Industry News

MIAMI BEACH, FLA. — South Florida has the Brightline high-speed rail service. Now, its beach cities have Breezeline to add to the mix.

No, it’s not a new train service, although Miami Beach could use one to connect it to downtown Miami. Rather, it is the new name for the nation’s eighth-largest cable operator, today owned by Canadian multimedia company Cogeco.

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No, we’re not talking about stations tied in some way to Bobby Vinton but, rather, the town of Vinton, Va. Here, an AM radio station with an FM translator are heading to a new owner, pending FCC approval.

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NEW YORK — Emerson Coleman, the SVP/Programming at Hearst Television, is retiring in summer 2022. His successor has just been named, and it is the person who is joining the operation to serve as VP/Programming under Coleman, who will guide her until he says farewell.

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NEW YORK — Discovery, Inc. has become a minority owner of OpenAP, the advanced advertising company serving the television industry.

Discovery joins FOX, NBCUniversal and ViacomCBS in the joint venture.

The investment signals an expansion of Discovery’s existing relationship with OpenAP, having integrated with OpenID in April 2021 and more recently partnering with OpenAP on the launch of XPm, the TV publisher backed cross-platform measurement framework.

“The commitment to OpenAP furthers Discovery’s strategy of building a technical framework that enables cross-platform audience-based buying and creating collaborative support for alternative currency standards,” OpenAP says, adding that it will help further its ability to grow the overall market for audience-based advertising ‘and expand the breadth and scale of its services across cross-platform identity, measurement and planning.”

Discovery Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer Jon Steinlauf and Jim Keller, EVP/Digital Ad Sales and Advanced Advertising, will each represent the company on OpenAP’s Board of Directors.

Additionally, Discovery will be able to contribute to OpenAP’s corporate strategy and product roadmap, while gaining further operational and technical efficiencies by activating audiences centrally through OpenAP.

“Discovery is excited to take an active role shaping the future of advanced audience buying,” Keller said. “Given our current momentum, influence and growth of audience-based sales, we believe Discovery can help further the work OpenAP has been doing to initiate meaningful change in the market.”

OpenAP works with more than 100 advertisers following the 2019 launch of the OpenAP Market with centralized advanced audiences able to be distributed to all national TV publishers regardless of platform.

“There is no denying that automotive dealers have been on a wild ride over the past two years, bouncing from one extreme to another,” says local advertising analyst Gordon Borrell.

A new report from his Borrell Associates recounts the events from the last 24 months that have changed the automotive advertising environment and previews what is to come.

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LOS ANGELES — In 1997, a trio of Class A FM radio stations at 92.7 MHz entered into a “trimulcast,” in a bid to serve the entire Los Angeles DMA. At first it was “Lite.” Then, it was “Jill,” the cheeky female response to first-adjacent Adult Hits “JACK FM.”

Today, two of those three stations remain and serve as Southern California’s home for Educational Media Foundation‘s Worship Music-focused Air1 noncommercial network. Until recently, however, the same issues that plagued the former formats for this facility remained — poor penetration in central Los Angeles.

That issue has now been resolved, thanks to an FM translator and the use of GeoBroadcast Solutions’ MaxxCasting system.

A “Common” settlement reached in 2019 is also an important factor for EMF.

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Why does Gray Television have an interest in a low-power television station licensed to a self-described “beautiful small town nestled in the hills of Southern Middle Tennessee?”

The fact that Lewisburg, Tenn., is an hour south of Music Row has everything to do with the broadcast TV company’s latest LPTV investment.

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RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION

As some three dozen lucky radio industry cognoscenti gathered in Las Vegas on January 6 to enjoy the 2022 Consumer Electronics and QR Code Showcase in Sin City, a veteran radio industry professional widely known for creating Classic Rock as an answer to hair-band free playlists fired off a fiery blog post that lambasted radio for shooting itself in the foot.

What was the problem? For the week ending January 2, 2022, Media Monitors’ Spot Ten Radio report showed Sirius XM accounting for some 33,794 spots aired across the AM and FM stations it tracks.

The latest Spot Ten Radio reports shows that it was likely a one-time deal, as the satellite radio company was absent from the top 10 for the week ending January 9.

Still, the presence of Sirius XM during that end-of-year week when subscription renewals are important is, in Fred Jacobs‘ view, a huge error in judgement, or perhaps a tremendous blunder.

We respectfully disagree and see no reason to panic and fret over radio advertisements designed to bring more attention to audio content. After all, it is Radio that allowed Sirius XM to even exist.

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Stormin Protection Products President John Pecore said the Optelator — a fiber optic isolator that eliminates grounding differentials between equipment and demark ground, protecting against direct lightning strikes on phone lines — has been discontinued.

A common application in broadcasting is to protect lines that serve remote monitors at transmitter sites. It also has uses in the automated milking industry — where remote monitoring equipment often suffers from poor connections — and in the military and homeland security, where Optelator protected inexpensive fax machines, copiers and printers, as well as provided isolated phone lines to silos and other military missile launching sites.

John Pecore blamed three factors for the decision: the pandemic, which he said has caused a 65 percent loss of business; increased pressure from his suppliers for parts orders in larger quantities; and a dramatic decline of demand for this kind of product.

“The phone hardline industry has crashed and burned [while] wireless is alive and well,” he said.

[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]

In fact the product was scheduled to be discontinued in the late 1990s, but Pecore said a review that appeared at the time in Radio World was followed by a rush of interest. “This product became a great success in your industry, and has been depended upon in radio for many years.”

The company will continue to support users of the Optelator II and the early-generation Optilator with repair services, and can rebuild or replace PC boards, at least until the supply chain has dried up. But no more brand-new units are available.

“Sometimes progress destroys the old, and brings in the new. It is the end of life as we know it for the hardline phone line,” Pecore said.

“One last final words for the radio broadcast industry: Thank you.”

Radio World invites both users and suppliers to tell us about recently installed new or notable equipment. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post The Optelator Is Discontinued appeared first on Radio World.

Educational Media Foundation is using a new and unusual FM translator installation so that more people around Los Angeles can hear its Air1 Radio Network Christian worship format.

GeoBroadcast Solutions said EMF is using a MaxxCasting system to expand the signal quality and audience reach of two FM stations through the installation of a translator in downtown Los Angeles. The technology company said EMF has increased its potential listenership by as much as 4 million.

“KYRA(FM), broadcasting to the north of the city in Ventura and L.A. Counties, and KYLA(FM), broadcasting from Orange County in the south, had been simulcasting the Air1 signal on the 92.7 frequency but weren’t reaching the densely populated downtown and neighborhoods of the city,” GBS explained in its press release.

“Through the innovative installation of a co-channel translator on the AON Center building, GBS engineers were able to bridge the gap between the two coverage areas and built a continuous signal that now stretches across 110 miles.”

MaxxCasting is a booster-based system that uses a cluster of directionalized, synchronized node sites to reduce interference between a station’s main and booster transmissions. But this configuration did not involve a node/booster at all; it relied on moving the translator to the Aon Building and synchronizing the two main stations.

GBS quoted EMF Senior Broadcast Engineer Shane Toven saying, “Since we’ve owned the stations, our challenge has been connecting the two signals and providing continuous coverage between our co-channel signals, which conventional boosters and repeaters were not able to provide.”

Equipment for Maxxcasting is provided by Doug Tharp at SCMS, the U.S. distributor for GatesAir transmitters. Paul Littleton is director of spectrum design at GeoBroadcast Solutions.

The post EMF Deploys Translator in L.A. appeared first on Radio World.