Industry News

According to Magellan AI, which monitors how much advertisers spend on podcasts, BetterHelp spent $4.3 million in February on 386 podcasts.

One of radio’s favorite advertisers, GEICO, was second with $2.6 million spent on 260 mainly sports podcasts.

Here are the top five:

Its earnings per share increased 57.58% over the past year in Q4. And, it beat the Wall Street consensus estimate by a penny.

While that’s a positive feat in COVID-19 times, investors have soured of late on Veritone Inc., the technology company that has built a reputation on harnessing media sales growth opportunities through AI attribution in audio and video content — including advertising.

On Thursday, Veritone shares were down by nearly 11%. What’s upsetting shareholders?

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RALEIGH — Capitol Broadcasting Company (CBC) has launched a new agency that promises to offer clients in the Triangle region of North Carolina, and beyond, strategic brand, marketing, and creative services.

It’s an expansion of services offered since 2017 by its WRAL Digital Solutions. 

“However, the needs of clients have continued to evolve, and CBC realized there was an unmet need in the market,” it explains.

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An AM/FM combo serving a small Mississippi town southeast of Memphis could be liable for a cash penalty for failing to submit its license renewal applications to the FCC in a timely manner.

BE SURE TO FOLLOW RBR+TVBR ON FACEBOOK!

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JACKSON, WYO. — Across Thursday, a group of local radio stations in Jackson Hole led their newscasts by trumpeting how gas prices were rapidly escalating, putting a tinge of fear in the report.

It appears such fretting may be premature. Crude oil prices plunged 8%, with European demand now less than anticipated. This, coupled with inflation concerns and the news that another 770,000 Americans filed new unemployment claims for the week ending March 13 sent U.S. financial markets downward.

Several publicly traded media companies were swept up in the tide.

Among the bigger dips was that seen by iHeartMedia, the audio media giant that is poised to benefit from the pending acquisition of a significant non-voting stake in the company by Global, the parent of several leading U.K. radio brands.

At the closing bell, IHRT was down 6%, with downward activity accelerating after the noon hour, Eastern time.

Also down significantly: Saga Communications, which continues to suffer from pandemic-related revenue dips across its radio stations. SGA finished Thursday’s trading at $25.12, down 6.7% from Wednesday.

On the TV side, Sinclair Broadcast Group gave up 5.4% of its value to finish the day at $35.89.

Hudson MX, the provider of next-generation media buying and accounting programs for broadcast media, has launched an “enterprise solution” designed to give the half-trillion-dollar media industry “a modern, cross-media, cloud based media management platform.”

As Hudson MX sees it, FinanceAssist can replace “outdated legacy systems that previously monopolized the market.”

Described as a “one-budget, one-invoice platform,” FinanceAssist can enable agencies to manage omnichannel campaigns with “greater flexibility, efficiency and transparency.”

Hudson MX adds, “With these end-to-end capabilities, Hudson MX provides new infrastructure built for today’s omnichannel reality and can agilely evolve in-step with how the industry transforms in the future while empowering the next generation of creativity and effectiveness for agencies and the broader advertising industry.

JT Batson, CEO of Hudson MX, commented, “Legacy systems don’t support agencies and their media partners’ creativity and innovation ambitions, hampering them with artificially increasing transaction costs and high volume of work that is a distraction from delivering results to clients. As an industry, we can and must do better to fix the ecosystem’s fundamental underpinnings for the sake of our industry’s future. With Hudson MX solutions like FinanceAssist we are doing just that through an agile, digital-first platform unencumbered by legacy technology so clients can eliminate process inefficiencies, allowing them to focus on higher-impact strategic work and unlocking revenue for their businesses.”

It’s a new day for HC2 Holdings Inc., which quietly installed a new CEO in late November and has been divesting stations that it no longer deems essential to an ATSC 3.0 spectrum play launched under former leader Philip Falcone.

Under Wayne Barr Jr. as Chief Executive, HC2 has sold TV stations to Weigel Broadcasting and, most recently, to Gray Television. HC2 is adding to more TV stations to the sell pile.

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The author of this commentary is senior vice president, digital platforms for Xperi Corp.

As part of India’s Digital India initiative, which has a vision of providing increased digital access to its population, Xperi and All India Radio have been collaborating on testing HD Radio FM broadcast in Delhi, India.

In February, 2021, Phase 1 of the test project was completed and submitted to the Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (MIB) for evaluation. In addition, updates on the commercial operation of HD Radio in North America, including receivers in the market, broadcast service quality and overall operational progress, were shared.

The program has significant implications for considerably advancing consumer access to FM radio broadcasts, in multiple languages, across India.

The test program was designed to demonstrate HD Radio services in Delhi on 100.5 MHz transmitting from the Akashvani Bhawan site at All India Radio’s main offices. With support from ComCon and Nautel, Xperi engineers installed a VS2.5 transmitter and broadcast 1.2kW total power (120W digital).

The program demonstrated reception on eight different radio models including car radio, portable and home models, as well as the BeatBoy feature cell phone with built-in HD Radio function.

While AM broadcasting has been operating in India since the 1930s by All India Radio, the government broadcaster, FM broadcasting is a relatively new service.

The first India FM broadcast was in 1977 and expanded exponentially in 2001 when the Indian government allowed private broadcasters to operate stations. Since then, the government has issued a series of frequency auctions which broadly expanded markets and licensed frequencies around the country. As of 2018, there are 390 licensed private stations and 400 government-operated stations.

Xperi research demonstrates that FM radio and music content is very popular in India, with over 80% of the population listening to FM radio on a regular basis. And because India is a very mobile society, most of the listening is through the FM Radio function in cell phones.

This market is growing. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has an objective to move the FM band to digital radio operations. And the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) continues to support new frequency auctions and licenses.

The recommendations from TRAI in February 2020 advised the government to establish a policy framework and roadmap for digital radio in India. These directives are aligned with the “Digital India” initiatives driven through the Office of the Prime Minister.

Implementation of digital radio broadcasting fulfills Digital India’s initiatives vision for radio; HD Radio services will be key to establishing this much-needed, digital, world-class broadcast network to serve all the citizens of India.

While most other technologies are transitioning, or already fully transitioned, to digital services, digital radio in India has lagged behind. In India, radio has a long history of providing critical public services and important information, in multiple languages to the population. Unfortunately, not everyone has ready access to internet and data services, especially in rural regions.

But because HD Radio can easily and inexpensively be integrated into mobile handsets for ease of use, it can digitally provide real-time emergency and disaster notifications through cell phones across India’s multilingual population, as well as enabling access to national, regional, and local information and entertainment programs.

Xperi’s HD Radio broadcast and consumer products include comprehensive levels of testing and certification to ensure consistent quality of service for the industry, which will be of major importance to a roll out in India. In addition, Xperi is investing in monitoring networks to ensure HD Radio transmission quality once a broadcaster has launched HD Radio.

The HD Radio team will continue working to support technical evaluations and policy discussions with MIB and All India Radio.

Aside from addressing the technical questions, the important focus is the availability of affordable receivers. Existing product designs can easily meet the cost expectations for the market, and it is believed that further optimization of design and production process can quickly achieve mass market scale.

The post HD Radio and Digital FM in India appeared first on Radio World.

Get ready for another fiery day on Wall Street for Urban One.

The company on Thursday morning released its fourth quarter and full-year 2020 earnings. And … they’re spectacular.

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The local TV via IP service that the NAB and the Big Four TV networks despise for what they assail as a guise is entering its 31st market.

Starting March 19, viewers across the Pacific Northwest’s second-largest market can stream 39 local broadcast channels through a service operated by a non-profit entity that’s rapidly expanding across the U.S.

In an e-mail sent Wednesday to its followers, Locast revealed that Portland, Ore., is its newest market — an addition that comes as the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament (“March Madness”) commences on ViacomCBS-owned properties and CBS affiliates, such as KOIN-6, owned by Nexstar Media Group.

Also viewable: Nexstar’s home for The CW Network in Portland, KRCW-32; Meredith Local Media‘s FOX affiliate, and MyNetwork TV sibling, KPTV-12 and KPDX-TV; Sinclair Broadcast Group‘s ABC affiliate, KATU-2; public media giant OPB‘s local PBS member station; and TEGNA‘s dominant NBC affiliate, KGW-8. Also available: ION Network; local feeds for Telemundo, Univision and Azteca América; and several digital multicast offerings.

The service is geo-fenced: If you’re outside of the Portland DMA as determined by your location services information, you can’t watch the stations on the 39-channel lineup.

The Portland DMA includes Clark County, Wash.; and extends within Portland to the capital, Salem, and to coastal communities including Astoria, where classic films “The Goonies” and “Kindergarten Cop” were filmed.

More market additions are on the way.

“We continue to work hard to launch more markets so stay tuned,” Locast said.

It also took care in noting that Locast is “a nonprofit” and relies on user donations “of just $5 per month” to support the ongoing operations and expansion of its “nonprofit” service.

As a non-profit, Locast believes it operates outside the scope of retransmission consent. That’s irksome to the NAB and every broadcast TV network, as their affiliates and owned stations are increasingly reliant on retransmission consent fees to offset a decline in advertising stemmed from the rise of local digital media solutions.