Industry News

Travel east of Atlanta, and you’ll reach Morgan County, and the small town of Madison, its county seat.

Here, a Class D AM offering religious programming is being spun.

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On December 2, the nation’s No. 1 broadcast TV station owner saw its broadcast TV stations and its recently acquired WGN America cable network blocked from Dish subscribers, as negotiations reached a stalemate over a new retransmission consent deal.

As of Friday afternoon (12/11), a resolution was not expected soon. That said, Nexstar Media Group has gained new clearance for WGN America.

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The suburban Detroit-based mobile strategy and development company led by COO Bob Kernen is releasing what it says is the first app designed for radio with voice activation.

According to jacapps, consumers can now open station apps with just a voice command. In an environment where users have on average 32 apps on their phone, this technological advance makes it easier for listeners to find their favorite apps.

“From Echo and Google Home to our cars and even our TV remotes, more and more devices are controlled with our voices,” said Kernen, “It just made sense to enable users to open our clients’ apps using Siri and Google Assistant.”

Lisa Waters, Digital Media Director for Local Media San Diego, participated in beta testing of V5 for one of her stations, KFBG-FM 100.7, formerly KFMB-FM.

“As soon as you fire-up the updated app, you get an immediate sense of the station personality because of the inclusion of more spot-graphics from our radio station’s website,” she says. “I asked Siri to ‘PLAY BIG FM’ when I was driving the other day, and it opened the app and started playing the stream though my car speakers flawlessly. It’s one of those features that you don’t know you need until you have it.”

The platform continues to support connected car platforms including Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and push notifications.

The platform also continues to have a complete location guide and directory option, which can help radio stations support and generate revenue from local businesses.

— RBR+TVBR West Coast Bureau, in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

The Society of Broadcast Engineers threw a surprise party Thursday for departing Executive Director John Poray.

“You taught us how to be an organization,” veteran engineer Fred Baumgartner told Poray during a Zoom meeting attended by more than 75 people.

The group included numerous past presidents of the society, current and past board members and committee leaders, representatives from state broadcast associations, and friends and Poray family members.

[Related: “SBE’s Poray to Retire in 2020”]

Poray was SBE’s first full-time executive director and has been with the society since 1992.

He began his career with the Boy Scouts of America’s Central Ohio Council and went on to work for Kiwanis International, The Apartment Association of Indiana and The Columbus Apartment Association.

Among those on the call were two engineers who interviewed Poray for the job 28 years ago, Rick Farquhar and Fred Baumgartner.

Poray told the online gathering that when he joined, he figured he might stay in the job for four or five years.

“I’ve never been with a group that enjoys their work so much,” Poray said. “You like what you do, it’s part of you. That really rubs off.”

Poray noted that he is not an engineer but that he shared interests of many SBE members, having DXed as a boy and collected QSL cards.

Society veterans on the call praised Poray for his administrative abilities, good ideas and efforts to provide stability and growth for the organizations.

One said that when he became an SBE officer, his predecessor told him, “It’s an easy job. Just do what John tells you and you’ll be fine.”

New Executive Director James Ragsdale comes on board in January.

The post SBE Gives John Poray a Big Sendoff appeared first on Radio World.

The next NAB Show isn’t until October thanks to the pandemic effect; but the association says exhibit hall reservations are off to “a significant head start.”

The National Association of Broadcasters said it has approximately 540 companies that have committed to the show in October in Las Vegas, including vendors from 31 countries. Organizers are promoting the event as “the time to restart, rebuild and reconnect.”

Among brands familiar in radio that NAB said have committed to the show are Audio-Technica U.S., Comrex, Nautel, Rohde & Schwarz, Wheatstone and WideOrbit.

NAB also highlighted AT&T, Inc.; Adobe Systems; Amazon Web Services; Blackmagic Design; Dolby Laboratories; Grass Valley; Ikegami; Limelight Networks; Panasonic; Planar; Pixel Power; Ross Video; Sony Electronics, Inc.; Telestream; Verizon Business and Verizon Media; and Vizrt.

It quoted Executive Vice President of Conventions and Business Operations Chris Brown saying, “Together with our partners, we are on a path to building a critical event that will reunite the industry and create a much-needed forum for building momentum going into 2022.”

It said initial applications account for about 330,000 square feet of space.

The show will co-locate with the Audio Engineering Society fall convention, the Radio Show and NAB’s Sales and Management Television Exchange. The Society of Broadcast Engineers also will coordinate its annual national conference with that schedule.

The post NAB Show Cites Early Exhibit Hall Sales appeared first on Radio World.

Starting this week, viewers in the nation’s 14th largest TV market — Detroit — get a taste of the future as five local TV stations have banded together to launch NEXTGEN TV in Detroit.

This market is vitally important for ATSC 3.0’s data capabilities, as automotive executives and production facilities can learn first-hand of how the connected car can benefit.

Are companies such as Ford and General Motors aware of what NEXTGEN TV can provide? Yes, says Anne Schelle, the Managing Director of Pearl TV, who speaks exclusively with Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson in this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by DOT.FM.
Listen to “RBR+TVBR InFOCUS Podcast: Anne Schelle” on Spreaker.

It’s presently airing an all-Christmas format, but with country music artists.

Soon, it will be devoting all of its musical choices to Jesus Christ and his teachings.

A Class B1 FM serving Canton, Illinois, with coverage of much of Peoria, has just become the latest acquisition for Educational Media Foundation.

The parent of the KLOVE and Air1 noncomm Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) networks is agreeing to purchase WCDD-FM 107.9 in Canton, Ill.

The seller is Illiana Communications, which is earning $170,000 from the divestment. An $8,500 deposit has been made by EMF.

The deal does not include the tower for WCDD. As such, EMF will lease it from Illiana. Terms call for monthly rent of $500, starting on the first anniversary of the lease, enacted at closing. The monthly rent is payable for the following 47 months. When that agreement ends, a new one is exercisable at a 10% increase in value.

The transaction does include the following:

Entering the Peoria area is likely one of many objectives for EMF as it seeks national coverage. The closest station airing KLOVE to Canton, Ill., is WLKU-FM 98.9 in the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa.

“Radio is one of the best performing media to help brands recover from a recession.”

Really? For broadcasters across Great Britain, that seems to be the case, new research from Ebiquity indicates. What learning lessons are there for U.S. radio broadcasting companies that can’t seem to propel themselves out of the COVID-19 bog?

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A new post on the Voice of America public relations website provides an update about the ongoing test of Digital Radio Mondiale from a shortwave transmission site of the U.S. Agency for Global Media in North Carolina.

It noted that a series of USAGM tests of the digital radio technology was launched in early 2020 with content targeting Cuba and Latin America.

[Read: DRM Advanced Radio for All]

The article cites the experience of Gerhard Straub, supervisory director of the USAGM Broadcast Technologies Division; Gary Koster, broadcast radio technician and transmitter expert; and Macon Dail, chief engineer at the transmitting station in Greenville, N.C.

“The USAGM test, says Straub, is ‘coasting along’ in the pandemic, but additional content will be added when technicians can travel again,” the story states. “Straub says the VOA signal was taken off in the initial test to concentrate on the [Office of Cuba Broadcasting] digital content and to keep the signal robust. Now that there is good reception data, he noted, the digital bitrate can be increased and VOA content added back into the test in 2021.”

The article also mentions advances by DRM in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil and North Korea.

The test DRM signal carries audio, scrolling text and rotating images.

“You have to stop thinking of it as radio, because it’s not,” VOA quotes Straub as saying. “Just like we broadcast digital data on the internet, we can broadcast digital data over shortwave without being hampered by an internet firewall that maybe limits what we can send to a particular country.”

Read the article “USAGM, VOA Testing Innovative Digital Radio Platform.”

The post USAGM’s Test of DRM Is “Coasting Along” appeared first on Radio World.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FCC has issued a Report and Order updating its rules to promote the introduction of ATSC 3.0-enabled innovative ancillary and supplementary broadcast services, a.k.a Broadcast Internet.

The positive response from key lobbying groups in Washington, D.C., was immediate, and positive.

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