Industry News

He’s been the Marketing Manager for the CBS affiliate serving Atlanta and the independent broadcast TV station branded as “PeachtreeTV” for the past several years and stayed with Gray Television following its merger acquisition with Meredith Corp.

Now, this local TV executive is being rewarded.

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The National Association of Broadcasters has announced the 50 finalists for the 35th annual NAB Crystal Radio Awards.

Winners will be announced on Tuesday, April 26 at the 2022 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

This year’s finalists are:

Ten Crystal Radio Award recipients will be chosen by a panel of judges representing the broadcast industry, community service organizations and public relations firms.

Since 1987, the NAB Crystal Radio Awards have recognized radio stations for their outstanding year-round commitment to community service.

Unique digital art. That’s perhaps the easiest way to describe what a non-fungible token, or “NFT,” is. It’s tied to cryptocurrency, and it’s hot.

The nation’s No. 1 creator and distributor of audio content understands this. Now, one of its top syndicated radio programs is partnering with OneOf on an exclusive NFT partnership.

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On its surface, it appears that the nation’s No. 1 licensee of broadcast television stations didn’t perform so well in the final three months of 2021. Free Cash Flow was down 26.2%. Adjusted EBITDA was off by 24.5%.

However, tough comps due to very strong Q4 2020 political ad dollars are at play here. So, ex-political, how did Nexstar Media Group do in Q4 2021?

It beat the Street.

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Dutch cable operator Ziggo is pulling the plug on its carriage of analog radio signals. The company is the last cable company in the Netherlands to offer analog radio as part of its service, but it is ending the service during the first quarter of 2022 to free up bandwidth.

According to Ziggo, only about 5% of its customers use its analog radio service. “In 2018, we started to discontinue the analog TV signal via cable, now it is analog radio’s turn,” the company wrote in its Dutch-language FAQ about the switchover.

To aid customers affected, Ziggo is offering a free FM antenna to replace the cable connection to their stereo system, or it suggests tuning digital radio stations via television or connecting a cable box to the stereo. The company is also offering for €50 (about $56) a DAB receiver that connects to an existing stereo system.

Ziggo carries more than 100 radio and audio channels via its television platform, including Dutch public and private stations, German and British public broadcasters, and German, French, and British international services.

Ziggo is the largest cable operator in the Netherlands, serving nearly 4 million households.

The post Ziggo Switching off Analog Radio via Cable appeared first on Radio World.

With confirmation that TEGNA is being acquired by a partnership led by Standard General that sees Apollo Global Management taking a non-voting stake in the broadcast television company, CEO Dave Lougee will depart.

Who is his replacement? A familiar face for Soohyung Kim, the new TEGNA board chairman once closing occurs.

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The company was founded during the Velvet Revolution, some 11 months before the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Today, this globally renowned entity founded by five engineers from the Scientific Research Institute of Television and Broadcasting in Praha is celebrating 30 years as a Prague-based company with customers and offices around the world.

With automotive brand Skoda its office mates in the Veleslavínská neighborhood on the west side of Prague, AVECO will be showcasing its three decades of achievement along with its current products of interest to broadcast professionals at the 2022 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

It’s selected Booth N1421 at the Las Vegas Convention Center for its return to the event, the NAB’s first in three years.

AVECO deployments range from multi-channel, multi-site operations – such as India’s ETV Bharat’s automation and media asset management system, supporting 5,000 reporters, 24 news studios and 24 full time news channels in 13 languages – to small standalone systems. Complete end-to-end production and playout facilities to individual products are also tied to AVECO.

“Since our humble beginnings with our motto ‘Let’s try!’ we’ve seen incredible changes in industry and technology,” said Pavel Potuzak, CEO of Aveco. “Today, our project with Televisa in Mexico would have been unthinkable when Aveco was formed. Think about it … fully redundant master control with frame-by-frame disaster recovery for 80 TV channels located on-prem and in the cloud.”

He continued, “From tape to servers to the cloud, our motto has changed with the industry as well to ‘Let’s Talk Automation!’ to better reflect our focus. With our vision of ‘Create – Manage – Deliver’, we provide media companies worldwide with our news/studio production automation, media asset management and playout solutions – on-prem, in the cloud and in hybrid architectures. We graciously thank our more than 300 customers worldwide that have helped us grow from a small group of friends in the Czech Republic to an international company with ten offices worldwide.”

A new networking series focused on innovation is in the works for the 2022 NAB Show, the National Association of Broadcasters’ first since 2019.

According to the NAB, each “NABiQ challenge” will relate to NAB Show’s new content pillars.

NABiQ is a series of 90-minute daily facilitated workshops that are intended to harness the power of teamwork “to ideate, innovate and create prototypes for nine real-world challenges.” Each workshop will accommodate up to five teams of six participants each who will compete for the winning solution.

NABiQ

Innovation consultant, coach and design sprint master Maria Duloquin will facilitate nine 90-minute competition-style events encouraging attendees to collaborate in devising solutions to common challenges facing the industry.

Registrants will be placed in five teams of six members per challenge to develop innovative solutions and prototypes that address central themes.

“Our community craves engaged and invigorating networking opportunities, beyond traditional happy hours and conversations,” said Chris Brown, the NAB’s EVP and Managing Director of Global Connections and Events. “This dynamic ‘hackathon’ format allows attendees to collaborate and draw on their collective experiences to create the next great out-of-the-box solution for our industry.”

Duloquin added, “Building on diverse knowledge under a tight deadline is a sure-fire way to foster innovation. Teams listen to each other, prioritize ideas, and define the most powerful solutions in an intense but incredibly rewarding experience.”

NABiQ is supported by Cynopsis for Capitalize and ProVideoCoalition for Create. The complete list of challenges is available here. Each competition will be followed by informal networking, with winning solutions shared with the entire NAB Show community and via NAB Amplify.

To RSVP, attendees should create a show planner and add the challenge(s) of interest to their calendar.

The XXIV Olympic Winter Games have concluded, and among those that can look back in pride are the leaders of a Oregon-based company that’s emerged as a global leader in visualization technology.

Planar emerged as the company NBC Sports contracted to provide fine pitch LED video wall display technology for its production of Beijing 2022.

In particular, NBC Sports’ Beijing set showcased a Planar TVF Series LED video wall, with a 1.8mm pixel pitch that powered broadcast coverage from Studio A, with over 200 LED displays delivering more than 15 million pixels of resolution. NBC Sports used the video wall to achieve popular resolutions and deliver clear, crisp images from every angle and viewing distance.

Planar has been in use in prior Olympic Games.

“It’s a tremendous honor to partner with NBC Sports to return as its display technology
provider for this event,” Planar EVP Adam Schmidt said. “We’re excited to help enhance NBC Sports’ broadcast coverage for viewers.”

When it came time to produce the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, which just wrapped up in the People’s Republic of China, NBC Sports turned to a privately held company with operations in California and Massachusetts to receive media capture, automated media processing, closed captioning, and test and measurement equipment.

Providing the needs: Telestream.

NBC Sports used both the Telestream Vantage Media Processing Platform and the Cinnafilm Tachyon processing library extensively across its coverage of the Beijing 2022 event, providing top-quality frame rate conversions.

NBC Sports also put to use Telestream’s Lightspeed Live Capture and Vantage to deliver a unique, mixed HDR/SDR conversion workflow for NBC Sports’ content produced in HDR. The NBC Sports Advanced Technology group worked with Telestream to develop custom color LUTs (Look Up Tables) that are used within Vantage to ensure the most accurate color processing pipeline throughout the production and postproduction process.

Additionally, NBC Sports used Telestream’s caption authoring and editing product in conjunction with Telestream Cloud’s Timed Text Speech service — an AI-powered transcription service; and Telestream 4K/8K HDR Waveform Monitors that support easy alignment and confidence monitoring with both local and remote operation.