Radio+Television Business Report

He joined Fox Corporation in 2019 as Executive Vice President and Chief Litigation Counsel.

Now, he will oversee the company’s legal function as Claudia Teran remains Executive VP and Corporate General Counsel, as well as General Counsel of FOX Sports.

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Its Twitter feed brags that it is “the most engaging college in the nation by The Wall Street Journal, 5 years in a row!”

Soon, however, it will be minus a medium used since 1968 “to proclaim God’s Word to generations of listeners.”

That’s because its owner, a university in Iowa, is selling the 100kw Class C1 facility.

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A new NBCUniversal event that promised to “unite the power of the media and entertainment industry with the solutions focus of a developer conference” went off without a virtual hitch on Monday morning.

And, as hyped since early February, the global ONE21 gathering offered marketers a showcase of the insights, stories, technology and data into how the entire Comcast NBCUniversal Sky family sees commerce shaping the connection between content and advertising.

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Prior to mid-February, it would have been a major market coup for a Talk station in need of a boost. Today, it only begs the question of why, and for how long, the Talk station has committed to a show with an expiry date.

The Rush Limbaugh Show, starting today, is now heard on a Talk station in the biggest city in the U.S. by square miles. It was previously heard on a crosstown News/Talker that has prepared for life without Rush.

Has iHeart or program syndicator Premiere Networks?

Now in the noon to 3pm time slot on WBOB-AM 600 in Jacksonville, a 50kw Class B blowtorch by day from 2 towers with 9.7kw at night from five towers is The Rush Limbaugh Show.

The AM’s signal stretches from Gainesville up past Savannah, Ga., and to much of the Charleston, S.C., market. But it boasts an FM translator — W266CX at 100.1 MHz in southeast Jacksonville — that gives WBOB all-important MHz coverage.

The program as today continues on with pre-recorded snippets of the late Rush Limbaugh, with Brett Winterble, Todd Herman and Ken Matthews taking turns setting up the content. Premiere has indicated this will continue until a transition to a new offering to its affiliates.

For Cox Media Group‘s WOKV-FM, the dominant spoken word FM along Florida’s First Coast, that wasn’t good enough.

Local personality Mark Kaye, who 4 1/2 years ago shared with RBR+TVBR five reasons why Snapchat matters for Radio, officially replaced Limbaugh’s program by shifting to the Noon-3pm time slot on WOKV today (3/22).

Kaye had been previously hosting the 10am-Noon shift on WOKV, following his morning co-host role on Cox Top 40 sibling WAPE-FM. Kaye is no longer heard on the pop music station.

With Cox’s decision to move on from the late Limbaugh, WBOB had an opportunity. With local market rights to the show now available, should it benefit from the now-deceased host as long as it can?

The answer for PD Gary Walsh and WBOB owner Chesapeake-Portsmouth Broadcasting Corp. was a definitive “yes.”

“Rush Limbaugh is a pioneering force in broadcasting,” said WBOB GM Jonathan McClellan. “He redefined talk radio and shaped the conservative political message for our country. We value the future of his legacy, and we believe his talented team will
drive the momentum of the movement far into the future. We welcome this monumental
voice.”

To bring Limbaugh to WBOB, The Dennis Prager Show was bumped.

Thus, WBOB has elected to replace a living Talk host’s program with that of a deceased one … for now. What’s on the table for WBOB could very well involve what Premiere decides to offer once it fully moves on from Limbaugh.

WBOB’s owner, Chesapeake-Portsmouth, is led by Nancy Epperson. She has family ties to Salem Media Group. But the lone involvement Salem has with WBOB is as a syndicated programming source. Following Limbaugh, America First with Sebastian Gorka, syndicated by Salem, airs in the 3pm-6pm slot. Mornings at WBOB are helmed by veteran local talk host and journalist Ed Dean.

While WBOB has elected to invest in Limbaugh’s legacy as a path for growth, Cumulus Media‘s rival to Premiere Networks, Westwood One, is in attack mode. On May 24, The Dan Bongino Show will be launched as a Noon-3pm Eastern offering. And, the show will air in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., where WMAL-FM has been a key bastion for conservative Talk in the Nation’s Capital.

PORTLAND, ORE. — A Nexstar Media Group TV station has launched its first podcast.

It’s part of a bigger plan to provide those in the Pacific Northwest’s second-largest market a local look at the six things they need to know … that they may not get from the abundance of full-power and low-power radio stations or the Oregonian newspaper as they start their day.

Introducing The Daily 6 from KOIN-6, the CBS affiliate serving Portland.

It marks the station’s first daily podcast, and will be released every morning at 7:15am Pacific.

The podcast is part of the KOIN Podcast Network. It’s a hub for on-demand weather reports and Beyond the Headlines reports, which have appeared sporadically as part of the beta test of the network.

The reports are audio-focused. One is hosted by Ian Costello.

Listening to the podcasts can be done from KOIN’s website or via popular platforms including Apple Podcasts, GooglePlay, Spotify, Stitcher and Podbean.

— Joshua Dudley

The Leon Black leadership era at the company that holds a majority stake in Cox Media Group has abruptly come to an end.

Nearly eight weeks after a Apollo Global Management “Conflicts Committee” and its board of directors completed a previously announced independent review of its Chairman and CEO’s previous professional relationship with Jeffrey Epstein — the convicted sex offender tied to the trafficking of minors who died in prison, Black has officially abdicated the top role at Apollo.

It comes several months ahead of the transition plan released in January.

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FORT MYERS, FLA. — The owner of the CBS affiliate serving Southwest Florida, perhaps the last market in the U.S. where three of the Big Four network affiliates are owned by independent broadcasters, has just signed a new agreement for “industry-leading local TV measurement currency” across its stations in the market.

The deal isn’t with Nielsen.

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FORT LAUDERDALE — Comscore’s five-year stock trend is far from pretty.

Two years ago, SCOR was suddenly slipping from a $20 price range; it started 2017 in the mid-$33 range. By August 2019, Comscore shares were at $1.86.

Today, they start the week at $3.83 in pre-market trading. For CEO Bill Livek believes they’re seriously undervalued.

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So far in 2021, the biggest campaign — by a wide margin — using spot cable is that of Discovery, to promote the launch of its much-ballyhooed Discovery+ over-the-top platform.

For the week ending March 21, No. 2 GEICO’s play count on ads was nearly half of that seen by Discovery.

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There’s some exciting activity being seen at spot television as the final days of Q1 2021 are upon us.

Automotive advertising can been seen. What’s intriguing is what brand is the leader.

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The gap between rival auto insurance specialists widened last week at Spot Radio, the latest Media Monitors Spot Ten Radio report shows.

In fact, the leader in the category — the new leader for all of spot radio — outpaced GEICO by more than 20,000 spot plays.

As shown below, Progressive is No. 1 with 53,621 plays as GEICO finishes the week at No. 7 (including iHeart promotional campaigns).

The other activity of note involves Indeed, while Babbel is No. 3 among fully-paid advertiser efforts.

A 70-year old owner of a radio station serving a rural portion of Western Pennsylvania to the southeast of Pittsburgh on November 16, 2020 was placed on a three-year “restricted probation” for a series of criminal sexual acts at a sentencing hearing that could save him from a FCC license revocation hearing.

This included wearing an electronic monitor for a four-month period, per the judgment, which left the plaintiff in the case upset and less than satisfied with the verdict.

Now, the radio station owner and morning host of this FM has returned to the airwaves of this Keystone State property, generating new controversy in the region.

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LOS ANGELES — The News Director for TEGNA-owned KING-5 in Seattle-Tacoma, who spent 11 years in news at KPIX-5 in San Francisco before moving to Washington state in 2018, is heading to Nexstar Media Group‘s L.A. giant — a cornerstone of the former Tribune Broadcasting.

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A key advertising theme has emerged in the first two months of 2021: household cleaning supplies.

That’s why the parent company of such brands as Tide, Charmin, Crest, Bounty and Always is again the No. 1 parent advertiser on local cable, radio and broadcast TV, Media Monitors data show.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Prominent telecommunications, media, and technology law firm Fletcher Heald & Hildreth has elected a new Member of the firm. It’s an active litigator who first joined the firm in January 2020 and continued to have a substantial hearing and deposition schedule — remotely — through the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The future of television arrived Thursday in Western New York, as five local television stations, owned by The E.W. Scripps Co., TEGNA, Sinclair Broadcast Group, and Nexstar Media Group, are the latest in the U.S. to begin broadcasting with NEXTGEN TV.

For those across Lake Ontario in Toronto, a taste of ATSC 3.0-powered television is that much closer to fruition.

With a promise of improved audio and video for consumers and the benefit of data services for TV station licensees, the stations saw planning and rollout of NEXTGEN TV coordinated by BitPath.

While competitors, the participating stations worked together to ensure that current programming remains available to all viewers, regardless of whether their television service is provided over-the air or by a cable or satellite company.

The stations now using NEXTGEN TV delivery are WGRZ-2, WIVB-4, WKBW-7, and Sinclair dup WUTV-29 and WNYO-49.

Those stations, with the exception of WNYO, can be viewed across much of Southern Ontario, including the GTA, where Rogers includes WGRZ, WIVB, WKBW and WUTV as part of its local channel lineup.

As cord-cutting began to rapidly increase in recent years, Wall Street became increasingly focused on looming National Football League television rights negotiations.

Why? As MoffettNathanson Senior Analyst Michael Nathanson points out, “the singular importance of this sport on the Pay TV eco-system” is a vitally important topic to flush out.

With Thursday’s announcement that the NFL has handed exclusive rights for Thursday Night Football match-ups to Amazon, Nathanson has some “significant takeways” that need to be discussed.

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In 1974, Steven C. Roberts teamed up with his brother, Michael, in creating a minority-owned business consulting and construction management firm headquartered in St. Louis. Fifteen years later, they expanded beyond commercial real estate investments with the creation of a broadcast media operation, serving the biggest city in Mississippi.

Now, Roberts is ready to demonstrate how a much-debated new technology the FCC could soon authorize for voluntary use by an FM radio station can aid a minority or women-owned station.

A ZoneCasting demonstration is on track for “The Beat of the Capitol.”

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After amassing a formidable stable of low-power and full-power television properties between the first quarter of 2017 and third quarter 2019, HC2 Holdings appears to be in the midst of a significant asset paring.

The company now led by Chief Executive Officer Wayne Barr Jr. has signed off on its fourth divestment deal since the start of 2021.

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The nation’s No. 1 audio media company, iHeartMedia, has made another notable move in the podcasting arena. Three new shows will shine a light on the “curious tales, historical oddities and stranger-than-fiction true stories that are often left out of history books.”

“We are excited to share our newest slate of iHeartRadio Original Podcasts focused on the curious true stories left out of history books,” said Jason English, Lead Executive Producer of iHeartRadio Original Podcasts. “This spring you can spend time with the Black cowboys who found freedom on the high plains after the Civil War; get a first-person account of the most insane government project in American history; and meet desperate World War I veterans who camped outside the White House for months during the Great Depression.”

The first historical podcast in the slate, “Black Cowboys,” available now, tells the story of what freedom looked like for Black Americans after the Civil War. The podcast shares a more honest version of the settling of the Wild West and shines a light on the one-in-four cowboys who were Black. Upcoming podcasts include “Operation Midnight Climax,” which details the stranger-than-fiction events that took place at a CIA-run brothel in the 1950s; “The White House Coup,” which chronicles a club of powerful Wall Street millionaires in a plot to overthrow President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR); and other little-known odd histories of historical figures and events.

New and upcoming iHeartRadio Podcast Originals include “Operation Midnight Climax,” just launched, and “The White House Coup,” coming in April.