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Spring is finally here and it seems the Pennsylvania General Assembly is starting to find their rhythm for the 2019-2020 session, however the dust has yet to settle on the balance between Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate. Last week, Democrat Bridget Malloy Kosierowski declared victory in the Special Election to replace the late Representative Sid Michaels Kavulich, and Democrat Movita Johnson-Harrel made history by being the first Muslim woman to win an election for State Representative, replacing Vanessa Lowery-Brown in the wake of her bribery conviction last year. On April 2nd, Democrat Pam Lovino will duke it out with Republican D. Raja for the seat left vacant by former State Senator Guy Reschenthaler who won his bid for U.S. Congress last fall. Looking ahead to May 21st, there will be two special elections held to find a replacement for the recently retired State Senators Don White and Rich Alloway. Ben Dannels Greenlee Partners, LLC

Reuters February 15, 2019 Buyout firm Apollo Global Management LLC has agreed to acquire a majority stake in 14 television stations from privately held Cox Media Group, the company said on Friday, a move that sets up Apollo to become a player in broadcasting, an industry it has sought deals in for some time. While Apollo and Cox did not disclose financial terms, sources said the transaction was valued at around $3 billion. The stations are in cities such as Seattle, Boston and Jacksonville, Florida, and reach more than 31 million U.S. viewers. Apollo is also gaining control of several radio, news, and television properties in Ohio, the company said. Broadcast television operators are looking to either gain scale or exit the space as viewership, and advertising dollars, increasingly shift to providers of web-based, streaming content. Reuters previously reported that Apollo was nearing a deal to acquire Cox’s stations. Apollo is also a bidder for a portfolio of local TV stations worth about $1 billion that Nexstar Media Group Inc plans to shed following its $4.1 billion takeover of Tribune Media Co, Reuters reported. If Apollo wins that group of stations, it would combine the assets with the Cox TV stations, sources have said. Apollo also has an agreement to acquire the assets of Northwest Broadcasting, which owns more than a dozen TV stations in mostly rural markets in the Pacific Northwest, and combine them with the Cox assets, Reuters reported. Cox said last July it was exploring options for its 14-station portfolio. The broadcast media sector has seen a flurry of merger talks amid expectations that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission could relax restrictions on how many stations broadcasters can operate. Private equity firms find broadcast TV stations appealing because of the cash-rich fees the stations generate from being carried by cable operators. Apollo would also be able to cut costs at Cox’s TV stations, which have been family-controlled for many years. Apollo tried unsuccessfully last year to acquire both Nexstar and Tribune Media, in separate attempts. Barclays PLC, Moelis & Co LLC and BDT & Co LLC advised Cox. RBC Capital Markets LLC, Guggenheim Partners LLC, and LionTree Advisors LLC advised Apollo.

Radio Ink February 18, 2019   There’s a new broadcast team for pregame and postgame coverage of the Pittsburgh Pirates on 93.7 The Fan (KDKA-FM), the flagship station for the team. Dan Zangrilli will return to the station to host the station’s pregame and postgame broadcasts, a role he previously held from 2012 to 2016. Jack Zduriencik will return for his fourth season as an analyst. Zduriencik joined the station in 2016 after serving as General Manager of the Seattle Mariners for eight years. He was part of the Pittsburgh Pirates organization as Scouting Director from 1991-1993. Station veteran Kraig Riley, who has been with KDKA since 2010 as a producer, will join the broadcast team for the first time alongside Zangrilli and Zduriencik. “We are thrilled to welcome Dan back to Pirates baseball, and excited to offer Pittsburgh a new voice in Kraig Riley,” said Michael Spacciapolli, Senior Vice President and Market Manager, Entercom Pittsburgh. “In addition, the incredible insight we get on a daily basis from Jack makes this is an exciting next phase of our Pirates coverage. As the sports radio leader, we will continue to expand our partnership with the Pirates and offer the very best coverage of the team across our platforms.” 93.7 The Fan’s broadcast coverage of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball commences with the team’s 2019 regular season opener on March 28. Select coverage of the Grapefruit League spring training games will begin on Saturday, February 23.

By Ben Strauss Washington Post Feb 13, 2019   The Chicago Cubs announced Wednesday that they are partnering with Sinclair Broadcast Group to launch a new network that will exclusively broadcast the team’s games. The Marquee Sports Network is expected to be ready next spring, in time to televise the Cubs’ 2020 schedule. The Cubs are the first Major League Baseball team since the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2014 to launch their own network. Sinclair owns nearly 200 stations across the country, plus the Tennis Channel; its partnership with the Cubs will create its first regional sports network. Marquee will arrive at a time of upheaval for regional sports networks. Disney is selling 22 such networks, including the YES Network, which broadcasts New York Yankees games, and others in places such as St. Louis and Detroit that air local NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball games. Bidding for the channels — RSNs as they are known — has reportedly been significantly lower than Disney’s asking price of around $20 billion. Rumored bidders have included private equity firms, Amazon, Major League Baseball — and Sinclair, too. Sinclair CEO Chris Ripley said Wednesday that the Cubs partnership could be the first move of a bigger Sinclair push into sports. “We are interested in those RSNs and we’re active in the process,” Ripley said in a phone interview. “These underlying sports rights have value outside the pay TV bundle. These are super premium rights for the Cubs, but also the RSNs in general. They bring in big audiences on any given night.” Ripley said he did not believe the market was as soft as perceived, but that the circumstances of the sale were limiting a bidding war. Disney acquired the channels from 21st Century Fox in 2017 as part of a larger deal, but it has been required by the Department of Justice to sell them because of antitrust laws. Ripley added that the most natural bidders for the channels each have a reason not to be involved. Fox just sold the channels, while Comcast and AT&T would invite their own antitrust scrutiny. Another potential buyer, Disney, is the seller. “Sinclair is the next best strategic fit,” he said. “And if you only have one player, this is where you end up.” The new network is a bet on the Cubs’ unique brand appeal and popularity, which the team’s owners, the Ricketts family, has sought to monetize since buying the team in 2009. In the past several years the Cubs have added video boards to Wrigley Field, commercialized the area around the stadium and secured public money to finance a new spring training facility in Mesa, Ariz. Marquee’s arrival will mark the end of a broadcasting era for the Cubs. Since 1948, the Cubs have televised at least a portion of their schedule on WGN. During the 1980s and 1990s, the games were beamed across the country, helping give the Cubs a fan base that extended far beyond Chicago. In recent years, Cubs games have appeared on a Chicago RSN and the city’s ABC affiliate in addition to WGN. The Dodgers launched their network in 2014 in partnership with Time Warner Cable in a deal worth $8.35 billion over 25 years. That financial windfall for the team has come at the expense of large swaths of local fans who cannot watch the team on Spectrum SportsNet LA because of local cable operators not paying to carry it. “I think the Cubs’ network has a 50-50 chance of working,” said Phillip Swan, a longtime industry observer and the editor of tvanswerman.com. “How can you not look at the disaster of the SportsNet scene and not be a little skeptical?" There are differences in the two deals, though. Sinclair, unlike Time Warner Cable (which has since been bought by Charter Communications), is not a cable operator but a programmer, and with its other channels it has leverage that will help in distribution negotiations. The high price of the Dodgers’ rights agreement also caused Time Warner to ask for high carriage fees from cable providers. “We don’t have the same financial pressure as they did,” Ripley said. “Plus, Chicago really is a Cubs town. fan base isn’t as strong or as concentrated.” Ripley declined to disclose terms of the Cubs-Sinclair deal. Industry experts predicted the Cubs would likely try to land a little more than $5 per Marquee subscriber. The YES Network charges more than $6 per subscriber, and ESPN charges closer to $8. In recent years, Sinclair has faced criticism for conservative-leaning programming on news broadcasts on its local stations. “This is a completely different division,” Ripley said. “Marquee Sports Network is a joint venture that we have with the Cubs. It’s a separate entity with its own employees."

Radio Ink February 6, 2019   Radio PA, the state news and information network covering the Keystone state has a new owner. Maryland Media One, the owner of the Maryland News Network, will assume operations on April 16th. “With the announcement of Radio PA closing it’s network in April, I was concerned with the affiliates that would lose content they rely on daily” said Maryland Media One President and CEO, Steve Clendenin. “I immediately explored options to assume the operations in Pennsylvania to keep the network alive.” Radio PA’s current affiliates will continue to receive uninterrupted content delivery during the transition phase and will continue operating from Harrisburg. Maryland Media One already operates one state network, Maryland News Network, which serves 35 affiliates. “I am a firm believer in the state network broadcast model,” explained Clendenin. “However, like all aspects in radio broadcasting, the model needs to be flexible. Radio PA’s future depends on the ability to super serve our affiliates and advertisers that need to reach the entire state and our model allows for that.”

Radio Ink Feb 6, 2019   Long-time radio industry owner Kerby Confer is still going strong with the Tuesday purchase of the Steinman Communications radio group. This brings the Forever total to 55 stations in 12 markets. The stations Forever Media is picking up are: WSTW-FM and WDEL-AM/FM in Wilmington, WXCY-FM in Havre De Grace, MD, WAVD-FM, WNCL-FM, WXDE-FM, WAFL-FM and WYUS-AM/FM in Milford/Salisbury. Confer owns Forever along with Donald Alt. Steinman is the parent of LNP Group which is the publisher of LNP/Lancaster Online. Michael Bergner was the broker for the deal.

Radio Ink Feb 5, 2019   iHeartmedia’s WBZ NewsRadio in Boston has reported that legendary morning news anchor Gary LaPierre died peacefully on Monday, surrounded by his family. LaPierre was recently diagnosed with leukemia. He was 76. The station reported on its website that “for almost 44 years LaPierre’s calm and steady voice prepared New Englanders for the day ahead. He told adults the solemn truths of our world and delighted children by reading the name of their town during the WBZ Storm Center school closing reports. LaPierre started out in the mail room of WBZ in the 1960’s and worked as a general assignment reporter before moving into the anchor booth.” LaPierre retired in 2006. “I am deeply saddened by this news,” Bill Flaherty, Director of Operations at WBZ NewsRadio said “If you were looking to work hard and also have lots of fun, Gary was the guy you need to be with. My heart goes out to his wife Peg and his family.” Peter Casey, WBZ NewsRadio’s former Program Director who worked with LaPierre for two decades, remembered him as a man of heart and compassion, “He was the perfect person to be the voice of WBZ and news radio for New England. His presence on the air, in the newsroom, and in our lives was huge… He could not have had a better partner than his wife Peg, and he always spoke glowingly about his boys Mike and Dean and their families.” Among his numerous achievements include LaPierre’s induction to the Massachusetts Broadcasters Hall of Fame , Associated Press, Radio-Television News Director Association (RTNDA) Awards, the national 1998 Edward R. Murrow award for Best Radio Newscast, and he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the March of Dimes Achievement in Radio Organization in 1997. In 1986 he received the Gold Award for Best Newsman of the Year at the International Radio Festival in New York City.

Radio Ink January 11, 2019 Photo credit: Buzzfeed   iHeart’s 106.1 The Breeze in Philadelphia is the latest station to pick up the ubiquitous Delilah. Philly listeners will be able to catch her show Monday through Saturday, 7 p.m. to midnight ET. “I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone in Philadelphia,” said Delilah. “We’re going to reconnect while playing great music at night, and we’ll have plenty of songs to match just perfectly with all those stories to share on 106.1 The Breeze.” “Delilah has a proven record of success in Philadelphia, and her fans are already excited about her return to the airwaves,” said Brian Check, Senior Vice President of Programming, iHeartMedia Philadelphia.

Well here we are folks, Santa has come and gone, the ball has dropped, and the 2019-2020 Pennsylvania General Assembly has officially been sworn into office. While swearing in day seemed cordial, this session will quickly turn interesting as the slimmer, yet still robust Republican majorities in the House and Senate will likely further their conservative tilt after losing many moderate members in the Southeast. Governor Tom Wolf looks forward to the start of his second term, with his inauguration set for January 15 th, after a decisive seventeen point victory made clear the mandate to keep his steady hand in executive office. Early high profile topics likely to be discussed in the legislature include statute of limitation reform, proposed solutions for uncompetitive nuclear plants, and the prospect of open primaries. With a total of fifty new members in the legislature, we will work diligently to educate all legislators on the issues and opportunities facing the broadcast community throughout Pennsylvania and in their own backyard. Ben Dannels Greenlee Partners, LLC

Dan O'Shea Retail Dive, 1/3/19 Dive Brief: About 41% of U.S. consumers owned a smart speaker by the end of 2018, almost twice the percentage of consumers who owned the voice-driven devices at the end of the previous year, according to a TechCrunch report that attributed the data to recent reports from RBC Capital Markets. The report indicated that U.S. market penetration of smart speaker devices enabled with Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant grew to about 31% last year, with about 100 million Alexa-enabled devices installed nationwide. Amazon led the way in smart speaker market share with 66% of the market. Meanwhile, Google Home devices, embedded with Google Assistant technology, achieved 23% market penetration last year, good for about 29% smart speaker share, according to the TechCrunch story, while Apple's share of the market through its HomePod device was much smaller than that of the two giants. Dive Insight: Alexa may help Amazon generate up to $19 billion in total revenue by 2021 via smart speaker device sales, voice-driven shopping and other revenue sources. That still will represent just a small portion of Amazon's total revenue, but in any case, the key to Amazon's ongoing dominance of this market is that it offers the widest variety of smart speaker devices and the broadest ecosystem of apps and partners. At the beginning of 2018, it looked like Google might have a breakout year for sales of its Google Home smart speaker device, and according to RBC's numbers, Google did reap around $3.4 billion in revenue from sales of its Home devices last year. There are now about 43 million Google Home devices in the U.S., RBC estimated. Google could sell more than $6.6 billion worth of Home devices this year, but even as that market for smart speakers is growing like crazy, Google still appears to have a long way to go to catch Amazon. Apple's HomePod has even further to go just to become a factor in this market. HomePod was criticized for its overall design, lack of capabilities and initial $350 price tag, and to date has claimed only about 5% share of the smart speaker market, according to RBC. The current state of affairs in the smart speaker market appears to set Amazon up well to win the evolving voice commerce battle, although to date not many smart speaker owners are actively shopping and purchasing through their devices. Another recent bit of research from eMarketer suggested voice commerce would total around $2.1 billion for 2018, well under 1% of all retail sales. Smart speakers represent an explosive new market opportunity for the technology companies that are selling these devices, but even as more are showing up in consumer homes, they do not yet represent much of a sales channel for retailers.

Now that the dust has settled following the 2018 record midterm election, legislators from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and everywhere in between will travel back to Harrisburg on January 1 st to be sworn in and start fresh on what is sure to be an interesting legislative session. Governor Tom Wolf won his reelection handedly after defeating former State Senator Scott Wagner by 17 points. While the Republicans in both chambers suffered losses in the Southeast, they still maintain a majority of 110-92 in the House and 28-21 and will likely take a more conservative trajectory after the loss of some moderate members. On the Federal side, the Republicans took a beating as the new Congressional districts tipped the scales leaving the state in a Congressional stalemate with nine Republicans and nine Democrats representing the state in Washington D.C. Senator Bob Casey also experienced a great year as he cruised to victory against Republican challenger Congressman Lou Barletta. With over 40 new members in the State House and Senate, there will be plenty of new blood excited to hit the ground running, and we at Greenlee Partners look forward to educating these members on the hard work that you and your employees do every day and will strive to foster champions of broadcasters for years to come. Ben Dannels Greenlee Partners LLC.

Bob Fernandez Philadelphia Inquirer 11/6/2018 Four years ago, the Supreme Court hammered nails into the coffin of the Aereo television service that captured local over-the-air TV stations on tiny antennas and streamed them to laptops and mobile phones for a subscription fee. The nation’s highest court said, in a 6-3 vote, that Aereo violated federal laws and shut it down. Now, the idea of streaming local TV stations is back from the dead and in a new form — with a Washington lobbyist and lawyer who likes to poke Big Media, and Comcast Corp., in the eye. David Goodfriend, the lawyer with a private tech backer who advocates for cord cutting, launched Locast as a “digital translator” service in Philadelphia on Monday to stream local television stations over the internet to computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, and even to traditional televisions through its Roku app. It offers 15 over-the-air stations in the Philadelphia market, including NBC10, CBS3, Fox 29, and 6ABC. “It’s working great,” Good-friend said Monday morning of Locast, now available in seven major TV markets. “You should download the app.” The Locast app is available for Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Roku operating systems. Although the courts shut down Aereo as violating federal law, Goodfriend says that a provision in the 1976 Copyright Act allows a nonprofit to boost television signals so that people could watch local television broadcasters — though even he admits that no one has tried this before and Comcast-owned NBC and others could attempt to shut him down through the courts. Goodfriend says he is boosting the broadcast TV signals — only over the internet and not over-the-air. Because it’s a nonprofit organization, Locast (which stands for local broadcast) will not charge subscriptions for its streaming service but instead operate on a public-television model and seek donors and benefactors, Goodfriend said. In addition to traditional payment methods, the organization also accepts cryptocurrencies, including bit-coin, bitcoin cash, ethereum, and litecoin. Locast has been available already in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, Houston, and Denver. Aereo was criticized and sued because it was a for-profit company and broadcasters claimed that it was stealing their content. Goodfriend said he believes that consumers will want to watch free streams of over-the-air TV stations with Locast in addition to streaming Netflix or Amazon Prime for entertainment — a big threat to Comcast Corp. and legacy media companies that rely heavily on the cable bundle for revenue and profits. “I want us to go back to the roots and original purpose of local TV media so that it is widely available and inexpensive,” Goodfriend said on Sunday. Goodfriend is a Washington lawyer and past Comcast foe who opposed the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal. He launched Locast in early 2018 as a diversification of his nonprofit Sports Fan Coalition, which has criticized the high cost of sports programming on television, particularly the NFL. Critics say he is attempting to exploit a loophole in federal laws. But, so far, television broadcasters — which were quick to sue Aereo — have not taken legal action against Lo-cast. The National Association of Broadcasters had no comment on Monday. Comcast also had no comment. In each of the markets where Locast operates, the nonprofit organization leases roof space, erects antennas — “like what you put on your roof” — and contracts with a broadband provider to deliver the local television station content over the internet, Goodfriend said. Goodfriend declined to name his tech backer who he says has lent his nonprofit the money to launch the service. He has filed an application for Locast’s charitable status with the Internal Revenue Service and is waiting for a decision from the government. The latest 990 for the Sports Fan Coalition showed $223,764 in net assets. “You have this vast multi-billion-dollar marketplace and the consumer always gets screwed,” Goodfriend said of the pay-TV business. A nonprofit will bring “rationality back.”