Feed aggregator

Jack Sellmeyer. Photo courtesy Norm Philips.

The author is chairman of the board of Kintronic Labs.

Radio World invited me to share some comments regarding memories of Jack Sellmeyer. 

In my mind he was one of the most distinguished broadcast engineers to serve the AM broadcast industry. 

Jack and my father, Louis King, had similar backgrounds of working for transmitter companies early in their careers and then transitioning into broadcast consulting. 

Seven months after I came to work full time with my father in 1983, he had a stroke, and I was left alone to keep the business going still being a fledgling broadcast engineer. Jack was one of my father’s close associates who helped mentor me through that challenging season of my life together with Ben Dawson and Ron Rackley. 

He was a very loyal friend to our company and to me. Jack Sellmeyer was a highly knowledgeable AM antenna system engineer, and he was an exceptional man of integrity, who was outspoken about those, who were not following his same code of ethics. I am personally indebted to Jack for his involvement in my nomination to receive the NAB Radio Engineering Achievement Award.

Here’s Jack working at the Kintronic factory, commissioning a transmitter for overseas Christian radio.

Jack and I shared our common faith in Jesus Christ. On one occasion we met at a Radio Disney transmitter site in New York City, where we removed a Continental 317C 50kw AM transmitter from service that was donated by Radio Disney.

After driving the transmitter back to our plant and assembling it for test, Jack visited us and conducted the final commissioning of the transmitter on a new frequency. The transmitter was shipped to Voice of the Martyrs in Colombia, South America, where it has since been in service as a regional Christian radio station.

Anyone who knew Jack knows that he had an endless library of life stories about his days in broadcast engineering or about his service in the Vietnam War as a communications engineer. He was in many ways a walking history book of broadcast engineering. 

The broadcast industry has lost one of the giants of our industry in Jack Sellmeyer, P.E. 

Jack Sellmeyer received the NAB  Radio Engineering Achievement Award in 2009; read our profile. His colleague Tom King received the award in 2015; that story is here.

The post Letter: Tom King Remembers Jack Sellmeyer appeared first on Radio World.

Nominations are now being accepted for the 2024 NAB Technology Awards. The awards honor contributions in digital leadership, broadcast engineering and technology innovation, and will be presented during the 2024 NAB Show, held April 13-17 in Las Vegas.

The NAB Digital Leadership Award honors an individual at a broadcast station, group or network who has had a significant role in transforming a traditional broadcast business to succeed on digital media platforms in a measurable way.

Two Engineering Achievement Awards are presented each year, honoring individuals for their outstanding accomplishments in the radio and television broadcast industries.

The Technology Innovation Award is presented to an organization for advanced research and development projects in communications technologies. The technology must demonstrate significant merit, be exhibited at NAB Show and not yet commercialized.

“Each year, the NAB Technology Awards celebrate the great minds behind the exciting innovations that improve our services, better entertain and inform our audiences, and advance our industry,” said NAB Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Sam Matheny. “We look forward to honoring these broadcast trailblazers at NAB Show in April and showcasing the breakthrough technologies on the horizon.”

The deadline for nominations is Monday, January 8, 2024. Nomination forms, award rules and lists of past recipients are available at nab.org/events/awards.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF. — Streaming and podcast solutions provider StreamGuys has launched its second-generation SGreports product, a log processing and content analytics toolset for both live streams and podcasts.

The updated offering, part of StreamGuys’ SaaS suite of analytics and monitoring services, offers an improved user experience through enhanced data aggregation and presentation, along with quicker access to streaming analytics.

StreamGuys has initially made the updated product available for small-to-mid sized clients, and will soon expand availability to larger enterprise accounts that require higher levels of customization.

SGreports helps broadcasters and media companies access metrics to understand how audiences interact with streaming content, and then leverage the resulting data to make intelligent business and programming decisions. The software presents visualizations on user dashboards to help them quickly filter and compare data on program streams and podcast episodes, for example. In its previous iteration, users manually parsed data through SGreports’ expansive filter options to build reports. While the process of exporting data was straightforward, the data aggregation process could grow time consuming as the number of sources of metrics grew.

“Broadcasters with varied streaming portfolios often have specific reporting needs that weren’t easily services by the prior iteration of SGreports,” said Robert Minnix, head of product at Humboldt County, Calif.-headquartered StreamGuys. “SGreports now offers a more cohesive environment to aggregate data from different subsets to achieve a singular view, as opposed to managing data across many dashboards. The simple explanation is that users have a more consumable view of everything in one place, which is especially useful for larger media networks and market-based streamers who have a lot of ground to cover. We have now centralized all this data to a single pane of glass.”

As with before, SGreports also allows users to flexibly drill down for greater detail and customize their views for maximum efficiency. However, SGreports also now offers a “snappier, more responsive user interface” that offers more visually distinctive metrics and with greater speed. That includes more insightful charts and graphics versus columns of numerical information. “Some of the SGreports metrics that our users value most, such as geolocation information from users in difference cities and countries, are now presented in ways that are simply more appealing to view and quicker to digest.”

On the quality-of-service side, StreamGuys has migrated SGreports to a Kappa software architecture that better supports real-time processing for analytics. This allows SGreports to aggregate data quicker, with event metrics often available within minutes of completion. “We’ve integrated the analytics stack into our infrastructure so that the host and client servers are processing data in real-time,” said Minnix. “There is no more waiting until tomorrow to access metrics on user traffic, as there is no more batch processing data across different intervals. The information populates as viewers and listeners disconnect.”

SGreports’ advanced reporting capabilities now include enhanced user agent and device-level analysis based on the Open Podcast Analytics Working Group (OPAWG). Support for OPAWG – a cross-platform initiative to standardize podcast download tracking and measurement – bolsters IP and user agent blacklisting, bot identification, and filtering to provide higher-quality podcast reporting through community-based specifications. SGreports also now directly integrates with StreamGuys’ flagship SGrecast podcast management platform and will soon support SGrewind time-shifting service to help users spot trends in traffic and consumption of rewindable content.

From 1998 to 2003, he served as an Oregon State Representative for Grants Pass and Josephine County. As of July 2020, he was back in the state house in Salem when his Grants Pass Broadcasting welcomed a Class A FM scraping the Medford market, adding it to his AM and FM already serving Grants Pass.

Now, Carl Wilson is selling the stations. But, the buyer is someone wholly familiar with the operation and will likely make very few, if any, changes.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

FORT LAUDERDALE — A generation ago, New York Major League Baseball fans had an easy way to watch a game. Mets fans tuned to WWOR-9; Yankees fans chose WPIX-11. Then came the regional sports networks, as cable TV grew. Today, cord-cutting and other financial pressures has made the RSN a fiscally prickly arena, yielding a return of play-by-play to broadcast stations in various markets including Phoenix.

As the RSN model shows its weaknesses, how are broadcasters working to fill the void? The question was one of several pondered during a panel discussion held Thursday (11/9) at the Matrix Media Ad Sales Summit.

 

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

TORONTO — In Canada, much like in the U.S., radio station ownership groups have been challenged by core advertising slowdowns. For Corus and Bell Media, which enjoys a partnership with iHeartMedia, quarterly challenges have made headlines. How did the third quarter of 2023 fare for North America’s most dominant multimedia ownership group?

Rogers Communications blew past analysts’ forecasts, with President/CEO Tony Staffieri “very pleased” to be sharing “industry-leading results” for Q3.

 

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

On February 2, shares in the nation’s No. 1 audio content creation and distribution company reached $8.70. It was a glimmer of hope that the company’s stock would return to above $10, where it had comfortably been across the first half of 2022. In fact, one year earlier, the stock closed above $20.

Now, four years and four months since emerging from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, iHeartMedia shares have hit a new low, extending a particularly difficult 2023 for the company’s Nasdaq-traded issues.

 

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

It’s shaping up to be one of the more contentious issues facing broadcast television station owners on Capitol Hill: fair compensation from virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributors through the extension of current retransmission content rules to such services.

For companies such as Gray Television, getting more dollars from vMVPDs is vital to their future. In contrast, vMVPDs and the cable television industry is dead-set against the idea. However, some resolution will be needed. If not, an increase in possible “blackouts” such as the one impacting a Gray property in Phoenix could raise the ire of consumers — in particular sports fans now turning to over-the-air stations to enjoy play-by-play coverage.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

A coaching client told public speaking coach Rosemary Ravinal last week that she feels like an imposter. How so? The C-suite-level executive felt unsure of her expertise when asked to deliver a keynote at an industry conference. “What if they know more than me about the topic?” she said. “I don’t want to feel like an imposter.” Simple reassurance of her expertise and intensive practice made her speech successful for both audience and speaker, Ravinal notes in this Media Information Bureau column.

 

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

DELRAY BEACH, FLA. — A Palm Beach County Circuit Court has cleared the way for the transfer of control of two AM radio stations and their respective FM translators from the ex-wife of the man who will be granted ownership, pending FCC approval.

It allows the individual to gain full control of the assets he ran but was in his ex-wife’s name.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

Audiences for spoken-word audio listening in the United States continue to grow, as does our overall listening time to spoken content.

Those are findings of a report from NPR and Edison Research, the fifth in a series on this topic.

“Almost half (48%) — approximately 135 million people — of those in the U.S. age 13+ listen to some type of spoken-word audio daily, up two percentage points (46%) from last year,” they said in a summary.

“Listeners in the U.S. age 13+ spend 31% of their daily audio time with spoken word, which is a 55% increase over nine years ago (20%).”

When it comes to where this listening is happening, they said that spoken-word listening at home has grown dramatically.

“Sixty percent of the total daily audio time spent with spoken-word audio is at home, 24% in the car, 13% at work and 3% at some other location. The time spent listening to spoken-word audio at home has grown to 41 daily minutes in 2023 from 27 daily minutes in 2014. Increases in at-home spoken-word audio listening are seen across every hour in the listening day.”

While listening in cars has shifted during and after the pandemic, they said, “AM/FM radio remains on top. Of all the daily time spent listening to spoken-word audio, time spent listening in the car has declined from 36% in 2014 to 24% in 2023. In the car, 62% of spoken-word audio consumed by those in the U.S. age 13+ is to AM/FM radio content, including over the air and streams.”

But for the first time, the study found, mobile devices are the primary way people listen to spoken-word content, with 39% of spoken-word audio consumed daily by those age 13+ in the U.S. being heard on a mobile device, followed by 35% on an AM/FM radio receiver.

Podcasts, not surprisingly, “represent a large and growing share of spoken-word listening,” and now represent over one-third (36%) of time spent with spoken-word audio.

In the summary, National Public Media VP of Sponsorship Marketing Lamar Johnson described the findings as “a powerful opportunity for brands looking to expand and engage their audience.”

Findings are at npr.org/spokenwordaudio.

Edison Research’s Share of Ear is a quarterly survey of Americans who are asked to keep a detailed one-day diary of their audio usage. It uses a nationally representative sample of those age 13+. The sample for this study was 4,193 people.

The post Report Cites “New Highs” for Spoken-Word Content appeared first on Radio World.

Not bad for a photo taken by a security camera.

That’s the KBRT Oak Flat transmitter site in the Santa Ana Mountains of eastern Orange County, Calif. The AM station, owned by Crawford Broadcasting, serves Los Angeles and Orange County with 50 kW daytime power. Its elevation is about 2,900 feet above mean sea level while the lights of Irvine and Anaheim visible below are near sea level.

Operations Manager Todd Stickler provided the photo to Director of Engineering Cris Alexander, and our longtime Radio World colleague shared it with us. Visible at left is Tower No. 4 in a four-tower directional array.

Cris adds that this is “probably the best, most modern AM broadcast site in the Unted States. Certainly one of the coolest.”

Radio World loves to receive photographs that capture the allure of radio. Recently, we put out a call to our readership asking for pretty pictures of their facilities. We welcome all photos that capture the wonder of radio. Email them to radioworld@futurenet.com.

[Related: “Check Out These Views”]

The post SoCal Sunset: KBRT Tower 4 appeared first on Radio World.

Not long after I came to work for Crawford Broadcasting Co. in 1984, I was introduced to our most recent acquisition, KBRT in Los Angeles. The station was unique in that the transmitter site for the three-tower 10 kW 740 kHz AM was located on Santa Catalina Island, some “26 miles across the sea …” as described in the song “26 Miles” by the Four Preps, circa 1957. 

The infrastructure for the station was different than anything I had ever seen. There was an audio feed from the Century City studio by an equalized “phone line,” which actually made the hop from mainland to island on a C-band terrestrial microwave link operated by the phone company. 

The problem was the several miles long run of copper from the phone company facility in Avalon to the site, which was up near the Airport in the Sky. Whenever it would rain, the overhead line would develop a hum and sound terrible.

As a backup to the phone line (or maybe it was the other way around, I forget), there were not one but two Part 74 STL links. One was from a bluff at Ranchos Palos Verdes (RPV) to a hilltop at the KBRT site, and the other was from the Queen Mary, which was moored permanently at Long Beach. Both sites were fed with equalized phone lines from our studio. I remember that those STLs operated on grandfathered 930 MHz frequencies, which we kept for most of our remaining tenure on the island.

Between those three STLs, the station could generally keep program audio on the air. We had a full-time engineer living in company housing at the site, and it was a big part of his job to monitor and make sure we had a clean program feed at all times, switching as necessary and as conditions changed. 

At some point, we lost the site at the Queen, and I moved that link to the top of Signal Hill in the Long Beach area. Then, when we moved our studios from Century City to Costa Mesa in 1987, I rented tower space from a cable TV head end a couple of blocks from the new studio and employed an “IF repeater” STL to get from studio rooftop to cable TV tower to the island.

As you can imagine, all those paths were clear. Nothing but oil derricks and ship traffic between the mainland and island antennas. The island transmitter site, by the way, was some 1,300 feet above sea level with a clear view of the mainland. Our typical receive signal was full scale, over 1,000 uV.

These 10-foot grid antennas were used in the 930 MHz diversity array for KBRT on Catalina Island. We hung them at an elevation where there was no view of the water but we still had a clear shot to the mainland end of the path. Still, knife-edge propagation let enough multipath through that digital never would work.

And yet, the over-the-air STL link was not all that reliable. When we would get marine layer over the Santa Barbara Channel, we would get deep fades and the recovered audio would get noisy or would squelch altogether. 

My experience to that point was all with over-land 950 MHz STLs, so I really didn’t understand what was happening other than that there was maybe some refraction taking place that was “bending” the signal up or down so that it would miss the receive antenna. Or was it something else?

I talked to some very smart people who suggested that we try a diversity receive system, with two antennas spaced a significant distance apart on one of the AM towers. 

So that’s what I did. We hung two 10-foot grid antennas on one of the towers. I don’t recall the vertical spacing, but it was significant. Each antenna fed a separate receiver, and we put a “voter” between them that monitored the AGC voltage from each receiver and selected the one with the higher signal.

Fingers crossed, I fired that system up and on a foggy day (marine layer over the channel made fog on the island), watched it work. I saw the signal on one receiver start to dip, dropping from over 1,000 uV to the bottom of the scale. At the same time, I saw the signal meter on the other receiver rising. At a certain point, I heard a “click” as the relay in the voter routed the signal from the receiver with the better signal. The audio stayed steady and noise-free!

We used that system for many years, eventually transitioning to a T1 when the cable company jacked the tower rent up out of reach. 

At one point, we tried a digital add-on to the 930 MHz STL, but it didn’t work at all, despite the strong signal. The reason: multipath from water reflections. As I recall, there was a UHF TV transmitter on the island trying to serve the Southern California mainland, and they had water multipath issues, too. 

I learned a lot in those island years about STLs and UHF propagation. I learned that in some situations, innovation was required. And it was gratifying to see the application of “out of the box” thinking actually work.

In the current issue of RW Engineering Extra, Dennis Sloatman will educate us on some of the principles at work in the STL world. This is a followup to an article we published a year ago. I trust that you will be enlightened by Dennis as I was.

Also, some months back Crawford Broadcasting experienced a strange phenomenon with our Buffalo, N.Y., superpower FM. We may see more of this kind of thing as stations upgrade their HD facilities; James O’Neal reports in this issue. I think you’ll find it’s an eye-opener.

Our goal in the pages of Radio World Engineering Extra is to give radio engineers tools that they can use in their everyday work. I’m confident that you’ll come away with something of value from this issue. If you have topic suggestions, I’d love to hear from you. Email me at rweetech@gmail.com.

[Subscribe to Radio World Engineering Extra]

The post A Link From Outside the Box appeared first on Radio World.

High school radio stations from across the country are again being recognized as part of the John Drury High School Radio Awards.

The 2022/2023 awards were recently presented by station WONC(FM), a station run by North Central College in Naperville, Ill., that has been broadcasting in the Chicago area for more than 50 years. The awards were created in 2003 to recognize excellence in high school radio broadcasting, and were named in honor of Chicago news anchor and investigating reporter John Drury. 

This year, more stations participated from more states than ever before — 12 states in all — said Zack DeWitz, general manager of WONC and coordinator of the awards. The awards covered 18 categories, from broadcaster of the year to best specialty music show, and included first-, second- and third-place categories.

“Every year [that this awards program] continues is a testament to the success and the value of radio at the high school level. And that fills me with so much joy,” DeWitz said. “The experience you’re getting in high school is vital. Not just to those of you who want a future in radio or another media. The practice you’re getting as public speakers and communicators will give you an advantage over other people who aren’t getting this experience.”

The awards recognize the expanding scope of radio’s reach, with nominations submitted for best website, best use of social media and best podcast. Other awards recognized key radio milestones, including best promo, best sports talk program and best talk show. 

Audio clips submitted by high school stations illustrated a breadth of ideas and talent, such as the clip from St. Andrew’s-Sewanee School’s WMTN(FM), which won for its podcast on conspiracy theories. The award for best public safety announcement was a no-vaping advertisement, written by students at New Trier High School for station WNTH(FM), while the award for best station promo was given to Baton Rouge Magnet High School’s WBRH(FM) for a 30-second review of the station’s eclectic music offerings. 

Some schools received multiple awards including WWPT(FM), broadcast at Staples High School, which received awards for best DJ, best news feature story, best newscast, best specialty music show, best sports play-by-play, best radio drama, best non-sports talk show, as well as best radio station advisor and broadcaster of the year.

During the awards ceremony, several alumni spoke about the advantages they gained from working for a noncommercial educational radio station in their formative years.

“Even if you don’t end up coming away with an award today, congratulations: you guys are getting some great recognition,” said WONC alumni Tim Calderwood, who is sports announcer for the Schaumburg Boomers baseball team, during the ceremony. “You’re doing a lot of great things.” 

Nominations for the 2023/2024 awards will be accepted beginning April 1, 2024. A complete list of the 2022/23 winners, including a series of audio clips and a video of the awards program itself, can be found here. 

[Sign Up for Radio World’s SmartBrief Newsletter]

The post This Awards Program Recognizes the Best of High School Radio appeared first on Radio World.

DAB+ may be best known for its widespread adoption in Europe, but this digital radio standard is also taking hold in other parts of the world.

The progress of DAB+ implementations in Ghana, Indonesia and Bahrain as covered at the WorldDAB Summit 2023 this week. The session “Global growth of DAB+ led by emerging territories” was part of the one-day in-person/online event, hosted at the Design Offices München Atlas in Munich, Germany.

DAB+ in Ghana was described by Christiana L. Attrams, assistant manager of the National Communications Authority’s Engineering Division. The NCA is conducting DAB+ trial broadcasts in the cities of Accra (11 FM stations being simulcast) and Kamasi (seven FM stations being simulcast), using VHF Band III.

“The cardinal reason for the DAB trial was to test digital sound broadcasting technology to address the increasing demand for FM radio broadcasting authorizations, in view of the severe constraints on the FM band in the major cities of Ghana,” said Attrams. “DAB is expected to provide a sustainable mechanism to meet the incessant demand for sound broadcasting authorization whilst supporting the digitalization agenda of the Republic of Ghana.”

At present, Attrams said the NCA is conducting field measurements of the signal strength, signal quality and coverage of the DAB services in Accra and Kumasi. It is promoting the DAB service through outdoor advertising, social media engagement, print and electronic media advertising.  

[Related: “New WorldDAB President Plants Her Flag at 2023 Summit“]

“The key challenge for the DAB trial in Ghana is the non-availability of receivers in the market,” Attrams said. “The NCA procured a limited number of DAB receivers for some stakeholders as part of the trial, but this is woefully inadequate considering the radio national population in Accra and Kumasi. The NCA has engaged car dealers and electronic equipment dealers to sensitize them about the minimum requirements for DAB receivers. We are expecting DAB receivers to be available in consumer electronic shops by the end of the year to address this challenge.”

Ignatius Hendrasmo speaking at the WorldDAB Summit.

Ignatius Hendrasmo, president director of Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI), spoke next about DAB+ in that country. According to worlddab.org, DAB+ adoption in Indonesia was confirmed in August 2023 in VHF Band III, for use by RRI. The Indonesian government also plans to offer Digital Radio Mondiale in this band.

Indonesia is a country of 273 million people that is located on the “Ring of Fire” chain of tectonic plates and volcanoes. As a result, “we are prone to disasters,” said Hendrasmo. “That’s why we need to adopt the DRM system with the hope that we can get our early warning system onto it.”

The bill to implement DAB+/DRM in Indonesia is before the Indonesian parliament, with enactment expected next year.

Bahrain formally launched DAB+ services on Aug. 31. At present, 10 DAB+ stations are on air in the country. The data rates being broadcast have been set at “128 kilobit per second for each service,” said Abdulla Ahmed Al Balooshi, assistant undersecretary of technical affairs with the Kingdom of Bahrain’s Ministry of Information. Each of these stations has a “95 percent location coverage probability at a 56 dB microvolt parameter.”

Bahrain’s decision to implement DAB+ comes after field tests with transmitter manufacturer Rohde & Schwarz that served about 40 percent of the country. The DAB+ trial started on Dec. 15, 2016, using a 300-watt DAB+ transmitter and broadcasting four programs.

To motivate more private broadcasters to simulcast on the kingdom’s DAB+ band, “Bahrain is willing to offer a free two-year trial period to introduce their respective FM channel program parallel to that DAB+ platform,” said Al Balooshi. His government has “already initiated the process to work with automotive importers regarding a requirement to have DAB+ including all vehicles imported in the kingdom.”

Toyota and Range Rover are working on adding DAB+ to their Bahrain-bound vehicles in 2024, while BMW is already importing vehicles in Bahrain with pre-installed DAB+ radios.

[Sign Up for Radio World’s SmartBrief Newsletter]

The post DAB+ Is Gaining Ground in Ghana, Indonesia and Bahrain appeared first on Radio World.

David Field

Audacy lost money again in the third quarter, quite a lot in fact — more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

Its operating loss for the three months was $281.7 million, compared to a loss of $151.9 million a year ago and almost as much as its net revenue for the quarter.

This extends a negative trend; in Q2 of this year the company posted an operating loss of $135.3 million, and in Q1 it lost $12.2 million.

In the quarter, Audacy reported a drop in net revenues to $299.2 million, down 5.6% compared to the same quarter of 2022. Local spot revenues were down 3%, national spot was down 15% and network advertising revenues were down 5%. Digital was up 3% to $64.8 million. (Competitor iHeartMedia also released financial numbers, including a decline in revenue; read that story.)

Audacy again did not hold a conference call for financial analysts. Had it done so, questions about its ongoing debt challenges would certainly have been part of the conversation.

The company is attempting to restructure $1.9 billion in debt and skipped an interest payment in October, according to financial news reports.

Audacy addressed it in a press release: “As noted in our recent public filings, we remain in constructive conversations with our lenders to recapitalize the company’s balance sheet to establish a strong financial footing and position the company to capitalize effectively on our growth opportunities.”

It said that “notwithstanding current challenges,” the company “has established a strong position as a scaled, leading multi-platform audio content and entertainment company distinguished by our exclusive premium content and top positions across the country’s largest markets.”

Audacy recently was unsuccessful at stopping the New York Stock Exchange from delisting its common stock.

In his statement about the Q3 report, David Field, its chairman, president and CEO, cited challenging ad conditions, particularly for national business.

“We gained revenue share in the quarter, most significantly in radio, in which we have achieved accelerating share growth since the start of the year. We also delivered solid gains in radio ratings share and digital audience metrics while making important progress on our tech roadmap and meaningful expense savings to improve our current and future business model.”

The company expects Q4 total revenues to decline by high single digits.

Audacy is one of the biggest U.S. radio owners, with about 230 stations in 46 markets.

The post Audacy Posts Big Operating Loss in Q3 appeared first on Radio World.

iHeartMedia sold off a significant number of tower assets in the past few months to improve its cash position.

In an earnings report for the third quarter, the company said that it sold 122 broadcast tower sites in September for net proceeds of $45.3 million, entering instead into long-term operating leases on most of them. iHeart says the proceeds will be used to pay down debt.

iHeart has engaged in a variety of “real estate reduction measures” to cut spending and raise cash. The tower site sales are more of the same.

Radio World emails to iHeartMedia representatives seeking more information on those asset sales were not returned. The name of the purchaser(s) was not disclosed in the announcement.

This isn’t the first time iHeart has sold off tower assets in recent memory. In 2014 Radio World reported that it sold more than 400 of its tower sites to Vertical Bridge for $400 million.

In Q3 the company posted a GAAP operating net loss of $8.9 million in the quarter, according to its filing. It had quarterly revenue of $953 million, down 3.6% compared to the same period last year. Things were a bit brighter when excluding Q3 political revenue, with overall revenue down 1%.

Broadcast revenue continues to show the drag of a soft national advertising climate. Total revenue for the Multiplatform division, which includes its approximately 850 radio stations, was $626 million, down 5% from last year. Excluding the impact of political, the division’s revenue decreased by 3.2%.

A closer look at the iHeart financial disclosure shows that broadcast radio had revenue of $455 million, a drop of 6.1% year over year. The radio network business continues to struggle, with revenue at $116 million, down 8.6%. But the company says it continues to see substantial upside in its broadcast assets in large part due to its scale and participation in “the migration to data and analytics infused planning, buying and selling of media.”

Digital audio revenue rose 5.2% YoY to $267 million. Podcast continues to be a growth engine, with revenue of $103 million, up 13%. Digital revenue excluding podcast was $165 million, up 1%. Revenue from digital audio accounted for 28% of third-quarter consolidated revenue.

The company reported that it has begun using artificial intelligence in its digital audio division for various purposes, including a cost-effective way to translate its English podcast library into foreign languages to allow for global expansion. It said AI also gives iHeart’s selling team enhanced tools to prospect and engage with advertisers for podcasting and broadcast. In addition, AI is being used to enhance podcast ad insertion.

Its third reportable division, the Audio & Media Services group, saw revenue decrease $15.8 million, or 20.3% YoY, primarily due to a decrease in political revenue. That division includes  RCS and Katz Media Group.

Expense management continues to be a focus, though expenses in the quarter increased. Consolidated direct operating expenses increased $8.3 million, or 2.2%, from a year before.

“The increase in direct operating expenses was primarily driven by higher music license fees, and higher variable content costs resulting from an increase in digital revenue, including third-party digital costs and profit-sharing costs,” according to a company statement. “The increase was partially offset by lower employee compensation as a result of cost savings initiatives.”

In Q3 the company also reported a cash balance and total available liquidity of $213 million and $625 million, respectively, as of the end of September. But its debt burden continues to overshadow the rest of its filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Total debt stood at $5.3 billion, though the company says there are no material debt maturities prior to 2026.

“While there continues to be lingering uncertainty in the advertising market driven by the current global geopolitical situation, as the advertising ecosystem continues to improve, combined with what is expected to be a record political advertising year in 2024, we believe that we will resume our growth story in terms of revenue and profitability,” said Rich Bressler, the president, COO and CFO of iHeartMedia.

iHeart expressed additional uncertainty about its Q4 outlook. It expects consolidated revenue to decline in the high-single digits.

The company had been predicting Q4 would be its best quarter of the year. While it is still on track for that, Chairman/CEO Bob Pittman said: “Q4 will be weaker than anticipated.”

[Related: “A Leasing Company Wants Your Tower, Should You Go for It?“]

The post iHeartMedia Sheds 122 More Tower Sites appeared first on Radio World.

NEW YORK — The National Women’s Soccer League is poised to raise its profile in a significant way come 2024, thanks to what is being hailed as “landmark agreements” for its domestic media distribution.

A four-year contract with a quartet of partners have been finalized, and Scripps Sports is one of the winners.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

In December 2022, RBR+TVBR readers first learned of the desire of a radio station licensee to retire at year’s end. A local buyer was sought, so the stations wouldn’t be shut down with their respective licenses surrendered to the FCC.

Eleven months later, paperwork has been filed for regulatory approval with the Commission signaling Janet Brown has found a buyer for the assets of Lake Powell Communications.

KPGE-AM 1340 and K252FG at 98.3 MHz, which air a Country format, and KXAZ-FM 93.3 in Page, Ariz., along with K261BX at 100.1 MHz, are being sold to Vance Barbee‘s Southwest Broadcasting.

A $150,000 purchase price has been agreed to, with a $10,000 deposit made by the buyer. A total of $50,000 will then be delivered at closing, at which time a $90,000 Promissory Note will be initiated.

An LMA agreement has been executed that will allow Barbee to begin operating the stations ahead of closing.

Barbee holds attributable interest in Estrella Broadcasting, which in May agreed to sell the rights to a future Arizona FM. He is also the equity interest holder in New Star Broadcasting, which in August 2020 agreed to acquire two FMs serving Show Low, Ariz.

The broadcast home of a hyperlocal television operation branded as “Blab TV,” which serves the Fort Walton Beach-Destin, Fla., area in addition to counties in Alabama north of the Florida state line, will need to pay a fine for a delinquency tied to the filing of issues/programs lists associated with the UHF property.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)