Industry News

Top executives at iHeartMedia say the trajectory of its revenue is up even as it searches for ways to better monetize its digital assets.

Results released Wednesday, Feb. 23, show consolidated revenues for iHeartMedia were $1.062 billion in the fourth quarter of 2021, a year-over-year climb of about 14%, according to the company’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Chairman/CEO Bob Pittman called it “another strong quarter and … a very strong year” and said the numbers reflect the “continuing digital transformation of iHeartMedia into a data-led digital business with important new platforms like podcasting built on the unparalleled scale and audience reach of our broadcast radio assets.”

He expects continued growth in 2022.

For the quarter, the company posted net profits of $111.9 million, compared to $2.9 million in Q4 2020.

Of the company’s three reportable segments, the multiplatform group, which includes its 850 radio stations, reported revenue growth of 9% in the final quarter of 2021 compared to the previous year. The segment, which also includes it network operations and live events, had $726.3 million in revenue in Q4 2021.

Pittman called the multiplatform group “a growth engine for the company” as the company continues to climb back to revenue totals established prior to the onset of the COVID pandemic. For comparison, iHeartMedia said its multiplatform group had revenue of nearly $849 million in Q4 of 2019 pre-pandemic compared to $726,292 in Q4 last year, a decline of 14.4% over the two-year span.

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iHeartMedia’s eye-popping podcast revenue growth continued in its Q4, according to the latest financial report. The digital audio group in the quarter grew revenue to $273.2 million, which was up by nearly 59% in Q4 compared YoY. Within that group podcast revenue was up 130% to $97 million in the final quarter of 2021.

“This company doesn’t have an audience issue. What we have is a monetization issue, and that is where we are focusing our efforts,” Pittman added.

Digital revenue growth continues to outpace that of iHeartMedia’s other groups, Pittman said on the earnings call. “In Q4 2021, digital revenue represented 26% of total company revenue compared to Q1 of 2019 when it represented under 10%. Clear evidence of our continued digital transformation,” he said.

The company recently announced it will use synthetic voice technology to extend its podcasting segment. iHeartMedia will use Veritone’s voice-cloning tool to convert English-language podcast series into multiple languages, dialects and accents for distribution across the iHeartPodcast Network. The company also recently announced an investment in the Sounders audio intelligence platform, which the company is using to match potential advertisers with podcast audiences.

Its Audio and Media Services Group, which includes which includes Katz Media Group and RCS, reported $65.5 million in revenue in the final quarter, a substantial drop from last quarter of 2020 when the segment recorded about $100 million in revenue. However, Rich Bressler, iHeartMedia president, COO and CFO, said that the dip was partly attributable to lower political ad spending.

Year-end numbers:

For the year ending Dec. 31, 2021, the company totaled $3.5 billion in consolidated revenue, up 21% YoY compared to $2.9 billion in 2020. The multiplatform group revenue grew by 13% YoY to nearly $2.5 billion in 2021.

The company posted a net loss for 2021 of about $158.4 million, which was down dramatically from its net loss the year before of $1.9 billion.

iHeartMedia’s capital expenditures for the year were $183.4 million compared to just $85.2 million in 2020. The company says its capital expenditures increased primarily due to its real estate consolidation initiatives aimed at reducing its structural cost base.

Bressler said iHeartMedia expects to have cap ex spending of between $150 million and $165 million in 2022.

iHeartMedia’s operating cash flow nearly doubled in Q4 2021 to $134 million, which it credited to consolidating real estate assets in certain markets. Cash on hand at the end of the quarter was $352.1 million. The broadcaster’s balance sheet listed $5.73 billion in total debt and $5.38 billion of net debt as of Dec. 31, 2021.

The post iHeartMedia Dishes on Latest Financial News appeared first on Radio World.

Should broadcast media companies pay the U.S. Forest Service a proposed administrative fee for new and existing communications?

The NAB has something to say about that.

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The VP of Digital Strategy for Hubbard Radio has been selected as the recipient of the NAB’s 2022 Digital Leadership Award.

He’ll be recognized at the 2022 NAB Show, scheduled for a live, in-person event between April 23–27 in Las Vegas.

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The NAB Leadership Foundation has announced that it is now accepting applications for the 2023 Broadcast Leadership Training (BLT) program through May 31.

The BLT program is designed to prepare senior-level broadcast executives to advance as group executives or station owners. Women and people of color are encouraged to apply.

Now in its 23rd year, BLT is an executive MBA-style program that teaches the fundamentals of purchasing, owning and operating radio and television stations. As the foremost executive training initiative for the broadcast industry, the 10-month program prepares aspiring broadcast station owners and executives with the working knowledge to further their careers.

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The 2023 Broadcast Leadership Training program will consist of weekend sessions held in-person at the NAB Headquarters in Washington, D.C. The starting session will be held in September 2022.

Broadcast professionals from all areas of the industry, including general managers, experienced sales managers and seasoned department heads, as well as regional and corporate executives, are encouraged to apply. Fellowship opportunities are available for women and people of color, the NAB Leadership Foundation (NABLF) said.

“These talented broadcasters join the long list of industry leaders with roots in the BLT program,” said NAB Foundation president Michelle Duke. ” We look forward to watching their careers grow from this success and witnessing the positive impacts as new and diverse leadership advances our industry.”

With this class, more than 350 participants have graduated from the program. The 2021 Broadcast Leadership Training Class graduates are:

• Melissa Begay, Operations Director, Native Public Media
• Robert Brooks, Digital Solutions Specialist, WHUR-FM
• Cathy Cangiano, Senior Vice President and Market Manager, Bonneville Seattle Media Group
• Thomas Ciprari, Station Manager, KTMF-TV, ABC Fox 23/Cowles Publishing Co.
• Leon Clark, Vice President and General Manager, KGTV ABC10/The E.W. Scripps Co.
• Tina Commodore, News Director, WFTV-TV/Cox Media Group
• Kate Doty, Director of Talent and Team Development, Morgan Murphy Media
• Susie Doucette-Pyle, Vice President and General Sales Manager, KRIV-TV Fox 26, KTXH My20/Fox Television Stations
• Alfredo Duran, President and Founder, Duran Media Management Services
• Blanca Esparza-Pap, Station Manager, Arizona’s Family, 3TV/ CBS 5
• Mariana Ferro, Regional Vice President, Sales Manager – National Sales, Univision Communications
• Andrew Givens, Station Manager and Director of Sales, KMSS-TV, FOX 33/Mission Broadcasting Inc.
• Ben Hart, President and General Manager, WJCL ABC/Hearst Television
• Charity Holman, Station Manager and General Sales Manager, WVVA-TV/Quincy Media Inc.
• Andre Holmes, Vice President, Financial Analysis, Gray Television
• Kari Jacobs, President and General Manager, 10 Tampa Bay/TEGNA
• Kim Parker, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Graham Media Group
• Nicole Ovadia, Vice President, Client Success, HOT97, WBLS, WLIB/Emmis Communications

The 2021 and 2022 program sponsors included: Beasley Media Group, Bonneville International Corp. Cox Media Group, Fox Television Stations, Futuri Media, Graham Media Group, Gray Television, Hearst Television, Legend Communications, NAB, The Nielsen Foundation, Meredith Corp., Morgan, Murphy Media, The E.W. Scripps Co., Quincy Media Inc., TEGNA, Univision Communications, ViacomCBS.

The organization also said that 2022 class is currently underway. They will attend the NAB Show in April and graduate in June.

For more information about the NAB Leadership Foundation or the BLT program, please visit, nabfoundation.org.

The post NAB Opens Application Window for 2023 Broadcast Leadership Training Program appeared first on Radio World.

One in a series of articles about the recently concluded EBU Digital Radio Summit.

CBC’s Julie McCambly (left) and Kevin Siu

Canada’s public radio and television services have gone from being broadcast-only platforms to distributors of a substantial amount of live and on-demand content in cyberspace.

CBC Listen is the home for the CBC’s online audio content, while CBC Gem hosts the TV content. CBC.ca is the overarching structure for all things digital at CBC/Radio-Canada.

During the online EBU Digital Radio Summit held on Feb. 16, 2022, CBC’s Julie McCambley and Kevin Siu explained how Canada’s public broadcaster produces and serves programming and podcasts in a session entitled, “What to do with all of that content?”

McCambley is senior manager of planning & operations for CBC Listen, and Siu is CBC’s senior director of OTT video & audio for CBC Gem & CBC Listen.

From on air to on demand
Every week, CBC Radio produces and broadcasts 70 live local shows across the country for Radio One, its spoken word service. This content is broadcast on the CBC’s FM service, made available live on CBC Listen, and also provided to some third-party broadcasters.

CBC Radio’s local on-air content is a natural resource for after-the-fact, on-demand listening. This being said, “what we’ve learned from experience is not to publish on-demand versions of an entire show when it comes to local,” McCambly said.

Instead, the real value for listeners lies in selecting, posting, and promoting specific interviews and other show segments as standalone content. “That means local segments make up a significant portion of what we call our on-demand listening offer,” she said.

On average, each local show produces two segments per day for CBC Listen.

“Once the show has gone to air, the technician who operated the show will work with the digital producer to identify segments that they want to upload to CBC Listen,” said McCambly. “Then they’ll repackage those segments to make sure that they are clean from a ‘rights’ perspective, and then they’ll publish them into CBC Listen. They’ll also make a version that’s available for third parties.”

For the hour of work it takes to repackage two local segments for on-demand listening, CBC Listen (and sometimes CBC.ca too) gets content that will attract listeners for about a week, McCambly said.

A similar process is used to repackage network-produced on-air content for the web, after it has been broadcast in all of Canada’s six time zones.

Web-only content
In addition to repurposing broadcast content for the web, CBC Radio also produces a special web-only version of the national newscast “The World This Hour” and a variety of podcasts.

So the CBC has 94 podcasts available for on-demand listening. The topics they cover include range from true crime and human interest stories to investigative reporting, history, and more. Some CBC podcasts are original productions, while others are repurposed from CBC Radio programs.

Under Canadian law, CBC Radio isn’t allowed to make money from advertising. But its online platforms can. “We do monetize our podcasts,” said McCambly. “We monetize them by making a pre-roll and mid-roll available for advertising.”

Looking Ahead
With so much online content on offer, CBC Radio’s goal moving forward is to raise awareness of its content and give more people access to it.

Achieving these goals means answering questions such as “how do we improve the discoverability?” said Kevin Siu, and “how do we streamline our technical infrastructure … to allow us to move more quickly?”

In response to the first question, CBC Radio is launching a free membership platform for CBC Listen users to boost their use of CBC online content.

“One of the benefits that we see for users is to be able to get access to either exclusive content or to content early on,” Siu said. In the crowded world of cyber streaming, any tactic that boosts listener loyalty is a plus.

Related stories:

• Human Connection Draws in Younger Listeners
• In-Car Listening Influenced by More Than Music Taste
• How CBC Radio Manages Its Wealth of Digital Content

James Careless is an award-winning freelance journalist with experience in radio/TV broadcasting as well as A/V equipment, system design and integration. He has written for Radio World, TV Tech, Systems Contractor News and AV Technology among others. Broadcast credits include CBC Radio, NPR and NBC News. He co-produces/co-hosts the “CDR Radio podcast” and is a two-time winner of the PBI Media Award for Excellence.

The post How CBC Radio Manages Its Wealth of Digital Content appeared first on Radio World.

To cover the political and military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, NPR is getting a half-million dollars in emergency funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

CPB approved the grant Tuesday.

The money will help NPR add staff and resources. The broadcaster has had reporters in Ukraine since January and said it will use the funds to pay for increased staff there and for security and travel to the region.

NPR President/CEO John Lansing called the situation “one of the most complex and consequential stories of our time.”

CPB President/CEO Patrician Harrison said in the announcement, “As Russia accelerates its use of misinformation and disinformation in its invasion of democratic Ukraine, CPB is proud to support NPR reporters in their difficult and potentially dangerous work in bringing fact-based news and information to audiences in the United States and around the world.”

The post NPR Gets Extra Funding to Cover Ukraine Crisis appeared first on Radio World.

A low-power TV station licensed to use VHF Channel 4 in the Dallas-Fort Worth market is being sold by one Hispanic broadcast ministry to another.

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He’s the President of Miller Communications, located in Chaplin, S.C.

And, he has just signed off on an agreement that will see the transfer of an FM translator serving Orangeburg, S.C.

The buyer is full of Glory.

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After 15 years as chief executive and 23 years with the organization, a Boston public media leader has decided to exit at the end of 2022.

What does this mean for GBH?

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NAB has told the FCC that it opposes a proposal from the U.S. Forest Service to assess an annual programmatic fee on communication uses to cover the Forest Service’s costs of administering its communications use program.

“NAB believes the Forest Service’s current proposal is unlawful, inequitable, and undermines the public interest,” the association told the FCC in comments filed this week. “Citing the ‘need for wireless connectivity for teleworking, tele-education, telehealth, and telemedicine,’ and the need for the Forest Service to ‘do its part by ensuring it has the necessary staff and expertise to administer its communications use program,’ the Proposed Rule seeks to collect an additional ‘annual programmatic administrative fee of $1,400 per communications use authorization for wireless uses such as television and radio broadcasting, cellular telephone, and microwave’ to cover the costs of administering the Forest Service’s communications use program.”

U.S. Forest Service communications use sites as shown in the agency’s GIS tool.

In its filing, NAB said the proposed fee would increase the total fee liability for existing broadcast uses serving smaller communities by nearly eight-fold in some cases, threatening their economic viability and potentially resulting in the loss of essential broadcast services in rural and remote areas.

“While NAB agrees that providing increased broadband access to rural communities is an important objective, the Proposed Rule undermines television viewers’ access to critical news and information in the process by drastically increasing the total fees broadcasters serving rural populations pay for communications use authorizations,” the association said. “Over-the-air broadcast television and radio are important sources of news and information to Americans, particularly for households with limited income in rural and tribal areas.”

NAB noted that while some “full-power” broadcasters successfully serve large populations from communications sites on Forest Service lands, such as Mt. Wilson near Los Angeles and Sandia Crest near Albuquerque, other lower-power (but still primary) broadcast stations, often family-run or non-profit, are licensed to serve small communities from Forest Service communication sites.

The association said that the fee could hamper broadcasters in meeting their public service commitments.

“Regardless of power level, all primary broadcast stations have federally-mandated coverage, program, and record-keeping requirements, making service of small communities much more economically challenging,” it said.

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NAB added that its public obligations negate the idea that broadcasters could pass these increased costs on to consumers.

“Given that broadcasters are still dealing with the adverse economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, such a substantial unplanned increase in fee liability will force broadcasters to make difficult decisions regarding whether it makes economic sense to maintain these operations, potentially resulting in the loss of essential broadcast services in rural and remote areas. Such an outcome would contravene federal policy to make broadcast television and radio services available throughout the nation.”

NAB suggested that the Forest Service consider alternative fee structures that would base the administrative fee on existing rules and policies tied to the highest value use, market size, and related factors to minimize the risk of disenfranchising persons located in rural areas.

“If the Forest Service nevertheless chooses to move forward with its proposal to assess the fee on existing authorizations, at a minimum it should allow for a phase-in period of five years or longer to minimize the potential harmful impacts on existing authorizations and the communities they serve,” NAB said.

Comment on this or any article. Write to radioworld@futurenet.com.

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