Radio News ®

Radio companies warn
Wall Street about Q2
No one is yet lowering their official guidance for the quarter, but radio companies are telling Wall Street investors that Q2 revenues aren't proving to be as robust as had been anticipated. At the Deutsche Bank Securities Media Conference in New York, Entercom said its revenues might be up only 5%, not the promised 6%, but Radio One said it was still confident of its 6-8% growth projection, as was Emmis with its 5% target. | More... |

Pure-play radio companies on the way out?
When consolidation was the name of the game, being a pure-play radio company made you a Wall Street darling. In fact, Emmis got hammered by investors for expanding into television. But at the Deutsche Bank Securities Media Conference in New York yesterday, Radio One CFO Scott Royster said the future is cross-platform. "I do believe that fundamentally being a stand-alone radio company, maybe not today, but in five years, particularly if you're public, just doesn't make any sense," Royster said. "I think that you need to offer advertisers - - particularly if you're addressing a particular consumer base, like we do - - your listeners, your viewers, your constituents on that side of the ledger, alternatives. And we're going to be looking to do that." Of course, Radio One has already launched TV One, in partnership with Comcast, to take its Urban radio specialty into cable television. Royster says the company has been exploring options in the online world, and notes, "people are pretty anxious to do business with us."

People tell Pew "p-yew"
when describing press cred
Iconic television magazine "60 Minutes" has just supplanted CNN as the most believable news source available in broadcast and cable, according to "The Biennial Pew Media Survey: How News Habits Changed in 2004." The bad news is that it did it with a less than stellar rating of 33% - - the news gets worse for outlets after that. But it's not that simple. The study was made public at a forum held at the Brookings Institute. Former Gerald Ford press secretary Ron Nesson moderated the session, which included Pew Research Center's Andrew Kohut, Stephen Hess of Brookings, Susan Page of USA Today and Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. | More... |

Tribune revs up, cuts loom for newspapers
Tribune Company reported that revenues were up in May at all of its divisions, but newspaper gains have not been what the company had expected, so expense cuts are being implemented, including some staff reductions. "Although help wanted advertising is improving month-over-month, and preprints year-to-date are delivering strong growth, other advertising categories are not meeting the aggressive plans we had for the year," said Jack Fuller, president of Tribune Publishing. "The shortfall is limited to a few newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times." Tribune reported that newspaper revenues were up 2.7% in May to $325 million, with ad revenues up 4.1% to $255 million. Broadcasting and Entertainment group revenues rose 4.3% to $141 million. TV revenues were up 2.4% to $115.1 million. Radio/Entertainment revenues shot up 13.3% to $26.3 million, which the company said was primarily due to the Chicago Cubs having more home games during the month and strong attendance.

Campaigns go mute in honor of Reagan
Both presidential campaigns will put a moratorium on advertising on Friday, 6/11/04, in honor of the funeral of President Ronald Reagan. Reagan's funeral will be held that day at the National Cathedral in Washington. Additionally, VP Dick Cheney has canceled an appearance in Springfield MO. Democratic candidate John Kerry has called off all campaign activity for the week in honor of the fallen president.

Adbiz ©

AT&T Foundation reups
with AWRT via PSA effort
American Women in Radio & Television (AWRT) announced that the AT&T Foundation has renewed its support of The Foundation of AWRT's radio PSA campaign entitled "Empowering America." AWRT and AT&T have worked together on this campaign since 2002 and are energized about the potential of the campaign in the coming year. Empowering America is an important oral education in the history of American women. The 60-second spots feature both well-known and relatively unsung female icons that have blazed trails in such diverse areas of endeavor as public service, science and medicine, social reform, sports, literature, broadcasting, music and aviation. Mary Hart, co-anchor of Entertainment Tonight, serves as the narrator of the campaign. The upcoming AT&T sponsored vignettes will feature 60-second biographies about the following pioneers: Marion Anderson - The first African-American artist, male or female, to perform at the Metropolitan Opera; Elizabeth Blackwell - Founder of the first women's medical college and hospital; May Edward Chinn - A renowned doctor whose research led to the development of the pap smear for early detection of cervical cancer; and Audrey Hepburn - Academy-award winning actress and special ambassador to the United Nations Children's Fund.

NBC pulls in 2.9B in the upfront
NBC, sans "Friends" and "Frasier," has all but concluded its upfront sales efforts, pulling in a reported $2.9B for the new season, at 7% CPM increases. The big draws were "The Apprentice" and Friends spinoff "Joey." CBS is expected to be the only network to increase its share of the ad market, with its take expected to rise 9% to $2.4B. CBS, still asking for 10% CPM increases, is holding firm with the buying community with 60% inventory sold and dangling the CSI carrot. Who will blink first? Fox is expected to be up 7%-8% to $1.6B. Meanwhile, cable is still the big winner, boosting upfront sales 17%-20% to $6.6B. The hottest of the hot? TBS, TNT, CNN, USA, MTV Networks and Bravo.

Media, Markets & Money tm

Washington Beat

Engineering

AM HD signals interfering in DC market;
chaos to come?
While FM HD Radio has done an exceptional job keeping the digital signals within the allocated "mask" (first adjacent frequencies to the analog signal), we are hearing yet again that AM HD Radio signals are not. We first had heard through the grapevine WOR-AM NY's digital signals were bleeding a bit too far over. Meaning the digital signals for WOR's 710 kHz analog frequency should theoretically stay within the mask of 700 and 720. We had heard that WGSM-AM 740 (Huntington, NY--Long Island) was complaining about digital bleed-over interference. And WGSM is 20 kW, not a weak signal by any means. WOR is using a Harris DX 50 transmitter. | More... |

Transactions

$11M: KQMQ-FM/KPOI-FM/KHUI-FM & KDDB-FM Honolulu (Honolulu, Waipahu HI) from New Wave Broadcasting LP (Kirk Warshaw et al) to Visionary Related Entertainment LLC (John Detz Jr., James McKeon Jr., Tamara Durbin, G. Paul Sullivan, J.F. McKeon). $8250K escrow, balance in cash at closing. Superduopoly with KUMU AM & FM, KAHA-FM. KHUI-FM & KPOI-FM are being resold to Salem Communications for $3.7M. [File date 5/5/04.]

$3.25M: WXLS-FM Champaign IL (Danville IL) from IAI Broadcasting Inc. (Terry E. Forcht) to Saga Communications of Illinois Inc. (Edward K. Christian). $300K escrow, balance in cash at closing. $100K to post-closing escrow account. Superduopoly with WIXY-FM, WKIO-FM and WLRW-FM. [File date 5/6/04.]

Stock Talk

Radio Stocks