By Brian Galante
RAYMOND, ME. — Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary Dielectric and broadcast equipment provider SCMS are looking back with smiles on a two-year partnership they believe sets the stage for a positive future.
Fueled through investment in renewed FM infrastructure, tower consolidation, and a collaborative customer service approach, the partnership exceeded sales expectations with key milestones in FM antenna and combiner sales, Dielectric says.
Specifically, Dielectric’s FM antenna sales exceeded 100 units for the first time in 24 years through Q3 alone, largely powered through SCMS’s efforts. The partnership also fueled a record annual number for FM manifold combiner sales, including more than 20 units destined for a national FM broadcast network in Africa.
“2025 has been a big year for RF investment, outpacing studio investment by a substantial margin,” said SCMS’s Matt Cauthen. “Some of that is cyclical relative to the aging of RF plants. Perhaps more interesting is how changes within the tower business are buoying antenna sales. That largely has to do with broadcasters moving to new tower locations, sometimes to improve market coverage and increasingly for consolidation purposes. Dielectric’s innovation cycle has been ahead of curve to address these trends.”
Dielectric’s manifold combiners are designed to pair with large FM master antenna systems, both of which are in demand for consolidation purposes. As tower companies lure more broadcast tenants to their towers, the number of FM signals per tower — often 10 or more — require master systems that can support multiple stations from a common infrastructure. Dielectric rolled out a modernized range of manifold combiners in 2024 and this year introduced its Ringmaster Series of FM master antennas. Including a 10-station RingMaster antenna system and a manifold combiner for a Vertical Bridge tower site in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
SCMS had also recently sold RingMaster antenna systems installed on towers in Tallahassee and Gainesville, Fla.; and in Newport News, Va.
Dielectric President Keith Pelletier commented, “Our partnership with SCMS has been impactful in many ways, including their ability to bring us into more FM projects earlier in the cycle. That alone has driven sales of our RingMaster antennas, which we introduced in June, far earlier than anticipated. It’s necessary to have real-world examples of new and innovative technology working in the field to drive sales, and we already have several RingMaster systems installed and functional thanks to the SCMS team. We also see a bright future with SCMS for our TV business as we anticipate an increase in ATSC 3.0 network rollouts come 2027.”
