the HOT List

The global home audio market continues to grow with no signs of it stopping. According to a Future Consulting report, the global home audio market's hardware shipments increased by 23 percent in 2017 with its revenues performing well, too, passing its barrier for the first time.

Nielsen Holdings PLC and Meredith Corporation have made a multi-year renewal agreement for Nielsen TV Ratings on all of Meredith Local Media Groups' stations. The news of the renewal agreement between Meredith and Nielsen was announced on Aug. 23.

In the Southwest Florida city of Estero, one of the big issues facing local residents is the plague of red tide that has led to the death of a wide array of sea life along the Gulf Coast. For one major publicly traded company based here, a sea change seen in the C-Suite is perhaps the bigger news of the week. A new CFO is set to start Sept. 10 at Hertz Global Holdings. Who is it? Look to Nielsen.

On August 16, RBR+TVBR was first to report that Gray Television would be divesting a station in the Albany, Ga., market to Brian and Patricia Lane‘s Marquee Broadcasting. On late Monday evening, the Georgia-based broadcast TV company that seeks to win government approval of its merger with Raycom Media announced who will be picking up the other eight stations selected for divestment by Gray.

That's a question Zacks Equity Research set out to find the answer to, in the wake of the company's now-dead effort to acquire Tribune Media. Zacks' query was designed for the benefit of value-oriented investors seeking a good choice to invest in.  What was Zacks' assessment of Sinclair Broadcast Group stock?

Here's a translator swap that's certainly going to attract a lot of attention. Educational Media Foundation is giving up a translator in a big South Florida city to Family Radio. In exchange, EMF is getting a facility that could bring Air1 to Western Pennsylvania's biggest population center. For Family, listeners to a major NPR member station may soon become irked at their upgrade plan.

Philip Falcone's HC2 Station Group has just filed its third Form 345 FCC filing this week, and this time around the owner of the Azteca América broadcast TV network is acquiring a licensed and silent LPTV facility in a big Midwestern market. An escrow deposit has already been made.

On June 25, Atlanta-based Gray Television successfully reached an agreement to merge with Raycom Media. When all is said and done, the new Gray TV will own 142 stations across 92 DMAs. However, nine station spins were announced in order to meet federal regulatory approval in markets where Gray and Raycom each own stations. The first of these nine stations has just been dealt.

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.