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An Alabama FM known as God’s Country is going to the non-commercial arm of Frank Lee Perryman’s Marble City Media LLC. Licensed to Goodwater, AL, Classic Country and Southern Gospel formatted WFAZ is being sold by The First Assembly of God and Lead Pastor Keith Jones.

WFAZ has been silent under an FCC Special Temporary Authority, and RadioAlabama Foundation is entering into a Local Marketing Agreement with the church to be terminated on the sale’s close.

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The recently formed Radio Vendor Alliance has added another member to its coalition ahead of the organization’s grand unveiling at the 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas. Navaquest, a provider of digital sales training for small to mid-sized radio markets, joins the RVA to offer strategic planning and advice to small, independent owners.

Navaquest aims to complement the services of existing RVA members with its training modules and digital marketing certification.

The RVA consists of eight founding members, including RadioFX, Envisionwise, Big Deals Media, Cool Radio Streaming, Rumple, Silverback Advertising, Radio Consulting Services, and Frank Gerard Voiceovers.

Navaquest founder Theresa Timm said, “One of the internal goals of the RVA is to align our services with each other, so radio stations can succeed in today’s ever-changing marketplace…To be part of an organization with some of the most respected names in the business is an honor.”

The RVA is gearing up for its first significant gathering at NAB Show, where it will sponsor the Small and Medium Market Radio Forum on the event’s opening day, April 13.

The Advanced Television Systems Committee is progressing towards incorporating Versatile Video Coding into its ATSC 3.0 broadcast standards, aiming to enhance efficiency beyond the existing High Efficiency Video Coding technology. The international compression method could facilitate 8K broadcasting capabilities through ATSC 3.0 with improved bandwidth conservation.

VVC, now in the evaluation phase as an ATSC “Candidate Standard,” may soon be ratified as a full standard, enriching the ATSC 3.0 suite with advanced compression capabilities.

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As NBCUniversal prepares for the audience and advertising boon of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the company has formed a first-time collaboration with AMC Theatres to bring live Olympic event broadcasts to theaters. From July 27 to August 11, fans can enjoy select daytime coverage at approximately 160 AMC locations nationwide.

Tickets for these viewings will be available for purchase through AMC and Fandango starting this summer.

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As Fox Sports reportedly plans to expand its college football broadcast schedule to include high-profile games on Friday nights this fall, the decision to host games on a night traditionally dedicated to high school football has sparked concern and opposition from the National Federation of State High School Associations which urges broadcasters to refrain.

The shift will likely feature leading teams from the Big Ten and Big 12 conferences, with the Big Ten expecting to schedule at least nine Friday night games on Fox networks in 2024, a notable increase from the previous year.

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The highly anticipated joint-network sports streaming service developed by Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery has named its Pete Distad its Chief Executive Officer, who comes from a long background in Apple’s television division after a stint at Hulu.

Scheduled to launch this fall, the yet-to-be-named platform is being described as a “Hulu for Sports” with 14 linear network feeds from the joint venture’s member companies.

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An application for an LPFM station in Rhode Island has been derailed because the applicant had listed a mailbox at an office supply store as its operating address.

Bump FM, a Providence non-profit that has been streaming gospel-formatted hip hop and rap from its website since 2018, sought to broadcast on 95.1 FM from Glocester. It applied for a CP during the December LPFM window.

But Bump FM listed a Smithfield address on Putnam Pike as where it would be operating from. The only problem? The address came back to a mailbox at a Staples office supply store.

Aaron Read, chief engineer at The Public’s Radio network, filed an informal objection pointing this out. FCC rules require an operating address to be a “campus” or “physical headquarters” within 10 miles of a proposed transmitter site.

Bump FM responded in February, updating its application to a location in North Smithfield that it said it had leased “out of an abundance of caution.” It told the FCC that the address on the original application was through office space with Staples’ Coworking program.

Read filed a reply saying that the Staples Coworking program is not available in any of the chain’s R.I. locations, which the commission confirmed. He said the the addresses for the officers and board members on Bump FM’s application were all in Providence, more than 10 miles from the proposed Glocester transmitter site.

In its ruling the commission now has declared that Bump FM does not qualify as “local.” 

In a top 50 Nielsen market such as Providence-Warwick-Pawtucket, an LPFM applicant qualifies as a local entity if it can certify that it is physically headquartered within 10 miles of its transmitter and that 75% of its board members reside within the same radius. 

Additionally, the commission could only trace the amended address to a lease date of Jan. 8, after the original application was filed and beyond the scope of a “minor change” that the Media Bureau would deem acceptable . 

The commission said Read’s objection had established “substantial and material question of fact that grant of the application would be inconsistent with the public interest.”

As a result, Bump FM’s LPFM application was dismissed. Bump FM acknowledged the dismissal on its website and said that it will not be filing a petition for reconsideration.

(Read the decision.)

The post FCC Dismisses LPFM Application in R.I. After Objection appeared first on Radio World.

Audacy has confirmed that Senior Vice President of Digital Audio Content Tim Clarke will be leaving the company at the end of March. As Audacy realigns its organizational strategy coming out of bankruptcy, Clarke’s role will not be directly replaced.

An internal memo given to Streamline Publishing by an Audacy spokesperson elaborates:

As part of our efforts to streamline, flatten, and further integrate our organization, we will not be replacing Tim’s role; his teams will instead be moving into various teams including Product, Marketing and Programming based on their respective job functions. Since Tim will be with us for another three weeks, we’ll have plenty of time to say a proper farewell, and to share more information on transition items that may be relevant to you and your teams. In the meantime, we will continue to focus on growing our streaming uniques, listening hours and revenue.

Clarke joined then-Entercom as Boston Market Manager in March of 2021, before being promoted to his current position after eight months. Since then he has overseen Audacy’s direct consumer operations, including the Audacy app and website, along with the digital strategy for local brands.

Before Audacy, Clarke spent 15 years with Cox Media Group’s radio division, rising to VP of Audience and Content.

An Audacy spokesperson tells RBR+TVBR that this adjustment is part of the company’s broader initiative to simplify its structure and enhance collaboration across its numerous content platforms, with digital expansion remaining a priority.

This is not the first executive departure for Audacy throughout its restructuring process. VP of News Bill Smee left in February. There have been additions staff shifts occurring from the local level up to format captains, as well as layoffs in its podcasting department.

Because much of my work is international, I was a relatively early user of WhatsApp. It became my free long-distance call and multifaceted messaging service for keeping in touch with businesses and friends around the globe. But for quite some time, when I’d mention it to folks here in the United States, many would say, “WhatsApp? What the heck is that?”

Search “radio” and see what comes up.

While the app was introduced in 2009 and subsequently became a global juggernaut, adoption in the U.S. was slower — yet it is steady and growing. eMarketer pegs the U.S. at 67.6 million users for 2023 and projects growth to 70.2 million by 2027. Other sources say it’s much higher. 

I’m convinced that WhatsApp will grow rapidly here as it adds more services and Americans increase international travel, spurring them to try the product. Many American businesses have already added WhatsApp to their communication process for consumers. With WhatsApp’s new “Channel” functionality, it’s time for American radio to explore this evolving product.

What’s not to like?

Get ready for WhatsApp Channels. It launched in September so that users could follow celebrities and brands for updates. At this writing, there is indeed a waiting list for creating a new channel; however, I’ve found several sources reporting that WhatsApp will be allowing access to all at some point soon.

Unlike WhatsApp Chats, the Channels feature is one-way broadcast communication, all coming from the brand or personality. Users subscribe to specific WhatsApp Channels to receive updates. This is most definitely a no-brainer for news/talk and sports formats but could also work quite well to highlight personalities and station benefits.

If you search “radio” or even “FM,” you’ll see how stations around the world are already using the product to communicate to their listeners. 

Bluradio in Bogota, Columbia, has more than 650,000 followers. For comparison, Major League Baseball has surpassed 1.5 million. Although there may be some U.S. stations on board, I could not easily find one.

WhatsApp Channels can provide one-way communication from your brand or personality.

Currently, 16 people can function as the “admin” for your WhatsApp Channel, so the creativity and work can be spread around your station. But plan wisely. For example, the help center makes a great point when it recommends that “channel admins should be respectful of their followers and avoid sending too many or low quality updates, which could lead recipients to unfollow their Channel.”

Along the way, WhatsApp Channels introduced voice messages, which means you’ll be able to send clips of shows or bits to followers. It’s not possible yet to embed videos, but links may be used. However, just like any other platform, I caution against linking out unless you don’t want followers to stay on your Channel. Once you link out, it’s unlikely the user will return, and often they bounce from the outbound link because they really do want to stay on the platform. You may also conduct polls on your WhatsApp Channel, a handy way to get your audience engaged in real-time, while you talk about it on-air. 

One more benefit to WhatsApp is using Community or Chats to accept two-way communication. It’s an excellent way for listeners to send you voice notes from their phones that you can use on-air. The advantage over phone calls is obvious: You can easily edit and utilize at your complete convenience. The sound quality is also excellent.

By the way, WhatsApp Chats are terrific for internal use. Use your WhatsApp Chat Group to stay in touch with your on-air staff or sales organization. It’s much more efficient than email and will speed up your communication process. 

What’s not to like? When the time comes, I am looking forward to watching American radio grow on WhatsApp and can’t wait to subscribe to your Channel.

Comment on this or any article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject field.

The post Get to Know WhatsApp appeared first on Radio World.

Audacy is in the process of rolling out the new HLS+ streaming technology from Super Hi-Fi on its 700 or so online stations, as we reported earlier this week. The change means listeners to those streams who use compatible devices will be able to enjoy new interactive and personalization features.

Super Hi-Fi calls HLS+ transformative. I interviewed CEO Zack Zalon to ask him to explain the technology and why he’s excited about it.

Radio World: Help us understand what HLS+ is and why you’re excited about it.

Zack Zalon

Zack Zalon: Let’s start by considering what does radio does incredibly well: production, branding, segues with sound effects or sweepers, and personalities who narrate an experience and pull people through a journey. 

But over the past decade the digital ecosystem has become more about interactivity and personalization. Look at Spotify. The ability to skip songs and go right to the beginning of the next one, the ability to get personalized information flown in for you, are great. But then you don’t get production, you don’t get narration, you don’t get branding elements — nothing that makes radio amazing. 

What we’ve been working on for three years is an entirely new streaming technology to allow both true linear, fully produced, live radio experiences, the full complement of radio’s capabilities, plus full interactivity and personalization. 

Let’s say you’re listening to a song and there’s a segue that’s about to happen. In that segue, you’ll get a branding element, a voice track, another branding element and another song, all stitched together perfectly, just as you’d expect on the world’s best broadcast radio experiences. And if you listen to it with HLS+, that’s what you’ll hear. But if you skip, you will go to the beginning of the next song perfectly, with no production overhangs, just like you would on a Spotify or an Apple Music. It won’t skip to a random spot on the stream; it won’t leave some of that production overhang audible. 

It’s almost as though HLS+ is crafting an entirely new experience for you on the fly, which makes it feel like just an interactive music service, but still with the production capabilities of radio on top of it. 

That’s the first part. The second part is personalization. So let’s say a sports report comes up in a radio broadcast stream. You’re in Washington, Paul, so with HLS+, you’ll get a Washington Capitals report, but I’ll get an L.A. Lakers report — at the same time, in the same spot on the stream — and then we go back into regularly scheduled programming. It’s seamless. 

This combination of capabilities has never existed before. That stream theoretically could power a broadcast radio experience through the FM or HD Radio dial too; but when you receive it on an interactive player on your phone, all that interactivity comes to life. And it’s the same stream, which can be both live and fully produced as well as interactive and personalized, all at the same time.

Finally, if the stream connects to a player that doesn’t support that interactivity, it folds down automatically into a traditional HLS stream — meaning this technology is compatible with billions of devices that already exist, such as Amazon Alexa, Sonos, etc. 

Audacy is converting all 700 of its online-only exclusive stations into HLS+ by the end of the month. And we’re going live with industry support from Telos Alliance, Orban, Barix, Xperi and its AIM app platform, and more coming. 

The industry has needed an advanced technology to allow them to keep the production that makes radio great, but also to take advantage of real interactivity, as Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music have had for years. We have heard from countless radio companies that they’re frustrated by limits of their existing streaming tech. So this is a unique opportunity for radio companies.

RW: Where will this show up?

Zalon: For starters, if a consumer is using the Audacy app, all those stations soon will work in a fully produced and fully interactive way. We’re going live with them on all of their apps for iOS, Android and web via JavaScript. We’ve also tested it on Alexa devices and believe that our ecosystem will soon include Amazon Alexa, even for the fully interactive experiences. And we’ll announce more customers over coming months.

RW: What does a streaming company need to do on the infrastructure side to integrate this?

Zalon: They have to be using the Super Hi-Fi operating system, which we call Program Director. It’s part of that ecosystem; but there’s no upcharge for using HLS+. It’s a small amount of code added to a customer’s player ecosystem. To date, if you use Program Director and want to do a stream, you can select HTTP streaming, you can select standard HLS or you can select RTMP. Now you’ll also be able to select HLS+ and the stream it creates is designed for that environment, it will provide that production, interactivity and personalization. 

RW: To be clear, this discussion applies to online streaming audio stations, not over-the-air.

Zalon: Well, if one of our customers is using Program Director to power an HD Radio or FM broadcast, that same experience would instantly be available as an interactive version online. Again, it’s a single stream. If it plays on FM, it obviously won’t be interactive, but if you listen in your interactive player, it is. We think this opens up a world of cool digital use cases.

RW: You mentioned skipping ahead. What happens when there’s a live, real-time element in the audio?

Zalon: It will collapse to live, and you can’t skip forward anymore until the live experience is over, say with a morning show. But the minute that show goes back to prescheduled voice-track programming, you’re right back in the interactive experience again.

This is amongst the most complicated technologies we’ve built. But it’s necessary, especially if radio is going to stay attractive to the next generation of consumers. 

One of the things radio is not doing very well is bringing in younger listeners. Those users are accustomed to controlling their own experiences, and radio has never been about user control. HLS+ starts to layer some of that control directly on top of the radio stream itself, so a younger demographic is more likely to experience radio in a similar manner to how they’re interacting with all of their other media sources. Our goal is to use HLS+ to make radio as relevant as possible to the broadest possible audience of listeners.

RW: You listed several technology partners that are supporting this. In what way are they doing so?

Zalon: Embedding the ability to read HLS+ into their devices would be one example. But more broadly these companies share a vision for transformation across the entire radio landscape. They see that we need a collective ecosystem of interoperable tools to help carry radio into the next generation of listeners. So while they’re supporting HLS+, you’ll see us supporting some of their advanced technologies as they come to market over the coming years. 

RW: Are those companies licensing HLS+ from you?

Zalon: No. We’re working together on a range of ways HLS+ might manifest itself in the industry. Right now it’s most useful for online digital radio. But there are so many technologies that are advancing the longer-term opportunity for radio companies, from entirely new studio and playout tools to in-car interactive entertainment services. We believe that HLS+ will add meaningful value across a variety of touchpoints on that ecosystem, and we’re incredibly excited to demonstrate some of those options as things unfold over time.

[Read more Radio World coverage of Super Hi-Fi.]

The post Zack Zalon on Why HLS+ Matters appeared first on Radio World.

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The Media Bureau affirms the dismissal of the application of Christian Recovery Foundation for a new LPFM station at Dracut, Massachusetts

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The Media Bureau dismisses the application of Portsonic Communications, LLC, for a new LPFM station at Las Vegas, Nevada

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The logo of the faidr app from Auddia.

Technology company Auddia, developer of the faidr audio app, announced a pay-per-play beta program for podcasters and networks.

“The program will treat podcast plays and downloads similar to streaming music, where content owners receive a direct payment based on how many streams they receive,” the company said in a press release.

CEO Michael Lawless said “the economics are simply broken” for many podcasters. “Ad revenues can be inconsistent, and unlike the top shows out there, you have the vast majority of podcasts, even seemingly popular ones, making just enough to survive. Meanwhile, ad networks, ad servers and ad salespeople are taking a significant chunk of the gross revenue from podcast ads.”

Lawless said the beta program pays creators directly for each play. “They keep a much bigger portion of the revenue generated from their material.”

The program targets listeners who skip the majority of ads and don’t subscribe to exclusive or ad-free feeds at the show or network level.

“Partners in Auddia’s pay-per-play program will have their episodes downloaded in full, with ads included, but listeners will be given controls that allow them to fast forward through ad breaks automatically, requiring no technological heavy lifting on the podcaster’s end,” the company said.

“When subscribers play a partner’s episode, Auddia tracks the activity and delivers a payment based on the agreed-upon per-play rate, which is based on the podcast’s current revenue-per-play and average CPM.”

Partner podcast episodes will be delivered by Auddia’s Seamless Play technology. “Users will be treated to episodes where the app fast forwards through ad breaks automatically, rather than requiring the end user to manually fast forward. Each play or download will be logged, and partners will be compensated at an agreed-upon rate on a monthly basis.”

The company said it will also release a seek forward functionality that allows users to fast forward to the next identified segment of content. “This functionality will be launched in faidr in the next major release this year as a beta test.”

[Related: “Auddia Drops Bid to Acquire Radio FM”]

 

The post Auddia Has a Beta Program for Subscription Podcasting appeared first on Radio World.

As previously reported by RBR+TVBR, Larry Patrick, the pre-petition receiver for the radio stations once licensed to Ed Stolz’s Royce International Broadcasting, had urged the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Nevada to convert Stolz’s bankruptcy from Chapter 13 to Chapter 7. The Court granted that motion today.

Stolz was notably absent from the proceedings, which will lead to the assignment of a Chapter 7 trustee to manage his personal assets.

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An eastern Kentucky FM covering the area south of Lickburg and west of Mashfork, along with three sister stations, is headed for new ownership, according to sale documents filed with the FCC.

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Technology research and advisory group Omdia has presented new research that indicates a pivotal shift in video streaming habits, showing a decline in subscription video-on-demand services per household for the first time in over five years, as of November 2023. Conversely, there is a marked return to free video services, particularly FAST channels.

This marks a significant change from the previously dominant trend of increasing subscription services per household.

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