Industry News

Former Alpha Media CEO Larry Wilson, who was pushed out of the company back in 2018, has filed a 191 page document with the FCC that accuses his former company of misleading the FCC, making decisions without proper board approval and challenging Alpha’s qualifications as a broadcast licensee.

Wilson’s filing makes public what has been whispered about in the industry for years; that the breakup between Wilson and its current management, including current CEO Bob Proffitt, was very messy with long friendships shattered. Alpha filed for bankruptcy earlier this year.

In his petition, which targets four Alpha license renewals, Wilson’s attorney’s say that in their 40 years of practice before the FCC they have never encountered such blatant, unlawful self-dealing by directors of a privately held licensee, flippant false certifications to the FCC and unauthorized transfers of control.

Wilson alleges two private equity funds usurped control of the privately held broadcast licensee from its Board of Directors and ran the company into the ground. He says that was done by “attempting to cut costs to achieve profitability, and then promote a prepackaged bankruptcy plan that would erase the obligations owed to secured and unsecured creditors and minority stockholders to the advantage of management and the private equity funds.”

Wilson alleges that his former company committed several illegal acts, misrepresentations and demonstrations of a lack of candor to the Commission.
He alleges the company of:
– making false certifications on multiple FCC applications.
– purporting to adopt changes to Alpha’s governing documents in a post-hoc effort to cover up past misdeeds and to remove nearly all duties owed by Alpha’s directors to the company and its shareholders
– transferring control of fundamental aspects of Alpha’s business operations to various people and entities without Board authorization to effect such transfers, and, most recently, further delegating substantial control of the company to a “Special Independent Committee,” all – ii – without publicly disclosing such transfers of control to the FCC and requesting prior Commission approval of such transfers of control; and, finally
– pursuing a foreign ownership structure with the purpose and intent to freeze the current Alpha domestic shareholders out of the company and for the sole benefit of Alpha management, private equity investors, and foreign entities.

Wilson says, “all of these facts reveal fundamental character defects that call into question the applicant’s qualifications as a broadcast licensee—and, concomitantly, the applicant’s ability to satisfy its mandate to serve the public interest.”

The petition concludes by stating “Alpha is on fire as a result of the facts and misdeeds set forth in this Petition. Petitioner therefore respectfully requests that the Commission deny the above-captioned applications or, in the alternative, designate the applications for a hearing on the issues specified in this Petition.”

Read the entire petition filed at the FCC HERE.

On Wednesday (4/14), ABC News officially announced the much-discussed arrival of Kim Godwin as its new President. It involves a former CBS News leader.

Following Thursday’s Closing Bell on Wall Street, CBS News responded with some major news of its own. Parent ViacomCBS is combining “the journalistic and business resources” of its news division with its owned television stations “into one divisional and leadership structure.”

This will see a pair of presidents and co-heads in this newly integrated structure for ViacomCBS. One just happens to be a woman who spent 11 years in the ABC family — most recently as President of its owned stations.

Wendy McMahon is joining Neeraj Khemlani in taking a role as a president and co-head of the newly formed division, which does not have a name as of today.

Khemlani has a strong print journalism background, and was most recently EVP and Deputy Group Head for Hearst Newspapers, owner of such publications as the San Francisco Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News and the Times Union serving Albany-Schenectady-Troy, N.Y.

But, it is a return to CBS for him: Khemlani spent eight years as a producer on 60 Minutes and spinoff news magazine 60 Minutes II.

What does this mean for CBS News President Susan Zirinsky?

Zirinsky will continue in the role until the new leadership has started in early May, ViacomCBS says, and will assist with the transition. “The company is in discussions with Zirinsky for a significant role at a new CBS News Content Studio to be launched later this year,” the company adds, signaling that she will not be departing the company but shifting to a different leadership position.

Khemlani and McMahon each report to CBS Entertainment Group President/CEO George Cheeks.

“This is an opportunity to create a news and information structure that positions CBS for the future,” Cheeks said. “It speaks to our ability to scale newsgathering, production, technical and operational resources to serve both national and local, linear and digital, with the agility to deliver trusted information to every platform. Wendy and Neeraj have the leadership background and cross-platform accomplishments that cover all these important areas, and they share our commitment for supporting superior journalism, optimal delivery platforms and the strongest of organizational cultures.”

Specifically, the unified ViacomCBS division will bring under one management structure CBS News, growing streaming news service CBSN and 28 CBS-owned stations in 17 U.S. markets. “It will maximize the power of CBS’s newsgathering and production operations to serve audiences across all national, digital, local and global platforms,” ViacomCBS says.

The appointment of McMahon is also a return to CBS for the longtime ABC employee: From 2006-2009 she served as Creative Services Director at CBS’s WBZ-4 and WSBK-38 in Boston. McMahon previously held a similar role at CBS O&O WCCO-4 in Minneapolis.

“I’m excited to return home to CBS and work with George and Neeraj to build out a unique and inspired structure that brings together the best in journalism, digital innovation and collaboration, to serve audiences at a time when trusted news and information — the hallmark of CBS — has never been more needed,” McMahon said. “Driven by the ingenuity, experience and dedication of the storytellers and teams at CBS News and our local stations, we are committed to reflecting the communities where we operate while cultivating a culture grounded in trust.”

McMahon’s history at ABC dates to her arrival at KABC in September 2009. She rose through the ranks, becoming SVP/Digital at ABC Television Network Online in 2015. On Jan. 1, 2018, McMahon was selected President of ABC Owned Television Stations Group.

McMahon began her career as Promotion Manager for Gray Television’s dominant CBS affiliated WTOC-11 in Savannah, Ga., upon graduation from Louisiana State University in 1996.

The ViacomCBS followed ABC’s appointment of Godwin, who will now oversee editorial and business operations for broadcast, digital, streaming and audio news across the organization.

Godwin had been “second-in-command” as an EVP at CBS News, in charge of newsgathering.

She’s also served as Exec. Director for Development and Diversity at CBS News, and as a senior broadcast producer of the “CBS Evening News.” She joined the network in 2007.

Before that, Godwin served as the acting news director and assistant news director at WCBS-2 in New York.

Earlier in her career, Godwin was the VP/News Operations for NBC Television Stations, and held key ND roles for KNBC-4 in Los Angeles and KXAS-5 in Dallas-Fort Worth.

As first reported by Streamline Publishing’s Radio Ink, former Alpha Media CEO and its founder, Larry Wilson, through attorneys at Brooks Pierce, wants the Audio Division of the FCC’s Media Bureau to deny the license renewal of four stations due to actions made over several years without — according to Wilson — full board approval.

The accusations by Wilson are numerous, and accusatory.

And, they came alongside another petition to deny filed by Southern Stone Communications‘ founder, also a minority investor in Alpha Media.

Alpha Media responded with a statement sent to Radio Ink early Friday.

“While we believe the petition is based on inaccurate information and baseless claims, Alpha Media remains squarely focused on serving our communities and operating our radio stations across the United States,” Alpha said. “Our core business continues to perform well despite current market challenges, and we are proud of what all of our teams have accomplished in delivering dynamic, diverse and exciting content to our communities.”

Alpha also notes that it continues to achieve “significant progress” in its financial restructuring process, confirmed by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, Va., “and best positions Alpha Media with strong financial partners to navigate current market conditions and pursue growth opportunities.”

While all has appeared to be positive for Alpha, with an emergence from debtor-in-possession status all but certain, Wilson reemerged with fighting words submitted via a 191-page document with the FCC. In the filing, made to the attention of the Media Bureau’s Audio Division and his chief, Al Shuldiner, attorneys Mark J. Prak and Patrick Cross of Brooks Pierce lobbed several accusations against Alpha the FCC’s way.

Much of Wilson’s argument centers on the $88 million sale of a group of radio stations in West Palm Beach to Hubbard Broadcasting, which closed in early 2019.

And, while Wilson’s petition has received the majority of attention, a smaller but equally important petition to deny has been submitted to the Commission by Southern Stone Communications head Paul Stone.

He seeks a denial of Alpha Media’s request to increase its foreign ownership concentration via a temporary waiver of the Commission’s rules.

Across 2020, several multichannel operators  — including Comcast and Charter Communications — issued upward of $1 billion in rebates to subscribers following the cancellation and suspension of major televised sporting events.

Now, Kagan, the media research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence, is putting the finishing touches on its annual Sports report. It examines how 2020’s sports programming numbers stacked up against prior years.

The report also provides status updates on the latest in the sports programming market and how pay TV operators are responding to the increases in sports programming costs.

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The author is executive director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. NFCB commentaries are featured regularly at www.radioworld.com.

More than ever, media organizations and other businesses are being open about salary ranges. For a previous generation, this kind of public posting about salaries was unheard of. Yet leaders are seeing there are advantages to this approach.

[Read: Community Broadcaster: How Stations Fight the Virus]

Many of us have seen generic wording before in listings. “Salary commensurate with experience” or variations thereof. For years, this obfuscation around pay was the norm. it benefits the employer to keep pay quiet, so the boss has room come negotiation time. However, big pushes for salary transparency in media have emerged the last three years, with some fields sharing what a baseline could and should be. These tendencies have rattled the fashion we’re accustomed to seeing salaries.

How does your station handle salary and wages in its employment searches? And how can this change be a win?

Almost as common in the generic language are situations where a promising candidate withdraws from a search. In the worst cases, they may drop out after they’ve gotten the offer. Why? In many instances, it is because the employer was cagey about the bottom line until the very last minute. That’s unacceptable for the candidate, who walks away with the impression your station may be cheap and is apt to hide it; and for the station, which just expended hours of paid staff time for a process they’ll now have to restart, all because they avoided a discussion that could have been cleared up by the very first posting.

Some may think that, by posting a salary range, you’ll limit the number of candidates. But really, what’s better: a small pool of candidates who know what they’re walking into, or a large pool of candidates in the dark and needing to either be persuaded by other perks or lied to by omission until the offer comes? And which candidate has higher morale coming in to the job?

There’s also an argument for fairness and diversity in hiring by being open. Last year, the National Federation of Community Broadcasters started collecting anonymously reported salary and wage data. “Chances are you are not facing pressure on pay fairness at the moment. That does not mean your community radio station can’t work on equity and your mission,” the page notes. And it’s true. More organizations want to build trust with candidates, and transparency is a means to uphold this value.

Pay transparency represents a cultural change for radio. But such a change needn’t be difficult. In fact, such change can meet our missions.

The post Community Broadcaster: Hidden Figures appeared first on Radio World.

The E.W. Scripps Company said after Thursday’s Closing Bell that it intends to redeem all $400 million in aggregate principal of its outstanding 5.125% senior notes due 2025.

The redemption will be made in accordance with the terms of the indenture governing the notes and the terms of the notice of redemption.

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For 16 years, she’s been a key executive at Nielsen, rising to GM and Head of Product Advanced Video Advertising in January 2019.

For 12 years, he’s been a product development leader who in April 2019 ascended to the role of GM and Head of Product for Audience Measurement.

Both will soon be former employees, but the latter departure is perhaps more noteworthy, given growing grumbles from the biggest TV networks that the pandemic resulted in audience undercounting by Nielsen.

Scott Brown, who rose through the product development ranks at Nielsen upon joining the company in 2009 as a Data Science Quality Assurance Director, is exiting.

According to MediaPost, he’s heading to Experian. Independent verification by RBR+TVBR of the report with Nielsen was still forthcoming at publishing time.

At Nielsen, Brown set the strategy for launching a currency-grade cross media measurement product across linear and digital. Industry-wide, Brown is considered a thought leader.

Brown’s departure comes amid a furor over alleged “systematic under-counting” by Nielsen, offered up by the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB). According to their findings, Nielsen lost 20% of its panelists due to this “under-counting.”

As the VAB explained, “Nielsen largely stopped visiting its panelists’ homes to make sure they were still properly participating because of the pandemic.”

This, VAB President/CEO Sean Cunningham argues, led to the under-count. He asks “Nielsen has streaming declining among 18-34 in 2020 versus 2019. How could this possibly be true?”

The Big Four networks are equally frustrated with Nielsen. According to Variety, CBS, ABC, NBC and the VAB collectively requested that Nielsen be subject to a third-party audit to be conducted by EY. They seek a response by Monday to the request.

In response to RBR+TVBR‘s request for comment on the flap, a Nielsen spokesperson offered a prepared statement:

“Over the course of the last year, COVID has disrupted lives, families, organizations and businesses. Nielsen is no different. We leaned in, kept the panel, our people and the ratings estimates safe and, like many of our clients, continued to operate.” 

In early March 2021, Nielsen started its return to pre-COVID maintenance protocols. In concert with local government guidance, this included the resumption of in-home field visits with the goal of returning to normal as quickly as possible. “While we have always been in the field, our return to in-home visits helps maintain our representative measurement panel and allows us to execute our Nielsen One vision for true, comparable cross-platform metrics,” the Nielsen spokesperson explained. “We have confidence in the fidelity of our ratings estimates and are focused on the continued quality of our panel.”

In fact, Nielsen responded to the VAB criticism by offering up research that shines a light on the “integrity” of its panel data and how audience viewership has shifted during COVID.

“Our research has shown that the audience estimates are in line with trends observed via other data sources, and we see no evidence to suggest that changes made during COVID to the panel have materially changed the audience estimates as reported,” the Nielsen representative said.

The research also takes a look at the value and impact that new content has in the marketplace, overall changes in premiere content scheduling and how streaming platforms play a significant role in the future of the entire media landscape. “We are working alongside clients to help the industry understand the true impact COVID has had on these accelerated shifts in audience behaviors,” the spokesperson said. “We have been fully transparent with clients and the MRC and will continue to guide the industry through the multiple factors that have influenced audience viewership during these unprecedented times.”

Meanwhile, Kelly Abcarian, who joined Nielsen in May 2005 as a Program Manager and has been a highly visible member of the global audience measurement team at Nielsen, is shifting to Roku once it completes its previously reported acquisition of Nielsen’s advanced video advertising business.

As RBR+TVBR reported March 1, Nielsen ad and content products will be integrated into the Roku platform via a “strategic alliance.” However, the pact’s key takeaway is that Roku will acquire Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising (AVA) business. This includes Nielsen’s video automatic content recognition (ACR) and dynamic ad insertion (DAI) technologies.

And, Abcarian will continue to lead those businesses, now under Roku.

“I am so proud to lead a team that has built an amazing addressable product that can scale under Roku’s leadership,” she said March 3 via LinkedIn.

Broadcasters are well placed to help the public feel more confident about vaccinations, said NAB President/CEO Gordon Smith.

He said that includes reaching communities of color, multilingual ethnic minorities and rural areas where vaccine hesitancy is highest.

Smith appeared Thursday before the Senate Commerce Committee on Capitol Hill at a hearing on the topic of communicating “trusted vaccine information.”

“Our research showed that everyone simply wants the facts — news stories that make recommendations based on factual reporting,” Smith told the senators. “Fortunately, that is what broadcasters do best — they dig deep to provide accurate information to their communities — not spin, not rumors and without political theater.”

Smith described NAB’s partnership with the Reynolds Journalism Institute on a research project to identify effective vaccine education messaging. Generally, he said, the public is eager for the vaccine, but there is greater hesitancy among demographics such as African Americans, Hispanics, conservative-leaning Whites and women aged 18 to 34.

He said the NAB/Reynolds research “made it clear that a local and regional approach would be more effective than a one-size-fits-all national message,” and said NAB was “gratified that the Department of Health and Human Services has identified local broadcast stations as effective advertising partners.”

And he noted that the NAB is a founding member of the administration’s recently announced Community Corps, that seeks to develop “trusted messengers in local communities to encourage people to get vaccinated.”

He said radio and TV stations “are anxious to serve again as critical partners to government agencies and the public health and medical communities, to arm listeners and viewers with timely, accurate information about vaccines.”

The post Smith Goes to the Hill to Talk Vaccines appeared first on Radio World.

Spanish-language media is certainly in everyone’s sights right now, given the blockbuster bi-national merger plans of Televisa and Univision Communications. This only further demonstrates the continued power of the U.S. Hispanic consumer, and why Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) is poised for more growth across 2021.

In this exclusive conversation, SBS EVP/Programming Jesus Salas shares how the company’s radio stations gained audience across the COVID-19 pandemic and has kept it, while also giving a preview as to what else SBS has in store for the rest of the year in this episode of the RBR+TVBR InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Jesus Salas” on Spreaker.

For nearly 12 years, Chattanooga, Tenn., sports fans seeking updates and programming from ESPN Radio have been able to tune to a Class A FM licensed to the town of Lakesite, Tenn.

Soon, a change in listening habits will be needed, as this facility is set to transition to non-secular religious programming under a new owner.

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