Industry News

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Leadership Foundation elected Tony Coles of Black Information Network and iHeartMedia, Paul J. Curran Jr. of Cox Media Group (CMG) and Melody Smalls of Allen Media Group, Inc. to serve on its Board of Directors.

“We are excited to welcome three outstanding individuals to the NAB Leadership Board and are grateful for our Board’s guidance as we work to develop leaders, advance diversity and highlight the community service initiatives of our industry,” said Darrell Brown, chair of the NAB Leadership Foundation and president of Bonneville International/KSL Broadcast Group.

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“We want to thank the new members for their willingness to serve and look forward to their insights as we continue to expand our programs and prepare the next generation of industry leaders,” added Michelle Duke, president of the NAB Leadership Foundation.

Tony Coles, president of Black Information Network (BIN) and iHeartMedia’s division president of Metro Markets, has more than 35 years of experience in the radio industry. He joined iHeartMedia in 2004 and has held various on-air, programming and management positions across the country. Most recently, Coles served as the executive vice president of programming for the company’s West region. In his current role, he oversees profitability for 21 iHeartMedia markets.

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NEW YORK — The “No Hispanic Dictate.” It still rears its ugly head, and for Jason Hall, EVP of Advertising Sales at Estrella Media, Hispanic Buying Power doesn’t equate to the 3%-4% of total advertising investments being placed on U.S. Hispanic media in 2021.

“There’s a lot of brands that still don’t get,” added Isabel Rafferty, CEO at Canela Media.

Both Hispanic market leaders participated in a prerecorded virtual panel presented Thursday as part of the Hispanic TV Summit produced by Joe Schramm for the Virtual Fall TV 2021 event.

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NEW YORK — Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Pearl TV — the business organization led by Anne Schelle representing U.S. broadcast television companies — has shared the first images of an upcoming NEXTGEN TV holiday brand marketing campaign.

For Pearl TV, the effort is designed to “deepen consumer awareness and engagement.”

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Adthos Creative Studio has released a free radio campaign that encourages Covid-19 vaccine uptake. The campaign uses synthetic voices created with AI technology.

Assets are available for free download and use. Promos cover 6,500 cities in 40 countries and in 70 languages and dialects. The company said that for the United States it includes 1,000 cities and communities.

https://www.radioworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Adthos-New-Orleans-30-sec.mp3An example of the 30-second Covid-19 vaccination PSA produced by Adthos using AI-generated voices.An example of the 30-second Covid-19 vaccination PSA produced by Adthos using AI-generated voices. -->
The company said it wanted to do good while highlighting its ability to create targeted messaging quickly and easily for multiple locations. “We also see this as a positive use for AI technology that benefits humanity”

Adthos states this is “the largest audio ad campaign in history.” It bases that statement on involving the work of 13,000 creatives and “supported on its release by stations with a total of more than 250 million weekly listeners.”

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Stations using the campaign must disclose the use of synthetic voices to their audiences; the company posted examples of the required disclosure.

Adthos Creative Studio is a product that is intended to be used to create audio advertising using text-to-speech and synthetic voice technology.

“Using Creative Studio, broadcasters and advertisers are not only able to create, produce and playout their ads in record time, they also have access to a suite of pre-produced adverts covering various kinds of businesses or services which can be quickly and easily customized to their needs,” the company states.

Comment on this or any article. Write to radioworld@futurenet.com.

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NEW YORK — Speaking at Forecast 2022 on Tuesday, Scott Schober of Cybersecurity Ventures and President/CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems soberly shared with attendees of the daylong conference that they will never stay ahead of the hackers. But, there are several things one can do to keep hackers at bay.

Building on that theme, cybersecurity company Surfshark has new facts that sound new alarms when it comes to online security. They start with e-mail address protection.

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Comtech dish on roof of WUWM Radio in Milwaukee. Courtesy DAWNco

The entity responsible for paying out claims to incumbent earth station operators affected by the C-band shakeup in the United States says it has started cutting checks.

The C-band Relocation Payment Clearinghouse (RPC) is paying claims filed directly by operators for costs related to reconfigure facilities in order to free up spectrum in the C-band.

The RPC says it is evaluating additional claims for reimbursement or lump-sum payments. It will continue to send payments as it approves applications and is urging potential claimants to come forward with their claims.

Approximately 1,500 earth station operators, some holding multiple licenses, already chose the lump-sum option, according to data from the FCC earlier this year, including many broadcasters. But licensees that did not accept that option are expected to work with their satellite providers or to directly recoup justifiable filter, dish and labor expenses from the RCP.

[“C-Band Migration Underway for Dish Users”]

Incumbent earth station operators, space station operators and other eligible fixed-service licensees transitioning out of the band are generally eligible for certain relocation cost reimbursements or other payments.

Some entities potentially eligible still have not filed claims, according to a press release from RPC, or have not registered with the RPC. “Once those entities have set up their profiles and filed claims, the RPC will evaluate their applications and make payments to those whose claims have been approved,” it stated in the release.

“We are making great progress in collecting claimant profiles, approving claims, and making payments to qualified entities that are relocating on the C-band,” said Frank Banda, RPC program manager. “We encourage all entities that might be eligible for reimbursement or lump-sum payments to register and file their claims as soon as possible. The sooner they file their claims, the sooner they can receive reimbursement or lump-sum payments.”

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Incumbent earth stations can seek reimbursement for the modification and reconfiguration of earth station dishes or possible relocation, if necessary to prevent interference from new 5G users, according to those familiar with the process.

Approximately 20,000 registered earth stations in the contiguous United States, according to the FCC, are classified as incumbent earth stations for purposes of the C-band transition.

To submit claims for reimbursement or lump-sum payments, claimants can log into their RPC Coupa profile and follow the instructions. The RPC website provides guidance.

The band repack process has several phases with hard deadlines involved, according to the FCC. Phase 1 involves earth stations in the lower 100 MHz of the band (3.7–3.8 GHz) in 46 Partial Economic Areas to be repacked by Dec. 5. Those are largely in urban areas and include most, if not all, major radio markets, according to the FCC. All remaining earth stations will need to be transitioned in Phase 2 of the repack by December 2023.

C-band refers to frequencies in the 3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz range. The spectrum has been used extensively by radio and television broadcasters for satellite C-Band downlinks, but those services are being repacked to the upper portion (4.0–4.2 GHz) of the band. The FCC mandated the spectrum shift as part of its effort to move toward the national expansion of 5G. It is making available 280 MHz of C-band spectrum (3.7–3.8 GHz), including a 20 MHz guard band, for flexible use throughout the contiguous United States.

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NEW YORK — Among the many activities occurring this week, aside from Forecast 2022, that involve the broadcast television industry was the first-ever “Measurement Innovation Forum,” hosted by NBCU.

The owner of NBC and Telemundo enjoyed representation from every corner of the industry. Following the Forum, former Nielsen thought leader Kelly Abcarian, today NBCUniversal’s EVP/Measurement & Impact for Advertising & Partnerships, shared an update on the Measurement RFP process with each measurement partner.

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DAB+ is on the air in Australia’s five major metro markets plus several other cities. Commercial Radio Australia Chief Executive Officer Joan Warner has said, “DAB+ audiences have grown as a result of broadcasters enhancing their digital radio formats and car manufacturers continuing to add DAB+ radios to their vehicle ranges.” An estimated 2.8 million DAB+ receivers have been sold to date.
This is an excerpt from our interview with her in the ebook “Trends in Digital Radio 2021.”

RW: Many broadcasters ask whether they should invest in an over-the-air digital format when there’s so many other distribution channels.

Warner: They need to be a bit more strategic. We know that no mobile network can carry all of radio listening traffic live and local. If everybody tried to do all of their radio listening over a mobile network, the network would crash. We’d break the internet.

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And I’m talking about live radio. Podcasting has yet to be proven to be the river of gold we think it will be. I mean, podcast listening is increasing in Australia and in the U.S., but it’s still a relatively small part of audio listening. And we need to work out how we monetize it.

But even telcos will say, “Yes, we don’t want all radio listening on our mobile network, because there’d be no room for anything else.” So, broadcasters have to step back and take a strategic look and say, “All right, where do we want to be?”

And our answer is, we want to be everywhere. We want to be, as broadcasters, accessible on every single platform we can be. That will be AM and FM in the medium term.

It could be the case in the future that people go, well, “Fifty percent of listening is on streaming, 40 percent is via DAB, so maybe it’s time to think about an AM and FM turnoff.” But that’s not on the radar at the moment. Not until we’ve got digital out into the regions.

So don’t pick a winner. You can’t afford to.

One of our broadcasters who had the same doubts about digital 10 years ago said, “We’re looking at this as defensive spending as well. If we don’t do it, someone else will jump in and grab that spectrum and offer a product that we could be offering.”

Now it’s, “Okay, how can we be more offensive with our DAB+? What are the benefits?” Incremental audience, extra revenue. We’ve got new stations — and we’re able to put all of these stations, including AM and FM, onto our industry RadioApp. Now we’ve got 400 available on one app, where normally we have only 11 commercial stations in a city in Australia.

RW: It sounds like your app is an important part of this conversation.

Warner: It’s important. I mean, listening on the internet still is at fairly low levels everywhere. Our research shows us, on average, about 15 percent of all listeners will listen to radio online, either via an app or on their PC, whatever they’re using.

But they are not only solely listening online, they’re listening sometimes to broadcast in the car or at home. There’s a common misperception, people will look at that 15 percent and go, “Oh, okay, 15 percent of all listening is done online.” No. It’s that 15 percent of listeners will listen at some stage online, but that’s not exclusive listening. Sometimes they’re also listening on their car radio or on a DAB radio at home.

The app has provided us an introduction into organizations like Google and Amazon to get all of Australian radio working properly on their speakers, first time, every time.

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Prior to us having RadioApp, the accuracy on smart speakers when asking for an Australian radio station on Amazon was 23 percent. The accuracy on Google was 40 percent. As [speakers] became more popular, people got them out of the box and said, “Oh, please play Hit Radio Sydney for me,” and what they were coming up with was New York or Los Angeles, or nothing.

That’s a missed opportunity for radio to be back where it may not have been for a while, back in the bedroom or the living area.

So we saw it as a strategic play. It was easy to say to Google and Amazon, “You only need to deal with one organization here.” Now because of RadioApp, on those speakers we’ve got 400 stations including every AM and FM and DAB station in Australia, commercial plus the ABC plus SBS and all of their DAB stations. Four hundred radio stations. And there are 3,865 ways to ask for them — by saying the frequency, by saying the name of the station, by saying the name of the station and the town.

Find our Q&A with Joan Warner in the ebook “Trends in Digital Radio 2021.”

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Research from the latest NPR/Edison Spoken Word Audio Report suggests a significant uptick in listening to spoken word programming, especially podcasts. With a commensurate growth in the number and types of spoken word programs available, one might wonder how listeners discover and engage with the available options. The report turned up some interesting answers.

The short answer to the discovery question is that listeners resort to a number of options to find what’s out there. The average number of options among all demographics is four, although 55+ trails with two. The top three most popular methods are searching the internet, recommendations from friends and family and social media posts. Once again, the 18–34 and multicultural demographics appear to be the leaders in most categories.

The most common way listeners find new spoken word audio programming is by searching the internet.

The fourth most popular discovery method according to the report is video-based apps or websites such as YouTube or Twitch, which was named by 42 percent of respondents. Broken down by demographics, these are used by 58 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds, 49 percent of the 35–54 demographic and 21 percent of those 55+. Thirty-five percent of white respondents reported using video, while multicultural respondents came in second with 55 percent.

Discovery strategy is a must

Looking at the number of spoken word topics or genres named by respondents makes it apparent why some sort of search or discovery strategy is necessary. The average number of genres named by those surveyed is 10. The most popular spoken word topics, according to the research, are news/information, music and comedy/humor.

This report also tracks listening habits, which have shifted since 2019. According to the research, travel, history and biography are trending downward, while romance, games/hobbies and celebrities/gossip are seeing upticks. It is important to note these popular genres over-index with growing segments of respondents, suggesting they are influencing the spoken word ecosphere.

[Read more of our coverage of “The Spoken Word Audio Report”]

When posed with the statement “Spoken Word Audio engages your mind in a more positive way than other media.” 62 percent of those 18–34 agreed, as did 58 percent of the 35–54 demographic and 44 percent of those 55+. Forty-nine percent of white listeners agreed, while 63 percent of multicultural listeners said yes. The reported negativity of mainstream and social media has surfaced in other parts of The Spoken Word Audio Report, and might be an important takeaway for those working in radio.

The next statement posed to respondents was “Spoken word audio is made for people like you.” The responses are very similar to those from the previous statement. Sixty-two percent of those 18–34 agreed, while 66 percent of respondents 35–54 said yes. Of those 55+, only 47 percent identified with the statement. Fifty-four percent of white listeners agreed, as did 66 percent of those multicultural.

Attention to advertising

The research from this report also supports the idea that the young and multicultural demographics are more likely to pay attention to ads and sponsorships on spoken word programming.

Younger and multicultural listeners are more likely to pay attention to advertising in spoken word programming.

When asked the question “How often do you notice ads or sponsorships while listening to spoken word audio?” the averages were 22 percent frequently, 57 percent sometimes and 21 percent never. Young and multicultural listeners were in the lead on this one. Among those 18–34, 31 percent responded frequently, 59 percent said sometimes, and only 10 percent replied never. Twenty-eight percent of multicultural listeners noticed the ads or sponsorships frequently, 58 percent said sometimes and 14 percent replied never.

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

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In:Quality Touch XLR SIP Codec

Moving studio-grade audio from point to point is much simpler thanks to browser-based programs that use the open source Opus codec.

One such modality is ipDTL from the U.K.’s In:Quality, which I’ve used with success. This web application the Opus codec and allows the originator to send up to six bidirectional links for connection.

This begs a question: How can this process be simplified for two-way sessions (voice overs, program and news contributions) that won’t tie up a laptop or desktop computer?

The founder of In:Quality, Kevin Leach, worked for the BBC as a producer and audio engineer. He says using ipDTL from a computer, is a process that depends on configuring settings such as audio device selection in the right order, to deliver studio grade audio. That’s not a problem for technical people.

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Leach says In:Quality’s SIP codecs were designed to increase simplicity and reliability for those who want a simple way to connect to a radio station.

“Once you put everything in a simple box [Raspberry Pi ] it takes away a lot of complexity. The USB SIP codec lets a user connect using a simple USB microphone and headphones, or a USB soundcard. The XLR SIP codec has Neutrik XLR-TRS connections for analog audio, and can also be configured to move audio on any network that recognizes AES67 as a protocol. It is available in a plain version, Zero, that is externally controlled, and a touchscreen-controlled version, Touch.

Here’s what goes in that Raspberry Pi box: a software codec that uses the EBU 3326 protocol and SIP to make calls. The preferred codec is the open source Opus codec, but the software can recognize G.722, G.711 and, where still available and as part of a subscription, ISDN.

Purchasers of In:Quality codecs receive a one-year subscription to the sip.audio service, which is part of the In:Quality family. All sip.audio subscribers can make calls and connect to any other SIP device that allows incoming SIP calls.

The sip.audio website has a growing worldwide directory of facilities and contributors (subject matter experts, voice over artists, et al.) who are SIP enabled. When connecting these codecs, In:Quality strongly recommends that they be connected to a network via Ethernet. In:Quality cautions that some dynamic microphones might not work well with the XLR Codec, due to the available gain in the preamp.

I configured the XLR codec to transmit and receive audio through my Allen + Heath ZED-10. Settings and configuration for the unit were done from a laptop on the same network. Other settings and adjustments can be made from the codec’s touchscreen. Line level mix-minus codec transmit was fed via the ZED-10’s FX send; the line level codec receive was connected through a line level channel, and the codec was connected via Cat-6 to a network switch and router.

Clean audio was transmitted and received between my studio and In:Quality in Manchester, England, KHAS(AM) in Hastings, Neb., and WKBX(FM) in Kingsland, Ga.

Brad Beahm is the operations manager for KHAS/Platte River Media in Hastings, Neb. On a given Friday, he’ll have five separate football broadcasts on five separate stations in his cluster, between Hastings, Grand Island and Kearney, Neb.

“In the past we’ve used Skype and have had a few issues, like having a computer do a Windows update, sound card settings getting changed and forgotten Skype passwords. With the In:Quality SIP codecs, we give them the box and equipment, tell them to push the button for whatever station they’re on and go from there.”

Beahm has the XLR codec in his equipment rack. He deployed a Touch SIP codec for a newscaster who had to move from Nebraska to take care of a relative. The use of the codec allowed that newscaster to continue doing news for the morning show. When asked about the quality of the signal from Colorado to Nebraska, Beahm said “Our morning guy asked if the newscaster had a fan running during the newscast. The signal was clear enough that the fan in the background could be heard. That’s a good problem to have.”

Neal Ardman is the president of NIA Broadcasting and Broadcast Partners and WKBX in Kingsland, Ga. His station uses In:Quality codecs for hosts on remote and for high school football, for which the station will use a dedicated Verizon Mi Fi on Wi-Fi or 5G.

Ardman suggests that those using In:Quality equipment at home insure that there’s enough bandwidth on the home network. “Make sure the talent working from home has a good quality soundcard too, and that’s usually not the one that’s built into the computer.

He also shared a security tip about spoofed IP addresses: “Make sure that your router is set up to accept connections to your codec only from known IP addresses. That way, you don’t have to worry about spoofed IP addresses.”

The XLR Codec from In:Quality has a list price of $449 (Zero) and $499 (Touch with integrated touchscreen).

Paul Kaminski, CBT, is a veteran radio news reporter and host of msrpk.com’s “Radio-Road-Test.” Twitter: msrpk_com.

PRODUCT CAPSULE

In:Quality XLR SIP Zero and Touch Codecs

Plusses

• Low cost
• Clean audio using Opus codec
• sip.audio subscription included
• Web-based configuration
• Easy professional connections (XLR and TRS), no soundcard needed

Minuses

• Some dynamic mics may not work well with the XLR codec

Info: https://inquality.com

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