Industry News

A low-powered TV station licensed to serve Las Vegas has just been sold.

The seller is a non-profit evangelical Christian broadcast ministry based in Texas that serves Spanish-speaking audiences.

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That’s how a self-described “a lapsed economist based in Canada” turned financial blogger describes the audio media company formerly known as Entercom.

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The guy who never threw away his shot will be honored by the National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation. Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of “Hamilton” and “In the Heights,” will receive its 2021 Service to America Leadership Award.

The foundation will honor him for advocacy and support for the Latino community and the arts during its annual Celebration of Service to America Awards next month.

The Service to America Leadership Award “recognizes individuals and organizations responsible for improving the lives of others through extraordinary public service.”

The film version of “In the Heights” debuts this week.

NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith saluted Miranda’s artistic accomplishments and continued, “He has matched his outstanding success with an outspoken advocacy for Puerto Rico and the arts, and a steadfast commitment to helping communities grow, learn and thrive.”

Miranda’s good works include helping the Hispanic Federation support relief and recovery efforts in Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria and launching Raise Up, a fundraising campaign to support the Hispanic Federation Emergency Assistance Fund.

He and the Flamboyan Foundation launched the Flamboyan Arts Fund in 2018, raising money for the arts and artisans in Puerto Rico.

And Miranda, Jeffrey Seller and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History created the Hamilton Education Program to help educators integrate the arts and creativity in the study of the revolutionary and founding era. The program relies on original historic documents to inspire artistic pieces.

The post NAB Foundation Will Honor Lin-Manuel Miranda appeared first on Radio World.

A veteran television news executive who has served in five of Hearst Television’s largest TV markets has been promoted to the corporate position of Vice President of News.

She will start in her new role on July 1, and is relocating to Hearst’s New York headquarters.

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In Reply Comments submitted to the FCC in regard to what is officially considered MB Docket No. 21-141, the nation’s biggest licensee of radio stations argued that the Commission can only consider its views in determining what level of advance approval a foreign entity may be granted.

That’s incorrect, the financial backer of one of the U.K.’s biggest audio media companies now says, pitting Heart-affiliated Global Media & Entertainment against iHeartMedia in what appears to be a growing tiff over non-voting ownership percentages.

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In a decision that could eventually extend the life of “Franken FM” facilities across the U.S., the FCC has granted Special Temporary Authority for the use of a FM radio signal alongside its ATSC 3.0 TV signal for VHF Channel 6 — thus allowing the low-power facilities to continue operation as an audio-first media entity, for now.

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RF manufacturer Nautel is running an HD Radio promotion on its VS and VSHD products that aims at the lower-power FM market but may interest other users as well.

“Low-power FM operations that are interested in the benefits and versatility of HD may not have been able to make the conversion due to cost,” said John Whyte, Nautel head of marketing in a release.

“We’re bringing these capabilities within reach through temporary, significant cost reductions in the VSHD upgrade for existing VS Series transmitters. The VS2.5 Analog/Digital FM transmitter is also available at a special price and is ideal for either analog or digital transmission.”

The VS Series is available in 300 W, 1000 W and 2.5 kW. Beyond lower-power FMs and LPFMs, Whyte said bigger stations might use Nautel VS Series transmitters as backups.

The VSHD is type certified for LPFM use in the United States. The company noted that HD Radio installations require an Xperi station license and a Nautel HD Multicast+ Importer/Exporter.

The promotion is for customers in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The post Nautel Highlights HD for Lower-Power FM appeared first on Radio World.

Until now, Entravision Communications Corp. has largely been known as a Hispanic-focused multimedia company with revenues fueled by strong digital growth, primarily across Spanish-speaking territories.

Not anymore, come July 1.

That’s the closing date of a business transaction that sees Entravision, traded on the NYSE, agree to purchase a digital marketing performance and branding company with operations across seven countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

That company is Singapore-based MediaDonuts, which has been in operation since 2010. It has a team of more than 80 employees located in Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and India.

Walter Ulloa, Entravision’s Chairman/CEO, calls the purchase “a natural fit with the overall digital and global transformation strategy of our business.”

He adds, “Entravision has always focused on providing advertising solutions in high growth markets and partnering with the strongest media and technology platforms in the world. We believe that the incorporation of MediaDonuts into the Entravision platform adds leadership, sales operations and digital offerings that will further propel our digital efforts.”

The company further explains that Entravision’s acquisition of MediaDonuts “is the next key step” in a plan to become a “leading marketing technology service provider in the world’s highest growth economies.”

That would certainly be the APAC region, which has more economic and political stability than Latin America.

Pieter-Jan de Kroon, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of MediaDonuts, will continue as CEO. He said in a statement, “With our business positioned for success, we are excited to now have the opportunity to join the global digital platform Entravision has built over the past decade. I am confident in the many commercial, technological and product development synergies our business will achieve going forward as a combined entity.”

All MediaDonuts employees will remain with the company upon closing, Entravision says.

While its roots are in radio and TV, Entravision’s revenue is fueled today by digital.

“Expanding our digital business is core to our overall growth plans, and following our majority investment in Cisneros Interactive this past October, digital now represents over 65% of our revenue,” Juan Saldívar, Entravision’s Chief Digital, Strategy and Accountability Officer, says. “With a global digital platform now poised to reach and serve clients in 32 countries, we are confident the addition of MediaDonuts will further enhance our service offerings and help drive our continued global growth.”

Entravision shares were up 7.1% to $5.13 as of 2:50pm Eastern. It the highest price for EVC since August 2018.

Between Victoria, Tex., and the sprawling Houston metropolitan area is Bay City.

Here, a Class C1 “Hot Country” FM is getting a tweak in its ownership.

It is the result of the death of the station founder’s wife, who held 100% ownership in the station.

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The European Broadcasting Union has announced a pair of engineering awards.

Sweden’s Sveriges Radio’s News Values project was cited for the association’s Technology and Innovation Award.

According to a release, the “technical ingenuity” is what interested the award committee. “Editors rate every news story on three dimensions: magnitude, life span and, crucially, the degree to which it embodies ‘SR values.’ In this way, every item gets a score that is used by the algorithm to automatically generate news playlists for each local SR station. The system is also used internally by the national news team to discover the most interesting stories from around the country.”

Chair of the EBU Technical Committee Judy Parnall said, “This is a perfect example of technical ingenuity being combined with public service values, helping Sveriges Radio to better fulfill its mission.”

Irene Nikkarinen at Finland broadcaster Yle is the recipient of the very first EBU Young Engineers and Researchers Award. The release explained she received the award for “her work on adapting and training an open-source metadata tool” that “is improving the findability of Yle content on its online platforms and apps.”

EBU Technology & Innovation Department Director Antonio Arcidiacono said, “Irene Nikkarinen is a perfect example of the kinds of profile that will ensure public service media remain at the cutting edge when it comes to innovation in media technology.”

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