Radio World

The Dec. 22 issue of Radio World features our Buyer’s Guide for antennas, RF support and power products. Buyer’s Guide features application stories like this one.

Northern Community Radio is an independent non-profit organization that operates two full-service FM radio stations and one translator that serve north central and northeastern Minnesota.

NCR built a full-service Class C2 FM station, KBXE, licensed to Bagley, Minn., in 2012. KBXE has a 488-foot guyed tower and directional Rototiller FM antenna made and installed by ERI. The station rebroadcasts KAXE and airs local programming from studios in Bemidji.

In 2019 NCR was granted a CP to increase KAXE’s height above average terrain from 459 to 673 feet while maintaining 100 kW effective radiated power. These new facilities required a taller 499-foot tower.

Chief Engineer Dan Houg proposed a new tower, antenna, transmission line and installation services, and ERI won the contract. Shown is KAXE’s 10-Bay High-Power Model SHPX-10AC Rototiller FM Antenna. ERI also was awarded a contract that included destacking the existing 315-foot tower after the new system was operational.

David Baes, executive director of Northern Community Radio, told ERI, “Now, with the new, improved signal, we are reaching out further than ever and bringing in a new group of listeners into the KAXE/KBXE family. I am excited about the future, to see where it leads us next.”

When the construction and commissioning of the new transmission facilities, were complete, the station website announced, “After YEARS of fundraising and planning, the construction of the KAXE tower and transmitter is complete. Finally, the 91.7 signal is back bigger and stronger than ever before.”

Info: eriinc.com, 812-925-6000 or email sales@eriinc.com

The post Northern Community Radio Goes Higher with ERI appeared first on Radio World.

This week we’re featuring highlights of 2021’s ebooks. 

Pierre Bouvard is chief insights officer at Cumulus Media and its national-facing arm Westwood One. This interview is from “Streaming for Radio in 2021.”

Radio World: How do you think broadcasters are doing at leveraging streaming?

Pierre Bouvard: The real accelerator for streaming has been the smart speaker. Years have gone by since stations started streaming, and it was always maybe 5% of total tuning; the arrival of the smart speaker caused radio stations to really wake up to the fact that the smart speaker brings radio back into the home.

Increasingly, homes do not own a radio, but a third now have smart speakers. Radio stations have been aggressively promoting that “You can listen to our station on your Alexa or Google Home.”

Now 15% of 25-to-54 listening in America occurs through the stream. That’s a substantial number. I think an advertiser needs to understand that if you’re going to spend a dollar on radio, 85 cents can be for the over-the-air and 15 cents should be for the stream.

By the way, we did a study. If you ask the average American, “Do you know how to listen to a radio station on a smart speaker,” there’s still a fair chunk who say no. We need to do a more forceful job of explaining how somebody can use a smart speaker to listen to a radio station.

The TechSurvey from Jacobs Media asks AM/FM radio listeners how much time they spent listening to their most preferred station via traditional platforms (AM/FM radios at home, at school, at work or in a vehicle) versus digital platforms (via computer, mobile, smart speaker or podcast). The convergence of the trend lines is apparent over time.

RW: Your Cumulus colleague Doug Hyde blogged recently about some substantial research on streaming. 

Bouvard: That is a study done quarterly called “Share of Ear,” conducted by Edison Research. It’s the gold standard study on how Americans consume audio. They have been showing over the last couple of years a steady and persistent increase in the share of listening that’s going to the audio stream.

The second part of this has been Nielsen. Since the Portable People Meter launched in 2010, broadcasters have asked Nielsen, “The PPM does a great job of picking up listening in an ambient fashion in the room, but if I put my headphones in for streaming, how can the PPM pick it up?”

A headphone listening adjustment for streaming went in place October of last year. In essence, streaming listening doubled from 5% to about 10% of 12+ listening.

Broadcasters now have the confidence that Nielsen is picking up streaming; so it can be monetized.

You’ve seen a number of stations doing Total Line Reporting, combining the over-the-air and the stream. The ratings increases when you combine those have been significant; in some markets, especially sports and spoken-word stations, they’re seeing significant increases with the combination of the stream, over-the-air signal and the new headphone adjustment from Nielsen.

Bouvard said Nielsen’s recent PPM adjustment for headphone listening revealed a doubling of 12+ listening. “Broadcasters now have the confidence that Nielsen is picking up streaming; so it can be monetized,” he said.

RW: There’s been this common comment that radio managers have struggled to monetize streaming. Has that changed?

Bouvard: When streaming was 5% of radio listening, yes, it seemed like a rounding error. But now that streaming is 15% of adults 25–54, it’s substantial. That is something we’re seeing across the Cumulus platform: Advertisers are seeing the value of the stream.

There’s something else: Streaming is the soundtrack of the American worker.

If you look at the hour-by-hour data, when is streaming strongest? Nine-to-five. This is a workplace audience. It’s one of the most valuable qualitative targets for an advertiser. They have a job. They have incomes.

What you have is a huge amount of audience that’s between the very desirable younger 20s all the way up to the 60s. The audience skews female, which is important for advertisers, since women either control or basically are responsible for most American consumption; and the profile is nicely upscale.

And the majority of the people are from that market. The local advertiser can buy ads in the stream with the confidence that the majority of the people reached are from that town.

RW: Which organizations do you think are incorporating streaming well into their strategies?

Bouvard: Spoken-word radio stations by nature, especially sports stations, have done an extraordinary job. I might have grown up in San Francisco, have allegiances to the San Francisco team; now I’m living somewhere else. Sports has done an amazing job of bringing those out-of-town people back to their hometown teams.

There are certain top personalities who aren’t in every market; streaming is also a way to reach them. We have a podcaster, Dan Bongino. He launched his radio show about two weeks ago. In the press release, we indicated a couple of the stations that would be carrying the show and their stream; the amount of traffic and interest basically crushed our websites and the streaming.

What radio does well is have compelling, funny and entertaining personalities. Streaming is a way for listeners to get to talents that they love even if they’re somewhere where they don’t have access to a radio. When we ask listeners, “What do you like about streaming,” that’s the answer: “It gives me the ability to listen to my favorite radio station, no matter where I am. I like that flexibility.”

That’s the voice of the customer saying, “Give me my station so that I can enjoy it more frequently.” That’s what streaming can do.

RW: What have we learned about analytics, measuring audience and verifying that people are actually hearing this content?

Bouvard: That’s the benefit radio has that Pandora and Spotify don’t. Pandora can tell you, “I delivered a thousand impressions” but you actually don’t know. The ad could have been playing to the empty room. Or the Spotify app could have been played so softly that nobody ever heard it.

The Nielsen Portable People Meter is tuned to the ear; that PPM is only capturing audible signals. We know if the ad was playing at a level that the person could hear.

The other big opportunity is that, by putting the audio stream in a digital format, we can append data to that stream. We can do a study to see: Did the people who heard the radio ad go to the advertiser website? Did the people who heard the radio ad go to the advertiser’s store? Did we grow awareness and interest for the advertiser?

Streaming opens up a whole new world of accountability and measurement.

RW: Sometimes we hear about audio quality and loudness problems, or ads that don’t run, or that you listen to a stream and can tell that no one is paying attention to it. Do you think that remains a problem? 

Bouvard: If 15% of radio listening is occurring via the stream, that’s bigger than the entire AM band, which is about 10% of radio listening. That’s significant. When it gets that big, you start paying attention.

It’s like another radio station — we have to give it just as much love and attention. The ads have to run as scheduled. The volume has to be consistent and pleasurable. If we’re going to substitute music, we’re going to need to do that elegantly.

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RW: Do you think our industry has gotten its message to potential advertisers that there’s a benefit over the Pandoras and Spotifys? 

Bouvard: Interestingly if you look at the “Share of Ear” data, AM/FM streaming is bigger than Pandora and AM/FM streaming is bigger than Spotify. That speaks for itself.

RW: But is that message getting to the advertising community?

Bouvard: Yes I think it is — thanks to folks like Audacy, who have rebranded and are going to market with a consistent offering. Thanks to iHeart. There are a lot more feet on the streets telling the story of AM/FM streaming.

RW: How you see the role of streaming continuing to evolve?

Bouvard: Jacobs Media runs an annual study called the Techsurvey. Every year they ask listeners, “How do you listen to your favorite radio station? Do you listen over the air, or do you listen with a device like a smart speaker, cell phone, laptop?” If you trend those lines, it has been going up consistently for streaming at the expense of over-the-air. That’s a nine-year trend.

If you keep extrapolating that, there’s going to be a point in time, maybe five years from now, maybe 10, where those lines are going to cross — where half of all American radio listening will be occurring through the stream.

I’m reminded of AM radio. At the beginning of the ’70s, AM dominated and FM was this experimental hippie thing. FM wasn’t in the car. But by 1980, half of all American listening was on FM.

Well, streaming is the new FM. It’s growing, and it’s something to be taken seriously.

Every radio salesperson should be saying, “Every buy on my radio station should have streaming, because it is now getting to be so significant. The audiences are growing so much.”

Every proposal and every buy should have streaming.

The post Streaming Is the New FM appeared first on Radio World.

This week we’re featuring highlights from Radio World’s 2021 ebooks. This article appeared in “After the Masks Come Off.”

Scott Foster is senior VP of engineering at Salem Media Group.

Scott Foster has been with Salem Media Group for 22 years. He remembers learning early on that when it comes to new facility projects, the company’s mission is more important than the money.

So where another company that bills $25 million a year in a market may have the luxury of spending $3 million to build a studio cluster, Salem’s team typically must plan around significantly smaller numbers.

Salem owns about a hundred stations in roughly 35 markets, including most of the largest cities. Some carry teaching and talk programs that are purchased by Christian ministries; much of this content is delivered to Salem via IP using XDS receivers from ATX.

Other stations carry Salem’s conservative talk format, distributed through Westwood One to XDS satellite receivers. And in major markets, Salem FM stations carry the company’s Fish format.

Efficiency was already a byword. “We have found that when we get several stations together, we can leverage the same salesforce, the same production force and board ops. Where another company with a three-station market might build 10 or 12 studios, we probably have five or six.”

In the long term, the company wants to downsize space further (though regional NOCs are not in its plans). And while remote work will grow, at least some in-person work will continue. For example, engineers and operations managers generally need to work on site. And sales teams benefit from the camaraderie and competition of working together.

But Foster expects that more air talent will work remotely and that future facilities will involve fewer studios, fewer seats and more “flex” space.

Even 20 years ago, before virtualization was a thing, Salem was thinking about operating lean. It would install a “station in a rack,” with Broadcast Tools switchers stacked on one another.

“We started it in Seattle; we had four radio stations there using five or six studios, all of which showed up on the switcher. When a studio went live, it was brought up on the switcher; when we didn’t need it, it was a satellite-driven.”

Those stacks of switchers, of course, are gone now. Foster recently managed a buildout in Washington and says, “I have one 25-pair Cat-5 and four punchblocks in that entire facility. Everything else is patch blocks, a biscuit box with network connections in it.”

Efficiency also means careful management of how rooms are used. Salem has many clients who come in and record half-hour shows on various topics, so even before the pandemic, scheduling was important, and only more so now.

“Nothing is worse than having [company executives] Dave Santrella or Ed Atsinger walk through a facility and see seven studios but four of them are dark with nobody in them. You’re wasting rent, you’re wasting capital. So we’re on a drive to shrink and push staffs to optimize the usage of their facilities.”

Exploring virtualization

Thinking centrally has been a long-term trend.

Until the early 2000s IT functions were managed locally at each Salem cluster, but this left the company vulnerable to security issues, so it began standardizing and consolidating back-office functions such as sales and management computers, traffic and VoIP phone systems.

“I watched the IT closet in our corporate office go from seven racks to one rack as they took all this stuff and they dropped it in our data centers,” Foster said.

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Then about six years ago Foster read about the BBC project exploring centralized local virtual radio, called ViLOR, and was inspired.

“Our stations run the same content in 35 markets. Why do I have 35 markets running these things, 35 people babysitting them and 35 facilities to keep up — 35, 35, 35? Why couldn’t I do it with two or three and distribute it across all of them?”

He approached Telos Alliance and a project integrator in Great Britain, both of which were involved in ViLOR, to learn more. As a result, Salem has performed some tests of virtualization in a “sandbox” project that involves a console engine, automation and codecs in Dallas that are run virtually through a data center and can be controlled from Seattle.

While this is a beta concept right now, Foster expects that Salem will continue to move in that direction.

“We are starting to transport a lot of content between studios and transmitter sites via IP; having that infrastructure already in place is one of our stepping stones.”

Standardizing on automation is another step. Salem was using systems from four vendors, but with virtualization in mind, it settled on WideOrbit.

“We’ve virtualized in our own facilities; the machines in the rack are where the audio takes place. Machines in the studios are just a GUI interface — a Wyse terminal interface back to the rack to give feedback, to see and manipulate the log.” Most stations, he said, will use Livewire infrastructure in support of the virtualization of the automation.

“The biggest fight is the microphone delay, right? Everybody is so used to hearing themselves in the microphone. You have a half-second delay and it drives them nuts.”

But giving a flavor of what’s to come, Salem has one local talk host who lives far from his market and manipulates WideOrbit automation remotely. “He could voice track in real time if he wanted to. It’s like the studio has been extended to his office halfway across the country.”

But for now, automation resides on servers in each facility, rather than moving it to remote data centers.

“Your troubleshooting changes then because you can’t just clip leads on a wire and hear the audio; you’ve got to be able to track packets and delay.” But once the technical staff has become accustomed to working with virtualization, Foster suspects Salem will make that jump.

Workforce issues

Some broadcasters have said that the pandemic accelerated radio’s move toward workflows being built around service agreements rather than one-time capital equipment purchases. Is Salem seeing that trend?

“On the software side of things, our Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Audition are annual pay. But the automation we’re buying outright.

“But yes I’m being asked to analyze it, and generally if we can show that it’s cheaper to do something as op-ex over four or five years, we’ll do it. But it has to pay off quickly.

“I’m not seeing it in transmitters or console systems — though if somebody like a Telos or a Wheatstone offered service via a centralized data center, it could be an interesting model. A station that reaches 10,000 people probably isn’t going to drop $15,000 on an audio over IP system, but a manufacturer might be able to get them signed up for a hundred dollars a month.”

Interestingly, Foster hears from vendors that even offer tower lighting as a service — “‘Hey, for $6,000 a month, we’ll put the lights on the tower, we’ll monitor it, we’ll do all the filings and fix them when they go bad. We just ask that you sign up for five or 10 years.’”

He says this idea might be appealing if a station is looking at a 1,200-foot tower in Omaha that needs new LED lighting, in which case the engineer may have to weigh whether it would be better to pay someone a monthly fee for a predetermined number of years, or spend $140,000 up front and bet that he can keep those new lights operational for longer than that.

One other unexpected impact of the pandemic is the difficulty in sourcing good tradespeople and working with utilities.

“I’m having a hard time finding electricians who will come wire up generators or do concrete pads. Likewise, I’ve got a major power project in Philadelphia, and PECO wouldn’t even come to the facility for a walkthrough because of COVID until just last week.”

Whether it’s for landscaping or paving a parking lot, tradespeople may just be too busy or are dealing with COVID issues of their own. Foster said it’s hard enough to locate one good vendor, much less three to all quote on a job.

The post At Salem, Learning to Think Virtually appeared first on Radio World.

(Getty Images)

Broadcasters are expressing concerns about the notion of changing the Emergency Alert system to add or expand alerting via the internet, including via streaming.

Congress instructed the FCC to examine the feasibility of such changes and of improving alerts that are already delivered online. A notice of inquiry from the commission invited public feedback.

Feedback from broadcasters and other interested parties reflect a general wariness of modifying EAS in this way.

The majority of commenters told the FCC they worry about the practicality of enabling online alerts via streaming services. Proponents of the established system say it is proven and that alerts are available via radio and TV broadcast stations, analog and digital cable, satellite radio, cell phones and other mobile wireless devices.

In addition, some broadcasters worry that any lessening of the FCC’s regulatory jurisdiction over EAS could create enforcement issues while overseeing streaming platforms.

“Expanding emergency alerts through non-FCC regulated streaming services not only presents technological challenges, but also fundamental regulatory and compliance challenges,” iHeartMedia and Cumulus Media wrote in joint comments to the FCC.

The broadcasters expressed concerns that internet-based services such as Netflix, Spotify and Hulu operate from centralized platforms, which if enabled with emergency alert capabilities could leave them susceptible to hackers.

“An intentional hack into one of these platforms by an actor with the malicious intent to cause public panic through false emergency alerts could have very broad national impact, all outside the regulatory control of the FCC,” iHeartMedia and Cumulus wrote.

It’s also not clear how a national streaming service could receive and then geographically-target locally generated alert messages in a timely manner, they said, thus undermining the current alerting system.

“Complicated if not infeasible”

The National Association of Broadcasters expressed similar concerns in reply comments: “Extending EAS obligations to internet streaming services would be complicated, if not infeasible.”

NAB sees maintaining a “reliable EAS” as a crucial calling of all broadcasters. Reliability of alerting was one of the issues cited by Congress when it told the FCC to explore ways to coordinate multiple technologies for advanced alerting.

The NAB said the only online audio outlets that currently may retransmit EAS messages are websites and apps that simulcast radio stations.

“As a general matter, the streaming feeds at the broadcast station are originated upstream of the EAS encoder/decoder in the programming chain, meaning that an EAS alert is typically relayed only if it occurs while a station’s own programming is broadcast on-air. If an alert occurs during a commercial break in the on-air programming, when different content is inserted into the online stream, the EAS alert is not usually retransmitted to the listener or viewer,” NAB wrote.

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In addition, pure-play online content streamers are not “well-positioned to participate in the existing EAS ecosystem” for live streaming feeds or on-demand content, according to NAB. “In general, online streamers lack the infrastructure to geographically localize any alert,” it wrote.

And the association theorizes that using IP addresses to geofence the dissemination of alerts could raise even more issues.

NAB concludes: “It remains unclear how the FCC could extend the EAS rules to largely unregulated internet streamers or ensure the reliability and security of EAS over the internet. Therefore, NAB respectfully submits that the commission should report to Congress that enabling EAS alerts to consumers provided through the internet would be too complex and likely infeasible at this time.”

National Public Radio agreed with the overwhelming majority of comments in saying that streaming services should not be required to provide EAS alerts.

“NPR also asks the commission to be mindful of imposing any potential costs that would result when adopting new requirements, especially for under-resourced public broadcasting entities,” NPR wrote. “Requiring public radio stations to provide EAS alerts through internet streams could introduce cost and possibly significant complexity.”

Further, stations do not completely control the end-user player experience with their streams, and some streams have sponsorship message insertion, which can interrupt an alert, NPR pointed out.

“It would be almost impossible for a station to monitor and verify that EAS alerts air on all of the different streaming players and aggregators, so measuring and logging compliance would be difficult,” NPR said.

NPR said the NOI’s definition of “streaming services” is quite broad and included websites, applications and services that are nationally focused and stream on-demand content.

NPR did suggest that current EAS participants should be encouraged to furnish EAS alerts over the internet on a voluntary basis when feasible.

REC Networks, a low-power FM advocate, made the following observation in its comments: “As many people listen to audio streaming services through a wireless device, they already have a tool, a much more reliable tool on their phone (Wireless Emergency Alerts) that can do the same thing — if not better — than what the inquiry suggests should be imposed on small and large streaming services.”

Other views

However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service supports the efforts to extend alerts to the internet and streaming services. Specifically, it believes the use of streaming services for emergency alert information will expand message dissemination, particularly to younger audiences.

“According to the Pew Research Center, 61% of U.S. consumers aged between 18 and 29 say an online streaming service is the primary way they watch television now,” NOAA officials wrote in reply comments to the FCC.

Technology licensing company Xperi Corp. believes the nation’s digital alerting ecosystem does need “reimagining,” but rather than adopting internet capabilities, it believes the FCC should make its HD Radio technology an integral component of the digital emergency alerting fabric.

“Not only can HD Radio broadcasting serve as a model for how to integrate EAS notifications with other digital technologies, but HD Radio technology should play a central role in any efforts to modernize the EAS, providing important resiliency and redundancy,” Xperi wrote.

Xperi said HD Radio would allow for the use of Common Alerting Protocol elements that can be leveraged to render message text, graphics and audio that maximize the accessibility and effectiveness of emergency alert information.

And what about streamers?

The Digital Media Association (DiMA), whose members include pure-play online content streamers like Pandora and Spotify, believes it may be it may be feasible to complete some, but not all, steps required for end-to-end transmission of EAS alerts through the internet, specifically, via the music pure-play streaming services offered by DiMA member companies.

“While receiving and processing EAS alerts may be technically possible, however, the national and global nature of these streaming services, which operate as apps on hardware devices or through websites relying on networks these services have no control over to transmit data, makes monitoring for, retransmitting, and delivering EAS alerts to end users infeasible, if not impossible,” DiMA told the FCC.

Therefore, “rather than increasing the reach of EAS, streaming services’ involvement will duplicate and possibly interfere with activities of existing participants, including broadcasters, cable systems and telecommunications providers, and others who remain better positioned to deliver clear, targeted and relevant alerts to local communities,” DiMA wrote in its comments.

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

The FCC Inquiry

The commission noted in March that Congress had instructed it to conduct an inquiry to examine the feasibility of updating the Emergency Alert System to enable or improve alerts to consumers provided through the internet, including through streaming services.

“Accordingly, in this Notice of Inquiry, we seek comment on the definition of ‘streaming services’ and whether it would be technically feasible for streaming services to complete each step that EAS participants complete under the commission’s rules in ensuring the end-to-end transmission of EAS alerts, including monitoring for relevant EAS alerts, receiving and processing EAS alerts, retransmitting EAS alerts, presenting EAS alerts in an accessible manner to relevant consumers, and testing.”

Congress also told it to look into the feasibility of improving alerts to consumers that are already delivered over the internet. “Accordingly we seek to establish whether it is feasible for EAS participants to leverage the internet to offer the full feature suite of the Common Alerting Protocol to the public.”

The NOI included many specific questions and issues that these concepts raise. You can read it in a PDF here. The discussion starts on page 26, paragraph 57.

The post The FCC Studies Internet EAS Alerting appeared first on Radio World.

The author is director, RF engineering at Shively Labs.

Just about anything can happen to cause failure in an RF system.

Antenna damage from wind, falling ice, lightning, tower work, vandalism, loose connections and aging components are just a few. When an engineer has multiple systems to take care of, something always seems to be in need of attention.

One way we have some control over such failures is regular system maintenance.

Caption:
Burns are visible where wire had been used to secure a flexible 3-inch line.

Have you ever checked site parameters after a significant weather event and found that some parameter had changed — not to the point of failure, but enough to prompt an investigation? Then upon a closer look you found damage that needed repair?

Or perhaps on a routine site visit, you discovered excessive heat on one or more components, and upon further investigation found an elbow that was nearly kaput — it would have failed catastrophically within weeks or days.

This is proactive maintenance and repair. If these near-misses haven’t happened to you, they likely will.

Had you been unable to check those readings after that storm and thus could not notice increasing VSWR, or had you not visited that site and noticed the hot elbow, the condition would have persisted, worsened and eventually failed, taking your station off the air.

That call usually comes at midnight on Super Bowl weekend.

These damaged components are an example of the “outside in” sort of burn that can occur when lines pass too close or touch other coax or tower members.

Checking sites that have suffered through extreme weather events is a prudent practice. So are regular visits, even to sites that may be considered trouble-free. The periodicity will vary — more frequent for trouble sites, perhaps quarterly or even semiannually for more reliable sites.

Annual tower climbs are great if it’s in the budget, but when they are not possible, we come back to intimate knowledge of system performance and those baselines, and running history logs that allow us to review for any indication that a problem has started and at what rate it is changing.

This can be useful information when determining if you need to scramble to make a maintenance visit immediately or can schedule for a later date.

Sample issues

Some things to look for when inspecting for damage in an antenna:

• Loss of dry air pressure, whether entirely or through a slow leak.
• Missing or damaged radiators. Pay close attention to the ends of the radiator and the feed points.
• Kinked, compressed or burned cables.
• Broken or unsealed radomes and/or plugged drains that cause water to collect.

In more complex systems, the power dividers and coaxial lines should be installed without undue mechanical stress on the components.

The coax should have the appropriate hangers and fasteners where they cross tower members or other antenna feed components. Consult the manufacturer for specific recommendations and best practices.

Antennas that have deicers systems usually have an external wiring harness to distribute AC power to each heating element within each radiator. The manufacturer will have the resistive values for each element and current draw to expect.

An ammeter measurement of each leg of the circuit, including the neutral, will give the first clues to the condition of the deicer system.

If the wiring harness was not installed correctly or fasteners have fallen away over time, the harness can hang in the high RF environment. This can cause reflected power issues at the transmitter and changes in coverage; it can cause currents to be induced into the wiring harness, and voltages large enough to cause arcing between the conductors of the wiring harness and tower members or other cables that pass in close proximity.

This is an excerpt of an article “Tips for RF System Installation and Maintenance” you can read in full in Radio World’s “Mission-Critical: Maintaining Your Transmitter Site” ebook.

The post Tips for RF System Installation and Maintenance appeared first on Radio World.

The Dec. 22 issue of Radio World features our Buyer’s Guide for antennas, RF support and power products.

Hank Landsberg is president of Sine Control Technology. The company has a new offering called the HP-200-1-TX.

Radio World: What is the new product?

Hank Landsberg: It’s a lower-cost version of our top-selling, highest-performance surge suppressor. The model number will be HP200-1-TX. It will be suitable for use at transmitter sites, hence the “TX.” It’s rated at 200,000 surge-amps per phase, so it’s ideal for use in high-lightning locales.

RW: How will radio stations use it?

Landsberg: It will be an excellent choice for use with solid-state transmitters that run on 240 volt single-phase power. These are very popular from manufacturers like Nautel and GatesAir, but they are also vulnerable to power supply failure caused by AC power line spikes and surges.

Our existing model HP200-1 has been very effective at eliminating this source of transmitter failure; the new model will make it more affordable without compromising performance.

The HP200-1-TX will be for 120/240 volt single and “split” phase power. It should be installed close to the main electrical panel where the Neutral and Ground wires are tied together.

The unit will also provide a Remote Status Output that can be interfaced to any transmitter remote control system. It will alert the user if there is a power failure or if a fuse in the PowerClamp unit needs to be replaced.

RW: What else should we know? Cost?

Landsberg: Like all PowerClamp surge suppressors, this unit uses a hybrid of multiple suppression circuits to achieve a very low clamping level — just a few volts above the sine wave peak. It’s installed in parallel with the load. There is no voltage loss, nor does its performance degrade over time.

Pricing is not determined yet, but it should be about 25% below the current model with identical performance.

Info: www.henryeng.com or call 562-493-3589 in California.

The post Sine Control Adds Lower-Cost PowerClamp appeared first on Radio World.

I consider it my mission to stay on top of tech — always reading, watching and digging. It is my passion to bring custom solutions to broadcast customers.

I frequently am inspired by software, networking and virtualization technologies used across so many industries, tried and true solutions that easily could benefit local radio.

Generally, IT infrastructure already exists in a broadcast facility in the form of routers, firewalls, switches and virtualization stacks from various vendors. It is imperative to make sure that this infrastructure is designed correctly, with security and functionality in mind.

In our industry, most of us have become accustomed to working with less-than-ideal equipment, not always implemented with the best, most secure, most efficient design in mind. Whenever possible, I use free and open-source software (FOSS) tools for my customers, even “retrofitting around” pre-existing equipment when a redesign is not yet feasible.

With FOSS, community-driven development allows for unique and powerful features, equal to or greater than proprietary solutions. In a time where security should be of the highest priority, I like knowing that source code is free-and-clear to audit at any time by anyone in the world. FOSS can offer significant cost savings to clients, and many times, make doing a project that would otherwise be cost-prohibitive possible.

But misunderstood or misconfigured tech is often more problematic and insecure than not having it at all. I have a lab where I can test software, virtualization, networking and proprietary broadcast hardware and software, and I have remote access to broadcast equipment in the radio stations and labs of partners and clients all over the world.

Working remotely

The pandemic has taught us that remote work, even for broadcasters, is surprisingly doable. With so many at home — aside from audio transport, more on that later — connecting to PCs station-side with tools like TeamViewer, VNC and LogMeIn have been the go-to solution.

But broadcast engineers like Jobie Sprinkle at WFAE in Charlotte, Henrik Poulsen at Radio Nordjyske in Aalborg, Denmark, and Tim Aquilina at 92.7 Mix FM in Maroochydore, Australia, have been looking for a way to give talent physical control again. And they are not alone.

Air talent around the world have grown up pushing physical buttons and adjusting physical faders and knobs without needing to see what they are doing because of muscle-memory. Today, it is possible to build the creature comforts at home that talent has been accustomed to in studios for decades, while embracing new technologies never before possible. It can be done, even on a budget, by combining tools used by IT professionals across all industries with the plethora of tools already designed for broadcasters.

Security concerns

It has always been considered bad practice to open firewall ports to internal services across the public internet, especially when the data is unencrypted. But I still see it happening at broadcast facilities all over the world.

Today, security is of the highest priority, so, using encrypted VPNs with additional internal and external firewall rules in place are the way to go. IPSec, OpenVPN and Wireguard are some of the most common VPN technologies, as well as proprietary vendor-specific ones. SD-WAN, although a buzzword of late, is very powerful and allows for global networks of all kinds of devices.

In all cases, encryption at the highest level available should be used.

Getting Into WheatNet remotely

Working from home myself, I wanted to test the reliability of remote physical control of gear from Wheatstone. In my home office lab sits a Wheatstone Sideboard. It is connected to a full Wheatstone AOIP system over 1,000 miles away. The Sideboard gives me real, physical, tactile control over a Utility Mixer — an 8-channel virtual console in a 1 RU Wheatstone Blade.

This is the intended purpose of a Sideboard, and it usually happens locally, but in this case, the Blade is in another time zone. With the Sideboard, I can select any source on the remote WheatNet system and make it available in the Utility Mixer I am accessing remotely.

So while I am controlling the mix locally, the mix itself is happening in the remote lab. Wheatstone supports using their automation control interface (ACI) between devices over a network, both locally and remote. the Sideboard is just one device on their list of control surfaces that can do this.

To make it possible in my lab, I have chosen a stack of FOSS tools including a router/firewall from pfSense with built-in OpenVPN. I set up an openVPN server on a static public IP address in my lab. On the remote-to-me lab’s side of things, it is behind a consumer firewall with a dynamic IP address. Behind that firewall is a PC connected to the internal internet network on one Interface, and the WheatNet network on another. It runs an OpenVPN Client and connects over the internet to the server in my lab.

In OpenVPN on both sides, I am using TAP Interfaces, bridged to each local WheatNet network. On the tunnel, there is no routing happening, it’s all layer 2, and so the devices on either side do not need a gateway defined to be able to talk to each other. In this way, I am effectively extending the same WheatNet Network across the VPN tunnel. See Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: Extending the network with a VPN tunnel.

Climbing the firewall

Sometimes, due to time, budget or hardware constraints, setting up VPN tunnels between two sites via dedicated hardware is not always possible. This is where a newer technology called SD-WAN, or software-defined wide-area networking, can be helpful.

ZeroTier One, Nubula and Tailscale are examples of this and employ magic (UDP hole-punching) between firewalls to establish connections between devices on an internal network on either side, without the need to insecurely open firewall ports or use hardware VPNs. All data is encrypted end-to-end and allows bridging and routing securely through the internet behind dynamic IPs behind firewalls on both sides.

This is an exciting technology that is making waves across all industries, though setup and configuration can be a bit more daunting than standard VPNs.

Transporting the audio

Solutions for getting audio from point A to point B are in huge supply. Comrex, Tieline, Barix and others have complete lines of hardware devices that do this effectively and efficiently. And Wheatstone has the Blade 4 with audio codecs built in.

Real-time audio in the virtualized world — software to software, and software to hardware — has become the Holy Grail in our ongoing pandemic world, and products that do this have come a long way, too. Some are able to use the high-quality, freely available (and FOSS!) Opus codec via SIP-managed connections; others are web-based like ipDTL and Cleanfeed. LUCI Software offers solutions for mobile, PC, Mac and Linux (think LUCI Live and LUCI Studio). These can work via SIP or direct connection, and have become my go-to solution lately because of their immense flexibility and lifetime licensing fees.

Blurring the lines

Early this year, I heard from a client who wanted to hire a new afternoon talent, but she is located nearly 100 miles away from the radio station. Is this doable, and on a budget? The show would continue through the pandemic and beyond.

I got to work designing and implementing a cost-effective solution.

The station is a customer of WideOrbit automation for radio and runs version 4,0, part of the newest incarnation, and provides “joint control” of each radio station. To obtain this control remotely and securely, all that is needed is a VPN connection. I turned to my trusty pfSesne/OpenVPN combo at the radio station, with an OpenVPN client running on a station-provided laptop at the talent’s house.

WideOrbit’s RadioClient, a native PC application, connects to the station-side RadioServers through the VPN tunnel, and the talent can control the radio station as if sitting in the studio. I configured workflows on hotkeys to route talent’s audio directly to air, take the feed off the air, send caller-audio to the talent, and route the backfeed to hear pre- and post-cut audio for voice tracking.

The off-the-shelf laptop is using a RødeCaster Pro for its audio interface, with an Electro-Voice RE20 plugged straight in. It has a solid DSP-based mic processor with a preset for the RE20, a listen and record bus and allows a mix-minus for the talent to hear return audio mixed with outgoing audio.

Fig. 2: WideOrbit Automation for Radio running on a laptop at talent’s house connected via OpenVPN, with joint control of the radio station, audio from the RødeCaster Pro transported back to the radio station via LUCI Live SE.

The client is particularly sensitive about subscription fees, so audio transport is handled via a one-time licensed version of LUCI Live SE on the laptop. This audio stream, along with WideOrbit control, is sent via the OpenVPN tunnel.

Station-side, a Windows virtual machine with an AoIP driver, is running LUCI Studio. LUCI allows different send and receive codecs, tailoring the codecs to the use-case.

In both directions, I wanted the lowest latency possible. I wanted return audio to be stereo, so that the talent feels like they are mixed well with the music. And so audio received from the talent uses a low-delay, mono, high-quality AAC codec. Return audio uses a stereo AAC codec with low delay and slightly lower quality. Currently, LUCI Studio is handling one bidirectional stream, but it is capable of 64.

Finally, phones are handled via Broadcast Bionics’ Caller One, running on a virtual machine at the station. Calls are answered via a web browser over the VPN remotely, with caller audio transported back to the talent via LUCI Studio, mixed on the RødeCaster Pro, sent back to the station as mix via LUCI Live SE, received by LUCI Studio, and recorded into WideOrbit as a produced package.

All of this does not feel remote for the talent, does not sound remote for the listener, and does not have an ongoing cost for the client.

Remote work is now a part of our lives across all industries. We live in a fantastic time of technology, where so much is available. And, now more than ever, it is possible for broadcasters, too. Doing it securely should be of the highest priority.

The author is owner of Fontastic LLC, a broadcast services company focusing on software and IT, helping radio stations around the world with integration projects. Email: chris@fontasticllc.com Twitter: fonte935

The post Take a Page from the IT Handbook appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Broadcasters has announced the NAB Show New York will return to New York City at the Javits Center on Oct. 19–20.

Produced by the NAB, the NAB Show New York is designed to be a more intimate opportunity for the broadcast, media and entertainment industry to present and discover product updates, new applications and workflow efficiencies to deliver superior audio and video experiences.

Additional details, including registration, will be available in the coming months, the NAB said.

More information is available at NABShowNY.com.

The post NAB Announces Plans for NAB Show New York in 2022 appeared first on Radio World.

Jared Merves

Jared Merves has been named senior vice president, digital, of Cumulus Media.

The company called him “a proven leader in digital revenue growth strategies, audience monetization and branded content.”

Merves founded a company offering digital support services called Wundervue. It was acquired by Distributed Media Lab, where he became chief revenue officer.

He is also former chief digital officer of Belo and Co. and had digital roles at Tegna and Cars.com.

He’ll start in mid January and report to President/CEO Mary Berner. Merves succeeds Larry He replaces Larry Linietsky.

Send announcements for People News, particularly engineering and upper management roles, to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Merves to Head Digital at Cumulus appeared first on Radio World.

The election was over, the motor generators had spun down, and the tubes had cooled; the big question at KDKA as Nov. 3, 2021 dawned was certainly “what do we do now?” (Getty Images)

The evening of Tuesday, Nov. 2, 1920, had come and gone. KDKA, 8MK, and perhaps others had taken to the airwaves that evening to report returns in the election that put Warren G. Harding in the White House. A few hundred, perhaps a few thousand people — there were no rating services then — managed to gain proximity to a primitive radio receiver of some sort and listened as the results were tallied and read into equally primitive microphones.

In retrospect, one can’t help but wonder what went through the minds of those individuals who stayed up late to present election results via “radiophone.” A radio broadcast is at best an intangible — something highly ephemeral, perhaps even a bit ethereal.

Had their voices really gone out into space to reach invisible ears? Had anything happened at all? There had to have been at least a slight sense of unreality in those first moments, a feeling perhaps best captured by Garrison Keillor in his description of the inaugural broadcast of mythical station WLT in St. Paul, Minn.

“Roy Jr. switched off the transmitter. It sighed, expelling a faint breath that smelled of vacuum tubes and electrodes. Ray leaned against the doorway, feeling faint. His speech had exhausted him.

‘Did anybody hear it, do you think?’

‘Guess so.’

‘Anybody ring up and say so?’

‘Nope. Maybe they were too busy listening.”

(WLT: A Radio Romance, 1992)

What now?

KDKA’s seminal broadcast way back in 1920, is now viewed as a great day — a truly historical one; something that changed the landscape forever. However, as with any event important enough to make its way into the history books, there’s always the dawning of the next day — the interval after the initial exuberance has passed and cold reality begins to set in. It is then that those who have been cheering in celebration are forced to stop and ponder “what happens next?”

KDKA’s hometown paper highlighted Harding’s win on Nov. 3, but nothing about the station’s historic broadcast.

This thought most certainly was on the minds of those at Westinghouse the morning of Wednesday, Nov.3, 1920.

Newspaper headlines that day said virtually nothing about radio. Instead, they screamed “HARDING BY MILLIONS,” “G.O.P.’s GREATEST VICTORY,” “HARDING WINS,” or whatever similar messages regarding election outcomes that could be fitted across the page in the largest type fonts available.

The words “radio” or “wireless” were hard to find, even down in the “noise” of the 6-point type reserved for classifieds and obituaries. Was there really a future in radio, or was the broadcast destined to be just another “flash in the pan?

Where are the cards and letters?

Judging from initial reaction by the public — other than some amount of well-wishing by those tuning in the KDKA broadcast — nothing had really changed. An examination of post-election night periodicals seems to indicate there was little direct impact — no uptick in business at the few sources for radio receivers and parts, no immediate backlog of applications for new stations at the Department of Commerce.

The public continued to read their newspapers and magazines, exchange gossip at card games and in barber shops, and seek out sources of illicit alcohol as Prohibition set in. The print media for the most part ignored radio as 1920 flowed on into 1921.

This would not be unexpected, as there is generally a “wait and see” attitude following the launch of new technology. A commercial aviation industry did not spring up immediately after the Wright brothers’ inaugural flight, and more than 100 years passed between the issuance of a patent for the first dishwasher and its widespread appearance in homes.

As for “radio gripping the hearts and imagination of Americans everywhere” following KDKA’s big broadcast, there’s little evidence to indicate that it initially made much difference one way or the other.

There were even non-believers and scoffers. One 1921 account describes an early demonstration of broadcasting with music transmissions demonstrated via a “mobile” receiver constructed in a baby carriage. Some “ear witnesses” were in denial of the wireless nature of what they were hearing, insisting that there must be a record player concealed in the carriage.

Pittsburgh push continues

Westinghouse still convinced it was riding a winning horse, continued to plow money into fledgling KDKA in 1921, boosting its power from 100 watts to 500, and then a full kilowatt and creating a broadcast studio.

Program offerings were also expanded with the addition of live musical performances, agricultural and weather reports, church services, and more

As 1921 progressed, Westinghouse, convinced that there was a future in radio broadcasting, continued to enhance the facilities of its fledgling station KDKA. One of the additions was the construction of the first real studio seen in the photo at left.; Westinghouse management also budgeted a higher power replacement for KDKA’s original 100-Watt transmitter. It was installed just a few months after the November 1920 election eve broadcast (center). Another indication radio for the masses was here to stay was the January 1921 KDKA hire of the world’s first full-time radio announcer, Harold Arlin (right). He is credited with handling the first radio play-by-play descriptions of both baseball and football games. (photos courtesy National Museum of Broadcasting)

Westinghouse’s PR branch stayed busy, issuing frequent press releases about KDKA to any and all print publications that might help to further the cause.

An example of such Westinghouse puffery appears the April 1921 issue of the trade publication, Radio News:

THEATRE MUSIC SENT BY RADIOFONE

The latest thing in providing entertainment by radiofone in Pittsburgh is the sending out of portions of the program given at a downtown theater. This is accomplisht in the same manner as the church services at the Calvary Church in the East End. Telefone transmitters placed in the theater collect and transmit the sound over a special telefone wire to the radio station of the Westinghouse company in East Pittsburgh (Radio KDKA), where it is then sent out by radiofone.

 

Promotions big and small Futurist Hugo Gernsback was an early supporter of democratizing radio, and used his monthly Radio News publication to further the cause whenever possible as seen in this January 1921 cover art.

Hugo Gernsback, editor of Radio News, and something of a visionary and prophet, was also a believer in radio broadcasting’s future, going so far as to drop the word “Amateur” from the title of his radio magazine in mid-1920 and welcoming such press releases.

Throughout 1921 Gernsbeck advocated “radio for everyone” in his magazine’s pages, with sometimes lengthy articles on new “radiophone” stations, demonstrations of speech and music transmissions, and simplified and less expensive access to radio for the public.

Perhaps the biggest boost received by radio broadcasting during its first year was the July 2 “fight of the century” featuring Georges Carpentier and Jack Dempsey.

While radio coverage was not the prime objective of this heavily-promoted event, others, outside of Westinghouse (most-notably RCA’s David Sarnoff), apparently saw some dollar signs in the new medium and added it to the mix.

The fight coverage station, WJY, was licensed as a temporary entity, and equipped with a General Electric transmitter that had been sidelined from delivery to another customer. (The “borrowed” nature of the gear may explain why WJY operated at 1,600 meters (187 kHz.) Another twist was the recruiting of licensed radio amateurs to assist in disseminating the broadcast, as radio sets were not really household items in 1921.

Radio broadcasting received a really big boost in 1921 from the broadcast of the July 2 Dempsey–Carpentier fight. The 3 kW transmitter used by the Hoboken, N.J. temporary station, WJY, is seen here. Reports were relayed from ringside and read by an announcer. The radio coverage of the championship fight was heavily promoted as evidenced in this photo (right) of a New Jersey boardwalk rolling chair.

The “ham” community set up receiving apparatus in performance halls and other venues, and ensured that everything worked properly. Even though reception of a 187 kHz signal and amplification to room-filling volume presented a challenge to the amateur radio ranks, many were able to deliver the goods to their captive and somewhat astonished audiences.

That collective audience was substantial, estimated at some 300,000, and most-assuredly exceeded “tuners-in” to KDKA’s election night event.

While the intent of July broadcast was to attract attention to the fight, it also did much to arouse public interest in radio, perhaps even more so than what Westinghouse was trying to accomplish with KDKA.

 

Priming the pump

1921 also saw other, less flamboyant, demonstrations of broadcasting.

Perhaps the best documented of these took place on Nov. 15, 1921 in Pine Bluff, Ark., where the president of the Arkansas Power and Light Company, Harvey Couch, had arranged for a broadcast of live and recorded music from Couch’s home to a meeting of the city’s Rotary Club. (AP&L was a Westinghouse customer, with Couch touring the KDKA operation during a buying trip to Pittsburgh and becoming a convert.)

Harvey Couch (Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, Central Arkansas Library System)

Couch, the Rotarians, and others were so impressed with this latest miracle of science that shortly after the pre-Thanksgiving demo, Couch applied for a license for Arkansas’s first broadcast station.

This, and similar efforts around the country had the effect of priming the pump. The public was definitely becoming interested in radio and Westinghouse extended its broadcasting reach to other population centers, breaking ground on stations in Massachusetts (WBZ), Chicago (KYW) and New Jersey (WJZ).

Gernsback also kept up with his promotions in print, ending 1921 with this editorial:

“To the careful observer, during the past six months it has become apparent that we are finally headed in the right direction as far as popularizing radio is concerned. We may say that we are now right in the midst of a revolution, as far as radio and the great public are concerned. We see the weather marks everywhere. The newspapers are becoming enthusiastic about radio, and devote more and more space to it. The man in the street is beginning to take a lively interest in all things radio. The editor’s desk is beginning to become flooded with letters, not from radio bugs alone, but from the layman, who does not know the difference between a detector and a telephone receiver—all of which is a healthy sign, and we may say that radio is entering into its last and final stage, as far as the public at large is concerned.”

From all appearances, 1922 was shaping up to be a very big year for radio broadcasting.

The author wishes to express thanks to the National Museum of Broadcasting’s Rick Harris; radio collector and conservator, Gary Alley; and to Guy Lancaster and Brian Robertson at the Encyclopedia of Arkansas for their assistance in the preparation of this article.

 

Further reading

• Ray Poindexter, Arkansas Airwaves, Cassville, Mo.: Litho Printers, 1974
• Thomas H. White, “Battle of the Century” The WJY Story, 2000
• First Broadcast Dempsey–Carpentier Fight July 2, 1921, RCA internal memo, 1921

The post Radio At 100: ‘KDKA: The Morning After’ appeared first on Radio World.

The author is senior news editor and head of the Eurovision News Exchange at the European Broadcasting Union.

Let’s face it — there are too many podcasts for any of us to listen to in our combined lifetimes. This wasn’t always the case — far from it — but it is true now. And there are podcasts for every taste and style. So, the first thing anyone wanting to start a new podcast has to do is consider who their target audience might be and what they want to talk about.

My colleague Laurent Frat who came up with the idea for the Eurovision News Podcast felt he knew the answer to the first question.

“As an avid podcast listener, I could see the enormous potential for community building among our dozens of member news organizations and I really thought it was the right time to delve into the most pressing issues facing journalism and more specifically public service media like the European Broadcasting Union and its Members in the 21st century,” Laurent said.

I arrived at the EBU in March 2021, having worked as one of the presenters of the highly popular Global News Podcast at the BBC World Service. So, it’s no surprise I was, of course, thrilled when Laurent asked me to work alongside him and the podcast editor, Cathy Milner, to develop his idea. I jumped at the opportunity.

We immediately decided we’d make the first episode entirely about the issue of media freedom and the challenges faced by journalists coming up against autocratic rulers determined to silence them and conspiracy theorists who see the news media as part of everything that’s wrong with society. This was at the time when journalists in the U.S. and Europe were coming under attack on their own streets by demonstrators protesting against new COVID restrictions or the results of the 2020 U.S. elections.

[Read More Guest Commentaries Here]

So, we had cleared that first hurdle of what we wanted to talk about, but who would our target audience be?

From the start, we agreed this fledgling podcast of ours would be primarily directed at the wider EBU community and more specifically the dozens of member networks in Europe and elsewhere that are connected to the Eurovision News Exchange — a network of public-service newsrooms operating in over 50 countries and providing tens of thousands of news stories per year.

If you’ve watched the news in Europe this week or news about Europe either on TV or on your favorite news website — chances are that you will have come across at least one if not five or ten of our news items.

Yes, we are the people who gather and share the images that you see on the news from the tensions at the border between Belarus and Poland to the harrowing scenes of the Kabul airport after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan to the proceedings at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.

And, unlike traditional news agencies, we don’t usually commission and record that footage. Instead, we rely heavily on the news gathered and recorded by our member news organizations from ZDF in Germany to RAI in Italy to NOS in the Netherlands, RTVE in Spain, the BBC in the U.K. and France Televisions.

For 60 years now, they’ve been sending in their news items and in return they get the latest news — both live and recorded from the other members. It’s a genuine community of the largest newsrooms in Europe and the Mediterranean working together through us.

According to Laurent Frat, “In this challenging period for journalism it’s more critical than ever to build on and develop our already tight-knit EBU community, and it’s why we have made a point of featuring journalists and senior editorial figures from our member news organizations in every one of our episodes to date. As far as we are concerned The Eurovision News Podcast is just as much about them as it is about us.”

So far, we have produced four episodes of our new podcast and we are busy working on another two to conclude our first of what we hope will be many more seasons to come.

In this era of fake news and rising distrust in the news media we are determined to raise the curtain and go beyond the news stories to show our listeners the serious thinking, editorial rigor and determination that goes into producing and delivering the public service media news that we are proud to stand behind and call our own.

Radio World invites industry-oriented commentaries and responses. Send to Radio World.

The post In Defense of Public Service Media News appeared first on Radio World.

Several prominent U.S. broadcast associations are asking a federal court to block an FCC order that mandates disclosures for foreign government-sponsored programming.

The request was filed Wednesday by the National Association of Broadcasters, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

They previously filed a lawsuit with the court challenging the FCC order. They’ve argued that the commission lacks the authority to “impose the investigatory requirements mandated by the order,” lacked justification for the rules and failed to address problems with undisclosed foreign governmental programming on cable systems and the Internet, “which is where the issue primarily exists.” They call the action unnecessary and overly burdensome, and in violation of the Communications Act, the Administrative Procedure Act and the First Amendment.

[Related: “FCC Denies NAB Stay Petition on Foreign Sponsorship ID Rules”]

The FCC adopted amended foreign-sponsorship identification rules in April to target situations where a station broadcasts material sponsored by a foreign governmental entity. The new rules require disclosure of leased programming sponsored by foreign governmental entities.

The commission said its modified regulations further the critical goal of transparency and it applies them to foreign governments, political parties and their agents.

The post Broadcasters Ask Court to Block Disclosure Mandate appeared first on Radio World.

The FCC Media Bureau has okayed a petition from iHeartMedia regarding foreign investors that hold its stock.

iHeart had asked the bureau to approve foreign interests held by Global Media & Entertainment Investments Ltd. and related entities totaling 6.8% equity and 8% voting interests in iHeart. It also asked for advance approval for GMEI and its entities to increase those interests up to 14.99%.

In an earlier 2020 ruling, the bureau had authorized up to 100% overall foreign investment in iHeart; at the time it approved two groups to hold more than the usual limit of 5%. The PIMCO Group could hold up to 32.99% of equity and 19.99% of voting interests while the Invesco Group could hold up to 19.99% of equity and voting. In making those rulings the FCC said iHeart would need its approval for any further foreign investment above 5%.

But then iHeart said it learned last February that GMEI — formerly called Honeycomb Investments Ltd. and based in the Bahamas — had independently acquired about 9.6 million shares of its stock on the NASDAQ exchange, about 6.6% of equity and 8.7% of voting interests.

iHeart notified the FCC and sought approval for those percentages, plus advance approval for GMEI to go up to 14.99%. (GMEI itself asked for approval to go up to 49.99% but later withdrew that request and fell back to the 14.99% figure.) iHeart said this ruling would incentivize foreign investment and benefit U.S. trade policy by encouraging reciprocal investment opportunities for U.S. companies abroad. It also said GMEI represents no national security or law enforcement concerns.

[See Our Business and Law Page]

So in short the latest FCC ruling grants approval for GMEI and its related entities to hold more than 5% of iHeart’s equity and/or voting interest as well as advance approval to increase its interests up to 14.99%. The previous approvals also remain in place: aggregate direct and/or indirect foreign ownership of iHeart above the usual 25% benchmark is allowed up to 100%; (2) approval for the PIMCO Group to hold up to 32.99% of equity and 19.99% of voting interests in the company; and (3) approval for the Invesco Group to hold up to 19.99% of the equity and voting interests.

The Media Bureau took input from a federal advisory committee on foreign participation, which found no concerns. iHeart will still have to obtain approval for additional foreign investors to hold more than 5% (or 10% for certain institutional investors).

iHeart estimated that following the FCC’s approval, direct and indirect foreign ownership of its capital stock would be “at a minimum, approximately 30% as to voting and 40% as to equity.” But that would not be an issue given the FCC’s previous ruling permitting iHeart aggregate foreign ownership up to 100%.

Read the ruling and the commission’s in-depth explanation of the case.

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

The post FCC Grants iHeart Petition on GMEI Foreign Investment appeared first on Radio World.

From our Who’s Buying What page: Triton Digital said radio group Fresh Media Bulgaria is using its audio streaming technology and services.

“Fresh Media Bulgaria will be able to provide Triton Digital’s cutting-edge Dynamic Ad Insertion technology to its publishers to effortlessly control and monetize content through precision-targeted audio ads,” the supplier said.

Fresh Media Bulgaria will also use Triton’s Supply Side platform Yield-Op to maximize revenue opportunities through programmatic ad buys.

Triton said Fresh Media Bulgaria is the largest radio group in the country. Its brands include BG Radio, Radio 1, NRJ, Radio City, Radio1 Rock, Veronika, Radio Nova and City TV.

The announcement was made by Fresh Media Bulgaria General Manager Nikolay Yanchovichin and Triton Digital Head of Global Revenue Stephanie Donovan.

Send news for Who’s Buying What to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Fresh Media Bulgaria Deploys Triton Services appeared first on Radio World.

Manufacturer AEQ has named its distributors of the year.

Tommex is a an integrator in Poland that works in broadcast, corporate and multimedia AV environments. “It has been part of AEQ’s commercial network since 2019, and in the last 12 months its work has resulted in numerous installations of intercom systems in the country, both in production centers and in theaters or sports halls,” AEQ wrote in the announcement.

AEQ Distributors of the Year Tommex of Poland (left) and Jamiro Broadcast of Kenya. Falcon Technologies of India was also honored.

Falcon Technologies in India, broadcast division of the Eagle Group, has been an AEQ distributor for more than 20 years. Among its recent work are two large projects for the national radio television of India, which involved installations in 33 cities.

Jamiro Broadcast in Kenya is a recent addition to the AEQ distribution network. The company focuses on design, installation and launch of radio studios.

AEQ said that the work of its distributors and integrators has been particularly challenging because of the global pandemic. “But radio and television in the world have not stopped, they cannot stop, they are the source of information and entertainment for a very important part of the society.”

The post AEQ Names 2021 Distributors of the Year appeared first on Radio World.

Kenya’s Communications Authority is beginning the process of reclaiming unused frequencies across the country. CA Director-General Ezra Chioba made the announcement Dec. 22., saying the applicants and license holders have 30 days to bring their operations into compliance or their license would be cancelled.

According to The Standard newspaper in Nairobi, Chioba, who was appointed director-general in September 2021, came into office with an eye towards reforming Kenya’s regulatory framework for broadcasting. As part of this, he said the CA would begin repossessing unused broadcast licenses with the intent of redistributing them to new investors.

“We have in the last few weeks we reviewed and identified those culpable. Accordingly, we have decided to revoke target licenses. This will allow us to re-plan and re-allocate these resources to investors who demonstrate commitment to establish and offer viable broadcasting services,” Chioba said, according to The Standard.

[More Radio News from Around the World]

In the notice posted to the CA website, six groups of revocations are outlined, including the cancellation of license offers and revocation of FM frequencies for 60 broadcasters. That list includes large commercial stations like Capital FM, NRG Radio, and Mbaitu FM.

The frequencies in question, in some cases, are for additional transmitters, so the revocation does not mean that all the stations will leave the airways entirely.

In its report on the revocation, Capital FM’s owners stated: “We wish to assure our loyal listeners, clients and other stakeholders that the Management of Capital Group Limited is seized of the matter for total compliance,” using a legal phrase to say they were looking to ensure compliance.

In addition to the 60 license offers, the CA announced the revocation of four frequency assignments to license holders and 18 FM frequencies assignments to non-permit holders who had yet to apply for broadcasting licenses, as well as the rejection of 24 applications for commercial and community radio services who had yet to comply with licensing requirements including paying regulatory fees. Nineteen television licenses and three subscription-based broadcasting services were also marked for revocation of license offers for failure to act within the CA’s prescribed timeline.

Last year, Kenyan authorities announced plans to crackdown on “absentee” license holders and transfers of licenses without prior regulatory approval.

The post Kenyan Authorities Begin Reclaiming Frequencies appeared first on Radio World.

Gifts to yourself to start a new year right! John Bisset heads over to Ace Hardware with a few bucks in his pocket.

Also in this issue:

The FCC weighs the idea of EAS on the internet.

Buyer’s Guide looks at interesting applications of antennas and RF support products including a custom diplexed AM antenna system for CKSP.

And we feature winners of the Best in Market Awards for 2021.

Read it here.

The post Read the Dec. 22, 2021 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.

The Dec. 22 issue of Radio World features our Buyer’s Guide for antennas, RF support and power products. Buyer’s Guide features application stories like this one. 

CKNW(AM), a 50 kW station at 980 kHz, is an existing four-tower directional array located near Surrey, to the southeast of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

CKSP, a 600 kHz, 50 kW DA-D, 20 kW DA-N station operated by Sher-E-Punjab, a broadcaster specializing in South Asian news/talk content, was added to the site making use of two of the four towers. It required a diplexed directional antenna system designed and fabricated by Kintronic Labs to facilitate the simultaneous operation of both stations from the CKNW transmitter site.

According to Tom King, president/CEO of Kintronic Labs, project management of the diplexed AM directional antenna system project was conducted by Richard Sondermeyer of G.S.Broadcast Technical Services Ltd. of Mississauga, Ontario. Final commissioning was conducted by Rob Elder, the Kintronic Labs field engineer.

The existing CKNW four-tower array is in the shape of a parallelogram, with two diagonally opposing towers oriented along a north–south line, and the other diagonally opposing towers oriented along a line rotated roughly 50 degrees clockwise from the center of the north–south line.

The NW tower is also the closest to the transmitter building, and its ATU building houses the CKNW power division/phasing networks as well as the tower matching network for this tower. The two towers on the north side of the array are those used for the new 600 kHz system, with the towers on the south side of the array detuned for 600 kHz.

The 600 kHz phasing and matching system was installed in a separate container located south of the CKNW transmitter building. The CKSP matching, filter and detune cabinets were installed in weatherproof housings and mounted on wooden platforms at the base of each of the towers.

The post CKSP Initiates Service via Diplexed AM Directional System appeared first on Radio World.

The following are in response to the Mark Persons article “Alike but Not Alike: Broadcast vs. Ham Radio.”

Well said

Having been an amateur radio operator for more than 67 years (and an occasional contributor to Radio World), I want to compliment Mark Persons on his article in the Oct. 27 issue.

It is the best explanation of the amateur radio hobby that I have ever read. There is nothing more that I could add to describe “hamming” to both the technical and non-technical, and I will rely on it to explain and recruit more hams to our hobby. 73.

John Seibels, K4AXV

 

Remembering the magic

I was a broadcaster first for a number of years and didn’t get licensed in amateur radio until 1990. In the early years, it seemed that many of the engineers I worked with were hams. Maybe not so much anymore. But one of them proved a worthy “Elmer” to me and got me up and running on ham over 30 years ago.

There are indeed many similarities, at least in the technical aspects. When I started in broadcasting, a Third Class License was required. Every person overseeing an air shift needed to take transmitter readings to ensure compliance in power output. Other “off-air” duties included making sure we powered down or up at the appropriate times to sunrise or sunset, check the tower lights and other similar tasks.

As time went on, the Third Class requirement was dropped, as were the requirements of the broadcasters to be knowledgeable of power readings, and such.

They were fun years: two turntables, three cart decks and a microphone staring you in the face. No automation, no computers. Even having time to use the bathroom on a six-hour shift was pretty much limited to the 4½-minute UPI news feed at the top of the hour.

My last years in broadcasting were distilled down to recording cuts and saving them with specified file names.

Of course, ham radio is more recreational. The content is not controlled by a station log but by the person on the other end of the QSO.

But there was still the magic of being on the other side of a microphone. If conditions were good, it was not unusual for me to work a number of QSOs before and after being on the air as a broadcaster.

I am grateful for the broadcast engineers I’ve known over the years, keeping us on the air with our broadcast stations as well as helping me get into ham radio. 73.

Scott McIntire, K7DXT

 

On the same frequency

I live in the Washington area and have been a pro broadcaster since 1979, but I didn’t jump into amateur radio until 2009. When I did it was with both feet. I even changed my ringtone on my cellphone to the Morse characters CQ, which hams use to call out over the air to talk to other hams.

As a frequent commuter bus rider, I often have to transfer at the Pentagon bus depot. Many of my fellow passengers are military folks who disembark there for their day of duties.

One morning my phone rang — “dah-dit-dah-dit, dah-dah-dit dah.”

I heard a loud guffaw went up from the back of the bus. One of the other passengers — either a ham or part of the Signal Corps — recognized the pattern and got my joke.

Broadcast radio and ham radio. Love ’em both.

Alan Peterson, KJ4IVD
National Production Director & Second Engineer
Radio America Network

The post Readers Celebrate Ham Radio appeared first on Radio World.

John Schmidt, P.E., is principal of John Schmidt Audio Video Systems Design in Hempstead, N.Y. For 36 years until retirement, he worked for ABC Television in New York as a senior audio video systems engineer, designing and supervising the installation of audio systems.

After reading a recent Workbench column, John offered a few suggestions to help the uninitiated create more problems than they solve when working with microphone cable shields.

Individuals involved in connecting analog audio equipment should familiarize themselves with two Audio Engineering Society standards: AES 48 and AES 54. These describe best practices in dealing with cable shields.

John’s first suggestion based on the guidelines is that the microphone cable shields need to be connected — typically to Pin 1 of an XLR connector, as seen in Fig. 1 — in a continuous, preferably isolated path from the mic to the input of the mic preamp.

Pin 1 is considered ground on a three-pin XLR.

Keep in mind that mics that utilize phantom power will not work without a shield (Pin 1) connection, as the cable shield provides a return path for the phantom power that operates the electronics inside the microphone.

Even if the mic does not use phantom power, failure to connect the shield may leave the mic circuit subject to hum or buzz due to capacitive coupling to one or the other of the active conductors, or interference due to RF pickup.

Now the issue moves to the line-level interconnects. Here there is a conflict between the practicality of the interconnecting equipment — which may not have been designed with best practice for grounding the shield connection (Pin 1 on the XLR) at the equipment interface — and requirements for RF immunity.

If all equipment was designed with proper termination of the shield connections for both its inputs and outputs, in accordance with AES 48, one would be advised to connect the shields of all input and output cables where they interface with the equipment at both ends. But as many of us have learned, this sometimes creates hum in the form of a ground loop.

At the expense of losing some RF immunity, connect the shield at only one end.

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If breaking the shield at one end solves your hum/buzz issue but leaves the equipment RF susceptible, try connecting the unterminated end of the shield to the metal case of the equipment through a small capacitor.

Transformer boxes can be useful, but John recommends specifying transformers with internal shields between the windings. Otherwise the capacitive coupling between the windings can pass interference.

Also keep in mind that some transformers have very poor frequency response when fed from a low-impedance source. If your circuitry is unbalanced, with the shield grounded at both the output and the input, and is carrying the return side of the audio signal, all bets are off, and you may really have a ground loop.

Finally, regarding analog video: Yes, the coax is fed with an unbalanced signal; however, most professional video equipment uses differential receive amplifiers, where the shield of the input is not grounded. The same is true for the unbalanced “composite” input of many FM exciters.

As readers can see, this is not a trivial issue.

John Schmidt’s website is www.john.schmidt.audio/main/.

A better way to model

On Oct. 29, Radio World reported on a proposal by Dielectric and other antenna manufacturers to allow computer modeling of FM directional antennas.

The FCC has opened a notice of proposed rulemaking to take industry comments about this. It says more than 2,000 full-service FM stations, more than 20 percent of them, use directional antennas. The change would allow any of them that replace existing antennas to avoid the expense of field measurements. It would apply not only to applicants for new FM facilities but to FM licensees applying for facility modifications.

An image from the Dielectric presentation to the Broadcasters Clinic about computational modeling of FM directional antennas.

John L. Schadler, a friend and former co-worker of mine when I was at Dielectric, outlined the studies that support this proposal in a presentation for the Broadcasters Clinic in October.

John’s presentation is available online and is fascinating. Of particular interest are the computer simulations John shows of FM coverage. Adjustment of parasitics or spacing yields nearly instantaneous display of the FM coverage pattern. These measurements, done physically on a range or in an anechoic chamber, currently take hours or days. In just a few minutes, patterns can be reliably modeled, modified or adjusted to meet coverage restrictions.

Final thought

Kuala Lumpur engineer Paul Sagi has followed our discussion of converting to LED lighting. He writes that heat is not the only enemy of LEDs; the wrong type of power supply can also shorten their life. LEDs work best on a constant current supply, rather than a constant voltage supply, which can also reduce their service time.

Got a great ideas? Share it! Tips for Workbench qualify for SBE recertification credit. Email johnpbisset@gmail.com.

John Bisset, CPBE, is in his 31st year of sharing reader tips in Workbench. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance and is a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award.

The post Workbench: The importance of microphone cable shields appeared first on Radio World.