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Audacy Inc. said it has acquired “an exclusive, perpetual license” to WideOrbit’s digital audio streaming technology and the related assets and operations of WO Streaming.

It will operate the business under the name Amperwave.

“This acquisition gives Audacy control of its product roadmap to deliver enhanced consumer-facing streaming features for its 170 million monthly listeners,” the media company stated in the announcement, which was made by Chairman/President/CEO David Field.

WO Streaming is a cloud-based distribution and monetization platform for live and on-demand audio streams. Field said the acquisition is a complement to Audacy’s existing investments in digital audio.

In this deal, Audacy is purchasing technology and the assets and operations of WO Streaming, which is a separate business unit within WideOrbit. WO has other products including radio automation, traffic, business intelligence and sales services that are not involved in this transaction.

Audacy will operate WO Streaming under the name AmperWave.

“The entire WO Streaming team, led by John Morris, SVP Streaming, has joined Audacy,” it stated. A spokesperson declined to say how many people that entails.

The post Audacy Acquires WideOrbit’s Streaming Business appeared first on Radio World.

As announced in May, Gray Television has agreed to acquire Meredith Local Media. One month later, after an unsolicited counteroffer emerged, Gray sweetened its deal, agreeing to pay $2.825 billion in cash.

Now, in order for Gray to satisfy terms that call for Meredith Corporation shareholders to receive $16.99 per share in cash and 1-for-1 equity share in post-close Meredith, it is amending and restating its senior credit facility while concurrently seeking an additional incremental term loan valued at $1.5 billion.

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A user screen on BE’s AudioVAULT V11.

Broadcast Electronics introduced its first AudioVAULT automation system in 1989. The company is now part of the Elenos Group.

Bob Demuth is business development manager, studio systems. 

RW: What trends in automation stand out for you?

Demuth: Automation suppliers have two kinds of clients: larger enterprise clients and smaller, more mom-and-pop clients. Both want the ability to do more with fewer people, to empower the staff they have to do as much as they can and from anywhere. 

Even mom-and-pops might have a station in Keokuk, Iowa, and a station in Moline, Ill. They aren’t iHeart or Beasley but they still have multisite operations, and they’re looking to maximize their efficiency and labor force. 

Our development is geared as much as possible to provide remote voicetrack capability, remote production capability, remote scheduling capability, which might be from home or another location. 

RW: When you’re sitting down with somebody who’s considering a system and they say “Well, I hear I need to be thinking about the cloud,” how does that conversation go?

Demuth: I’m in development and I also run international sales for BE, so I get both sides of this. 

Nobody wants all their eggs in a cloud basket. That’s the overwhelming response that I get.

They’re happy to have the cloud as a backup, as a storage or transfer point for audio, but nobody wants their final playout audio coming from the cloud at this point.

This is a personal opinion, but the next war is not going to be bombs and missiles, it’s going to be an attack on infrastructure. And the major infrastructure that we all use every minute of every day is the internet. 

Playout from the cloud is only as good as that connectivity. If that goes away, what do you do? 

So most of my customers look at the cloud as more of a backup and a transfer medium rather than a primary playout source.

I’m an old-school radio engineer, I would rather invest my time and money with a playout system at my transmitter site that’s fully linked. If I lose my connectivity, whether it’s IP connectivity or traditional microwave, at least I have something that’s still running on its own. 

We’re working now on one of the largest AudioVAULT projects BE has ever done, a major customer that runs a couple of dozen networks. They’re uplinked, streamed and delivered via set-top boxes around the world.

One of their design criteria was that we did not depend on their corporate VPN for the distribution of the audio. This is a large company with a lot of resources and some of the best connectivity, but they are not prepared to make their primary, or even backup, broadcast functions dependent on that connectivity.

This article is excerpted from the ebook “Automation: The Next Phase.” Click the cover to read it.

I know National Radio Systems Committee working groups are looking for a cloud-based solution for HD Radio, a solution that takes the hardware out of it and puts the software on the cloud for encoding of HD1, HD2 etc., and centralizing it. But it seems to be driven by the larger corporate broadcaster companies more than the average broadcaster.

Currently our cloud offering is about transferring assets via the cloud, with automatic or on-demand uploading, storing and transferring, making those assets available across an organization’ s locations. We will be coming out with a cloud-based playout system for backup use later this year. There is no technical reason this couldn’t be used for on-air if there is enough internet bandwidth available for the desired audio quality. But I do not see many people looking for that as their primary cloud source.

RW: Do you see more joint projects happening, for instance between automation and the AoIP network?

Demuth: Absolutely. We need to be doing more than just pumping out automation over AoIP, meaning playing audio over a WheatNet, Livewire or Dante audio driver. We need more of an integrated functionality with console providers.

Why don’t we see more joint development? Some of us try to cooperate, but if a company like Telos Alliance decides to do joint development with BE, how do they deal with RCS or with WideOrbit? Will Wheatstone continue to cooperate and develop with BE?  

Pick one and you alienate the other. That’s the biggest block to all working together is our natural, competitive nature. That, and how do we deal with proprietary information and “trade secrets.”

Yet there is more going on than some engineers might realize. For instance, we offer complete remote control capability with both Axia Livewire and WheatNet, we’re doing more than just sending AoIP out of our playout system and plugging it into an Ethernet switch. We’re also able to send control commands to control surfaces, whether they’re virtual or hardware consoles, whether it’s Axia or Wheatstone or Lawo.

RW: Engineers need to know about a supplier’s tech support.

Demuth: We have a team of experienced customer service people, some who’ve worked there since the beginning of AudioVAULT. As a customer I bought my first AudioVAULT around 1995. We have had some people working since 1990. There’s experience, accessibility, knowledge, also IT skills. 

We all depend on the operating system, and if the operating system has issues, or if the local installation has issues, we have to be able to identify those and point the engineer in the right direction and not just kiss it off and say, “Hey, that’s your network switch, you’ve got too much traffic.” We have to be able to help them troubleshoot it without fixing their IT issues for them.

We are fully manned in Quincy, Ill., 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central time. Outside of those hours, we have a callback system and try to respond to any emergency call after-hours within 15 minutes. Our average callback is between 15 and 30 minutes. 

I used to run engineering for Beasley Broadcast Group from 1990 to 2007. I chose AudioVAULT back in 1990 and I never regretted it.

RW: What other factors should buyers be considering?

Demuth: If I take my sales and development hats off and go back to my engineering hat, the question is reliability and redundancy. 

Is your audio stored in multiple places? What happens if you lose one of those places? Can you get seamless continuity of broadcast operations from this system? 

There will always be hardware failures; how does the automation system deal with those failures and provide the broadcaster with rock-solid, reliable playout no matter what happens?

Obviously we can’t control power, e can’t control connectivity; that’s the customer’s responsibility. But assuming they can provide continuous power and provide continuous connectivity, how do we keep continuous audio play?

AudioVAULT offers the ability to store audio on separate servers. So if Server A dies, Server B is reading ahead on that same, or the cloud engine is reading ahead on that Server B. And you can reboot Server A and there’s not even a pop or a click, when Server B picks up. 

That’s the kind of system you want. If your main playout engine fails, you want not to have to use a silence sensor to switch over to a backup playout engine that’s playing within a half a song of your main one. Ideally you want to go seamlessly to the backup playout system, without any interruption in programming, so that your listener wouldn’t even notice; that’s what AudioVAULT provides. 

You want tools to maintain and operate your system from anywhere. To do production, to do scheduling, to do cloud control, automation control and maintenance from anywhere.

This would be the same if I’m a mom-and-pop or if I’m iHeart.

I’m a very small part-owner of two little radio stations in Aspen, Colo., and I chose AudioVAULT back in in 2005. We have a main system in the studio room, a backup system in the studio room and a tertiary system at the transmitter site, which is at a 10,000-foot elevation.

In the winter, the only way to get there was with a Sno-Cat. I wanted a system that could give me that main, give me that backup and give me that tertiary system, and a transmitter in case I lose all connectivity and can’t get up there for 72 hours or whatever. As long as I can send my logs out 72 hours in advance or I could send them out seven days in advance and I’m still on the air. That’s what I want.

RW: One engineer said about automation, “If I can’t install it or fix it, maybe I shouldn’t have it.”

Demuth: That’s just guys who don’t understand their own limitations and the difference between hardware and IT, software-based, solutions. Hardware is easy to self-install, but software requires specific configuration and integration with IT infrastructure.  There is too much risk that an engineer will miss something that will compromise the reliability of the system. 

You want the automation supplier to install the system and configure it and teach you how to do it properly. You don’t want someone who’s not familiar with the software to be doing this on their own. 

You want them to be integrally involved with the installation, whether it’s done remotely or on-site; there’s no substitute for the on-site engineer and production people. But all of this stuff is too complex for someone to take a piece of software, run “install” and expect to use it and get the best results. 

RW: Virtualization?

Demuth: Virtualization is really important to larger customers because it allows them to reduce their hardware profile. For the larger systems that I’m putting in — I’m not going to say they’re exclusively virtual, but virtualization is the future of computing. 

It raises some challenges, because if you’ve got four virtual servers on one piece of hardware, you only have one video output. How do you deal with some of interface challenges? Your software has to work a little differently. But I believe it is not only the wave of the future, it is the current best practice for larger operations.

RW: Another engineer told me, “I don’t like it when suppliers go back to the well all the time with upsells.”

Demuth: AudioVAULT is all-inclusive software. You buy a license and you get all of our tools. 

There are some options that are add-ons, but we are upfront about them. An example is our remote access stuff. It requires a separate gateway server, because if you’re going to open up your automation system to the internet, which is what you have to do to remote voice track and remotely operate, you need an interface sitting on a firewall. 

So the internet traffic talks to the gateway server, and then the gateway server talks to the automation system, so the outside world can’t get to your automation system. 

Another example are our cloud-based tools. They are extras, because not everybody wants those functions, but that’s not an upsell. We’re straight about that from day one, we don’t hide anything.

But we don’t sell the production screen separate from the import screen, separate from the automation screen, etc. It’s a single, all-inclusive, license for all normal station functions. 

RW: And what about low-cost or free software that’s out there?

Demuth: What is your tolerance for being off the air? That’s the answer to these cheap automation systems. 

The post BE’s Demuth: Reliability and Redundancy Are Crucial appeared first on Radio World.

Larry Langford

A young chief engineer who knew a lot more about computers than transmitters and analog audio systems recently asked me for help in tracking down on-air distortion that had affected his mom-and-pop station for some time.

The station did have on-air distortion. It was not terrible, just bad enough to notice, though the longer you listened, the more it irritated — a real turnoff for Time Spent Listening.

It sounded to me a bit like the audio was going through an amp with bad power supply filters, and it had a raspy edge on voice. But identifying the source of the problem by ear was difficult.

This was an AM station that had an FM translator mounted on the hot tower, a situation that can present its own set of challenges. The distortion was evident on the FM. But a critical listen revealed that it was present on AM as well!

This pretty much ruled out my thought that high RF at the tower was being rectified on the audio input to the translator and showing up as audio distortion. So it was time to take a look at the audio chain.

Clamp!

Pretty straightforward: Program was being delivered from the studio miles away, with digital uncompressed audio sent over fiber. It sounded good going in, and it sounded good coming out. Yet the on-air product definitely was distorted.

The audio was fed to the FM via a buried 1,000-foot cable to the tower. That line was driven by a pair of old super-quality Western Electric 111C repeat coils set up for 600 ohms in and 600 ohm line out with center tap grounded — the perfect way to send audio in an RF field. This arrangement no doubt had been set up by a previous chief who knew the magic of repeat coils for long lines.

Audio from the codec was connected to a Broadcast Tools switcher, then to the program line that fed the AM processors and the FM line to the tower.

I grabbed a handheld oscilloscope — something the young chief had never seen — and pulled the output connector from the switcher. I gave it a look on the scope with a 600-ohm load, and it showed nice clean peaks at about +8 dBm — looked good, sounded good.

I plugged it back in and bridged the line with the scope. Aha! The scope showed clipping with the peak levels closer to +3 dBm and a definite ceiling.

There was trouble here, but why?

Audio level on the coils was well under the +30 dBm (1 watt) design limit for the rugged four-pound 111Cs.

Still searching for the problem, I spotted a couple of black boxes where the cable leaves the building. These were Grommes~Precision TLS lightning suppressors.

When I looked up their data sheet, things started to make sense.

The TLS contains multiple stages of lightning protection. This unit is designed for protection of audio paging circuits with an RMS audio level of 1 volt. On a 600-ohm line, 0 dBm (1 milliwatt) is .774 volts, so with a level of +8 dBm (1.94 volts) the line level was crossing the clamp point for the TLS.

While the spec sheet shows a switching to ground level of 25 volts, the unit starts clamping just over one volt.

Us old guys

While finding this problem was a bit of a challenge, fixing it was a snap. With the drive to the line reduced to –3 dBm (.5 volts) on the PPM meter, things sounded great.

Another solution would have been replacing the TLS units with LLS models that have a pass rating of 6 volts (17 dBm), which is better suited for broadcast levels. But we work with what we have.

Now you might ask, why did the AM sound bad if the problem was on the FM stereo pair?

The Broadcast Tools switcher derives its mono output (used by the AM) by passive combining of L+R internally from the stereo output. So if the stereo line gets clamped, so does the mono line!

I suggested and installed a set of 1000-ohm buildout resisters on the output of the switcher, the better to isolate the FM feed, just as a precaution. With the 111C coils set up for center tap ground, the TLS might not have been needed at all; but better too much protection than not enough.

With the elimination of the distortion, the station was able to process a bit harder, increasing the loudness while improving the sound quality — a win-win for sure.

While I was there I couldn’t resist teaching my young friend to reduce the AM modulation peaks from 130 percent positive (yikes!) 100 percent negative, to about 90 percent symmetrical. He heard the difference and agreed to keep it that way.

The takeaway here is simple: Read spec sheets, and know how adding devices will affect your overall sound.

My assist call also underlined a growing problem in broadcasting. “Us old guys” know analog audio and issues peculiar to AM. The new “engineers” are not getting that knowledge, learning only about digital and computer networks. I hate to say it, but institutional knowledge is dying as more of us become silent keys.

Solution? Us old guys need to take every opportunity to reach one, teach one.

The author is chief engineer and owner of WGTO Cassopolis, Mich., and W246DV South Bend, Ind. Read more of his past articles.

Share your own tech tips or stories about how you solved a problem. Write to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Distortion Detective: The Case of the Irritating Audio appeared first on Radio World.

The pages of RW Engineering Extra are where the finest engineers hang out! Engineers like Stephen Lockwood, Cris Alexander, Jeff Keith and Jeff Welton, whose latest stories you’ll find here.

The FCC recently adopted new rules regarding RF human exposure limits. Lockwood, president of Hatfield & Dawson Consulting Engineers, discusses what radio engineers should know about them.

Keith of Wheatstone writes that there are many tools available to help quantify the performance on your air chain. Good Engineering Practice doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.

Alexander reminds us not to overlook the possible simple solution when we’re confronted with a problem. And Jeff Welton explains the beauties of ferrite toroids.

Read it here.

The post Inside the Oct. 20, 2021 Issue of RW Engineering Extra appeared first on Radio World.

An AM/FM combo, along with an FM translator, serving a small Ohio municipality is being spun.

That could explain the buzzards flying around the building, if you will.

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License Revocation Proceeding

From our People News page: Katz Media Group promoted Scott Porretti to president of Katz Digital Audio, a newly created position. He had been executive vice president.

“Porretti, a veteran of Katz, who is uniquely qualified for his expanded role, will continue to oversee all Katz Digital Audio offerings, manage relationships with an expansive roster of publishing and technology partners, and further the growth of podcasting and programmatic digital audio on behalf of current and new partners,” the organization announced.

Porretti has held several management positions there including senior vice president of Katz Radio Group and vice president manager of the Katz New York office.  In 2014, he was named senior vice president of Katz Digital and in 2018 was promoted to executive vice president of Katz Digital.

It said he led its digital team in making “substantial strides” to strengthen its internal technology and systems, and that he is spearheading the rollout of Katz Intelligence Manager, a proprietary audience system for the digital audio marketplace.

He will continue to report to Mark Gray, CEO of Katz Media Group.

Gray highlighted Porretti’s audio industry knowledge, team leadership style and “extraordinary vision in this marketplace.”

The post Porretti Is Named President of Katz Digital Audio appeared first on Radio World.

“After a lighter-than-normal content slate in Q1 and Q2 due to COVID-related production delays in 2020, we are seeing the positive effects of a stronger slate in the second half of the year.”

That’s the collective assessment of Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings, CFO Spence Neumann, COO and Chief Product Officer Greg Peters, VP of Investor Relatons/Corporate Development Spencer Wang, as the OTT giant released its third-quarter earnings report following Tuesday’s Closing Bell on Wall Street.

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Spotify said its Megaphone podcasting platform is now up and running in Germany, Spain, Italy and France.

The company said podcast listening in Europe now reaches 20 to 30% of internet users in those markets. It cited a report from eMarketer. Further, it said Euro podcast ad spending is expected to grow more than 50% by 2023, according to IAB Europe.

[Related: “Spotify Expands Audience Network”]

Megaphone launched six years ago and was acquired by Spotify less than a year ago.

Spotify said about 30% of the top 200 shows on Spotify and on Apple are hosted on Megaphone.

The platform provides tools for creating, measuring and monetizing podcasts.

The post Spotify Megaphone Is Open in Four Euro Countries appeared first on Radio World.

What is the role social communities play in influencing purchase decisions?

WARC, in partnership with TikTok and Publicis Groupe, came together for a just-released study that helps answer that question. Their work outlines what they say is “the huge potential for brands to engage with audiences and increase unplanned purchases by narrowing the funnel between product discovery and purchase.”

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Starting Monday (10/25), a pair of ABC affiliates in the Lone Star State owned by The E.W. Scripps Company will have a new VP/GM.

It’s an individual whose most recent TV industry role was as President/GM of the NBCUniversal-owned Telemundo affiliate serving Denver.

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There are several new social media accounts at the Federal Communications Commission. This is not in itself unusual, but these accounts have been set up by the FCC Office of Inspector General.

Its goal: “to aid in our mission of detecting and preventing fraud, waste and abuse, and promoting economy, efficiency and effectiveness in the operations of the FCC.”

It now has a presence on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The first tweets on the OIG Twitter account were sent in late July. The current inspector general is David Hunt.

In a statement, the FCC OIG noted that it is a small office with fewer than 50 full-time employees that “nonetheless is responsible for the oversight of FCC operations and billions of dollars in funds administered through various FCC programs.”

It said recent Covid-19 relief legislation provided additional billions of dollars in funding to the FCC.

“With the expectation that some of these emergency appropriations may become permanent, our need for assistance from the public to help us ensure this money is appropriately disbursed, is at an all-time high.”

The office said it hopes to increase its visibility of our office through social media, expecting that people or entities with helpful information “will come forward to assist us in furthering our mission.”

The OIG encourages people to call 888-863-2244 or 202-418-0473 or email hotline@fcc.gov if they suspect FCC-related fraud, waste or abuse.

The post FCC Inspector General Launches Social Accounts appeared first on Radio World.

Ed Woloszyn, the General Manager of dual CBS/Fox affiliate KEYC-12 in Mankato, Minn., recently died following a brief cancer fight.

Now, Gray Television has chosen the individual who will take over the station’s leadership role. It’s a woman who has been News Director for a former Quincy Media, Inc., property in Rochester, Minn.

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Shown is a 250-pound pumpkin with the hand-painted face of show host Dave Smiley.

Turkeys famously may not be able to fly. But pumpkins certainly can’t, and that means there will be a big SPLAT on Wednesday morning in Indianapolis.

Actually three big splats. The “Smiley Morning Show” on Cumulus station 99.5 WZPL(FM) will observe its 19th Smiley Pumpkin Drop by dropping three pumpkins of varying weights from hundreds of feet onto concrete.

One of the pumpkins weights 1,459 pounds; the station will also drop a 250-pounder and a 400-pounder.

“The smallest pumpkin will be painted with ‘Smiley Morning Show’ host Dave Smiley’s face on it,” the station announced.

“The largest pumpkin will be painted live onsite by artist Gavin Goode. Listeners will determine what will be painted on the pumpkin. So far, listeners have been suggesting a COVID-19 molecule.”

The event is free, and the station is inviting anyone, particularly families, to attend in or out of costume.

The show airs 6 to 10 a.m. on Wednesday at The Shops at Perry Crossing in Plainfield, Ind., with the three drops taking place between 8 and 8:35 a.m.

The post Indianapolis Station Readies Pumpkin Drop appeared first on Radio World.

Comrex has introduced a service that delivers conferenced audio from multiple contributors to the company’s hardware codecs in high quality.

Called Gagl, the service is cloud-based and allows one to five users to send and receive audio from computers and smartphones.

“Participants can connect and send audio by simply clicking a link using any common web browser,” the company announced. “Their audio is conferenced (if there’s more than one user), and delivered to a Comrex hardware codec such as ACCESS or BRIC-Link II. All participants can hear other participants, and the codec can send audio back to them.”

A promotional diagram from Comrex for the new Gagl service.

Comrex says Gagl could be used as the hub for a round-robin reporting program or for a “morning zoo” radio show to support multiple simultaneous connections at once.

“Because it offers low latency, it’s appropriate for call-in talk radio. Gagl could also be used to allow a single contributor to connect back to the studio from a computer or smartphone.”

The service will be available by the end of the year.

Comrex said the system is easy for users of any level of technical expertise to use and that the service provides stable connections with limited bandwidth.

“Gagl uses the Opus audio encoder, with a bit rate that delivers both voice and music in excellent quality. Gagl also delivers audio directly to a Comrex codec with all the stability enhancements, pro-grade audio connections, and features that hardware codecs provide.”

 

The post Comrex Introduces Gagl appeared first on Radio World.

America’s Public Television Stations is cheering the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee Chair for recommending $565 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for Fiscal Year 2024.

This chairman’s mark, courtesy of Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), will likely serve as the basis for negotiations with the House of Representatives on the final appropriations bills. The U.S. House of Representatives has already approved the same $565 million for CPB in the two-year advance funding for FY 2024.

In addition, the draft Senate bill providing appropriations for Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies also includes $30 million for Ready To Learn and $20 million for public broadcasting interconnection.

“This is an important day for public television,” said Patrick Butler, president and CEO of America’s Public Television Stations. “We lost $100 million in purchasing power over 10 years of flat federal funding, and this chairman’s mark would restore much of that loss — and with it our ability to provide the educational services, the public safety communications, the civic literacy and the beloved programming which millions of Americans need and value.”

Butler adds that APTS is also appreciative of the $20 million in FY 2022 for the annual station interconnection account, and for $30 million allocated for Ready To Learn, a competitive grant program at the Department of Education that supports the creation and distribution of educational media content to millions of children across America.

In mid-March, the septuagenarian owner of a Class A radio station serving a rural portion of Western Pennsylvania returned to the airwaves after a short absence. His return was controversial: on November 16, 2020 this individual was placed on a three-year “restricted probation” for a series of criminal sexual acts at a sentencing hearing that most believed would save him from a FCC license revocation hearing.

Seven months later, the Chief of the Commission’s Media Bureau has spoken up. Roger Wahl is on notice that he could loose control of WQZS-FM in Meyersdale, Pa., as a Hearing Designation Order has been sent to his attention.

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When Gordon Borrell, the respected local ad trend expert who serves as CEO of Borrell Associates, sits down with four top radio and television executives at Forecast 2022, their  perspectives, projections and visions for the broadcast industry will likely be shared. A lively discussion of broadcast media’s opportunities, digital competitors and regulatory challenges is also expected.

What will they say? You won’t be able to read it here, or anywhere else, as it is an exclusive no-press session at Forecast 2022.

To hear what Borrell and his panelists have to share, you have to be in New York.

No press coverage. No recordings. Full freedom to express their thoughts with no cameras or microphones.

Who’s on the panel?

Caroline Beasley
CEO
Beasley Media Group Brian Lawlor
President/Local Media
The E.W. Scripps Company

 

Debra OConnell
President of Networks
Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution Bill Wilson
CEO
Townsquare Media

 

Don’t miss out on hearing what these top leaders have to say — along with the chance to see them face-to-face.

We invite you to register NOW to secure your seat at Forecast 2022.

 

Check out the Full Agenda Here.
Forecast 2022 is set for The Harvard Club in New York on Tuesday, November 16.

Register NOW.

Katz Media Group has elevated a veteran of the media sales organization to the role of Katz Digital Audio president.

Taking the new post: Scott Porretti. He will continue to report to CEO Mark Gray.

Porretti has been within Katz Digital for several years, rising from SVP to EVP of Katz Digital after four years in May 2018. He’s also been a SVP of Katz Radio Group, overseeing a sales team comprised of more than 250 people working across seven sales divisions.

At Katz, Porretti is spearheading the rollout of the Katz Intelligence Manager (KIM), described by the company as “a state-of-the-art proprietary audience technology for the digital audio marketplace.”

Gray said, “Scott’s in-depth knowledge and vast background in developing audio solutions across a variety of platforms has helped Katz grow its diverse digital offerings and proprietary technologies. Scott’s effective team leadership style, and his extraordinary vision in this marketplace, has catapulted Katz Digital to a place where it is now viewed by advertisers as a one-stop-shop to reach diverse audiences with unparalleled scale.”