Radio World

Gary Fisher

The author is president/partner at Equity Communications, a radio ownership group in southern New Jersey.

It was a brisk chilly April 15 morning on the Black Horse Pike in West Atlantic City.

It should have been the start of another bustling summer season at the Jersey shore; but we had just finished chatting with the mailman, who’d left without delivering any checks for the fifth straight day. (He did leave everyone else’s mail with Equity, since no other businesses in our five-story office building were open.)

This was exactly one month into what would become the depths of the pandemic.

No emails, no voice mails and 50% of Equity’s second quarter bookings had been cancelled in the previous 30 days.

Sales visits and phone calls were out of the question. No salespeople to make them, no clients to accept them. No local businesses planning their start-of-season promotions.

Phillies baseball, usually a $250,000+ revenue contributor for Equity, had been postponed indefinitely. The WZXL Beer Fest and Music Festival, a $100,000 event marketing revenue generator, was cancelled.

It was nuclear winter in April.

Biblical

My partner Steve Gormley and I formed Equity Communications in 1996 to hold nine radio stations and, more recently, a digital advertising and streaming business.

We’d been through 9/11, the 2006 financial crisis, Hurricane Sandy, the collapse of the local casino industry and the digital disruption of traditional media. But the pandemic and the plunge it created in revenues were like nothing we had ever seen. We’d spent 24 years building this company; almost half of it disappeared overnight. Earlier disruptions were rounding errors by comparison.

In March everything suddenly stopped. No cars on the road to listen to radio. No car dealers or casinos open to buy ads. No one at work to write checks for the ads we had already run.

The standstill was downright biblical. And Equity of course was not alone in that.

We had to take stock of everything we’d been doing for 24 years and put it through a COVID lens. Our company was forced to cut expenses, downsize staff, reduce salaries, reduce employee benefits, sell off assets and re-engineer its sales, programming and administrative departments.

Veteran AEs and DJs left, new digital salespeople emerged, hard personnel decisions had to be made. Legacy operations strategies and practices with diminishing effect were scrapped, new ones instituted. We listened harder to our clients and audiences to set our direction.

We were forced to get slimmer and faster. For Equity it was a complete reset.

Compressed changes

In a weird way we’d been prepared for this new economic reality. Our company had been growing its streaming audiences via websites and mobile apps, and had increased revenues five-fold by staffing up our highly successful in-house digital sales division.

The pandemic accelerated forces that had already been in play in advertising, delivering years of change in just a few short months.

From a sales point of view, everyone was thrust out of their comfort zones. From an expense control viewpoint, we stopped doing stupid, silly and fun stuff. From an operations point of view things, we looked at practices we’d deemed mission-critical and said, “Why in the world are we doing this?” From a content point of view, streaming music and digital programming, once thought of as an existential threat to over-the-air radio media, became our saviors.

We felt we had reinvent the company or we might not have one left. It was an opportunity to fast-forward modernization.

We took the approach that the pandemic didn’t happen to us, it may have happened for us. The worst crisis we had ever seen presented innumerable opportunities. We became the epitome of a modern media company.

We were at a bit of a disadvantage compared to local competitors like Comcast, Townsquare and the Atlantic City Press; we did not have the backing or liquidity of a larger corporation. On the other hand we had no debt or debt service to worry about.

We were also fortunate that Equity had an amazing core of a dozen or so employees who have showed up every day to keep the doors open. Staggered hours, skeleton staffing, physical distancing, separation, sanitation, ventilation, mitigation, lots of cleaning and masking kept us going.

An image from the Equity Communications media kit

These staff members, most of whom have been with us for well over 15 years, are the real architects of our reset — our essential workers.

Along the way Equity learned valuable lessons about dealing with adversity and with COVID. As cases start spiking again, our pivot may offer useful lessons to local businesses that have made it this far but may struggle to get through a tough winter.

Coming back

We’ve been telling our clients: We’re still here, we’re still big and popular, and now we’re more affordable than ever. Staying big, digital, friendly, local and cheap is our way through this.

We’re getting to the other side and are now seeing sequential improvement month after month. Our third quarter revenues improved by 66% over our second quarter, mirroring the recovery seen in other media companies. Actual forward pacing has returned for the fourth quarter as I write.

I’m encouraged that many banks, law firms, health care providers, car dealers, restaurants and casinos are calling staffs back to work. That should be a precursor to advertising and spending eventually coming back.

I’m sure most of the clients we’re Zooming with are still in their sweat pants and underwear; but it seems like more and more staffs are drifting back to work each week.

We don’t know what the coming quarters hold but we’re doing OK and our doors are open. We’re still here and we’ll be here.

I’m worried about projections that say one out of five small businesses will close this winter. But I hope after all our “eLectile dysfunction” calms down, there will be another round of stimulus for our clients. The real recovery will begin later in 2021 when everyone feels safe and people can eat in restaurants, hang out in bars and shop in stores without a concern.

When the exciting new vaccines and therapeutics are served up, combined with a side order of herd immunity, I think our local radio and digital will really take off. And with our new lean-mean-machine expense structure we should see actual profit and cash flow again.

We’re not bulletproof; but I feel we’ve toughened ourselves against second and third waves and associated shutdowns. Likewise I feel we’ll be ready to pounce on any real recovery the minute it starts. We’re like that Timex watch from those John Cameron Swayze TV commercials from 50 years ago. We took a licking but we’re still ticking.

Comment on this or any article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post How We Took on the Pandemic, and Won appeared first on Radio World.

Organizers of World College Radio Day saluted 10 stations in six countries that made special efforts for the event this year.

WCRD announced recipients of the “Bret Michaels’ Spirit of College Radio Awards” recognizing efforts made by college stations on Oct. 2.

The award was named this year for Bret Michaels, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur and front man for the band Poison. He is also a diabetic and survivor of a brain hemorrhage, and is active in a number of causes and charitable efforts.

He took part in a Q&A with students and donated $10,000 through his Life Rocks Foundation.

The 10 winners, listed below, were announced by Anabella Poland, president of College Radio Day 2020, and Eva Gustavfsson, president of World College Radio Day. They said a total of 570 stations in 43 countries participated in the day.

• Aggie Radio 92.3 KBLU-LP at Utah State University (USA)
• K103 Gothenburg Student Radio at University of Gothenburg/ Chalmers University (Sweden)
• KRSC-FM at Rogers State University (USA)
• MavRadio.fm at University of Nebraska-Omaha (USA)
• RADIO-E at Universidad de Costa Rica (Costa Rica)
• Radio 6023 at Università del Piemonte Orientale (Italy)
• Radio Katipunan 87.9 FM at Ateneo de Manila University (Philippines)
• The Wolf Internet Radio at University of West Georgia (USA)
• UST Tiger Radio at University of Santo Tomas (Philippines)
• Webradio EAP at Hellenic Open University (Greece)

The College Radio Foundation supports student radio including online, cable, carrier current, FM and AM outlets.

The post World College Radio Day Salutes 10 Stations appeared first on Radio World.

The recently published book “Radio’s Second Century: Past, Present and Future Perspectives” is an academic survey of our industry, a collection of essays, statistics, graphs and antidotes edited by author and professor John Allen Hendricks that features contributions from scholars in media and journalism.

Hendricks is department chair and professor of mass communication at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and author or editor of 11 books.

This one is a collection that belongs on the shelf labeled “media studies.”

Promotional information for the book notes that as the industry enters its second century, it continues to be a dominant mass medium even in the face of competition.

“Lasting influences such as on-air personalities, audience behavior, fan relationships and localism are analyzed [in the book], as well as contemporary issues including social and digital media,” it states.

“Other essays examine the regulatory concerns that continue to exist for public radio, commercial radio and community radio, and discuss the hindrances and challenges posed by government regulation with an emphasis on both American and international perspectives. Radio’s impact on cultural hegemony through creative programming content in the areas of religion, ethnic inclusivity and gender parity is also explored.”

Michael Brown writes in the forward that the book “points to a diverse and open field for those who wish to study radio and those who have an interest in learning what we know about the technology, programming, social issues and international use of radio.”

Academic text John Allen Hendricks

To give you a further idea of its content mix, Part I is titled “Contemporary Radio: Social and Digital Media.”

This section includes discussions about listening “from AM to FM to XM, and beyond”; audience research and web features in radio; the “para-social” nature of podcasting; and social media analytics.

Part 2 explores “Programming Matters: Localism, Personalities and Audiences.” Chapters focus on “the shrinking electronic town square” and localism in talk radio; the fandom of Howard Stern; lessons from the “War of the Worlds” broadcast; and how to encourage creative programming.

Part 3, “Social Issues,” includes chapters on religion in radio, NPR’s role in America and “resisting podcasting’s sonic whiteness,” while Part 4 takes on international perspectives including community/campus radio in Canada, the dominance of public radio in podcasting and the role of women in radio.

Among discussions I found interesting are ones focusing on radio as “theater of the mind”; how NPR aspires to create “driveway moments” through storytelling; how radio and podcast producers use sound to create a feeling of intimacy and connection; and how using headphones changes the listening experience.

The book would be an excellent read for a college student pursuing a degree in communications or journalism and needing insight into the radio industry. It’s also suitable for those who like to think hard about the roles that radio and audio play in our culture and how people interact with them.

This isn’t a book for those who want to know how to sell more radio spots or learn about the next technology platform that will change our industry. In general I found that it does not offer much in the way of definitive direction and improvement; a reader is left to conclude what direction radio should take in the next century. The stats and graphs can get repetitive, causing one to want to skim ahead.

However a strength of the book is its exploration of podcasting. It breaks down the success and appeal of the new medium and why it has such dominance with radio listeners:

I enjoyed passages about podcasting as a “converged medium” that brings together audio, the web and portable media devices, as well as a disruptive technology that has forced some in radio to reconsider established practices. I think the book is spot-on in its conclusion that podcasting will continue to dominate and be a strong substitute for listeners seeking news, information and entertainment.

The book is published by Rutgers University Press and retails for $39.95 in its paperback version.

The author is a project engineer at Lawo North America.

The post Book Takes Scholarly Look at Radio appeared first on Radio World.

We’ve received good feedback and a couple of questions regarding Wayne Eckert’s submission on grounding wooden poles used to support STL antennas, described in the Workbench column in the Nov. 25 issue. (Like all recent issues of Radio World, you can access it online at radioworld.com/digital-editions.)

You’ll recall that Wayne is an engineer with the Rural Florida Communications Cooperative, so he’s had a bit of experience in bonding and grounding to reduce lightning damage.

Fig. 1: Wayne’s drawing of a properly grounded pole for supporting an STL antenna.

He told us last time about an AT&T document “Grounding and Bonding for Network Facilities.” It’s on the website https://ebiznet.att.com/sbcnebs/.  Much of the document is applicable to broadcast sites and studios.

Fig. 1 is Wayne’s diagram detailing the bonding of an STL antenna to a down ground. Note that the bond sweeps down from the antenna to the grounding conductor.

In answer to the first question we got, yes, the down ground wire does extend above the pole by about 6 inches to a foot. This “pigtail” conductor then is sticking up from the pole.

The down ground cable is typically #6 hard-drawn copper, solid or stranded. Yes, all pole attachments should be connected to the down ground cable using silver solder and short sections of the same #6 gauge cable.

These short grounding cables, attached to the mounted structures can be connected to the down ground using a C-Tap crimp lug (Fig. 2). If the installer doesn’t have crimping tools and dies, the connection can be made with silver solder.

Fig. 2: You can crimp connections to the down conductor using a C-Tap and lug.

Silver solder should be used for all RF and grounding connections — 60/40 tin/lead solder will melt under the heat of a lightning strike given that its melting point is only 360 degrees Fahrenheit. Silver solder’s melting point is above 1,000 degrees.

Strong adhesive

You may have gone to the dentist and received a filling made of a composite resin, a mixture of plastic and glass or quartz. It’s applied in layers, with each layer cured using an ultraviolet light.

A similar liquid plastic adhesive that uses UV light is available for consumer use. Bondic is ultra-strong and unlike super glues is not messy.

Fig. 3: An image from a promotional video for Bondic. The adhesive works on nearly everything and doesn’t “stick” until it’s cured by UV light.

Each Bondic kit includes a special dual-purpose pen. One end dispenses the liquid plastic, the other consists of a UV LED used to cure the bonding material. So this is not really a glue but rather a liquid plastic which, when activated by the UV light, welds the pieces together.

The bond is waterproof, and (should you wish to repair a coffee cup handle) it’s dishwasher safe. Another plus: Unlike glues that eventually dry out in the tube, Bondic stays wet until it is cured by the UV light.

Bondic can be used not only to bond two items but to fill in chips or cracks in metal, wood, plastic, ceramic or glass. One typical use is to repair broken insulation on a smartphone charging cable.

In addition to the starter kit, refill tubes of the Bondic liquid are available. Search Bondic on Amazon or visit getbondic.io.

Guy insulators

Professional Engineer Charles “Buc” Fitch writes that he was quite surprised to find out that Preformed Products, the folks who make all those guy wire grips and associated mounts for towers, also manufactures fiberglass guy wire insulators. Buc says they offer a full line of ceramic insulators as well as fiberglass guy strain insulators. Visit www.preformed.com.

Buc points out the importance of using isolating guy wires with these fiberglass extensions near an FM antenna, as the steel guys can cause FM signal distortion.in nearfield positions. Visit the Preformed site, you’ll be amazed at their varied products.

Classic mic repair

Dan Slentz is always finding entertaining or educational subjects on the web and often shares with Workbench readers. His latest submission is both entertaining and educational.

Fig. 4: A video on YouTube profiles Clarence Kane, a former RCA employee who is still servicing microphones.

Clarence Kane is the owner of ENAK Microphone Repair (ENAK is Kane spelled backward!). He was born in 1926 and got interested in electronics while in the service. Afterwards he attended the Radio Electronics Institute and went to work at RCA, where he worked for 33 years, mostly repairing microphones.

Radio World’s James O’Neal wrote about him in Radio World in 2010. His company continues that service, and he’s the last remaining RCA employee still servicing microphones.

Dan points us to this 12-minute mini documentary video about him on YouTube.

John Bisset has spent more than 50 years in broadcasting and recently began his 31st year writing Workbench. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance. He holds CPBE certification with the Society of Broadcast Engineers. He is also a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award.

Workbench submissions are encouraged, qualify for SBE Recertification and can be emailed to johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Workbench: More on the STL Support Pole appeared first on Radio World.

Have you ever wondered how many ads you should be airing in a certain week in order to reach your audience effectively? The short answer is, “it depends on what your goals are.”

Cumulus Media/Westwood One and the Radio Advertising Bureau partnered to offer some specific guidelines for radio stations. The goal was to reach  a range of listeners, ranging from a 34% reach to a 78% reach of a station’s audience, with four separate campaign goals defined as very light, light, medium and heavy.

The very light and light schedules were ideal for advertisers who want a maintenance campaign with modest levels of reach and frequency. A medium schedule is a good fit for a general sales event or promotional campaign with modest levels of reach and frequency. A heavy schedule is best for a major sales event or a product launch where many listeners are reached very frequently.

Those four approaches offer stations guidance as to how much and how often an audience is reached, wrote Pierre Bouvard, chief insights officer at Cumulus Media/Westwood One, in a blog post.

The study revealed that turnover is a key factor. Turnover is calculated by dividing a radio station’s cume (the number of different people reached by a station in a week) by its average quarter-hour audience. The greater the turnover, the more ads needed to reach an audience in a typical quarter hour. Stations with high turnovers have lower time spent listening while stations with lower turnovers have higher time spent listening.

“There’s no such thing as good or bad turnover,” Bouvard wrote. “You just need to know what it is. Turnover is a helpful ratio to understand how many commercials, promos or song spins are needed to reach a station’s audience.”

To determine the ads needed for a very light schedule, for example, take half the turn over. For a medium schedule, double the turnover.

The report also offered suggestions for different radio formats. For a top 40 station, for example, a station would need to air 15 ads, promos of song spins per week to reach 34% of its audience. To reach 78% of its audience, a station would need to air 103 ads.

The study also found that although agencies and FM/AM radio sellers agree on the number of ads needed for light schedules, they typically underestimate the number of ads needed for medium or heavy campaigns.

A companion study determined what kinds of campaigns are actually being run across the country. Cumulus Media conducted a Media Monitors analysis of AM/FM radio advertising in 99 markets during a week. The report found that during the first week of August 2020, 182,425 commercials were run on 1,685 monitoring radio stations in 99 markets. The study assigned one of the four types of schedules — very light, light, medium and heavy — in those 99 markets.

The report found that the vast majority of weekly radio station campaigns (73%) are very light, meaning they are reaching only one-third of a station’s audience. Only 2% of radio campaigns were considered heavy while 4% were considered medium intensity and 66% were considered medium.

It appears that the underestimation of the number of ads needed for medium and heavy schedules is the reason why there are so few medium/heavy campaigns, Bouvard said, even though heavy campaigns are an important strategy for advertisers.

[Read: Bouvard: More People Are “Ready to Go”]

One of the best practices as recommended by the study is that radio stations run heavy schedules of AM/FM radio ads if these advertisers are looking to generate significant impact. A previous study conducted by the National Association of Broadcasters and Coleman Insights found that advertisers who run heavy schedules rate the campaigns as excellent far more often than those running different campaigns.

The bottom line: set the right expectations with your advertisers. “Don’t expect grand opening results from a light weekly campaign,” Bouvard wrote.

Instead, press your advertisers to examine their existing plan to see if the schedule intensity matches desired results. The strategy that answers an advertiser’s concern about cost of medium- and heavy-intensity ads is two-fold: run shorter ads and run ads at all day and time periods, since ad costs for nights/weekends generally run about half of prime-time hours.

Remember, Bouvard wrote: advertising is not one-size-fits-all. “Understanding the campaign goal is crucial to determining a correct AM/FM radio plan strategy and as important as the message itself,” he wrote. “While the number of occurrences/spots needed for various campaign goals might be underestimated, the use of these tools can serve as guidelines to better optimize the AM/FM radio planning and buying process.”

 

The post Determining How Many Ads a Station Needs to Run to Get Results appeared first on Radio World.

Eliminating injuries and fatalities in tower work is the aim of a new partnership of OSHA, NATE and the FCC.

 “The goal of the three-year partnership is to eliminate worker injuries and fatalities while performing wireless and telecommunications, tower erection and maintenance operations,” they said in an announcement.

“The partnership will address some of the industry’s frequently encountered hazards, including falls from height, electric, falling objects, tower collapses, and inclement weather.”

[Read: FCC, OSHA Team Up on Tower Safety]

The agreement was signed in an online ceremony involving officials of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association and the Federal Communications Commission.

They included Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor Loren Sweatt, NATE Chairman Jimmy Miller and FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

Sweatt said demand for wireless communications and broadcast services has increased the need for construction, service and maintenance of towers around the country.

The effort is being done under OSHA’s Strategic Partnership Program.

 

The post NATE, OSHA and FCC in Safety Partnership appeared first on Radio World.

Entercom named Ashok Sinha to a key communications role.

As senior VP, head of corporate communications and PR, “will lead the communications strategy and execution across the company’s entire portfolio of assets.”

[Read: Entercom-Urban One Deal Shakes Up Four Markets]

That includes oversight of internal and external comms, media and press relations, corporate messaging, crisis communications and issues management, and “executive thought leadership management.”

He was formerly vice president, communications lead, technology at WarnerMedia. He has also held communications positions at Publicis Media, NBCUniversal, Viacom and Product(RED).

He reports to Chief Marketing Officer Paul Suchman, who said the appointment is part of the company’s efforts to “build the future of audio.”

In the announcement, Sinha called himself “a lifelong consumer of music and the spoken word” and said “I believe in the power of audio and its ability to engage, entertain and inform the world.”

 

The post Entercom Names Sinha to Communications Post appeared first on Radio World.

The Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau has begun targeting property owners and managers that tolerate pirate broadcasting on their properties.

It started today by notifying owners of three properties in Queens in New York City that there is apparent illegal broadcasting happening at their buildings.

The bureau issued an announcement that it is exercising the FCC’s new authority under the recently enacted PIRATE Act, which gave the commission a significant new hammer in its anti-pirate toolkit: “Parties that knowingly facilitate illegal broadcasting on their property are liable for fines of up to $2 million,” it stated.

Enforcement Bureau Chief Rosemary Harold said, “It is unacceptable — and plainly illegal under the new law — for landlords and property managers to simply opt to ignore pirate radio operations. Once they are aware of these unauthorized broadcasts, they must take steps to stop it from continuing in their buildings or at other sites they own or control.”

If they don’t, she said, they risk a heavy fine, followed by collection action in court. “In addition, our enforcement actions will be made public, which may create further unforeseen business risks.” She emphasized what the FCC and broadcasters have been saying for years: that pirate radio is illegal, and can interfere with licensed stations and emergency alerting.

The bureau will provide written notice to property owners and managers that it thinks “are turning a blind eye to — or even helping facilitate — illegal broadcasting.” It also has created a new “Notice of Illegal Pirate Radio Broadcasting.” The notice provides owners a period of time to remedy the problem before any enforcement action proceeds.

The first three notices were mailed — first class and certified mail — to owners of buildings in Queens that are just a few blocks apart. The bureau said it traced a signal on 105.5 MHz from 3520 97th Street, Queens; another on 91.3 MHz from 3535 95th Street; and a third on 95.9 MHz from 3512 99th Street. They were given 10 days to respond; the FCC said the bureau will “consider any response before taking further action.”

Under the prominent headline “Notice of Illegal Pirate Broadcasting,” each letter’s language should get the attention of a landlord. It reviews the possible penalties, then adds: “If you do not respond to this Notice, the FCC may nonetheless determine that, as a legal matter, you have sufficient knowledge of the above-referenced pirate radio activity to support enforcement action against you. Service of this Notice to you or your agent establishes the foundation, along with other evidence, that could lead to significant financial penalties.”

Broadcasters have pushed for decades for the FCC to be more aggressive in combating illegal broadcasting. FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has been a vocal proponent of giving the commission more tools to do that, and Congress did so in the PIRATE Act.

The argument is that landlords and property managers often know of the activity, and the bureau said it has previously sent warnings to landlords and sought cooperation from national property owners’ organizations to raise awareness. “With pirate broadcasts persisting despite these efforts, Congress took action and empowered the commission to penalize property owners and managers that knowingly permit pirate broadcasters to remain operating from the landlord’s buildings or unbuilt areas,” it stated.

“Landlords and property managers also may be found liable if a pirate station ceases operation for some period of time but later resumes at the same site.”

 

 

The post FCC Starts Crackdown on Pirate Radio Landlords appeared first on Radio World.

The author is membership program director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. NFCB commentaries are featured regularly at www.radioworld.com.

With 2020 ending, many people in noncommercial radio are looking at the defining moments of the year. And though the big stories of the nation had a lot of resonance, one topic in particular towered over the community and public media industries.

COVID-19 had a stunning impact, including upon stations forced to change core operations and to lay off staff amid financial problems. The presidential election spawned an array of community discussions, such as escalating polarization and the complex issues opened up by misinformation. 2021 is likely to see both of these subjects dominating headlines and our popular consciousness.

[Read: Community Broadcaster: Difference Makers]

However, if you are a watcher of community media or public radio, nothing quite shaped the industry like diversity, equity and inclusion.

DEI was front and center in no small part due to the proverbial dam breaking in community and public media. Scandals had been brewing at prominent organizations since at least 2017. But where leaders once beset by controversy angled out of positions largely on their own terms, 2020 was the year jobs were withdrawn, people were fired, organizations committed to do better, and everyone ignoring problematic cultures was officially put on notice.

This year, noncommercial media outlets of many sizes saw their names tied to claims of racism, exclusion and abusive workplaces. St. Louis Public Radio and WAMU drew national headlines for serious internal issues. Social media and the internet became forums for workers at Georgia Public Broadcasting, GBH, PRX and elsewhere to speak out. Where staff may have once been quiet, this was the year they instead called for accountability at places like WNET in New York and NPR. Past issues sunk the jobs of Sonya Forte Duhé and Andi McDaniel; they had new positions at Arizona State University’s well-regarded journalism program and Chicago Public Media, respectively. Elsewhere, 2020 saw a wave of retirements and resignations by those caught up in staff conflicts, the most visible of which was American Public Media Group CEO Jon McTaggart. Even community radio saw the spotlight, with sexual misconduct and other issues being raised.

It was not all bad news. The killing of George Floyd and nationwide racial justice demonstrations pushed many communities to have dialogs about bias and equality. Seattle’s KEXP announced it was changing its DJ lineup in a bid to more accurately represent its diverse city. In July, Colorado Public Media offered a sober look at its own failings, pledging to do better. And in the fall, Public Media for All organized a day of action that mobilized dozens of major public media organizations and hundreds of employees to commit to improvements related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

How diversity initiatives will be executed in 2021 remains to be seen, though signs are good that such topics will continue to be a high priority. In December, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting hosted a discussion on diversity with managers across the industry. Organizations like Greater Public, NFCB and the Station Resource Group are leading conversations with their cohorts. And outlets such as Capital Public Radio, KALW and Blue Ridge Public Radio have agreed to accomplish at least one Public Media for All goal in their first 30 days of signing up.

2020 has been a most difficult year for radio. Yet, new calls for inclusion may make 2021 a year we step up to be more relevant, diverse and engaged.

The post Community Broadcaster: Diversity Was Radio’s Story of the Year appeared first on Radio World.

Four of the six bays are shown during installation.

From Radio World’s Who’s Buying What page: WSEW(FM) in Maine will soon operate from a fresh tower site that includes a six-bay Dielectric DCR-H FM antenna with radome.

It’s shown here with four bays up during installation.

The site is across the border in Barrington, N.H., and will go live early next year.

The noncom Christian station is relocating from a tower site in Sanford, Maine, in order to improve signal strength and reach more people including listeners in Manchester, Nashua and Portsmouth, according to a press release from Dielectric.

Ron Malone is president of the licensee, Word Radio.

“WSEW’s market penetration was previously limited with the use of a log-periodic antenna system solution using linear, slant polarization,” Dielectric stated.

“In addition to the advantages of circular polarization, the side-mounted, six-bay antenna will have a prime position on the 400-foot tower to maximize coverage, with its center of radiation at 287 feet above ground level.”

The tower at the new site is owned by Vertical Bridge. Malone was quoted saying the project is intended to resolve issues that the station has had with multipath and occasional dropouts.

Users and suppliers are both invited to send news for Who’s Buying What stories to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post A New FM Site and Antenna for WSEW appeared first on Radio World.

Emerging technology could simplify facility infrastructure and reduce costs for broadcasters by eliminating reliance on hardware and utilizing the cloud instead.

A two-part session at this fall’s virtual Radio Show conference explored virtualization of traditionally hardware-based systems and the benefits of the fourth generation of HD Radio technology.

Moderator Roz Clark, senior director of radio engineering for Cox Media Group, framed the conversation as a look at the next generation of radio architecture, which will involve fewer hardware boxes in facilities as broadcasters move toward more service-based systems.

[Read RW’s free ebook “Virtualizing the Air Chain: Next-Gen Radio Architecture”]

“We know broadcast equipment is specialized, expensive and wears out. It requires maintenance and cooling. And all of these things are magnified by the number of stations you own, so evolving things forward and making it a more cost-effective and useful part of our business is a goal we all have,” Clark said during his introduction.

He noted that the NAB Radio Technology Committee is working with equipment manufactures to create common platforms to develop technology solutions.

“We are trying to simplify things, make it interoperable and adopt best practices, to develop technology to fit within the existing infrastructure — and the modern infrastructure as it evolves,” Clark said during his introduction.

PPM and EAS

The first panel included Jason Ornellas, regional director of engineering for Bonneville International Corp.; Alan Jurison, senior broadcast engineer at iHeartMedia; and Lakeya Jefferson, director of audio client engineering at Nielsen Media.

A goal of the NAB Radio Technology Committee, Clark said, is to make it easier and more cost-effective to implement HD Radio as the industry transforms into a digital transport delivery mechanism.

One part of that effort involves the software to insert Nielsen Audio PPM codes. Another is the implementation of Emergency Alert System content into an HD sub-channel stream.

Jefferson said Nielsen has taken its enhanced Critical Band Encoding Technology, or CBET, which is used in its PPM hardware encoders, and made it available in a software-based version to be integrated into third-party devices and products that may exist in broadcast facilities.

“We are excited to offer a wide variety of options when it comes to encoding. Nielsen is planning a beta release of our audio software encoder to a select group of audio processing vendors, including Orban, Wheatstone and Telos/Omnia, and AM stations with a wider production release later this year,” Jefferson said during the online session.

Field evaluation for AM stations began in early October with plans to release FM and streaming in 2021, Jefferson said.

Ornellas, who chairs the PPM Subgroup of the technology committee, said Bonneville successfully beta tested software-based PPM encoding using Orban processing at KHTK(AM) in Sacramento, Calif., and KSL(AM) in Salt Lake City. So did Cox Media at its stations WSB(AM) in Atlanta and KKYX(AM) in San Antonio, Texas.

“It was pretty seamless, with no issues for either the terrestrial AM or HD channel,” Ornellas said of the Bonneville testing. “We were able to see that the PPM encoding was being present right on the processor as well as the Multichannel Encoding Monitor. Nielsen was happy with the quality assurance they were expecting. This is a huge first step.”

iHeartMedia’s Jurison has been working for some time on getting the EAS component of the broadcast air chain put into software and virtualized into HD Radio subchannels.

“It’s been a challenge for (iHeartMedia) to get EAS onto the HD-2, -3 and -4 subchannels. We expect the next-generation architecture to move a lot of things out of defined-purpose hardware and into the cloud,” he said.

“We think some of the low-hanging fruit is the multicast channels. A lot of those stations just play music with few elements. As we migrate audio and radio into the cloud, these seem like good choices for us to virtualize.”

iHeartMedia uses a physical audio switcher that is tied to the EAS encoder to get EAS messaging onto the FM subchannels, Jurison said. The industry’s challenge, he says, is how to get EAS onto the subchannels without requiring hardware in the local market while remaining FCC-compliant.

He said Gen4 HD Radio technology and an embedded HD Radio importer/exporter will allow broadcasters to “virtualize” this process.

“It’s a whole new way of looking at HD Radio. The HD-2, -3 and -4 are perfect for us to begin putting things up in the cloud; but the cloud doesn’t have an EAS encoder,” Jurison said.

He explained that broadcasters will have the capability, thanks to the Gen4’s embedded importer/exporter, to connect the EAS encoder via 2wcom’s HDRCC, an HD Radio capture client appliance, which will encode all audio.

According to 2wcom’s website, the HDR-CC “requires a setup that has EAS audio connected to the capture client as well as a GPI to trigger the alarm. When the alarm is triggered, the three-channel HDR-CC logs into the importer and replaces all supplemental channels (HD2–HD4) with the alarm program. After the GPI is released, the HDR-CC logs out and the importer continues with normal operation.”

Jurison says Gen4 HD Radio technology will eliminate complicated audio switching requirements for emergency alerts. iHeartMedia is field testing the new system. The session included an explanation of how audio is delivered from an iHeartMedia data center in Cincinnati through its tech center in San Antonio to WWHT(FM)’s transmitter site in Syracuse, N.Y.

“We are essentially generating audio in the Cincinnati data center that goes through our WAN to the transmitter site in Syracuse with no hardware in between to generate the HD2 channel,” Jurison said.

In conclusion, Jurison said by using the Gen4’s embedded importer/exporter and 2wcom’s HDR-CC, broadcasters have the ability to insert EAS into any multicast channel from any data center anywhere across the country and eliminate physical hardware switching.

HD Radio Gen4

Part two of the virtual equipment evolution session featured presentations from broadcast equipment manufacturers Nautel, GatesAir and Rohde & Schwarz. The companies are working on Gen4 HD Radio virtualization technology for use in the cloud.

Moderator Roz Clark described an ongoing open collaboration to find radio architecture solutions that includes radio broadcasters, equipment manufacturers and Xperi, the parent of both HD Radio and the hybrid radio platform DTS Connected Radio.

“It’s really the three-legged stool approach between all of us. We want to simplify the architecture, we want to ease implementation to make it cheaper, better and faster. And also to leverage the technology that surrounds the broadcast business in general,” he said.

Philipp Schmid, chief technology officer for Nautel, said since a lot of the radio air chain is based on “purpose-filled boxes,” there is the need to look at the transition to a software environment and that HD Radio presents the opportunity to do so.

“However, HD Radio also adds cost and complexity,” Schmid said, “due to having to keep audio aligned between the FM and the HD-1.”

Nautel, which manufacturers transmission equipment, has partnered with Telos Alliance to develop a new Gen4 HD system using Omnia Enterprise 9s audio processing software and the Nautel HD multicast transmitter platform.

“The whole system can be applied in the cloud and can be scaled and is highly reliable,” Schmid said.

Nautel’s goal is “easy HD Radio conversion, cheaper HD Radio conversion, security and interoperability for third parties and legacy equipment,” he said.

A webinar of the Gen4 HD Radio system by Nautel is available on the company’s website.

Rohde & Schwarz manufactures the THR9 liquid cooled FM HD Radio transmitter and its HD component, the HDR900 built on the Gen 4 HD Radio architecture, according to information presented during the virtual conference.

“We suggest creating a functional block for all of the HD encoding. This block can live in the cloud or it can live virtually,” said Don Backus, account manager of radio transmitters at Rohde & Schwarz. “It gets us simplicity and it also gets us the ability to provide an abstraction from the hardware layer and that does allow for a virtual implementation or in the cloud.”

Backus said standardization on AES67, a technical standard for audio over IP and audio over Ethernet interoperability, and IQ over IP interfaces are key to the overall process.

“We want to define structures that enable less costly solutions with virtualized hardware and cloud computing,” Backus said.

To conclude the virtual Radio Show technology session, Kevin Haider, product manager, radio transmission for GatesAir, touched on the latest Intraplex IP link audio codec.

Haider said integrating IP tunneling capabilities within audio codecs provides multiple benefits for HD Radio applications, including maintaining relative delay between FM and HD signals across the network and providing reliable HD Radio E2X data streams across IP networks and limited bandwidth STL networks.

“It also allows for broadcasters to move their HD Radio exporter and importer to a studio where it is easier to maintain,” he said.

The post Engineers Explore Next-Gen Architectures appeared first on Radio World.

Flash back to fall 2019 at a community station abuzz with activity. A DJ is in the studio, spinning records, while volunteers socialize, work in production studios and assemble donor gift packages. Training is underway for new recruits and anticipation is high for a co-promoted concert at a nearby venue. Hugs are exchanged along with “hellos” and “goodbyes.”

For much of 2020 most of these activities were just a memory, as stations adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic.

What does community radio look like when the community isn’t necessarily allowed inside the station? How are stations that pride themselves on 24/7 live in-studio DJs doing radio when they must restrict access to their buildings? And how are volunteer-reliant stations adjusting to socially distanced engagement?

The Grassroots Radio Conference confronted these questions in October. Held virtually, the event was hosted by ARTxFM, otherwise known as WXOX(LP) in Louisville, Ky.

Studio Safety

Dr. MarkAlain Dery has a unique perspective on studio safety, as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist as well as founder of community station WHIV(LP) in New Orleans. He spoke as part of the online conference.

This image was shared by MarkAlain Dery, who spoke about COVID safety protocols at WHIV(LP) in New Orleans. “We took pictures of a few of our DJs and plastered these all over the station, plus our internal communications,” he said. “The DJ is Jenny Yanes and the show is called ‘Islam in the Crescent City.’”

For much of this year, only one person at a time has been allowed at WHIV. Masks are required and a clean sock is placed over the studio microphone for each shift.

Importance is placed on handwashing and disinfection of surfaces, and the production booth is closed. Flyers implore, “Spread Love, Not Germs.” WHIV supplies washable masks, which show hosts drop into a container marked “dirty” upon exit. Dery emphasizes the aerosolized nature of coronavirus, pointing out that masks and ventilation are both critical.

Because of the challenges in keeping studios clean and safe for volunteers, many community stations have opted to limit access drastically, with some shutting down in-person activities entirely.

In the early days of the coronavirus, WXOX shifted to a staggered studio schedule so that on-air hosts were not running into each other during program transitions. The initial plan was to have one volunteer do a show in the studio, followed by a remote broadcast.

Even with that precaution in place, WXOX General Manager Sharon Scott grew increasingly worried about everyone’s health.

“Literally, I wasn’t sleeping at night,” she reflected. When the outbreak worsened, she closed the studio. By that point most hosts were already broadcasting from home.

100 Different At-Home Studios

While each community station approaches broadcasting amid a pandemic differently, many used archived programs and automation to fill schedules when live DJs cannot be in the studio.

This was the initial approach at WFMU(FM) in East Orange, N.J., near New York City, where only a skeleton crew of staffers is allowed at the station.

Looking back on the early rerun-filled days, Station Manager Ken Freedman said that “It was awful.” He described the awkwardness of airing pre-virus shows that felt out of step while listeners in New York and New Jersey were going through the crisis.

Quickly, priorities shifted to setting up home studios for WFMU’s sheltering DJs. Freedman described how “sobering” it was to be at an epicenter of the pandemic, knowing people who died and having DJs come down with the virus.

Although WFMU has been doing remote broadcasts over IP for over 20 years, Freedman said that in some ways it’s more difficult today because there are “so many more options.” With around 100 different studios in DJ homes, it can be “very challenging” to help orchestrate myriad options and troubleshoot all the permutations of breakdowns in the broadcast chain.

It’s a similar situation at WXOX, where live broadcasts are originating from home studios across Louisville.

One vintage record-loving DJ has taken over a dining room table with their turntable setup; another broadcasts from a front porch, with bands playing in his front yard; and some keep it super simple using just a laptop.

To facilitate live remote broadcasting, WXOX created a secondary stream that only the on-air hosts can access. Hosts broadcast live to this stream, which the station picks up to transmit over FM and online. Scott recommends that for this behind-the-scenes stream, stations obtain a plan with the highest bit rate and lowest cap on the number of listeners to save on costs.

Under current circumstances, stations also have been more tolerant of variations in sound quality to allow community radio hosts to work remotely. Even the voice memo app on a smartphone can be used to record audio, from interviews to public service announcements.

A new vocabulary

At cash-strapped community stations, home setups for DJs can be Spartan; but low-cost or free software platforms help. Minimal requirements are a computer, internet connection, and headphones.

Sharon Scott encourages DJs to connect with an Ethernet cable to help mitigate troublesome WiFi connections. USB microphones are also recommended, although not every DJ has one.

Software used by DJs to stream live at WXOX and WFMU includes AudioHijack, Rocket Broadcaster, LadioCast and BUTT (“broadcast using this tool”).

Pacifica Network has posted a discussion of software and strategies for remote broadcasting that includes Zoom, Squadcast, Riverside.fm, Ringr, Zencastr, phone interviews, Cleanfeed, split-tracking, Dropbox, Splashtop, VPN, Rocket Broadcaster and Radio Hijack.

ARTxFM also has a remote tutorial at www.artxfm.com/remotestations/. And additional tips can be found in the archived conference sessions at www.youtube.com/VirtualGRC.

In Ames, Iowa, KHOI(FM) show hosts have been doing live radio and interviews using Zoom video meetings. Station Manager Ursula Ruedenberg calls it the “simplest solution” for programs with co-hosts and guests, despite some audio sacrifices.

Listeners have been understanding. “It’s a COVID-19 sound … people freezing up or sound getting a little bit wonky just has become part of the way things sound now,” she articulated.

“There for each other”

Beyond technical glitches, the “COVID-19 sound” has unintended benefits.

In Albany, N.Y., Paul Smart of WCAA(LP) has led audio production workshops that eschew “professional gloss.” For him, providing access and building community are more important.

Hearing tidbits of extraneous sounds on the airwaves, like background noises from dogs barking and phones ringing, has sparked listener interest in making radio at WCAA. That has led to an uptick in home-produced shows, allowing the station to expand local programming.

Community building is at the core of these efforts. Scott said, “In the midst of political turmoil, civil unrest and a range of local disasters, community broadcasting is more important than ever. Meanwhile, the global coronavirus pandemic makes accessing our studios a formidable danger of its very own. Yet, as FM broadcasters, we have committed ourselves to being there for our local community in times of emergency. We must also be there for each other.”

 

The post Community Stations Share COVID Stories appeared first on Radio World.

RWEE’s format allows us to dig more deeply into specialized topics of interest to radio engineers.

In this issue, David Maxson describes a situation in which an FM station was accused of causing 8th harmonic interference to a cellular carrier, which complained to the FCC.

Also: John Kean on loudness; Tom Vernon on RadioDNS; Cris Alexander on project planning; and Bob Orban and Greg Ogonowski on protecting your digital audio quality.

Read it here.

The post Inside the Dec. 16 Issue of Radio World Engineering Extra appeared first on Radio World.

IEEE Broadcast Technology Society has announced it will host an IEEE BTS Pulse event from February 9–11, which will discuss topics including single frequency networks, applications for drone technology and 5G content production.

The second ever IEEE BTS Pulse event, the three-day virtual event aims to answer vital broadcast industry questions with top experts, according to IEEE BTS’ website.

[Visit the Radio World Calendar]

The first of the three days will be dedicated to SFN and virtualization cohesiveness. The session will look at the fundamentals of ATSC 3.0 SFNs as well as the virtualization of broadcast gateways and some of the challenges and uses of software-based SFN implementations. S. Merrill Weiss, Merrill Weiss Group LLC; Benoît Bui Do, Enensys; Mark Corl, Triveni Digital; and Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise are slated to speak on day one.

Day two will focus on drones and thermography, specifically how thermal imaging can be used to scan broadcast transmission lines and antennas to identify possible areas of concern and how drones can help in this area. Paul Shulins, BTS vice president and president of Shulins Solutions, is tapped as the day two session chair. Session speakers will also include certified thermographers and an expert on using drones for broadcast signal measurements.

The third and final day of IEEE’s Pulse event tackles 5G content production. Organized by the European H2020 project 5G-RECORDS, the session will look at the opportunities and challenges of 5G for professional audiovisual content production. This will include presentations on the European Broadcasting Union’s 5G content production activities and 5G technology enablers from Ericsson and Nokia. David Gomez-Barquero, Universitat de Valencia, Communications Department, iTEAM Research Institute- Mobile Communications Group will lead the session.

For more information on the IEEE BTS Pulse event, visit IEEE BTS’ website.

The post IEEE BTS Pulse Agenda Spotlights SFN, 5G and Drone Usage appeared first on Radio World.

The outgoing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is asking why broadcasters should be covered by special media ownership rules at all.

“We need a fundamental, intellectually honest reassessment of what the media marketplace looks like now, where it’s going and what this means for consumers,” said Ajit Pai, speaking to the Media Institute Tuesday.

He noted the huge growth in ad revenue for digital platforms over the past decade compared to other media. The result, he said, is that broadcast media are subject to far more regulation “to guard against [their] supposed market power” than companies that are now far bigger than they are.

“In 2020, for example, Google and Facebook are each expected to bring in more ad revenue than every TV and radio station in the U.S. combined,” Pai said.

Pai, a Republican, has made regulatory reform and streamlining one of the themes of his tenure. But he thinks bigger changes are called for.

He said Congress should expand the FCC’s “forbearance authority” so it could eliminate outdated rules for video providers, and also consider “a top-to-bottom re-write of the Cable Act.”

More dramatically, “I also believe that the federal government needs to fundamentally rethink the very concept of media ownership regulation. … We don’t have special rules about how many social media outlets you can own. We don’t have special rules for how many streaming services you can own. We don’t have special rules limiting how many Americans your internet platform can reach. Indeed, our so-called media ownership rules don’t contain ownership rules for much of the media, and in particular those parts of the media that are growing fast. For some reason, the only ones we have are for broadcasters.”

The problem, he said, is “a fundamental refusal to grapple with today’s marketplace: what the service market is, who the competitors are and the like. When assessing competition, some in Washington are so obsessed with the numerator, so to speak — the size of a particular company, for instance — that they’ve completely ignored the explosion of the denominator — the full range of alternatives in media today, many of which didn’t exist a few years ago.”

He said when determining a company’s market share, “a candid assessment of the denominator should include far more than just broadcast networks or cable channels. From any perspective… it should include any kinds of media consumption that consumers consider to be substitutes,” Pai said.

“When you ask the intellectually honest questions, the answers raise serious doubts about whether the FCC should have media ownership regulations at all,” he concluded.

“If general competition law is good enough for other sectors of our economy, why not the broadcast industry?”

 

The post Pai Calls for Reassessment of Media Marketplace appeared first on Radio World.

Streaming is not a static technology. New innovations are constantly being developed.

Many video and “over the top” streamers have discovered the advantage of CMAF, the Common Media Application Format. This format, explained in standards document ISO/IEC 23000-19:2020, offers advantages to the streamer that are finally being recognized for audio-only streaming.

Technology companies StreamS and StreamGuys recently announced joint support for it. StreamS is part of Modulation Index, a company that offers streaming encoders and internet audio products and is headed by Greg Ogonowski, founder of Gregg Laboratories and former VP of product development at Orban.

StreamGuys is a service provider of live and on-demand streaming, podcasting delivery, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) toolsets.

Why does this matter to Radio World readers?

As the companies put it, their goal is to provide “next-generation, high-performance live audio streaming using fully compliant standards-based CMAF HLS for low-latency, adaptive-bitrate HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). Together, both provide a complete end-to-end streaming solution that is reliable, scales to rapidly growing large audiences and reaches more modern devices with stunning audio quality.”

Container format

Please note that various companies will offer different flavors of a format, which is a problem with generic formats. Someone one said that the beauty of standards is that there are so many. Unfortunately, there are also a multitude of interpretations.

As a result, many existing streaming protocols have been modified and hacked to the point of becoming proprietary, leading to compatibility issues among streaming servers and player clients and devices. Will the disparity end? Probably not in the foreseeable future.

This particular solution is working hard to stay compatible with Apple Music. StreamS makes the hardware and software solution, and StreamGuys is the content delivery network or CDN.

Many formats are needed for streaming: the encoding format (i.e. xHE-AAC), the transport format (i.e. HLS), and the container format. CMAF is an example of a container format:

• It can contain your audio and video plus all the associated metadata.
• ID3 metadata is supported.
• Commercials can still be injected from multiple networks.

A diagram from StreamS/Modulation Index depicts the process.

Why is the announcement from StreamS and StreamGuys a good idea?

Consider that the World Wide Web was designed to present static or small files. It was not originally thought of for presenting non-ending streams; streaming was conceived later.

CMAF takes your content and chops it into segments, sending it to the Content Delivery Network. CMAF then instructs the player how to reassemble and present it, thus getting rid of many of the typical issues associated with streaming.

Greg Ogonowski, president of StreamS, notes that a “streaming server” is no longer essential to send the stream out.

What about latency? The delay of the content from encoding to playback has been the sworn enemy of the streamer.

CMAF can reduce (though not eliminate) latency. With a smaller payload, buffering and unwanted stream disconnections are lessened greatly.

To achieve less latency they are using this with HLS, which stands for HTTP Live Streaming, an adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. Yes, that Apple. So there is instant compatibility with all of the iPhones out there. Yes, Android supports HLS out of the box, though support depends on the version of Android.

So compatibility is there. With HLS, latency is closely tied to the duration of the media segments that you’re using.

“HLS is getting a whole lot better with CMAF,” said Kiriki Delany, president of StreamGuys, in the press release announcing the partnership. “We are excited to support ultra-low latency and simplify deploying HLS.”

Delany said HLS provided efficient ways to switch networks while maintaining a stream, as well as savings on power consumption for mobile devices; it also introduced much higher latency than traditional true-streaming systems.

“CMAF changes that by allowing encoding to happen much faster, which greatly reduces file-based buffers. Meanwhile, xHE-AAC, once adopted by all major browsers and mobile platforms, will simplify what codecs are needed on the decoder side. It will support very low bitrates, like 12 kbps for speech, to very high bitrates, such as lossless ALAC/FLAC formats. This simplification will mean larger reach, and lower barriers to cross platform compatibility.”

As a bonus, the higher adoption of lossless formats ALAC/FLAC for “fine arts formats” also invites the audiophile to enjoy streaming.

The introduction of CMAF and HLS is a big step for streaming radio and audio-only services. Hopefully others will get on board.

The author is a broadcast and streaming consultant and co-chair of the Audio Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Broadcast and Online Delivery.

The post Putting CMAF HLS to Work in Audio appeared first on Radio World.

AVT Audio Video Technologies is highlighting a new digital radio installation in Germany.

“With the installation of NDR’s new DAB+ playout system supplied by AVT, listeners will be able to receive news and weather information from their respective regions via DAB+ with a coverage that was previously only possible via FM,” the manufacturer stated.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

Norddeutscher Rundfunk, or NDR, is part of the public broadcast association ARD. It serves Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.

“The DAB+ playout, which was previously divided into four regions, was replaced by a completely new redundant DAB+ Ensemble multiplexer system for 16 regions,” AVT stated.

It said the large number of different programs was a project challenge, because each of the 16 regional multiplexes can generate eight to nine independent DAB+ programs.

IP-based playout is done with a Magic DABMUX plus Ensemble Multiplexer with integrated DAB+ encoders licensed by FhG.

“The system’s internal redundant switching ensures seamless switching of the multiplex signal, which is available as EDI and ETI/E1 signal. The audio feed to the multiplexers including the audio monitoring is done via AES67 streams, which are connected to Prodigy audio converters from DirectOut,” the company stated.

“The regionally categorized slideshows are created by the PAD playout system of the company 4=1, Dynamic Label+, traffic announcements and TPEG traffic information is generated by the TIC system of the company GEWI. Linkage sets are triggered directly from CGI’s dira! automation software. The monitoring of the entire system is via EMBER+ with a GUI using Lawo VisTool. As management software, the new browser-based AVT DAB System Manager is used which enables the management of all 32 Ensemble multiplexers.”

Thorsten Geselle was the project manager at NDR.

 

The post NDR Gets AVT DAB+ Playout System appeared first on Radio World.

A sign directs residents to a COVID-19 test site in Aurora, Ill, in November, as cases spiked in the state. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Millions of jobs lost. Close to 300,000 perished. Over 16 million sick.

You know the facts because you’re living them. One thing most of us can agree on is that the science of this COVID-19 thing hasn’t changed and it remains highly contagious.

Being isolated for so long, it’s human nature that we are all past ready to return to normal activity. What’s constantly in play is the public’s attitude.

A friend of mine in Florida recently declared that she was “so done with COVID” and took a road trip to Key West with three friends, sharing a hotel room and reveling in the food and atmosphere of their favorite hot spots.

In touch with listeners

Understanding attitudes is the tricky part of being on-air during the virus. It’s the one discussion point your local team needs to update constantly so you can properly adjust what you’re doing on-air, online and with your social channels.

Nobody knows when this nightmare will end. Even once the vaccine deployment ramps up, it will be months before all public activity can safely resume in a normal way.

It’s super easy to be unintentionally tone-deaf about this tragedy, but doing so can damage your personalities and your brand, perhaps permanently.

In the beginning of the outbreak, from his yacht in the Caribbean, recording industry billionaire David Geffen posted a picture of a beautiful sunset for his 80,000+ Instagram followers. Seemed innocent enough, even with the caption that said , Sunset last night… Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus. I hope everyone is safe.”

He got roasted first by his followers and then by the media. This is a guy who’s been involved in raising millions of dollars for clinics, charities for the homeless, and even has a school of medicine named after him in California. None of that matters to the people who perceive him as a privileged jerk.

They’re thinking, Yeah, you’re isolated all right … from the risk and uncertainty the rest of us face every day!

The lesson is that we can’t let our guard down as the seasons change and we need to be ultra-aware of what we are saying to our listeners.

Community-mindedness

You’ve had to be living in a cave not to know that the act of staying home when possible, wearing a mas, and social distancing — and the extent to which any should be mandated or voluntary — has become a political sore spot. Therefore, unless your product is a specifically conservative or liberal talk format, it’s risky to take a position.

A transparent way to talk about masks is to have the voices of your listeners express their opinion. Stay calm and have your best tension-easing methods of diplomacy ready to roll.

As the recent election shows, the country is split on so many issues that your personalities or station will inevitably alienate many listeners if you go all-in on one point of view.

However, because the relentless contagion of this devastating virus hasn’t changed, all stations should encourage sick people to stay home, to be careful around the elderly or others of compromised health, and to remember that we are all in this together.

There is one scientifically proven fact that your station staff could highlight:  wearing a cloth mask (even a bandanna over nose and mouth) may not do much to protect yourself, but it is enormously helpful in protecting others.

It is a community-minded action, and local radio culture is, or should be, all about community. Imparting this information via PSA or to a genuinely interested caller is an important public service.

That said, if your community is overwhelmingly in favor of full-time masks while in public, you could also give out or sell masks or hand sanitizer with your logo to benefit a charity, as some stations have been doing for months now.

Offer resources

Most importantly, every station in America should continue doing their best to generate funds, food and supplies for those in need.

With unprecedented unemployment, we must create more avenues to offer support. This may be more-frequent PSAs urging both monetary and non-perishable donations to food banks; airing announcements about volunteer opportunities; and supporting loans for those in need.

Adams Radio Group of Delmarva broadcast the “Radio Cares: Feeding America Emergency Radiothon” fundraising event last spring to benefit the hunger relief organization Feeding America. Credit: Salisbury Business Journal

If you haven’t done it already, I urge you also to create a resource page on your website with links to such things as local employment search ideas and help in navigating loss of income; food security advice and dollar-smart recipes; articles on coping with disruption of family life and other relationships; and, of course, how to stay safe and healthy in the face of COVID-19. Enlist a member of your staff who is good at research to compile these resources and review it with your talent so they’re in the loop of what’s available to their listeners on the website and what’s being constantly updated.

During times of crisis, people have long turned to radio personalities as virtual friends. And just as a friend is genuinely warm and approachable, it’s more important than ever that talent express a desire to share in their listeners’ lives.

Most of this comes in the form of morning shows; many who expanded hours in April continue to stay on for longer, while others have already scaled back. The situation is so fluid that if your area goes into lockdown again, you should take a hard look at your schedule.

There was a piece of optimistic news in a Radio Advertising Bureau article in October from Pierre Bouvard, chief insights officer at Cumulus: “The growth of workplace commuting combined with the return of children to school has caused time spent in the car to surge. This is good news for both the outdoor advertising and U.S. AM/FM radio industries. From May to October, Nielsen finds daily time spent in the car has grown +81% from 36 minutes in May to 65 minutes in October. Among heavy AM/FM radio listeners, daily time spent in the car has doubled from an hour and six minutes a day to two hours and 11 minutes.”

Even if this goes sideways due to renewed school closings and new restrictions, the beautiful part is that we can rest assured that in-car will come roaring back.

Many of us have more questions. At the top of my list: Do you continue to respond to the times in your local community?

Reach the author at marklapidus1@gmail.com. Read more great promotion, content and management articles from Mark Lapidus at www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/promo-power.

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

The post What’s the Right Tone on COVID-19? appeared first on Radio World.

A rendering of the new satellite

A new satellite serving SiriusXM is in orbit and “performing properly” after a Sunday launch.

That announcement was made by the company along with Maxar Technologies, which built the satellite, and SpaceX, which launched it.

The SXM-7 ready for launch in an image from SpaceX.

The satellite is SXM-7 and it has an expected service life of 15 years. There are five other active satellites in the company’s constellation, but SXM-7 and SXM-8 — which is scheduled to launch next year — will replace XM-3 and XM-4.

“SXM-7, a high-powered digital audio radio satellite, was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.,” the companies announced.

“Shortly afterward, SXM-7 deployed its solar arrays and began receiving and sending signals. Next, SXM-7 will begin firing its thrusters to commence its journey to its final geostationary orbit.”

“SXM-7 will deliver the highest power density of any commercial satellite on-orbit, sending more than 8,000 watts of content to the continental U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, increasing the power and reach of the signal for SiriusXM,” they stated.

The announcement was made by Megan Fitzgerald, Maxar’s senior vice president of space programs delivery;

Bridget Neville, SiriusXM’s senior vice president of satellite and repeater systems engineering and operations; and Lee Rosen, SpaceX’s vice president of customer operations and integration.

 

 

The post SiriusXM’s New Satellite Is in Orbit appeared first on Radio World.

The author is president of Nova Electronics in Dallas, Texas.

A serious consideration for AM revitalization is being overlooked. Rather than promoting digital, which is still not ready for prime time, how about making changes in facilities a little more friendly?

One way is to get rid of the three-channel rule, which has outlived its usefulness. Many stations are going dark, but the band is still too crowded for most stations to move within that range. In order to reduce interference and improve coverage (which the FCC claims is of high importance, but doesn’t seem to practice), a station may have a frequency available that accomplishes all the above but is outside the range; and waivers are nearly impossible to receive. 

At present you have to wait for an AM filing window, which may not happen for years to decades (the last one was over 20 years ago), in order to make a move outside the three channels. 

There is no good reason for this, with the number of stations recently going dark, whereby a struggling station could improve their coverage and reduce current interference if such a move were allowed. 

Another factor would be to allow more stations into the expanded band. There are only 52 stations across the nation in the entire expanded band, making it an additional resource that is being vastly underutilized. 

Keep adequate protections between stations so as not to overcrowd the band, and allow this underpopulated territory to be used for improving the AM band, which was the primary motivation for its creation. 

These simple changes can be made with no real costs or changes in regulatory structure required. Unfortunately that seems to be the exact opposite of what government does. 

 

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