Industry News

Eleven radio stations in Texas face the loss of their licenses if they fail to apply for renewal by the end of this month. They include three full-service FMs, three AMs and five low-power FMs.

The Federal Communications Commission released the list of stations that it says haven’t filed yet. “Their licenses will expire as of Aug. 1, 2021, provided no renewal application is received by midnight on the date of expiration.”

The stations are:

KDSH(LP), Borger, Texas; Living River Ministries Inc.

KKFH(LP), Conroe, Texas; Fuente De Vida – Conroe Inc.

KRKF(LP), Corpus Christi, Texas; Stedfast Ministries

KBRA(FM), Freer, Texas; Cobra Broadcasting LLC – KBRA

KTEZ(LP), Killeen, Texas; Kates Media Group Inc.

KJJT(FM), Los Ybanez, Texas; Jesus Pena Acosta

KIRT(AM), Mission, Texas; Bravo Broadcasting Company, Inc.

KLBW(AM), New Boston, Texas; Chapel of Light

KOZA(AM), Odessa, Texas; Stellar Media Inc.

KPHS(FM), Plains, Texas; Plains Independent School District

KHDJ(LP), San Antonio, Texas; Educacional MTY

The post 11 Texas Stations Face License Expiration appeared first on Radio World.

This is one in a series of articles from the ebook “The Real World of AoIP.”

Radio World recently asked several manufacturers to identify the most important technical development or trend in the use of AoIP.

At Wheatstone, Jay Tyler, director of sales, said AoIP today is all about access — access from home, access through the cloud, and especially about access for everyone.

“Our customer base has traditionally been the iHearts and Townsquares of the industry, but more recently, we’ve been getting calls from GMs of family-owned stations or of smaller regional station groups who find that they can’t maneuver in these times without AoIP,” he said.

“Events [of the pandemic] just pushed their plans for AoIP further up on the calendar.”

At the same time, he said, AoIP is following the same trajectory as IP in general and has become a lot more scalable.

“We can now scale the systems used by the iHearts and the Townsquares for those smaller operations and smaller budgets, and we can scale a lot about what makes AoIP useful by adding more and more functions to it. We started out replacing soundcards with AoIP drivers, and now we’re adding appliances, virtual mixers and UIs, software apps, and even, in the case of our Blade-4, codecs.”

Tyler said Wheatstone sees the cloud as the next trend in AoIP, and an important one for regional broadcasters or anyone who wants to join operations and get some of those cost savings.

“Wheatstone has been doing a lot with container platforms like Docker for some time, and this is a great option for running many different applications on a single machine or cloud instance.

“We’re talking about a very lightweight, resource-efficient VM, where one container could host WheatNet-IP audio processing and another could host the station automation. Each is totally isolated yet both run off the same OS kernel. One container communicates with the other through APIs and because each container operates independently of the other, you avoid unintended interactions between software components and eliminate a single point of failure,” Tyler said.

“The container virtualization layer is extremely flexible and can scale up as we need.”

The post Tyler on AoIP for Everyone appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation’s Celebration of Service to America Awards, scheduled for July 10, will be shown on over 500 TV stations according to a release. Over 200 stations will air the program immediately with others airing it through Aug. 14.

The awards honor local radio and television stations from across the country for local community public service.

[Read: NAB Foundation Will Honor Lin-Manuel Miranda]

This is a list of finalist radio and TV stations. Tamron Hall will host the ceremonies.

In addition to the public service awards there will also be the first John D. Dingell, Jr. Award for Excellence, for a Congressmen.

Broadway writer/actor Lin-Manuel Miranda will receive the 2021 Service to Leadership Award, the NAB Leadership Foundation’s highest individual honor. And Procter & Gamble will receive the 2021 Corporate Leadership Award.

The post NABLF Awards Air to on 500+ Local Stations Nationwide appeared first on Radio World.

Around Thanksgiving Day 2019, word first surfaced that veteran radio industry executive John Fullam would be retiring at year’s end. By late January 2020, his successor had been named.

Now, the man selected to take on Fullam’s duties has departed the company formerly known as Entercom. As a result, Fullam is back, serving as the interim SVP/Market Manager of Audacy‘s Denver stations.

Chuck Sullivan, who became SVP/Manager of KQMT-FM 99.5 “The Mountain,” KALC-FM “Alice 105.9, Adult Standards KEZW-AM 1430 and KQKS-FM 107.5 and KQKS-HD2 “Comedy 103.1″ on Feb. 3, 2020, is no longer with the company.

Sullivan joined Entercom in 2014 as the SVP/Market Manager for the company’s Milwaukee market. In 2015, his role expanded to include oversight of Entercom’s Madison, Wisc., stations. Prior to joining Entercom, Sullivan served in leadership roles for Cumulus Broadcasting, including as VP/Market Manager for the company’s Mobile cluster and as Market Manager for five stations in Destin-Fort Walton Beach, Fla. Before that, he served as a managing partner for Ocean Broadcasting in Wilmington, N.C., from 1996 to 2006.

Sullivan’s exit comes as KQKS Program Director Victor Starr has also exited Audacy.

He had been PD of the station since March 2016.

In a request for comment, an Audacy spokesperson tells RBR+TVBR Sullivan “has left the company to pursue other opportunities.”

In 1975, Fullam entered the radio business at a now-defunct company called the Home News Corporation. This saw him serve as VP/GM of venerable Rock station WRKI-FM “I95” in Brookfield, Conn., a popular station serving Fairfield County and Westchester County, N.Y. An October 1992 acceptance of similar duties at WKQI-FM in Detroit served as the catalyst for a 44-year career that saw him take key positions at AMFM Inc., Clear Channel, CBS Radio and Entercom, serving as SVP/GM/Market Manager of its Denver stations. Fullam gained that final role in November 2017, a two-year deal.

It is licensed to Ashland City, Tenn., but has a signal that covers all of Nashville during daylight hours. While the AM has just 35 watts at night, there’s a 100-watt FM translator that allows it to cover Nashville’s western neighborhoods.

These facilities are heading to a new licensee, pending FCC approval. And, it is a certainty that “The Mighty 790” is involved in their future.

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Its a tiny town in Lewis County, Mo., that had under 550 residents in the 2010 U.S. Census.

It’s important enough of a locale for Gray Television to make a deal for a low-powered TV station based in this tiny burgh.

There’s a perfectly good reason it is buying the facility, when one looks at a map.

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The FCC’s “Auction 111” is coming, and the Commission has just set its Comment and Reply Comment Dates so it may hear from the public on competitive bidding procedures.

The auction involves Construction Permits for Low Power TV stations and for TV translators.

BE SURE TO FOLLOW RBR+TVBR ON TWITTER!

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On June 29, Cumulus Media enjoyed a banner day on Wall Street, with high trading volume fueling a notable increase in share value.

Could a successful pay down of debt, using cash on hand, be the catalyst for long-awaited long-term growth at a company that has successfully emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization?

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Seventeen days ago, the nation’s No. 1 audio media company by number of radio stations announced it would prepay $250 million in term loan facilities while repricing its incremental term loan.

The announcement was icing on the cake for IHRT shareholders who have enjoyed an incredible rebound from COVID-19-influenced lows seen in March and April of 2020.

With iHeart’s June 24 closing price, a 473.5% improvement has been seen since March 30, 2020.

As of 1:27pm Eastern on July 9, IHRT sat at $26.02.

By comparison, IHRT was trading in the $17 range until mid-February, when COVID-19 fears pummeled the issue — and just about every other publicly traded company.

For iHeart, however, meaningful recovery for its battered stock began in May 2020. And, aside from a few profit-taking ebbs and flows, the growth of its stock is unprecedented.

What’s to come for a company that seeks to transition the bulk of Rush Limbaugh’s listening audience to a team of Clay Travis and Buck Sexton as questions on how to transition aging Top 40 personalities such as Ryan Seacrest loom?

As far as Wall Street is concerned, long-term forecasts are in line with what the company expects, as podcasting and digital revenue show no signs of a slowdown.

The 1-year revenue estimate put on IHRT by Wall Street analysts: $29.14.

For some, the buying and selling of broadcast media properties over the past 12 months has been nothing short of dismal. Aside from cash-rich non-profit broadcast ministries seeking FM properties they couldn’t get a decade ago, radio industry transactions have come in small trickles. The TV industry, on the other hand, has seen colossal mega-mergers involving companies such as The E.W. Scripps Co. and Gray Television.

Television industry transactions of late have also included deals involving unbuilt low-power TV stations. With a sign-on deadline of Tuesday, time is rapidly ticking for those seeking to spin these facilities and cash out. For those still in need of a facility fire-up, an automatic forfeit of the CP looms.

Then, there’s a group of LPTVs for sale that are a bit unique. How so? They don’t need to be built until 2023.

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