He succeeds Antwane Johnson, who retired earlier this year
Manny Centeno, who is familiar to broadcasters who work in emergency alerting, has been promoted to director of IPAWS at FEMA. Centeno succeeds Antwane Johnson, who had held the post since 2009. Centeno’s prior title was program manager.
All fifty State Broadcasters Associations, joined by those of the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, are collectively urging US Congress to expedite the approval of the VOICES Act – pivotal legislation aimed at promoting diversity in media ownership.
They have officially requested support for H.R. 8072 and S. 4158, known as the Broadcast VOICES Act, which was introduced in April and seeks to reinstate the Diversity Tax Certificate Program at the Federal Communications Commission.
The Copyright Royalty Board is defending its rate setting decision-making to the U.S. Supreme Court where religious broadcasters are looking to overturn June 2021 decision in the so-called Web V proceeding that covers radio’s streaming royalties for 2021 to 2025. The CRB says it largely maintained the rate structure that has governed noncommercial radio webcasts since 2006, which has set significantly lower rates for noncommercial stations.
The National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee has asked the Supreme Court to overturn the rates set by the CRB. It doubled the minimum fee for noncommercial webcasters to $1,000 per year for each station or channel. But that rate will go up if a station has a large online audience. The CRB says noncommercial operators will need to pay an additional $0.21 for every 100 songs streamed for all digital audio transmissions above 159,140 aggregate tuning hours in a month per station or channel. Those rates rose to $0.25 for every 100 songs on Jan. 1 under annual inflation adjustments.
OpenAI and News Corp. on Wednesday announced a “multi-year global partnership” that will allow OpenAI to access current and archived articles from News Corp.’s outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch, Barron’s, The New York Post and more.
As part of the deal, OpenAI will be able to display content from News Corp.-owned outlets within its ChatGPT chatbot, in response to user questions. The startup will also be able to use News Corp.’s content “to enhance its products,” or, likely, to train its artificial intelligence models.
The Justice Department sued Ticketmaster and its parent company Live Nation on Thursday, accusing the ticketing companies of blocking competition in the live entertainment industry.
The DOJ, which filed the antitrust lawsuit alongside 30 state and district attorneys general, alleges that Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s anti-competitive behavior deprives U.S. music fans of ticketing innovation and forces them to pay more than fans in other countries.
“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
“The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services,” he added. “It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”
The DOJ argued that the ticketing companies engage in exclusionary practices to protect a self-reinforcing business model, in which they use revenue from ticket sales and sponsorships to lock in artists with exclusive promotion deals.
Predicting the future is hard, but what the airwaves may sound like later this year in terms of political ad spending is as close as it gets for broadcasters. AdImpact, which looks at where candidates have already reserved ad time, says 14 hopefuls have placed reservations after Labor Day of at least $1 million. And as of Tuesday (May 21), it says $208 million future Presidential ad reservations have been booked.
AdImpact says Democratic advertisers currently hold a $137.5 million advantage in future Presidential ad reservations over Republicans. The political ad tracking firm says GOP advertisers currently have $1.7 million in future reservations, with their latest reservation ending on May 28. In comparison, Democratic advertisers have $139.2 million booked through Election Day.
The pro-Biden group Future Forward accounts for nearly all that spending. AdImpact says it has reserved $134.5 million of broadcast and cable ad time in the fall. Where its dollars are going closely aligns with the battleground states. Ads have been tracked in Pennsylvania ($36.3 million), Michigan ($26 million), Arizona ($21.5 million), Georgia ($19.8 million), Wisconsin ($16.7 million), Nevada ($5.6 million) and North Carolina ($5 million). The PAC has also booked $3.7 million in the Omaha, NE market as Biden looks to win Nebraska’s second congressional district for an electoral college advantage. AdImpact says if Future Forward’s current reservations hold, the group will exceed the $118.2 million it spent in 2020 supporting the incumbent.
The National Association of Broadcasters says a proposal to use pre-scripted alerts to help ensure non-English speakers are reached during an emergency could be more of a hindrance than a help. It is warning the execution could cause “further confusion” for non-English language audiences during an emergency, saying multilingual template EAS alerts will be “ineffective and confusing” as well as putting a new cost burden on broadcasters.
“The messages will have to be stripped of meaningful content to their essentials to be translated into pre-canned scripts in 13 different languages. No doubt, those pre-canned scripts will omit information and nuance that may be crucial to delivering an effective warning to the receiver,” NAB says in comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission.
The FCC is currently considering a proposal (PS Docket No. 15-94) that it says would help ensure that alerts reach the more than 26 million Americans with limited English-language proficiency. It would create an alert reservoir that stations could tap into during a disaster situation to deliver EAS alerts in 14 languages, including English and Spanish. The recordings would be stored in EAS devices, and the translated audio for each template would be provided as audio files or links to streaming audio.
Relationships and beat reporting basics are the keys to battling back against sources who don’t engage
Politicians have long stonewalled journalists. But recently, it’s gotten worse.
An Arizona legislator filed a restraining order on a journalist for knocking on their door. A Pittsburgh school board held virtual meetings long after the law allowing them expired. Politicians bypassed local reporters for partisan media outlets.
These are just a few instances of journalists being shut out of their efforts to cover public business and hold officials accountable.
Such reports led the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership at Poynter to convene a symposium to address the phenomenon. In late 2023, a group including public media leaders, entertainment and sports journalists, local reporters, political columnists, political advisers, editors, policy advocates and several Poynter leaders gathered in Miami at the offices of the Knight Foundation.
“Our hearts ache for the families directly in the path of the devastating storms,” says Shannon Booth, NBA Chairperson of the Board and GM of Gray’s television stations in Lincoln, Hastings and North Platte.
The Nebraska Broadcasters Association (NBA) has made a $25,000 contribution to the United Way of the Midlands Nebraska & Iowa Tornado Relief Fund.
“Our hearts ache for the families directly in the path of the devastating storms,” says Shannon Booth, NBA chairperson of the board and GM of Gray’s television stations in Lincoln, Hastings and North Platte. “These funds will stay local and benefit our neighbors and friends in eastern Nebraska and western Iowa as they begin to rebuild their lives. Local broadcasters care deeply about the communities we serve.”
In Wisconsin, broadcasters take a multifaceted approach to addressing the engineering shortage
For the past decade or more, radio and television managers have been dealing with a dilemma: Many veteran engineers are retiring while few skilled young people are stepping in to take their place.
Leaders of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association are well aware and are taking a proactive approach. Their strategies include working with colleges and vocational schools that have relevant courses, encouraging the use of apprenticeships, and hosting conferences and seminars, sometimes in conjunction with the Society of Broadcast Engineers.
Their goal is to provide young adults with opportunities to understand the engineering profession while giving them the training, mentorship and guidance they need to succeed.
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