KBA'S WEEKLY NEWSLETTER

MAY 6, 2021

ROB BEASLEY PASSES AWAY

REMEMBERED AS BROADCASTER, MUSICIAN & FAMILY MAN

Robert Lowery “Rob” Beasley, Jr., 56, of Russellville, Ky passed away Saturday, May 1, 2021 at the Medical Center of Bowling Green.

Rob was born September 28, 1964 in Leitchfield, Ky. From childhood he had a passion for music and began developing his performance skills on multiple instruments. At age 15, he began working in the radio industry. Much of his career was spent as a radio personality under the moniker of Maxwell “Max” P. Murphy, and his energetic, booming voice filled the airwaves throughout South Central Kentucky. During the latter years of his career, he served as a broadcast engineer for The Edge Media Group.

Rob was a member of Southern Heights Baptist Church, Russellville where he served as a musician and sound technician. Prior to his service at Southern Heights, he spent many years as a praise band member at Living Hope Baptist Church, Bowling Green, Ky playing saxophone and guitar.

Rob was also known for his enthusiasm and humor as a popular announcer for several Kentucky marching band competitions and his devotion to helping the Logan County High School Band.

He was loved by many for his big heart, quick wit, and servant spirit. Rob will be missed by many including his wife of 23 years, Mandy Pickett Beasley; 2 children Patrick Beasley (Brie) of Crestwood, Ky, and Zoe Beasley, Russellville,Ky; His mother, Joyce Vincent of Hardinsburg, Ky; His father, Robert Beasley (Kathy) of Auburn, Ky; 1 sister, Amy Robinson (Phillip) of Hardinsburg, Ky; and 5 grandchildren Rylee, Rilee, Knox, Raelynn, and Maxwell. He was preceded in death by his step-father, Sonny Vincent.

The family will receive friends from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. Friday, May 7th at Southern Heights Baptist Church, Russellville, Ky with a service celebrating Rob’s life beginning at 6:00 p.m.

STATE LEADERSHIP IS NEXT WEEK

KBA TO MEET VIRTUALLY WITH KENTUCKY'S DELEGATES

Each February, the KBA takes a group of broadcasters to Washington, DC to meet with Kentucky delegates about issues that are important to broadcasters. No thanks to COVID, the 2021 NAB State Leadership Conference was postponed and rescheduled for next week, virtually.

What follows is a list of confirmed appointments next week. The schedule will likely grow and change between now and Tuesday. Therefore, we will share an updated list of meetings with access links on Monday. Anyone wishing to specifially attend the NAB State Leadership Conference on Tuesday from 12-3PM, please let Chris know as soon as possible at chris@kba.org.

TUESDAY, MAY 11, 2021

12-3 PM ET - NAB State Leadership Conference

4:30 PM ET - Senator Rand Paul

WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 2021

3:30 PM ET - Senator Mitch McConnell

4:30 PM ET - Congressman James Comer

THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2021

11:00 AM ET - Congressman John Yarmuth

11:30 AM ET - Congressman Brett Guthrie

2:00 PM ET - Congressman Andy Barr

IMPACT FINALISTS ANNOUNCED

LIVE AWARDS SHOW IS JUNE 8TH @ 2PM ET

The judges have completed their work and KBA would like to congratulate the finalists for the 1st Annual Impact Broadcast Awards. Winners will be announced during the live streamed awards show on Tuesday, June 8th at 2:00 PM ET. Details to come on how you can view the event.

SEE THE FINALISTS

FREE LBS WEBINAR FOR KBA MEMBERS

TUESDAY, MAY 11TH @ NOON

7 STEPS TO A FANTASTIC RECOVERY

TUESDAY, MAY 11TH @ 12:00 PM EDT

We promise it won't matter if you're from the radio, television, or the digital side of things, from a large market or small, you will leave this webinar better prepared to build and enhance your recovery efforts as we'll focus on often overlooked details. Just some of the things we'll be covering include:

Competitive money - where is it, and why do people buy competitive media when they could be buying us?
Reducing cancellations with just a couple of the right questions
7 "Must Ask" questions in every C N A. And if you don't ask them, it isn't a C N A. A spreadsheet to show you why? Absolutely!
Benefit-oriented presentations (and yes, we'll have a template)
Giving clients who don't like to plan farther than a month out a tool to help YOU help them plan further out
Customer service tips to share with your clients to help them close more business
The Grand Pooba Appointment list

ARE FCC REGULATORY FEES ON THE RISE?

THE ANSWER IS MOST LIKELY, "YES"

The FCC recently released its list of proposed regulatory fees for 2021, which can be found here.

It will take some number crunching to sort out how it affects particular types of broadcast stations, but the big takeaway is that the FCC’s budget allocation that Congress requires it to collect via regulatory fees each year went up by about $35M to $374M (about a 10% increase over last year). Looking at the various classes of stations, it appears broadcast fees went up a comparable amount overall, though it appears the FCC’s proposal skews the biggest part of the increase towards larger markets (ie, a small market station might get an 8% increase while a large market station got a 12% increase).

KBA and NAB have battled against these fee increases year after year, and have had some success around the edges, but the ultimate problem is that Congress mandates by statute that the FCC collect fees from its regulatees, and dictates how much must be collected each year. At this point, the only real solution lies on Capitol Hill, as the FCC has repeatedly shown little interest in figuring out how to charge regulatory fees to the tech companies that benefit from the FCC’s various proceedings setting aside unlicensed spectrum for WiFi, etc., or otherwise increasing the universe of fee-paying entities across which to spread the FCC’s budget allocation.

There are very few federal agencies that are funded this way, but obviously Congress would prefer the $374M be “self-funded” by the FCC than to actually use tax money to cover those operations. I’m sure you will hear from your members that the fees are unfair (and they are), but it is increasingly clear we are wasting our breath trying to get the FCC to change it (and admittedly, they can’t change a lot given the statute), so query as to whether discussions with NAB should resume on trying to obtain a longer-term solution from Congress. It will be an uphill battle, but you have to start somewhere or accept that these annual increases will be perpetual.

JEFF SCHMIDT'S SALES TIP OF THE WEEK

SEIZING THE OPPORTUNITY

Spring is in the air in Wisconsin, pay no attention to the snow that we got this week. One of the things spring in Wisconsin brings is garage sales. It’s a ritual. The signs go up on Monday and by Saturday morning neighborhoods are filled with bargain hunters looking for those unique finds, living by the old cliché that one person’s junk is another person’s treasure.

Yesterday during our Leadership MasterClass Jeff Sisk from Forcht Broadcasting in Hopkinsville, Kentucky shared a true treasure of an idea. Jeff’s news director came to him and told him that the local newspaper stopped putting yard sale listings in the classified section and wondered if there was something the radio station could do. Side note, love it that the news director was thinking about revenue opportunities.

Jeff’s team went to work and created a website page where people in the community could post a 30-word listing for free. There was a fee if they wanted more words. Jeff also found a title sponsor for the page. His website team developed a form to make it super easy not only for the staff but for the people who wanted to post. Then they went to a local company that they thought would benefit from sponsorship of the page. The sponsor gets the title position and the “ownership” of the page and everyone wins.

Because this is on their website, this is an organic digital success story that is providing revenue to the station’s website with support on the air to drive traffic to the website. The program has been a great success. For webmasters this also provides great traffic an engagement based on the number of people coming to post or view. You can click here to go to the station’s website and see how they are executing this great idea. You’ll see that there are tiles created for each listing, and when you click on the tile, you see the full details of the yard sale including a clickable map button to direct you right to the event.

They key takeaway’s aside from the great idea are:

A culture of service – Jeff and the management team have created a culture where anyone can come forward with an idea for serving the community, the listeners, or generating revenue
Seizing the opportunity – Radio has a unique ability to act quickly and seize opportunities. Whether they be disaster response, or in this case filling a need in the community that also generates revenue
Digital provides limitless opportunity – Not too many program directors would want to go on the air and list upcoming yard sales, but with a strong website and digital presence the station was able to seize an opportunity, create a web page, fill a need in the community and generate revenue. What’s not to love

Congrats to Jeff and the team in Hopkinsville, and thank you for sharing a great idea, and some excellent lessons for maximizing digital resources in your market.

Jeff Schmidt is the SVP of Professional Development at the Radio Advertising Bureau. You can also connect with him by email JSchmidt@rab.com or on Twitter and LinkedIn.

NEWSLETTER QUICK NOTES...

FCC RULES FOR ALL-DIGITAL AM RADIO BECOMES EFFECTIVE

By David Oxenford

The FCC’s order adopted in late October authorizing AM stations to voluntarily convert to operations in a fully-digital mode became effective yesterday when the approval of its information-collection obligations under the Paperwork Reduction Act was announced in the Federal Register. This means that AM stations can opt for full-digital operations, which many have argued will provide a stronger, more stable digital AM signal with improved fidelity and more resistance to the environmental noise that plagues analog AM reception. Click here to read more.

MAY 15 - COPYRIGHT ROYALTY FEE REPORTS DUE

Commercial and noncommercial webcasters and those broadcast stations simulcasting their programming over the Internet must file Monthly Report of Use and Monthly Usage Statement of Account forms with SoundExchange for the month ending March 31, 2021 by this date.