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The Bureau enters into a Consent Decree with Mayes Education Inc., d/b/a/ Waldorf University

Who were the top healthcare and pharmacy retailer advertisers in September?

A new analysis by Media Monitors provides a clear answer.

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He’s served as the President/GM of the Hearst Television-owned ABC affiliate in Jackson, Miss., and took that role five years ago. Now, he has been chosen to succeed Joel Vilmenay at its NBC affiliate serving New Orleans.

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There’s a change in leadership for the NBC affiliate owned by Nexstar Media Group in Terre Haute, Indiana.

And, this individual will also oversee the company’s operational agreements with close partner Mission Broadcasting tied to the market’s ABC affiliate.

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Gray Television has promoted an individual who first joined its NBC affiliate serving Alexandria, Va., to the top leadership role at the station.

At the same time, it has selected a station veteran to replace the retiring Matt Eldridge as the head of ABC affiliate in Reno, Nev.

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One of the two leading Democratic voices on the influential House Energy & Commerce Committee — the individual who oversees the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology — has announced he will not seek re-election.

As such, he will be saying goodbye to Capitol Hill in January 2023.

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Nominations are open ahead of the IBC event in December for suppliers to enter the Best of Show Awards 2021 or, for those not exhibiting at the convention, a new Best of 2021 Awards.

The awards are supported by Future’s media and entertainment technology brands TVBEurope, Radio World and TV Tech. Nominations are due Nov. 23.

Nominations will be reviewed by a panel of independent industry experts.

Information and the registration information can be found on the award program page.

The post Nominations Are Open for Best of Show at IBC appeared first on Radio World.

A session of the AES Fall Online Convention this week will explain new recommendations about streaming loudness.

“Internet audio streaming and on-demand file playback have become major sources of media delivery, affecting the ways that audio is recorded, mixed, post-produced and delivered,” the organization noted in a session summary.

“Excessive loudness compromises quality, inconsistent loudness annoys listeners. To resolve these issues, the AES Technical Committee for Broadcast and Online Delivery has created recommended guidelines for establishing and implementing an effective Distribution Loudness for streaming and on-demand audio file playback. This session will have members of the committee discussing the recently released TD1008 Recommendations for Loudness of Internet Audio Streaming and On-Demand Distribution.”

This table is taken from the AES recommendations. Click the table to read the document.

The session will take place Thursday Oct. 21 at 3 p.m. Eastern time. It is part of a series of sessions online this month in lieu of an in-person AES show.

Leading the session will be consultant David Bialik and John Kean, senior engineer with Cavell & Mertz.

Others contributing to the recommendations document are Rob Byers, Jim Coursey, Eelco Grimm, Bob Katz, Scott Norcross, Robert Orban, Shawn Singh, Jim Starzynski, Alessandro Travaglini, Ian Shepherd and Greg Ogonowski.

Other sessions of the Broadcast and Online Delivery track are already available on demand including discussions of using SNMP, advantages of using metadata, stream monitoring, spatial audio in podcasting and other topics.

 

The post AES Session Explains Loudness Recommendations appeared first on Radio World.

Updated at 12:25pm Eastern

On the evening of October 6, the latest fight over retransmission consent fees commenced. At 9pm Eastern, TEGNA-owned stations were no longer accessible to Dish customers, as the companies’ accord had expired without a new deal put into place.

TEGNA and Dish exchanged words, each blaming each other for the “blackout,” by law, of TEGNA stations to Dish’s paying clientele.

On Monday (10/18), Dish took things up a notch by reaching out to the FCC.

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By Jackson Weaver, with additional reporting by Adam R Jacobson

kIRKLAND, WASH. — On September 10, Lotus Communications, the privately held media company run by the Kalmenson family from Los Angeles, officially closed on its acquisition of the lone radio stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Today, those stations’ continued link to Sinclair has led to widespread challenges for the three audio brands, as a crippling cybersecurity incident at the stations’ former owner has led to severe disruption for Lotus in Seattle-Tacoma.

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Its shares are presently trading at a year-to-date low. Industry groups including the Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) aren’t pleased with its TV audience measurement services. The Media Ratings Council is working on accreditation issues.

Nielsen has had a bruising 2021. Now, it believes a new brand campaign, including a “new identity” will help in sharing the story of the company’s “transformation of its culture” and “a redefined strategy focused solely on the global future of media.”

Nielsen’s new look and feel, it says, “represents a commitment to innovation and the company’s role and purpose of powering a better media future for all people.”

Following the sale of its Global Connect business in March 2021, Nielsen reiterated that it is now focused on delivering “digital-first and global-first media solutions” in the “measurement, audience outcomes and content services” arenas.

This includes the previously announced integration of its measurement products into Nielsen One.

The company says, “With an unmatched foundation of cross platform measurement, Nielsen offers a full suite of planning and outcomes solutions for marketers and agencies to enhance their return on investments. Nielsen also continues to enhance its Gracenote content services business, delivering leading metadata and analytics for On Demand content globally.”

“While our business has transformed dramatically over the past few years, it became clear that perceptions of the company have not evolved at the same pace,” said Jamie Moldafsky, Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. “The rebranding marks a new Nielsen both inside the company and out, with a strategy hyper-focused on the global audience and the changing media environment. Nielsen’s core values of inclusion, courage and growth, along with its clear strategy, will power the company’s transformation as we partner with the industry and our clients to help them better understand how evolving audiences consume media and find content.”

The new brand identity will be unveiled at Advertising Week New York, which will be held October 18 – 21. Signage showcasing the elements of the rebranding will be prominently displayed on the fifth and sixth floors of Hudson Yards. Nielsen will also host a daily breakfast at its lounge, which will feature the new logo, images and colors, in line with the company’s new brand identity.

Initial elements of Nielsen’s brand evolution include:

New Logo: As a prominent representation of the company, people and brand, the new logo is playful, optimistic and smart. Inspired by the universal play button as well as ratings, the forms come together subtly to create an ‘N’ letterform in the negative space, signifying insights revealed by Nielsen’s data and the constant momentum in media.

New Brand Colors: The multitude of fresh colors speaks to the diversity and richness in media representing or containing a piece of data, a piece of music, a show, a content creator, or a member of the audience, all working together to move media forward. The green and orange triangles represent movement upwards and downwards, an expression of ratings and the popularity of content across all platforms. The red triangle nods towards the content not seen or heard. Data and insights are just as much about what people don’t choose to consume, as what they do consume.

New Brand Purpose Statement: Powering a Better Media Future for All People.

Chalk up another carriage agreement between a television network owner and a MVPD that includes cable TV customer access to an “Over the Top,” or OTT, offering.

ViacomCBS and Altice USA on Monday revealed that they’ve reached a “comprehensive agreement” for the continued carriage of ViacomCBS’ networks for Altice USA’s Optimum and Suddenlink customers.

The pact also provides Altice USA with rights to ViacomCBS’ suite of streaming services, including Paramount+, SHOWTIME OTT, Pluto TV, BET+ and Noggin.

“We are pleased to have reached a new multi-year agreement with our partners at Altice USA that underscores the strength of ViacomCBS’ brands and streaming services,” Ray Hopkins, President of U.S. Networks Distribution at ViacomCBS commented. “Altice USA through its Optimum and Suddenlink brands is an important partner and we look forward to continuously serving subscribers with our outstanding collection of content.”

Yossi Benchetrit, Altice USA’s Chief Programming and Procurement Officer, added, “As Altice USA continues to focus on providing our Optimum and Suddenlink customers with a robust array of content to meet their evolving entertainment needs, we are pleased to reach a new agreement with ViacomCBS that ensures the continued delivery of their networks plus added rights to the ViacomCBS streaming services portfolio.”

ViacomCBS and Altice USA will continue to collaborate on addressable media and advanced advertising capabilities.

Other terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

Updated at 9:40am Eastern

“We are experiencing technical problems and are working to resolve them.”

That was the short but succinct Tweet sent in the 8pm Eastern hour on Sunday evening by a dual CBS/FOX affiliated property licensed to South Bend, Ind.

Six hours earlier, a nearly identical Tweet was posted by the ABC affiliate serving Portland, Ore.

Those “technical difficulties” were seen at sibling television stations across the U.S., including a pioneer in broadcast television that was perhaps the first TV station to broadcast in color — WRGB-6 in Schenectady, N.Y.

On Monday morning, the stations’ leadership still wasn’t commenting. But, it submitted the facts in a SEC filing. Indeed, Sinclair Broadcast Group has become the latest media company to suffer a severe ransomware attack.

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As Sunday, October 18, came to a close on the East Coast of the U.S., it became very clear that Sinclair Broadcast Group had apparently become the latest owner of radio and/or TV stations to become victim of a crippling ransomware attack.

With cybersecurity concerns bigger than ever for broadcast media, expert Steve Morgan‘s upcoming Forecast 2022 appearance couldn’t be more timely to tackle the subject.

From Sinclair to Cox Media Group, Audacy, Townsquare Media, Urban One and smaller broadcast media companies such as Max Media of Norfolk, Va., and Bicoastal Media, in the Pacific Northwest, cyber adversaries are wreaking havoc at some broadcast media companies, catching them off-guard and ill-prepared. Learning how the cyber adversaries do it and discovering why people and companies remain largely in the dark about cybercrimes could be one of the biggest opportunities of the year.

Morgan is the founder of Cybersecurity Ventures and Editor-in-Chief at Cybercrime Magazine. At Forecast 2022, he’ll chat with WABC-AM in New York talk show host Juliet Huddy for a provocative interview delivered free of technobabble.

Morgan has written more than 500 articles for Forbes, CSO, and others. He is co-author of the book “Women Know Cyber: 100 Fascinating Females Fighting Cybercrime” and named on numerous lists including LinkedIn’s 5 Security Influencers to Follow, Onalytica’s Who’s Who in Cybersecurity, and the Top 100 Cybersecurity Influencers at RSA Conference.

 

“The value of a business depends largely on how well it guards its data, the strength of its cybersecurity, and its level of cyber resilience,” Morgan says.

Don’t miss this opportunity to hear what Morgan has to say. Make your plans to day for Forecast 2022, November 16 at the Harvard Club in midtown Manhattan.

Forecast 2022 explores the most critical challenge facing business and industry today — cyber security — with a session packed with information you need to know and answers to questions you have – or should have. Seating is limited. Register today for Forecast 2022 and take advantage of early bird pricing. Registration include admittance into the Broadcast Leadership Reception honoring the 2021 Top Radio and Television Leaders. Always a great networking event, this may be a one-of-a-kind opportunity this year!

WASHINGTON, D.C. —Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel has shared with fellow Commissioners at the FCC a proposed rulemaking that would require mobile wireless providers to block illegal text messaging.

“As the FCC continues to combat unwanted robocalls, it recognizes that it must adapt to the latest scamming trends—including the rise of robotexts,” the FCC said on Monday.

In 2020 alone, the Commission received approximately 14,000 consumer complaints about unwanted text messages, representing an almost 146% increase from the number of complaints the year before.

Thus far in 2021, the Commission has received over 9,800 consumer complaints about unwanted texts.

Meanwhile, data from other sources reaffirm evidence of the problem. For example, RoboKiller reports 7.4 billion spam texts were sent in March 2021.

“In a world where so many of us rely heavily on texting to stay connected with our friends and family, ensuring the integrity of this communication is vitally important,” Rosenworcel said. “We’ve seen a rise in scammers trying to take advantage of our trust of text messages by sending bogus robotexts that try to trick consumers to share sensitive information or click on malicious links. It’s time we take steps to confront this latest wave of fraud and identify how mobile carriers can block these automated messages before they have the opportunity to cause any harm.”

If adopted by a vote of the full Commission, the rulemaking would explore steps to protect consumers from illegal robotexts, including network level blocking and applying caller authentication standards to text messaging.

The leader once again at Spot Cable, according to the latest report from Media Monitors, dominates by play count.

That said, there is a new challenger to the throne. And, it is one of the “GAFAN” group of tech giants many broadcasters want to regulate — because, ironically, they are draining broadcast media of local ad budgets.

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The latest Media Monitors Spot Ten Radio report is out, and it shows that the brands that believe in AM and FM radio are sticking with the medium.

For the week ending October 17, Indeed and DuckDuckGo remain big users of spot radio, by play count.

The dollars invested in radio for these campaigns is not known.

Other active users of radio include Vicks, State Farm, UnitedHealthCare and Capital One, which returns to the Spot Ten report.

During a roughly five week period in 2020, the Walt Disney Co.’s stock value surged from the $120 range to a price upward of $170. The company’s shares were buoyed, in part, by Pfizer’s successful Phase-3 vaccination trial and Disney’s second Direct-to-Consumer investor day.

The one-year anniversary of these events is approaching and, MoffettNathanson Senior Analyst Michael Nathanson notes, “the stock is seemingly stuck in neutral.”

Has the market — or Disney — gotten it right?

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Mississippi-based Boswell Media learned that good can spring from tragedy — even a tragedy that resulted in the downing of a 350-foot tower, the smashing of a studio roof and the loss of radio stations from the air.

After Hurricane Ida tore through Louisiana in early September, it turned toward Kosciusko, a city of nearly 7,500 in central Mississippi and the home of Boswell Media. Winds of 100 mph whipped through the area, deluging the city with hard rain and felling trees all across town.

[Read: Big Louisiana Radio Tower Comes Down in Ida]

“The ground had been so wet here after so much rain,” said Johnny Boswell, president of Boswell Media. At about 4:45 pm on Sept. 1, a staffer in the studio heard a thud as a tree from an adjacent property fell and landed on one of the tower’s guy wires. Even as the tree lay overturned on the guy wire, “the tower was doing its best to right itself,” Boswell said. But the combination of wet ground and fallen tree won the battle, bringing the tower down on the station roof.

The good news: the staffer inside the building was not injured even as the studio roof absorbed 100% of the tower weight. The bad news, however, was that the collapse cut off transmission of station WLIN(FM) and the network that feeds two other stations — WCKK(FM) and WKOZ(FM).

Over the next few weeks, the mangled tower was hauled away, a new concrete support structure was installed and dozens trees around the studio were removed. “We took the opportunity to eradicate around the perimeter over 50 trees close to the property line,” Boswell said. For a station that’s been in that same location since 1947, the lesson here is to watch out as nature grows and changes around towers and other buildings. “[Things like that] can creep up on you,” Boswell said.

The stations were brought back on air soon after the accident via a temporary antenna atop a power pole. “We had an STL and we were able to get to our other transmitting tower via our codecs,” Boswell said. “Everything is now up and running.”

After a new tower was located in Virginia, the station contracted with J Crow Tower in Philadelphia, Miss., to install a Rohn 65G, a 350-foot tower with a wind load of 90 to 110 mph. The station is also taking the opportunity to add a new temporary antenna to the tower. “Now we’ll have a good low-power option,” Boswell said.

By mid-October, the tower was in the midst of being painted and prepped for installation. And what’s more, the station found a way to turn tragedy into opportunity.

“There were so many trees that were cut and some logs that came out that were useable,” Boswell said. He coordinated with the team cutting the trees and together they decided to cut the logs to a useable length. The reclaimed wood has been donated to a saw mill rehabilitation program at a local correctional facility.

 

The post Tower Misfortune Turns into an Opportunity for Mississippi Radio Station appeared first on Radio World.

This article originally appeared on the Fluke website and is used with permission. The company has posted online courses and other resources at www.fluke.com/en-us/learn.

Anyone who makes their living by working with electricity quickly develops a healthy respect for anything with even a remote chance of being “live.” Yet the pressures of the getting a job done on time or getting a mission-critical piece of equipment back online can result in carelessness and uncharacteristic mistakes by even the most seasoned electrician.

This list was developed as a quick reminder of what not to do when taking electrical measurements. Paying attention to three specific categories when thinking about the most common mistakes made when making electrical measurements, personal protective equipment, tools, and culture of safety.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

Having the right equipment to keep you save comes first.

1: Leave your safety glasses in your shirt pocket.

Take them out. Put them on. It’s important. The same goes for taking the time to put on insulated gloves and flame-resistant clothing. All of these steps fall under wearing proper PPE. Follow the table method to figure out what level of gear you need on, as detailed by NFPA 70E Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace.

2: Work on a live circuit.

De-energize the circuit whenever possible. If the situation requires you to work on a live circuit, use properly rated tools paired with the correct PPE for the environment. Make sure you wear safety glasses or a face shield and insulated gloves, remove watches or other jewelry, stand on an insulated mat and wear flame-resistant clothing, not regular work clothes. 

Tools

Once you’re geared up and you’re appropriately protected, it’s just as important to make sure the tool in your hand is the right one for this situation, and the test tool and its accessories are safe to use.

3: Replace the original fuse with a cheaper one.

If your digital multimeter meets today’s safety standards, that fuse is a special safety sand fuse designed to pop before an overload hits your hand. When you change your meter fuse, be sure to replace it with an authorized fuse.

4: Use the wrong test tool for the job.

It’s important to match your digital multimeter to the work ahead. Make sure your test tool holds the correct CAT rating for each job you do, even if it means switching DMMs throughout the day.

5: Grab the cheapest meter on the rack.

You can upgrade later, right? Maybe not, if you end up a victim of a safety accident because that cheap test tool didn’t actually contain the safety features it advertised. Look for independent laboratory testing marks on your test tools to ensure they have been proven to handle what they’re advertised at.

6: Neglect your leads.

Test leads are an important component of digital multimeter safety, they are an extension of your test tool. Make sure your leads match the CAT level of your job as well as the tool. Look for test leads with double insulation, shrouded input connectors, finger guards, and a non-slip surface.

7: Hang onto your old test tool forever.

Today’s test tools contain safety features that were unheard of, even a few years ago. Even if your old test tool is still working, many of the new features, both safety and test features, can be well worth the cost of an equipment upgrade.

Culture of Safety

How your company thinks about and learns about safety influences how individuals conduct their work, what the culture of safety around them looks like. Mistakes are made when you’re pushed to work too quickly or new employees aren’t properly trained.

8: Use a bit of wire or metal to get around the fuse all together.

That may seem like a quick fix if you’re caught without an extra fuse, but that fuse could be all that ends up between you and a spike headed your way.

9: Fail to use proper lockout/tagout procedures.

Remember to follow the correct steps to remove power from an electrical circuit or panel, and to lock out and tag the panel or circuit, so that no one can re-energize it while work is in progress. Lockout/tagout procedures are detailed as part of NFPA 70E. 

10: Keep both hands on the test.

Saved a big one for last on this list: Do not keep both hands on the test. When working with live circuits, remember the old electrician’s trick to keep one hand in your pocket. That lessens the chance of a closed circuit across your chest and through your heart. Hang or rest the meter if possible. Try to avoid holding it with your hands to minimize personal exposure to the effects of transients.

[Related: Read the ebook “Mission-Critical: Maintaining Your Transmitter Site”]

The post 10 Dumb Things Smart People Do When Testing Electricity appeared first on Radio World.