On December 24, 2020, the husband that shares ownership with his wife of a Class A noncommercial FM radio station serving the island of Nantucket in Massachusetts passed away.
Now, the requisite paperwork is being filed that will give the woman full ownership of “Quahog Country.”
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In September 2019, Monte Miller had his fill of repeated requests to delay the closing of a March 2019 transaction that would see the transfer of six full-power stations and two FM translators by Miller’s Rocking M Media to Allied Media Partners (AMP). “I took the stations off today,” he told RBR+TVBR at the time — a move that would negate a $6.2 million deal.
More than two years later, all but one of the two FM translators involved in that imploded deal are back in the news, as their license renewal applications were under Media Bureau review at the FCC. The Chief of the Audio Division has signed off on the renewals, along with the sale of one of the full-powered FM properties. However, in order for it to happen, Rocking M entered into a Consent Decree and is making a contribution to the U.S. Treasury.
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A select group of Americans may be familiar with the name John Peel, thanks to the late air personality’s time at BBC Radio 1, where he brought progressive rock, punk acts, dub reggae and electronic acts their first national airplay in Great Britain.
Few Americans, if anyone, may be familiar with the name Janice Long. In the United Kingdom, Long is perhaps as equally iconic as Peel, thanks in very large part to their on-air chemistry as the hosts of BBC Television’s “Top of the Pops” program.
Today, anyone who has ever watched TOTP or was raised on Radio 1 is mourning her death, which came on Christmas Day following “a short illness.” Long was 66 years old.
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The largest convention and expo to be staged in two years is scheduled to take place in one week. And, it will be held without the full-scale participation of such companies as Google and Microsoft, each of which confirmed over the Christmas holiday weekend that they will not be engaging in in-person events during the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
With in-person event cancellations at CES 2022, including that of iHeartMedia, growing, what does that bode for attendance at the second most-important event of the season — NATPE Miami?
“NATPE Safe” protocols have been updated. This means that on-site virus testing will be available at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, the sprawling casino-style with no gaming resort adjacent to the Nobu Eden Roc, home to the much smaller (but perhaps more important to broadcasters) Matrix Media Ad Sales Summit.
The “NATPE Safe” protocol already includes proof of vaccination, and the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) believes the on-site testing of vaccinated attendees will ensure that its global programming marketplace and TV industry conference will be a successful event, starting January 18 and ending January 20.
How will it work? Optional Rapid Antigen COVID-19 Testing for all attendees on the main dates of the event will be available via an appointment; sign-up information was still forthcoming at the time of this writing.
“Guests that take advantage of the daily testing will receive identification (i.e. wrist badge) of their negative COVID test,” NATPE said. “Individual exhibitors and sponsors may choose to require testing in order to meet with their staff.”
Meanwhile, NATPE Miami, which traditionally has a diverse global attendance, will offer a PCR COVID-19 Test for international attendees that require a negative test result 72 hours or less before entering back to their country of origin. The cost: $150. It is reserved for those who are attending NATPE Miami from outside the U.S.
Among the high-profile sponsors of NATPE Miami are Univision Communications, AP, A + E Networks, The CW, Horowitz Research, Lionsgate, WB, and Tubi, the FOX Corporation over-the-top offering.
“With the health and safety of exhibitors, buyers, sponsors, honorees, partners and all attendees as top priority, NATPE will be following the highest standards and COVID-related protocols,” the organization said.
Furthermore, NATPE has created a daily health survey which will be filled out by attendees on everyone’s mobile phones. Complimentary face masks will be available on-site. Temperature checks will be taken before entering certain parts of the NATPE event, such as the mainstage conference session or the exhibition floor.
There will also be a NATPE Networking Tent, which will provide an outdoor option for networking.
While masks are “highly recommended” for all attendees, even as the event requires vaccination, face masks will be mandatory for all NATPE staff, service providers and vendors as cleaning will be reinforced in all exhibition spaces and high-contact areas will be frequently disinfected.
The Fontainebleau is also doing its part to segregate hotel guests who are not attending NATPE Miami from those who are.
As such, things will not be back to normal for NATPE Miami attendees, with outdoor tents for sessions and meetings and designated NATPE Safe zones fully controlled by the event production team planned for the entire resort, where in years past it was perfectly expected to see Byron Allen walking the corridors of the Tresor towers as Kalil & Co. representatives met with current and prospective clients in a suite with a near-perfect view of South Beach.
RBR+TVBR has confirmed that Kalil & Co. will again have a suite at NATPE Miami.
— Adam R Jacobson, in Delray Beach, Fla.
RBR+TVBR will be offering selected NATPE Miami coverage, based on COVID-19 safety protocols and updated guidance. It will be present January 20 at the Matrix Media Ad Sales Summit, where Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson will be moderating a panel discussion on ATSC 3.0 and OTT opportunities for television.
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.
The Univision network affiliates serving two of the nation’s biggest emerging Hispanic markets — Kansas City and Minneapolis-St. Paul — has a new VP/Station Group Manager.
He takes the expanded role at Media Vista Group after seven years of experience overseeing the Twin Cities operations.
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In the Florida Keys, there’s a station called WKIZ. It’s a digital low-power TV facility, and is a sibling to a Class A digital TV facility also serving the Conch Republic. Paul Garber has been the Manager of the stations’ licensee.
Thanks to a deal finalized just before Christmas, a reorganization in the stations’ ownership is moving forward. This puts David and Penny Drucker in the driver’s seat.
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On December 21, RBR+TVBR was first to share the news that Gray Television had agreed to purchase a low-power TV construction permit and five fully built LPTVs from the licensee led by Jeff Winemiller.
Now, Gray has struck again — this time grabbing a half-dozen LPTV CPs across the South.
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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.
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.
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The FCC InquiryThe 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: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:
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.
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