while enabling our radio stations to benefit from economies of scale and service simplification.”

Cumulus station metadata will be represented in the DTS AutoStage in-vehicle infotainment ecosystem.

Among the content partnerships DTS AutoStage has with major broadcast groups and aggregators around the world are BBC, Bauer, Global Radio, NPO, Audacy, Beasley, Cox Media, Commercial Radio Australia, radiko, FM World, and Germany’s SWR.

With Urban One stock exploding in value on Thursday, it was only natural that some investors may want to cash out and enjoy a handsome profit.

That’s exactly what transpired on Friday, as UONE went on a wild ride that saw shares jump and quickly recede, leading to a 13% dip for the day.

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A Chicago-based live and virtual event production company is the latest company to have adopted a “go to” solution for connecting remote presenters into virtual events.

It’s technology that broadcast TV executives may wish to consider for their own operations.

Signature Production Group is using Quicklink Studio and Quicklink ST102’s tools, provided to them through Key Code Media, a U.S.-based systems integrator for A/V, broadcast, and post-production solutions.

Joel Paige, General Manager of Signature Production Group, comments, “At first, it looked like the product we were looking for didn’t exist due to our simultaneous use of NDI video and Dante audio. But the Quicklink developers stepped up and customized a solution that fit our workflow perfectly. The collaborative relationship between our companies has been a big part of the key to the success we’ve had with the Quicklink solutions.”

For more information on Quicklink ST55 click here, and for more information on Quicklink’s ST102, click here.

… and the Catz, too.

Meredith, who gained full control of Powell Meredith Communications Company in a 2009 divorce settlement, is selling a 40-watt FM translator serving an Arizona community to the northwest of Phoenix.

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A longtime public radio leader who served as President and GM of North Carolina Public Radio has passed away.

She had been on medical leave since February. However, details about the cause of death were not shared by the family.

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The Advanced Warning and Response Network (AWARN) Alliance is hosting a virtual summit next week that will bring together broadcasters and other private sector players with the nation’s largest alerting authorities to discuss next generation emergency messaging.

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It seems the creditors to the regional sports networks owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group that recently took on the Bally Sports brand through a wide-ranging integrated partnership with the gaming company are in the process of signing non-disclosure agreements to start talks on lowering the RSN’s $8 billion debt load.

That’s according to “people with knowledge of the matter” who spoke with two Bloomberg reporters on Friday.

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Esteemed GroupM Global President of Business Intelligence Brian Wieser has singled out three key areas that have been transformed the most for his firms clients over the past months.

While e-commerce and “responsible investing” are two of these areas, it is the third — linear and Connected TV — that deserve the industry’s attention.

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If timing is everything, then Byron Allen — the media mogul behind Local Now, Allen Media Group and Entertainment Studios — just made the biggest statement yet that the Golden Arches have been nothing more than a rusty bucket with respect to the level of advertising commitment it’s given to his broadcast and cable properties.

With McDonald’s getting much attention for moving forward with “bold new investments to further reflect its diverse customers” and putting 2%-5% more dollars into Black-owned properties over the next five years, Allen Media Group has filed a whopping $10 billion lawsuit against the quick-service restaurant giant for racial discrimination.

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Urban One may have had an explosive day on Wall Street, but other broadcast media companies also found themselves seeing strong gains on Thursday.

Among them: Salem Media Group, and The Walt Disney Company.

Here’s a glance at today’s activity on Wall Street.

For a live look across each trading session, please visit the homepage of RBR.com.

He’s a New Hampshire native and rose through the ranks at Hearst Television, where he was News Director of its flagship property in Boston. For the past five years, he has been VP of News.

Now, this pro has been selected to succeed the retiring Jeff Bartlett in his home state.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — A group of Republican Members of the House of Representatives on Thursday (5/20) introduced legislation that they believe help closes the digital divide in the U.S.

How so? The plan, led by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s top Republican, is designed to ensure broadband infrastructure “reaches all Americans and is not used to fund duplicative and wasteful overbuilding.”

Democrats immediately responded by pointing to support for their own bill.

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Colin Benedict, the Vice President of News for radio and TV station owner Morgan Murphy Media, played an integral role in the planning and execution of an effort across all of the multimedia company’s markets to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations.

How did the initial idea for a “Vaccine Day” effort originate, and then pollinate? What does this effort say about the role that local TV stations, in particular, play in their respective markets?

Learn more in this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM, with host Adam R Jacobson, who candidly shares his own qualms about getting vaccinated.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Colin Benedict, Morgan Murphy Media” on Spreaker.

For 18 years and change, she’s been the head of sales for Fox Television Stations’ owned-and-operated station serving the Minneapolis-St. Paul market, adding SVP/Market Manager duties in December 2014.

Now, this 35-year TV industry veteran is heading to the Pacific Northwest’s largest market to head up Fox’s O&O.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — She’s been at the FCC since 1997, and in her time at the Commission oversaw two-thirds of the Commission’s auctions. She served under nine FCC Chairs.

Now, she’s set to retire, and an Acting Deputy Chief in the Office of Economics and Analytics has been named to succeed her.

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MIAMI —NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises’ Telemundo Global Studios has promoted the person in charge of Production Operations and Production Design at Argentina-based Underground Producciónes to the role of SVP/GM for the recently launched Telemundo Streaming Studios operation.

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In the northern half of California’s San Joaquin Valley, pastor Juan Montes has established a Spanish-language broadcast ministry that uses a Class A FM station licensed to Chowchilla, and an FM translator in Hughson, to reach the Modesto and Merced markets, respectively.

Now, Montes’ operation is adding two additional FMs in the region.

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Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act was, in the view of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), designed to promote a competitive online ecosystem that maximizes user control while guarding against illegal activities.

“The law is credited with empowering unprecedented innovation, but it is also blamed for allowing Big Tech to suppress speech and avoid liability for seemingly unchecked misinformation,” the Trump-era FCC influencer notes today.

This sets the stage for a panel discussion hosted by AEI visiting scholar Mark Jamison on proposals to reform Section 230 — and on whether the law has fulfilled its original promise.

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