Top stories from February
RadioWorld
Elgato’s Stream Deck Studio Adds Rackmount Panel
Skirt Antenna Helps Reimagine AM Radio in SoCal
Loop Adapts AI for Afternoon Voice
TVB Europe
Technicolor set to enter administration
How BBC Wales returned live to 1985
‘Majority’ of Technicolor UK’s 400+ staff made redundant as administrators officially appointed
Winners announced for Best of Show at ISE 2025 Awards
Ampere: streamers to spend $12.5 billion on sports rights this year
TVTECH
New York Governor Calls for End to MSG-Altice Blackout, Pushes for Consumer Refunds
Industry Reacts To Future of Television Initiative Report
FCC Chair Carr Opens Investigation of DEI Efforts at Comcast, NBCU
NAB Petitions FCC for ATSC 1.0 Sunset in 2028 and 2030
Top trends
Key force shaping the industry with implications and context
RW: Radio World readers are very engaged with content about creative solutions. That includes “small” studio products, as shown with our story about Elgato, which is an exhibitor at NAB but probably never heard of RW. The two stories we’ve run about them over a couple of years have been very popular. Readers also are interested in big AM jobs like the one describing the skirt antenna (Kintronic one of the vendors). Artificial intelligence is also of continued interest. And our regulatory coverage of the Trump administration and Carr FCC have generated keen reader interest.
TVBE: The main trend during February has been the business of media technology. As stated above, Technicolor was by far the most popular story but, there were others. Two reports from Ampere Analysis had 250+ views each, while Haivision’s annual Broadcast Transformation Report had 200+ views.
TV TECH: NextGen TV was in the spotlight in February as two very important developments happened. First, we covered industry reaction to the release of the Future of TV initiative that was announced at the 2023 NAB Show and managed by the NAB. The report was released just prior to the new administration and lays the groundwork for the second important development of the month: NAB’s petition to sunset ATSC 3.0 for good by 2030. This is a very ambitious goal, and given the experience of the first transition from analog to digital, pretty unrealistic at this point. Both items will be top of mind for broadcasters at NAB next month.
Additional trends
TVBE – “By far our biggest story of February was the collapse of Technicolor. To date, it has had over 5.2K views. This led to a 6 per cent open rate for the Daily we sent on February 24th.”
TV TECH
● FCC Chairman Carr’s efforts to promote the Trump agenda, including attacks on broadcaster bias and efforts to eradicate DEI.
● Broadcasters and exhibitors prepare for the 2025 NAB Show
● Sports continues to be enormously popular, with Super Bowl LIX garnering nearly 128 million viewers, a record. Also, WBD announced that its Max streaming service would NOT launch a separate sports streaming service.
● Network blackouts were also a continuing concern, particularly surrounding marquee sports events like the Super Bowl and in particular, March Madness. Altice and MSG did settle their differences and DirecTV ended up settling with Paramount to keep CBS and other Paramount channels on their program tier, but this is a problem that will continue to plague the industry.
