Radio+Television Business Report

You’re welcome, Georgia voters.

Meredith Local Media enjoyed a particularly strong fiscal Q3, with the first three months of 2021 yielding a healthy increase in core advertising, along with a surprising influx of political ad dollars resulting from two runoff races in the Peach State that received national recognition — and financial support.

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They include WTVJ-6 in Miami, KNBC-4 in Los Angeles and WRC-4 in Washington, D.C., among other stations. They have been, until now, among the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations.

Not anymore, thanks to a rebrand made by parent Comcast on Thursday.

Introducing NBCUniversal Local, revealed in an internal memo obtained by RBR+TVBR.

“As we continue to transform together and to better represent all the local businesses that make up our division, we decided to rebrand our group,” the company explained to its employees April 29.

Driving the name change: NBCU owned stations and its regional sports networks “are collaborating” and reaching their local news and sports audiences.

This effectively unites 42 NBC and Telemundo owned stations, seven regional sports networks, regional cable news network NECN,  production company LXTV and the LX digital multicast network, in-house marketing and promotions company Skycastle, out-of-home business NBC Everywhere, graphics design team the Arthouse, and multicast networks COZI TV and TeleXitos.

“NBCUniversal Local celebrates all of our company’s local businesses coming together to strengthen their already strong teams so they can better serve their local audiences,” the company said.

The three main components of NBCUniversal Local —  NBC Owned Television Stations, the NBC Sports Regional Networks and the Telemundo Station Group — will not see any changes to their branding.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation has unveiled the finalists for the 2021 Celebration of Service to America Awards.

The honors recognize outstanding community service by local broadcasters. One winner from each category will be announced during the Celebration of Service to America Awards program, which will again be broadcast on television and radio stations across the country as a special one-hour awards ceremony featuring celebrity guests, past honorees and policymakers.

The awards will premiere on July 10 and run through August 14, 2021.

“America’s local broadcasters’ fundamental commitment to public service continues to shine brighter than ever, and this year’s finalists embody the close bond between stations and their communities,” said NAB Leadership Foundation President Michelle Duke. “We look forward to celebrating these outstanding stations and honoring their critical work informing, supporting and strengthening the public in a year of unparalleled difficulties.”

The 2021 Celebration of Service to America Awards finalists represent 20 states and 28 cities. During 2020, these 28 stations devoted a collective 3,528 hours of airtime to public service and provided more $43,440,000 in funds and donations.

Following is the list of finalists by category:

Service to Community Award for Radio – Ownership Group

• Summit Media The Power of Radio: Giving a Voice to Silent Victims  
• iHeartMedia (in partnership with Fox) Living Room Concert  
• Zimmer Radio Miracle for Kids Radiothon
• Alpha Media LLC United for Justice  

  Service to Community Award for Television – Ownership Group

• ABC Owned Television Stations Localish 
• Nexstar Media Group, Inc. Remarkable Women
• The E.W. Scripps Company The Rebound
• Hearst Television Inc. Takes on Systemic Racism 

  Service to Community Award for Radio – Large Market

• WBAL Kids Campaign 
• KYGO Wants to Talk 
• KTMY Rebuilds the Neighborhoods
• WALR Takes on 2020 Election 

  Service to Community Award for Television – Large Market

• KMGH-TV Takes on Public Safety 
• WKMG-TV Works to Make Ends Meet
• WISN-TV Feeds the Hungry
• WCVB-TV Responds to Two Pandemics 

  Service to Community Award for Radio – Medium Market

• WSGW-AM Provides Flood Relief
• WMHJ Community Clean Up
• WYCT-FM Offers Hurricane Sally Relief Efforts 

  Service to Community Award for Television – Medium Market

• WKBW-TV Runs Buffalo Strong-Give 7
• WMC-TV puts School on TV
• WMTV-TV Makes Commitment to Feed the Hungry  

  Service to Community Award for Radio – Small Market

• KRIB-AM Lights up the Night
• KLQL Shares the LUV
• KNDE-FM 136 Charities, $794,573, One Day  

  Service to Community Award for Television – Small Market

• WTOK-TV One You. One Me. One Community.
• KSNT-TV We Together 
• KTVB-TV Idaho Shares

“SiriusXM turned in a great performance across the board,” company CEO Jennifer Witz said as she opened the satellite radio company’s first quarter earnings call on Wednesday. “Like many companies, we are benefiting from Americans getting back on the road, growing auto sales and consumer incomes bolstered by significant federal stimulus. These impressive results are also a strong testament to demand for great content, our resilient business model and once again, our teams flawlessly executing the strategies we laid out.”

How did SiriusXM perform in Q1?

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In the not-too-distant past, Channel 36 in Salem, Ore., and Channel 26 in Portland, Ore., were simulcast partners offering Christian-themed television programming to Oregon’s most populous areas.

Now, the facility serving the Pacific Northwest’s second-largest DMA is being spun.

Who it is going to begs the question of how Channel 26 will now be used.

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During the past year, the job of seeking and reporting the truth became increasingly dangerous. Journalists were threatened, assaulted and arrested at an alarming rate while on the job.

For the broadcast journalist in the field, serving both radio listeners and TV viewers, unprecedented levels of verbal and physical violence came courtesy of civilians, police and even, the RTDNA says, “leaders we are meant to hold accountable.”

With that portrait as a backdrop, the RTDNA on Wednesday released “2021 Newsrooms by the Numbers: Data From a Dangerous Year in Journalism.”

The report offers a sobering look at the threats to field reporters that have grown since 2019.

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Since joining the radio industry in September 1992, she’s been associated with some of Southern California’s most successful Hispanic-targeted radio stations. And, she came from a circus operation — literally.

Now, this accomplished broadcast sales executive has joined iHeartMedia to serve as a Senior Account Executive at its Los Angeles radio station group.

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NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises has selected a Senior Vice President of Research Strategy and Insights — an individual who joins the company to lead research, insights and analytics to inform programming, marketing and digital strategies across the portfolio.

He joins from iHeartMedia and reports to Mónica Gil, Chief Administrative and Marketing Officer at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises. 

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With report after report of late illustrating the seemingly ceaseless wave of cord-cutting that’s upending the pay TV industry, it was only a matter of time before a research report emerged that put a date on when U.S. consumers will cough up more cash for streaming video than for MVPD-delivered channels.

That, according to Strategy Analytics, is coming in three years.

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Ad spend and pricing data research and analytics firm Standard Media Index (SMI) has a new Vice President of Sales.

It’s someone who brings 20 years of leadership experience within media and technology to the SMI team, and will oversee the expansion of the ad intelligence company’s sales strategy and new business development.

“It’s truly a pleasure to welcome Dave Dembowski to the SMI family,” said Ben Tatta, President of Standard Media Index. “As an accomplished sales executive, he brings with him two decades of sales leadership and experience from top digital platforms. In this new role, he will be instrumental in further developing the sales pipeline and driving growth for the business, across the board.”

Dembowski most recently served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development at IgnitionOne, and previously held various sales leadership roles at Yahoo and EDGAR Online.

From April 2007-September 2017, Dembowski was a key Yahoo! executive, serving as VP/Sales through its acquisition by Verizon.

On March 19, Discovery Inc. shares closed at a remarkable $77.27, climbing from $20.24 on Oct. 30, 2021. There was lots of buzz about its Discovery + OTT launch, which features a massive marketing campaign that continues to dominate the Media Monitors Spot Ten Cable report.

Then, the bubble burst for DISCA on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market, with Wall Street responding to signs that the OTT growth could perhaps wound core MVPD-distributed channels a bit too rapidly.

With Tuesday’s Closing Bell, DISCA finished at $39.01. Wednesday will be a difficult trading day for Discovery.

Why? Its Q1 2021 results missed Street expectations.

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Pandora who? As the fourth month of 2021 nears its close, Spotify is arguably one of the most popular audio streaming services in the world. Its penetration in Mexico City is among the company’s best. Across the U.S., Spotify is nothing to shirk at.

So, how did it do in the first quarter of 2021? Futuresource Consulting lead market analyst for music and audio Alexandre Jornod digested the numbers early today from London, and offers up the details.

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It’s described as “a unique identifier that enables the resolution of both linear viewership and digital audiences into a common identity framework.”

Introducing OpenID from Comcast-owned NBCUniversal’s advanced advertising company OpenAP.

As OpenAP sees it, OpenID has the power to “unlock” cross-platform capabilities for advanced TV advertising.

The news follows the recent launch of OpenAP’s SSP, which offers advertisers transparency and visibility of available premium video inventory at scale.

OpenID enables efficient matching with viewership currencies for distribution to multiple television publishers, NBCU notes, “evolving advanced TV from age and gender demographics to ID-based targeting.”

The ID is built on a graph of offline and online data and is able to connect directly with buy-side data partners and sell-side platforms.

“With this launch, advertisers will start every campaign by identifying an audience that will be resolved to a set of OpenIDs, which can be broad or narrow based on campaign objectives,” OpenAP notes. Audiences are defined at the ID level then matched to viewership data and platform IDs for linear, digital and addressable activation to create a unified, cross-platform OpenID audience. OpenIDs are shared with TV publishers for use in linear and digital campaigns, with publishers using their internal tools to build targeted media plans.

The OpenID is designed to allow TV publishers to maintain control of data and protect data leakage through the central identity framework, reducing onboarding costs, while creating standards that can unlock cross-publisher measurement and attribution.

“For advertisers, the OpenID increases speed of audience activation, reduces the reporting lag for OpenID audiences, and enables cross-platform use cases to drive investment,” OpenAP says. “Advertisers benefit from more effective campaigns and now have the ability to see who they are reaching across each environment.”

Participating publishers able to accept OpenIDs include AMC Networks, A+E Networks, Crown Media, Discovery, Disney, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Univision, ViacomCBS, WarnerMedia and The Weather Channel.

“The acceptance of OpenIDs will facilitate cross-platform convergence when used to seamlessly onboard and activate data across publishers and platforms, powering cross-platform use cases requested by the buy-side with new capabilities planned for launch in Broadcast Year 2022,” OpenAP says.

The first agencies to integrate with and activate all audiences for advanced cross-platform TV campaigns as OpenIDs are dentsu Media, GroupM, Haworth Marketing + Media, Horizon Media and Omnicom Media Group.

Meanwhile, OpenAP has partnered with TransUnion as its identity backbone.

In an effort to provide increased value for advertisers, OpenAP is collaborating with The Trade Desk on behalf of the TV ecosystem to drive interoperability between the OpenID and Unified ID 2.0, the industry-wide initiative to create an upgraded alternative to third party cookies.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On February 1, television stations located in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi were required to file applications for license renewal for terms expiring on June 1, 2021.

Eight stations failed to file license renewal applications. A goodbye to said facilities is in the works, but can be prevented.

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On the eve of RBR+TVBR’s arrival as Editor-in-Chief, Adam R Jacobson met with Pacific Media Group CEO Chuck Bergson at the company’s headquarters in Kahului, on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

In this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM, Jacobson catches up with Bergson, gaining insight into whether or not COVID-19 curbed rapid growth for the company, which today is the only radio station owner with properties across all of the Hawaiian Islands.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Chuck Bergson” on Spreaker.

Along the Wasatch Front, viewers seeking FOX programming can tune to KSTU-13. It’s a sibling to KUPX-16, the ION O&O serving Salt Lake City.

The stations are owned by The E.W. Scripps Co., and it could explain Scripps’ interest in a pair of low-power television stations serving Utah’s closest cities to Las Vegas, Nev.

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Allen Media Group isn’t just a growing broadcast TV station owner.

Its digital platform Local Now is gaining notice as a free streaming service for local news and entertainment, with localized content including local news programming meshed with movies and TV shows available for viewing.

Local Now is available on nearly all platforms across OTT on connected TV, Mobile and Web. Now, Local Now is accessible via the newest set-top boxes associated with one MVPD.

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Comscore has landed an expanded deal with ViacomCBS, which has renewed its National TV measurement contracts with the consumer data and analytics firm seeking to compete against Nielsen.

Comscore has been providing ViacomCBS linear TV measurement since 2014.

Since then, their relationship broadened to help build out Viacom’s Vantage Platform. Now, ViacomCBS will be calling on Comscore to boost its traditional linear advertising campaigns on Comscore’s National TV currency, “a key element as the media and entertainment company looks to diversify its partnerships around measurement across both its linear and digital assets.”

Comscore Chief Revenue Officer Carol Hinnant noted, “We highly value our innovative partnership with ViacomCBS and are now pleased to expand the relationship to include traditional linear currency solutions. Once again we are proud to partner with ViacomCBS to change the currency landscape.”

ViacomCBS Chief Operating Officer of Advertising Revenue John Halley added, “Under its new ownership structure, Comscore is making meaningful strides in investment, engineering, and product innovation to support the industry’s evolving needs as a cornerstone measurement provider. We believe Comscore can drive significant value for ViacomCBS, helping us achieve our goals around cross-screen measurement, while supporting our efforts toward a diversified currency strategy.”

International marketing intelligence service WARC‘s latest Global Advertising Trends report has been released. In it, WARC outlines “the new, long-term shifts in e-commerce, social media, online video and gaming for brands and consumers.”

What’s the key takeaway for broadcast media executives? Linear television advertising plummeted, making retransmission consent revenue more essential than ever in the U.S.

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The Media Sales Institute (MSI) has entered into a strategic alliance with Media Staffing Network (MSN). The arrangement brings MSN’s media recruiter’s expertise to the MSI curriculum at the 2021 NABOB MSI.

The event is scheduled for October 25-November 24, at the Atlanta University Center (AUC) and hosted by Morehouse College.

“This new partnership will allow our candidates to gain a better insight into how to research prospective employers and create an effective personal marketing presentation,” said MSI Developer Jeffrey P. Myers. “Additionally, our alliance includes incorporating MSN’s expertise in the first Media Sales & Operations Department (MSD) collegiate curriculum in the country, which is being developed at the AUC and housed at Clark Atlanta University (CAU), starting in 2022.”

MSN CEO and founder Laurie Kahn (pictured) added, “With our tutelage, we can better prepare the MSI graduates to address the position for which they are applying. Sadly, many colleges and universities are not as up to date on what a recent graduate should include on their resumes. Nor do they teach their students how to best stand out and showcase their value when they have little to no work experience.”

The MSI curriculum was developed in 1999 by Personal Selling Principles (PSP), a media management and sales marketing company, and is designed to properly expose and prepare talented individuals for a career in media sales. Since 2006, PSP has partnered with the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) to host the MSI Program at various colleges and universities.

The 10-day “intense” curriculum addresses the ever-evolving media sales process and concludes with sponsoring companies interviewing the candidates for open sales and operations positions.