the HOT List

Brian and Kevin Lilly are known across the broadcast media industry for their ownership of television stations in northwest Pennsylvania and for broadcast TV services linking U.S. territories in the Caribbean to the mainland. Now, the Lilly brothers are teaming up to purchase a pair of digital low-powered television stations serving their home market of Erie.

How robust was the broadcast deal market in the first quarter of 2022? Volker Moerbitz of S&P Global Market Intelligence's Kagan unit crunched the numbers. The first three months of the year experienced the highest quarterly deal volume since the third quarter of 2019.

The Detroit-based owner of broadcast TV stations led by Catherine Badalamente has filed comments with the FCC expressing their concerns of TEGNA's privatization plan, which would put ownership of the company in the hands of majority shareholder Standard General and non-voting minority shareholder Apollo Global Management. Standard General offered a statement in response to GMG's claims.

On June 13, RBR+TVBR first reported on the sale of Emmis Communications' last full cluster of radio stations, in its home market of Indianapolis. At the time, it became known that the buyer of those properties, Urban One, would need to divest the facilties presently tied to WHHH-FM “Hot 96.3” in Indianapolis. A deal was consummated just days later, and with a Form 314 filing at the FCC made June 23, the buyer of WHHH's current home can now be disclosed.

The Commission has released a Third NPRM that seeks comment on the state of NextGen TV, powered by the new ATSC 3.0 digital broadcast standard, transition. It also wants to know what interested parties think about the scheduled sunsets of two rules adopted in a 2017 Report and Order.

Local radio is very much under attack from a variety of undesirable fact-twisting online news and information sources, whether its social media or a Google search. AMs and FMs can fight back. In fact, if Hispanic radio in particular were to take up the fight, the firepower would be that much stronger, NAB President/CEO Curtis LeGeyt believes. He made the comments as part of a Hispanic Radio Conference address on Wednesday.

The company founded by the late Norm Alpert and today led by his widow, Donna Alpert, has agreed to sell "WAVE 101.1." The buyer is local. And, the price it is paying is notable for its somewhat surprisingly high valuation.

What does the EVP and CFO of a St. Joseph, Mo.-based multimedia company with roots in the newspaper business have to do with a broadcast TV station serving Monterey Bay, California? He's just signed off on a transaction that will put the station, which News-Press & Gazette Co. operates via a shared services agreement with its current owner, in NPG hands, pending FCC approval.

At an event on "Currency Collaboration" held early Tuesday at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity in France, VideoAmp announced that the ad measurement and optimization platform has inked a new partnership with TelevisaUnivision. It allows the owner of Televisa, Univision, UniMás, the Uforia audio brand and ViX, its fast-growing OTT platform, to use VideoAmp data to power its advanced advertising options.

Canada’s competition bureau put a stop to a $26 billion CDN transaction that would have combined multimedia giant Rogers with Shaw. The companies in early June agreed not to proceed with closing their deal until either a negotiated settlement is approved with the Commissioner or the Competition Tribunal has ruled on the matter. On Friday, a major move designed to get the Competition Bureau in Ottawa to say yes to the marriage transpired.

The former President of Meredith Local Media Group, who held the role through the Meredith Corp. merger with Gray Television, has resurfaced as the co-founder of an entity "that will invest in niche companies in the broadcast media industry." He's teaming up with another former Meredith TV leader.

The owner of "Mega 105.7" in Philadelphia is reviewing its assets and its profit generation, in the face of new competition from iHeartMedia. It's not good: a bankruptcy filing was submitted to a federal district court in Fort Myers, Fla., several weeks ago. Now, the licensee has officially shifted to debtor-in-possession status.

Blame it on headwinds from overseas conflicts, continuing supply chain issues and deep cuts in ad spending from large verticals like automotive. These are the reasons BIA Advisory Services offers in explaining why it has decreased its full-year 2022 U.S. Local Advertising Forecast estimate to $167.4 billion.

UPDATED: It was established long before the sale of WPYO in Orlando by Cox Media Group to SBS that a rivalry for Spanish-language radio listeners would ensue. Now, it has become known that CMG shut off the encoder for "El Zol 95.3" at some point before its sale, and reset it for WDBO-AM. Nielsen Audio investigated, and as a result the CMG/Orlando News/Talker is being delisted from a re-issued April 2022 ratings report. SBS believes there's more to the story.

After a strong start of the year, advertising spending will be slowing down amidst economic uncertainty. That said, MAGNA Global predicts "organic and cyclical" growth factors will support marketing activity and advertising demand.