NorthEast Radio Watch 4/13/2026: It’s Almost NAB Show Time!

In this week’s issue… The industry gathers in Vegas – SBS files for bankruptcy – New top 40 in PA – Retirement in Brockville draws honors

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*It’s gray, rainy and 50-something here in western New York as we write this week’s column, which makes a forecast of sunshine and 80-something for Las Vegas next week look especially appealing as broadcasters prepare to gather for this year’s NAB Show.

For your editor, this will be the 24th year at NAB (with that pandemic gap that cancelled the 2020 and 2021 events), and a new experience – in addition to reporting back to all of you about what the state of the industry looks like, I have a new role this year as the North American representative for Myriad, the suite of broadcast software from Broadcast Radio in the UK.

But fear not. In addition to wearing out my soles on the show floor, I’ll also be attending (and speaking at) the Public Radio Engineering Conference later this week and attending other industry events, and I’ll have a NERW wrap-up for you at some point next week, though possibly delayed from our usual Monday publication date.

So what’s on our radar for NAB this year?

Everyone wants to see the shiny new gear, and there’s some neat stuff we’re looking forward to seeing on the floor. For all of AM radio’s issues right now, existing stations still need to replace aging transmitters, and it’s been getting hard to source lower-power rigs lately as companies like Armstrong have exited the business. This year, though, Nautel is extending its XR line downward in power with new 1 kW and 2.5 kW offerings – and we’re looking forward to see what’s up with BE and its new domestic ownership.

It’s also been a while since Omnia has had a new flagship processor, so we’re eager to hear what its new Omnia 12 sounds like, 15 years since the 11 rocketed on to the scene. It’s an increasingly crowded field, what with Orban’s flagship 5950, new options from Angry Audio and more. And that’s just the hardware boxes. So many of the functions in a radio station that once required standalone pieces of hardware can now be carried out virtually, including audio processing, program switching and, soon, EAS. With the exit of one of the two big makers of hardware EAS boxes, we’re expecting to hear some updates on where the industry stands on virtualizing EAS and incorporating it into an airchain without a hardware box.

Yes, there’s AI, too, but there’s been “AI” for quite a few years now at NAB, and for all the vendors and prognosticators eagerly touting a world in which algorithms take the place of humans at the core of content creation, the reality so far hasn’t come close to living up to most of the hype. As a column that’s been painstakingly created entirely by a human for 32 years now, you can probably guess where we come down on that, right?

There’s more than just shiny new boxes and show-floor swag, though. At a time when the business faces so many existential crises, we’ll be listening carefully for signs of where leaders think the industry’s future is headed. Will the current FCC be able to push its deregulatory agenda in the face of court roadblocks like the one that’s currently preventing Nexstar from completing its takeover of Tegna? And if ownership caps are a thing of the past, what could that mean for station groups that still have the resources to grow in markets where they’ve been capped? Will the ATSC 3.0 “NextGen” DTV system finally get the traction it needs to go mainstream, at a time when TV viewers have an ever-growing set of choices?

There are a lot of questions and not a lot of obvious answers as we get ready to head west. So stay tuned here and over on RadioInsight.com, where we’ll do our best to look past all the hype and let you know what we make of this year’s show.

(And of course if you’re going to be there, please come by the Myriad booth, C2230 – and you can also use our promo code, NS9659, for a free floor pass!)