TV/Cable News

With CBS Radio expected to shift from CBS Corp. to Entercom on Friday, the top brass at Black Rock have unveiled plans to offer senior notes in a private debt offering. Meanwhile, Moody's Investors Service has assigned a rating to CBS Radio's proposed $250 million revolving credit facility, while CBS Radio has also entered the "Strata"-sphere.

OTA Broadcasting was a big winner in Auction 1000, the FCC's incentive auction that relinquished broadcast TV spectrum to wireless companies. It pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars, including $72,817,599 for saying farewell to a Class A TV station serving the New York Tri-State Area. Now, the channel-sharing agreement for the disappearing over-the-air station is bringing this "zombie" to one of the nation's best-known PBS member stations.

Five of the leading television service providers in the U.S. lost more than 640,000 television subscribers between them in the third quarter of 2017. With more results to be reported, net losses are looking larger than in Q2, during which they lost just over half a million television customers. For the top 10 services in the U.S. listed in the informitv Multiscreen Index, the losses were more severe. Yet, revenue isn't being heavily impacted.

Now that the ANA Multicultural Marketing & Diversity Conference has concluded, the Event Services team at the Fontainebleau -- along with the management at the neighboring Eden Rock Miami Beach resort -- are now heading into high gear for not only the busy holiday travel season, but NATPE Miami. The 2018 event is already well into the planning stages, and the Chairman/CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment and veteran journalist Soledad O'Brien have already been confirmed for a keynote presentation.

The Media Financial Management Association’s 2018 CFO Summit will be held March 8-9, 2018 at the Hilton Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort on A1A overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Overseeing the event as co-chairs are the top financial executives for a major broadcast TV company, and the radio broadcasting company driving the push for FM tuners in all smartphones.

Nielsen has secured its fourth major MVPD for the integration of non-personally identifiable TV viewing data with its panel data tied to its local TV measurement service. It will go into effect in 2018.

Sure, Q3 may be looking a little rough around the edges for many radio broadcasting companies. But, consider where the entire industry could be in five short years, thanks to the surge in smart speakers that's just unfolding. According to a just-released study from U.K.-based Juniper Research, smart speakers such as Amazon Echo, Google Home, and the Sonos One will be in a majority of U.S. homes by 2022.

Up against difficult Q3 2016 comps due to a sharp decrease in political dollars and the absence of Olympics advertising, TEGNA -- the media company formerly known as Gannett prior to the spin-off of its newspaper segment -- knew it was going to have a down Q3 in 2017. But, there's a silver lining to its expected dip in earnings: It's not as bad as what Wall Street anticipated, and TEGNA shares finished up 4.1% on Wednesday, to $12.31.

As competition heats up, virtual service providers such as Hulu with Live TV, AT&T Inc.'s DirecTV NOW and Sony Corp.'s PlayStation Vue "are racing to add live local stations to bolster channel lineups and lock in subscribers." That's the conclusion of a just-released report on the rapid growth of "skinny bundles" -- and what is bringing in consumers -- from Kagan, a group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.

The NAB has been granted an FCC experimental license to operate a full-power next-gen TV facility in Ohio’s biggest market. The effort seeks to help broadcasters and manufacturers prepare to deliver Next Gen TV services powered by the new ATSC 3.0 standard.

Multicultural marketing succeeds when marketers fully understand what is relevant to a cultural group at any given moment in time. Mining insights from the subcultures that drive mainstream audiences can be difficult when marketing processes don't always move at the same speed as culture. HBO addressed this issue in reaching out to TV audiences, and here's how VP/Multicultural Marketing Jackie Gagne did it.

Don't think for a minute that a lack of Olympics-related programming, and the dollars that go with it, are single-handedly responsible for the year-over-year comparison when looking at how TV performed in Q3 2017. There's more to the story, the Standard Media Index Q3 report released Monday afternoon suggests.

Nexstar Media Group certainly enjoyed a strong Q3 thanks to its newly forged synergies from the closing of its Media General acquisition and integration of those stations into its operations. But, like Gray Television, strong growth came against talk of advertising woes and tough political comps.

If one were to ask how a company could withstand an 82% drop in political dollars yet still show a profit in Q3, all they would need to do is review the financial results released Monday morning by Gray Television. The owner-operator of 100+ TV stations across the U.S. met its profit forecasts in strong fashion.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai just got a first-hand look at the slow recovery facing Puerto Rico up-close and in person. Pai met with government and industry officials to assess the status of recovery efforts and consult on next steps that the FCC should take to assist in the restoration of communications networks. He's now on his way back to Washington.