the HOT List

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.

Gray Television may not have the same level of national top-of-mind consumer recognition as such broadcast peers as Tribune, Hearst, Sinclair or Meredith Corp., but that could change in just a matter of months. Its merger with Raycom Media is one of the year's top media and marketing deals, and Gray's Q3 guidance may be even sweeter than its Q2 results.

Last week the FCC “took a historic and long overdue step to increase ownership diversity in the broadcast industry.” An incubator program designed to establish greater broadcast media ownership diversity will come to fruition. Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel dissented. Now, one individual close to the push for the program tells RBR+TVBR it has a fatal flaw.

In a surprise announcement, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises revealed that Hispanic media industry veteran Luis Silberwasser will be leaving the company on October 1. He's served as Telemundo Networks President for four years, and his exit comes amid widely reported turmoil at Telemundo's No. 1 competitor — Univision Communications. It also comes as Azteca América is gearing up for a massive relaunch.

If Wall Street needed proof that a publicly traded radio industry pure-play was still a great investment, Beasley Broadcast Group certainly delivered the goods with a strong Q2 earnings report. At first, investor sentiment appeared to be poor. Beasley shares headed south yet again with a nearly 4% dip in the first half hour of Friday's trading before attempting a rebound. It worked.

CBS Corp. late Thursday recorded a strong Q2 that beat Wall Street estimates. What does our favorite Wall Street wordsmith, Pivotal Research Group's Brian Wieser, have to say about that? A "not impressed" meme would have sufficed, based on his take of the company's results. That said, he's convinced that Viacom's reunification with CBS is a done deal.

Are some of the nation's largest broadcast TV station owners guilty of artificially inflating the price of their advertising through collusion? That's what a Mobile, Ala.-based law firm focused on personal injury, which is an active TV advertiser, believes. As such, the firm — Clay, Massey & Associates — filed suit against six companies in an Illinois Federal District Court.