FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Nexus Broadcast Returns: Bigger, Faster and Built on Its Own Software Twelve years after health forced its founder to close the doors, the broadcast engineering firm is back, serving AM, FM, LPFM, translators and TV with in-house software that makes expert engineering and FCC filing faster and more affordable. TEXARKANA, Texas — Nexus Broadcast, the broadcast engineering and FCC filing firm founded by Leo Ashcraft, is back in business. The company closed in August 2014 when Ashcraft's health made it impossible to keep going. It returns today as a different kind of firm: one that writes its own engineering and station software, and uses it to handle more stations, more filings and more questions, for less money, than it ever could before. The new Nexus Broadcast covers every broadcast service: full-power FM and AM, LPFM, FM translators, and full-power, Class A and low-power TV. It also builds station websites and apps, hosts streams, and offers monthly engineering plans that put an engineer on call for stations that cannot keep one on staff. Why Nexus closed, and why it is back In the 2000s and early 2010s, Nexus Broadcast was a familiar name to the low-power FM community. It sold LPFM transmitters, stereo generators and antennas, helped first-time applicants through FCC filing windows, and Ashcraft, who had owned and operated stations around Texas, wrote about LPFM rule changes in Radio Guide. In 2014 Radio World reported that he had closed the 30-year consultancy and equipment business, citing declining health and the economy. “I can no longer operate the company effectively,” he said at the time. “That was the hardest call I ever made,” Ashcraft said. “The work never stopped mattering to me. What stopped was my ability to do all of it by hand, every hour of the day. My health set the limit, and the old way of running an engineering firm needed more of me than I had.” The limit has not changed. What changed is the work itself. Over the past several years Ashcraft has rebuilt the way Nexus operates, so that the repetitive, error-prone parts of broadcast engineering are done by software he designed, and his time goes where an experienced engineer actually matters. “I'm not coming back the same,” he said. “I'm coming back smarter about how I work. The software carries the load I used to carry myself, and that means I can say yes to more stations than I ever could before.” An industry that changed, and a firm built for it Radio in 2026 runs leaner than it did in 2014. Many stations have no full-time engineer. Small owners, nonprofits and LPFM boards handle FCC deadlines, EAS logs and ETRS filings on top of everything else. Filing windows bring hundreds of applicants at once, and the consultants who serve them are stretched thin. At the same time, the tools changed. FCC data is online and updated daily. Studies that once took a consultant days can be run, checked and drafted into exhibits in a fraction of the time when the software is built by someone who knows what the FCC expects to see. “Most of an engineering study is careful, repeatable work: pulling the right records, applying the rules the same way every time, and catching the mistake before the FCC does,” Ashcraft said. “Software is better at that than a tired human at two in the morning. That frees me for the judgment calls, the creative engineering, and the conversations with clients.” The result is a firm that feels quiet and fast from the outside. Clients can request a study, check a deadline, pay an invoice or get an FCC alert without waiting on a phone call. But every filing is reviewed and signed off by an engineer, and a real person answers when a client needs one. “Automated doesn't mean anonymous,” Ashcraft said. “It means you don't wait a week for an answer. When you need to talk to an engineer, you get one who has been doing this for decades.” What Nexus built The centerpiece is RF Navigator, broadcast study software that runs on Nexus's own RF Workbench platform. It runs station studies from current FCC data and drafts the engineering exhibits from the finished study, with modules for FM translators and LPFM second-adjacent waivers, full-power FM, AM (day, night and critical hours), and TV (full-power, Class A, LPTV and translators). Every study Nexus prepares runs on it, and the same software is available to consulting engineers who would rather do the research themselves. A demo is at rfnavigator.com. Around it, nexusbroadcast.com now offers: - More than 30 free tools for engineers and applicants, including a filing window tracker, station and call sign lookups, spare call signs, pending FM applications, an LPFM directory and self-inspection checklist, HAAT and U/D calculators, FCC propagation curves, tower and FAA checks, FM RF exposure, ETRS deadlines and FCC filing fees. - ETRS filing and monthly engineering plans from $199 a month ($99 for LPFM): an engineer on call, ETRS Forms One, Two and Three, a deadline calendar with reminders, and a monthly EAS log review. - Station websites from $399, station apps for iPhone and Android, and stream hosting from $9 a month, all run by broadcast engineers. - Station software in development for the day-to-day work after a station is on the air: TroveTracks (music library tagging and screening), WeatherTrove (automatic local weather breaks), VoiceTrove (between-song breaks about the records actually playing), NewsTrove (local news gathering, held for approval) and RadioText Pro. “Everything we built started as a problem at a real station,” Ashcraft said. “I've owned and run stations myself. If a tool doesn't save a station owner time on a Tuesday afternoon, it doesn't ship.” The FCC, every day, in one place Nexus also publishes a free daily tracker of FCC broadcast actions at nexusbroadcast.com/fcc-actions. It lists every grant, dismissal, acceptance and new application the FCC posts for AM, FM, LPFM, FM translator and TV stations, day by day. Any station can sign up for a free email the morning after the FCC acts on its call sign. Two companion pages follow the rulemaking side. One lists every FCC rule, proposed rule and notice in the Federal Register for the last 120 days, with comment deadlines and a broadcast-only view. The other shows who is filing what in each broadcast docket, newest first. A Premium tier adds alerts on competitors, new applications nearby and sales in a station's market. Coverage maps a station can actually use The free Coverage Map Maker turns any FM or LPFM station's FCC record into a print-ready coverage map in minutes. It plots strong, primary and fringe signal levels, adjusted for terrain and directional antennas, and counts the people inside each one from the 2020 Census. The map carries the station's own logo, colors and headline, ready for a rate card, an underwriting pitch or the station website. When a station needs more than a sales map, such as a terrain-shadowing study, a comparison of candidate sites, or an interference exhibit for an FCC filing, Nexus prepares full coverage and interference studies on the same software. Network news and local weather, back on the air Ashcraft is also reviving something many stations will remember. His first newscast network grew to hundreds of affiliate stations before the workload and the cost of a news wire shut it down. Its successor, Nexus Radio News, is now taking early-access applications at nexusradionews.com. - Hourly network newscasts in 1-, 3- and 5-minute lengths, plus breaking-news bulletins, delivered as broadcast-ready audio straight to the station's automation. - A local weather service for each market: a 15-second conditions update and a 30-second forecast, refreshed every hour, with any watch or warning first. - Statewide and local newscasts to follow, market by market. - Free to commercial stations on barter; LPFM and internet stations from $20 a month, full-power noncommercial stations from $40. There is nothing to install and no service call. A station signs up, runs one setup step on its studio computer, and the newscast is waiting in a folder at the top of every hour. Every story is built from verifiable sources and checked before it airs. Lower cost, higher quality, one place to call Because the software does the repeatable work, Nexus can take on more cases at once and price them lower, without cutting corners. Studies are run the same way every time, from current FCC data, and exhibits are drafted straight from the finished study, so fewer errors reach the FCC and fewer applications come back for amendment. “Small stations have always paid big-market prices for engineering, or gone without,” Ashcraft said. “When the software does the heavy lifting, I can charge less and still do better work. That's the whole point.” One thing Nexus will not do again is build hardware. The company no longer manufactures transmitters or other equipment and has no plans to. Instead, it helps stations choose, install and license the right gear from established manufacturers. “We're not in the box business anymore, and we're not going back,” Ashcraft said. “Everything else a station needs — the channel, the study, the filing, the deadlines, the website, the app, the stream, the software that runs the day — that's us. One call.” Nexus is taking clients now for the FCC's NCE FM translator filing window, which opens November 4, 2026. Broadcaster by trade, ham by heart Ashcraft is also a licensed amateur radio operator, W5PRO, and the same approach behind Nexus runs through his ham site, w5pro.com. It offers nearly 20 free tools for new and experienced operators alike: band plans by license class, live band conditions, a best-band-now estimate, greyline and satellite-pass maps, antenna and feedline calculators, an RF exposure calculator, a call sign lookup, and help renewing a license or updating an FCC address. Operators can also sign up for an email the day the FCC acts on their call sign. No ads, no logins, and every number is cited. “Ham radio is where a lot of us fell in love with radio in the first place,” Ashcraft said. “Art Bell, W6OBB, brought it to millions of overnight listeners, and working alongside his show put me close to that legacy. If a new ham gets on the air faster because of something I built, that's as good as any filing I'll ever do.” About Nexus Broadcast Nexus Broadcast is a broadcast engineering and FCC filing firm serving AM, FM, LPFM, FM translator and TV stations across the United States. Founded by Leo Ashcraft, it pairs decades of station, consulting and FCC experience with its own RF Workbench and RF Navigator engineering software, and offers station websites, apps, stream hosting, monthly engineering plans and free FCC tools at nexusbroadcast.com. Over his career Ashcraft has owned and operated a number of radio stations across Texas, and his broadcast work includes Art Bell's Midnight in the Desert on the Dark Matter Digital Network. # # # Media contact: Leo Ashcraft, Nexus Broadcast, (430) 558-5100, nexusbroadcast.com/contact 2801 Richmond Rd #366, Texarkana, TX 75503 Online: https://nexusbroadcast.com/news/nexus-broadcast-returns PHOTOS AND LOGO (attached) - Leo-Ashcraft-color.jpg and Leo-Ashcraft-black-and-white.jpg: Leo Ashcraft, founder of Nexus Broadcast, at the microphone. - Nexus-Broadcast-logo.jpg / .png: Nexus Broadcast logo.