the HOT List

On Tuesday, Philip Falcone's HC2 Station Group made headlines by grabbing a Class A TV station serving a growing part of South Florida. Now, HC2 is adding a Class A in one of the nation's hippest cities in a deal that could further build a group of owned-and-operated stations for Azteca América.

Of all of the potential buyers for the 19 remaining radio stations that The E.W. Scripps Company sought a buyer for, this one may have caught market observers off-guard. Scripps​​ has reached an agreement to sell its last group of radio properties, located in four markets, to the Carl Parmer-led SummitMedia.

A digital Class A facility licensed to a city within the West Palm Beach DMA is being dealt for a little more than half a million dollars. The buyer? That would be a rapidly growing entity that is piecing together stations that will likely air this company's recently acquired broadcast television network.

Nielsen shares were up another 5.9% on Tuesday, bringing NLSN to levels not seen since a July 25 tumble. What's fueling a much-needed rebound in Nielsen's stock price, following a Q2 2018 earnings miss, a cut of its profit forecasts, and the announcement that CEO Mitch Barns would retire at the end of the year?

If the FCC goes along with a NAB plan released in June that would "modernize" its rules regarding ownership limits, Townsquare could theoretically own all of the radio stations in all but four of the markets it operates in. Is this fair? Is this how radio industry leaders believe the battle against local digital media group should be waged? RBR+TVBR asked Townsquare Media why it is in support of the NAB plan. Here's what they said.

A Denver-based tech company focused on digital content licensing, rights and clearances for the TV industry has been snapped up by the Costa Mesa, Calif.-based purveyor of a SaaS-based operating systems for AI that's increasingly getting noticed by both radio and television industry programming and sales leaders

Determining audience “identity” has become a major priority over the past year for U.S. marketers, many of whom plan to increase their investment in finding and developing identity solutions. What might this mean for your radio or TV station group? A newly released study from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) based on research conducted by Winterberry Group could provide some fresh answers.

According to exhibits made public on Thursday by Tribune Media, the company's EVP/General Counsel and Chief Strategy Officer on December 17 wrote to Sinclair's top legal counsel expressing Tribune's "serious concern" with Sinclair's approach to obtaining Department of Justice clearance to close the merger of the two companies. The letter reveals that stubbornness on Sinclair's part likely derailed the deal.

RBR+TVBR went through the fees associated with Tribune Media's decision to terminate its merger with Sinclair Broadcast Group, and the dollars total in the millions. Meanwhile, Tribune's $1 billion suit filed Thursday in a Delaware Chancery Court is a sign to one respected D.C. communications attorney that it chose to avoid the worst thing that can happen to a pending deal: a delay.

With Sinclair Broadcast Group remaining tight-lipped about its shaky merger plans with Tribune Media, many Wall Street observers wondered if the deal was headed to the dumpster. Wednesday marked the first day either party could walk away from the combination of the two companies. At 6:25am Eastern Thursday, Taps was played. Tribune was the bugler.

Univision may never ever become a publicly traded company, but that hasn't stopped the nation's biggest purveyor of Spanish-language media options from releasing its quarterly earnings reports. Univision's Q2 results were made public early Thursday. Net income was down, but net revenue was up.

Entercom recently scorned a highly popular streaming audio hub by yanking its stations from the popular platform in an effort to raise awareness and use of its Radio.com. Cumulus Media just took the opposite approach.

Net revenue and operating income each soared for Entercom during Q2. When factoring in discontinued operations, net income also propelled upward. How did investors react? Entercom was up by nearly 21% in mid-morning activity on the NYSE and finished at its highest price in three months.

As has been widely rumored, Lotus Communications has acquired Scripps' radio stations in the Tucson and Boise, Idaho markets. What hasn't been known was the price the company led by Jim Kalmenson would pay. All has now been revealed, and Kalil & Co. is the exclusive broker for this transaction.

A top sales exec at Skyview Networks in August 2018 demanded a jury trial in a Federal court on the grounds that her boss opened Microsoft Outlook on her company-issued laptop and sent every contact a note that she was placed on "administrative leave" and that no one contact her. To her, this was defamation. In 2020, the jury ruled in favor of Skyview.