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Bee Broadcasting, Inc. enters into Consent Decree to resolve political file investigation

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Kenneth Clark enters into political file consent decree to resolve political file investigation

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The nation’s top audio media company and No. 1 licensee of radio stations released its first quarter 2021 earnings just after Thursday’s Closing Bell on Wall Street.

What did iHeartMedia have to share, ahead of its earnings call for analysts and investors?

Revenue fell 9.5%, or 7% ex-political. Adjusted EBITDA in Q1 2021 declined by $38 million. That’s better than what iHeart’s forecasts predicted, and only fuels its confidence that it will return to 2019 adjusted EBITDA levels by the end of 2021.

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If there ever was a time to swing from a significant net loss to profit, this is it. And, Salem Media Group delivered, with total revenue rising year-over-year.

Here’s the thing: Salem’s publishing division, along with continued strong digital dollars, made the feat possible. Net broadcast revenue declined in the first quarter of 2021.

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The company’s fiscal performance during the first three months of 2021 were bumpy but could have been worse. This sequential growth was coupled with positive comments from CEO Mary Berner during the company’s Q1 ’21 earnings call on Wednesday referencing “enhanced operating leverage” and “continued year-over-year sequential growth.”

Cumulus Media‘s path to profitability appears to have gotten the seal of approval from some in the investment world. The company’s shares were up significantly on Thursday.

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There’ll soon be a new person responsible for overseeing the content, sales, brand, and operations across all platforms — as well as defining and executing the vision and strategy — at a TEGNA property in the Lone Star State.

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My column about the FCC’s political-file consent decrees caught the eye of an engineer whose  employer has one radio station under a decree; he was appointed to be its designated compliance officer, so he’s getting a close look at the impact.

“I thought I might offer you a little off-the-record inside look at how easy it is to run afoul of the FCC’s political broadcasting rules,” he told me. But given how many stations are affected by this issue, I asked permission to share his comments anonymously, and he agreed.

Here’s what he wrote:

Paul, 73.1943(c) requires: “All records required by this paragraph shall be placed in the online political file as soon as possible and shall be retained for a period of two years. As soon as possible means immediately absent unusual circumstances.” That “as soon as possible” and “immediately” is what got us and a lot of others in trouble.

I get it … political candidates need to know right away, the same day, what competing candidates are doing in terms of advertising schedules, so that info needs to be up and available… immediately.

What happened in our case was that a gubernatorial candidate placed an order last October for an ad buy on our station. The account executive dutifully entered the order. Traffic got the spots scheduled and the spots aired right on time.

However, the paperwork for the order sat on the AE’s desk for a few days before she gave it to the person responsible for OPIF uploads. And just like that, because an AE set another piece of paper on top of the order sheet, we were in violation. When the OPIF manager got the order sheet, she immediately uploaded it and of course it was time stamped … several days after the order date.

There was no way around it, and we owned up to it in our renewal application.

It was nothing malicious, nothing particularly careless, just an honest mistake on the part of an employee who probably should have had a greater awareness of the rule and the possible consequences of violation.

Paul, another perilous, treacherous path to violation is network programming.

Oftentimes, political buys are made at the network level. The syndicators are required by contract (by our contracts, anyway) to immediately send us the paperwork so that we can upload it, but they quite often do not, either at all or not until several days later if they do at all.

We have no way of knowing what political ads are embedded until/unless we hear them or the syndicators tell us. When we do get the paperwork, we always annotate it with the date/time received and immediately upload it. But that could still constitute a violation, even though it is arguably beyond our control. The FCC would argue that we are responsible for everything that goes out over our airwaves, and they are correct.

The point of all this is that while political OPIF violations in this renewal cycle may seem epidemic, I don’t believe that is the case.

The OPIF and time stamping of uploads make it impossible to claim compliance if even a little late — not that we would ever knowingly do that anyway (we always in the past disclaimed our certifications in license renewal applications, “to the best of our knowledge …”). A tiny mistake under the current system makes for a black-and-white license renewal issue. It’s all very frustrating.

For now, we have put an embargo on all non-federal political advertising and will only take federal candidate ads that we are required to by law.

We hate to leave money on the table and not give candidates a platform, but we simply cannot take a chance that another small mistake will be made and affect our licenses.

Thanks to this reader for sharing his experience of how the current FCC initiative is affecting one company’s daily operations.

The post “It’s All Very Frustrating”: Life Under a Consent Decree appeared first on Radio World.

In the last year, fueled by “Black Lives Matter” social justice protests, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives reached full tilt across Corporate America. Now, there is a growing realization that “DEI,” or D&I, action is no replacement for marketing and advertising to ethnic consumers.

That’s the crux of a statement being sent by the Hispanic Marketing Council today to Fortune 1000 Chief Marketing Officers and the media.

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It was a company first: Saga Communications President/CEO Ed Christian was absent from its Q1 2021 earnings call held Thursday morning. He’s “doing fine,” CFO Sam Bush told those on the call.

Christian suffered a painful muscle pull, Bush reports, and he was at a doctor’s office getting X-Rays instead of offering his trademark “picturesque comments,” as Bush calls them, on what turned out to be a nine-minute fiscal review for analysts and investors of Saga’s first three months of 2021.

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An interesting new series of infographic maps attempts one sort of answer to the common question, “Who is making money off of podcasting?”

The maps identify top-earning podcasts by country and by several popular genres.

The company that put them together believes the highest-earning podcast, in the United States and globally, is “The Joe Rogan Experience” with $72.3 million in what it calls “potential earnings.”

Click to enlarge.

They think Europe’s top-earning podcast is comedy show “Sh**ged Married Annoyed,” with an estimated annual value of $10.6 million. And the highest-earning business podcast is U.S. show “The GaryVee Audio Experience” with $6.3 million.

The overall global map is fun to browse; click the image at right to see it enlarged. (A link to the full set of maps is at the end of this story.)

These were put together by financial blog Top Dollar Financial Insights Hub, which is part of debt consolidation company Accredited Debt Relief, working with UK-based content marketing agency NeoMam Studios (the latter produces “creative content that online audiences will want to share and journalists will want to write about”).

They did a similar project last year called YouTube Moneymakers, identifying the most popular YouTuber in various countries and estimating their earnings.

in issuing the podcast infographics, they noted that there are an estimated 850,000 active podcasts and 30 million podcast episodes, but that the industry’s revenue is estimated at less than $1 billion dollars right now.

Big media companies like iHeartMedia believe there is a lot more to be made in podcasting, and have made investments in the infrastructure and analytics to build that business, as seen in IHM’s launch of a programmatic “private marketplace” just this week.

Describing their process, the mapmakers say they compiled the top 20 podcasts in various countries across Spotify and Apple lists using Chartable, found the podcasts on Castbox and recorded the number of plays, number of overall episode and the number of episodes in the last 12 months.

“Following the calculation that Castbox sees about 2% of overall plays, Top Dollar multiplied the number of plays by 50 and calculated the number of plays by episode,” the organization stated in a press release.

“The team went on to estimate the potential earnings in the last 12 months by assuming three 60 second ads per episode and taking CPM values from AdvertiseCast.”

It then applied the same process for several specific genres as well.

See all the maps here: https://www.accrediteddebtrelief.com/blog/every-countrys-highest-earning-podcast/.

The post Maps Identify Top-Earning Podcasts by Country appeared first on Radio World.

It’s only a proposal, and you have about a month to have your say with the FCC.

And, your voice may be integral to the prevention of a regulatory fee increase proposed by the Commission.

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When Viacom reunified with CBS Corporation, some industry observers may have questioned why the Viacom team — orchestrated by majority shareholder National Amusements, Inc. and one Shari Redstone — was given control over what was once known as Black Rock.

Thursday’s release of ViacomCBS’s Q1 2021 results illustrate just how correct that decision was. Streaming revenue is on fire, and that was a key catalyst for the company during the first three months of 2021.

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Getty Images/Mehau Kulyk Science Photo Library

David Bialik consults to stations on their streaming and audio processing. He is an AES Fellow and award-winning leader who has held technical positions with Entercom, CBS, Bloomberg, United Broadcasting, Bonneville International and the National Association of Broadcasters.

This interview originally appeared in the ebook “Trends in Audio Processing for Radio.”

Radio World: What would you say is the most notable trend in processing?

David Bialik: An important development in the use of processors is the awareness that streaming requires different processing than “over-the-air.” While broadcasters want to be the “legally” loudest, streaming does not have to be the loudest, but they can be the clearest; and with commercials originating from various locations, matching loudness levels is extremely important. 

The current recommendation from the AES’ recommendation for Streaming Loudness (currently being revised) is –17 LKFS.

Stations (and engineers) are now understanding that one size of processing does not fit all. You should not use the same processing for over-the-air that you do for streams. Use a loudness meter. Orban released a free one that is quite good!

As far as features: Many processors are good and have good features. Bob Orban and Frank Foti have often joked that they make the gun but you do not have to shoot it. Do not process so aggressively that you cannot identify the instruments. You should always be able to hear the cymbals! Ask yourself if the artist wants to hear their audio clipped or not.

RW: How will the cloud and virtualization affect the processing sector? 

Bialik: Stations are hoping this will cost less and take up less real estate. Hopefully the benefit of a cloud architecture will create redundancy and eliminate a point of failure. 

It also makes your internet connection more important and the need for backup more critical.

RW: With so many people working remotely, what are the implications for managing processing today?

Bialik: Security will be important, of course. Routing will be incredibly important since a station will have to set a “Quality of Service” to guarantee that the audio always has the bandwidth needed.

Stations will want remote facilities to sound the same as studios. Remote users will need good acoustics, and be able to produce high-quality audio — we do not want 1K telephone sound.

RW: Content comes at us from so many locations. What role do loudness and LRA (loudness range) play? 

Bialik: This will be more important, especially for streaming where Direct Ad Insertion is being used. You do not want to be listening to content (at –17 LKFS) and then have commercials and interstitials played much louder. I have heard this happen at 6 dB louder at times. You will be knocked off your chair. 

RW: Are listeners, especially younger ones, moving toward greater fidelity because of their use of on-demand services and personal downloads? 

Bialik: Stations with a good dynamic range will always sound more appealing to the listener.

RW: There are committees at the Audio Engineering Society working on recommendations and guidelines for online audio content. What would you like to see from this work?

Bialik: I am chairing much of this. Loudness issues invite the listener to constantly adjust the level. If they are adjusting one control it is as easy to turn the content off. How will that help the TLH?

RW: AES loudness metrics are moving to a lower target level for content, streams, podcasts and on-demand file transfer, like metrics established for online and over-the-top video. Given current practices, could radio see loss of potential audience due to listener fatigue?

Bialik: I believe the lack of dynamic range will cause listener fatigue. Hopefully the content will have good dynamic range and good loudness levels. The level of audio-only streams is being targeted at –17 LKFS while video is at –24 LKFS. Within the short term future, loudness could be controlled by metadata. Yes we are talking a 7 dB difference. The recording industry is also pushing for –24 LKFS. This allows for more headroom as well.

RW: With new “hybrid” radio platforms coming out, a listener might tune to an FM signal in a market but then drive out of it, with the receiver switching to the station’s online stream. What matching challenges does this present?

Bialik: Stations that have to cover ads and sports blackouts will sound worse. 

RW: What else should we know?

Bialik: If everyone say streaming is the future, why not invest in the future now and do the best audio you can?

Read other recent articles about processing for radio broadcast applications.

The post Streaming Has Its Own Processing Needs appeared first on Radio World.

News, in Spanish, credible news, has become essential to people’s lives.

How is CNN en Español meeting this challenge in the U.S. as a global news organization? SVP and Managing Director Cynthia Hudson shares all with RBR+TVBR Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson in this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Cynthia Hudson, CNN en Español” on Spreaker.

New growth from new solutions. A new culture, driven by a growth mindset. A compelling financial model. 

Those are the key highlights provided in a sleek earnings presentation put together by Nielsen, as it released its first-quarter 2021 results. How did it do? Revenue was up, but did Nielsen beat Wall Street estimates?

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