Radio World

Flash back to fall 2019 at a community station abuzz with activity. A DJ is in the studio, spinning records, while volunteers socialize, work in production studios and assemble donor gift packages. Training is underway for new recruits and anticipation is high for a co-promoted concert at a nearby venue. Hugs are exchanged along with “hellos” and “goodbyes.”

For much of 2020 most of these activities were just a memory, as stations adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic.

What does community radio look like when the community isn’t necessarily allowed inside the station? How are stations that pride themselves on 24/7 live in-studio DJs doing radio when they must restrict access to their buildings? And how are volunteer-reliant stations adjusting to socially distanced engagement?

The Grassroots Radio Conference confronted these questions in October. Held virtually, the event was hosted by ARTxFM, otherwise known as WXOX(LP) in Louisville, Ky.

Studio Safety

Dr. MarkAlain Dery has a unique perspective on studio safety, as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist as well as founder of community station WHIV(LP) in New Orleans. He spoke as part of the online conference.

This image was shared by MarkAlain Dery, who spoke about COVID safety protocols at WHIV(LP) in New Orleans. “We took pictures of a few of our DJs and plastered these all over the station, plus our internal communications,” he said. “The DJ is Jenny Yanes and the show is called ‘Islam in the Crescent City.’”

For much of this year, only one person at a time has been allowed at WHIV. Masks are required and a clean sock is placed over the studio microphone for each shift.

Importance is placed on handwashing and disinfection of surfaces, and the production booth is closed. Flyers implore, “Spread Love, Not Germs.” WHIV supplies washable masks, which show hosts drop into a container marked “dirty” upon exit. Dery emphasizes the aerosolized nature of coronavirus, pointing out that masks and ventilation are both critical.

Because of the challenges in keeping studios clean and safe for volunteers, many community stations have opted to limit access drastically, with some shutting down in-person activities entirely.

In the early days of the coronavirus, WXOX shifted to a staggered studio schedule so that on-air hosts were not running into each other during program transitions. The initial plan was to have one volunteer do a show in the studio, followed by a remote broadcast.

Even with that precaution in place, WXOX General Manager Sharon Scott grew increasingly worried about everyone’s health.

“Literally, I wasn’t sleeping at night,” she reflected. When the outbreak worsened, she closed the studio. By that point most hosts were already broadcasting from home.

100 Different At-Home Studios

While each community station approaches broadcasting amid a pandemic differently, many used archived programs and automation to fill schedules when live DJs cannot be in the studio.

This was the initial approach at WFMU(FM) in East Orange, N.J., near New York City, where only a skeleton crew of staffers is allowed at the station.

Looking back on the early rerun-filled days, Station Manager Ken Freedman said that “It was awful.” He described the awkwardness of airing pre-virus shows that felt out of step while listeners in New York and New Jersey were going through the crisis.

Quickly, priorities shifted to setting up home studios for WFMU’s sheltering DJs. Freedman described how “sobering” it was to be at an epicenter of the pandemic, knowing people who died and having DJs come down with the virus.

Although WFMU has been doing remote broadcasts over IP for over 20 years, Freedman said that in some ways it’s more difficult today because there are “so many more options.” With around 100 different studios in DJ homes, it can be “very challenging” to help orchestrate myriad options and troubleshoot all the permutations of breakdowns in the broadcast chain.

It’s a similar situation at WXOX, where live broadcasts are originating from home studios across Louisville.

One vintage record-loving DJ has taken over a dining room table with their turntable setup; another broadcasts from a front porch, with bands playing in his front yard; and some keep it super simple using just a laptop.

To facilitate live remote broadcasting, WXOX created a secondary stream that only the on-air hosts can access. Hosts broadcast live to this stream, which the station picks up to transmit over FM and online. Scott recommends that for this behind-the-scenes stream, stations obtain a plan with the highest bit rate and lowest cap on the number of listeners to save on costs.

Under current circumstances, stations also have been more tolerant of variations in sound quality to allow community radio hosts to work remotely. Even the voice memo app on a smartphone can be used to record audio, from interviews to public service announcements.

A new vocabulary

At cash-strapped community stations, home setups for DJs can be Spartan; but low-cost or free software platforms help. Minimal requirements are a computer, internet connection, and headphones.

Sharon Scott encourages DJs to connect with an Ethernet cable to help mitigate troublesome WiFi connections. USB microphones are also recommended, although not every DJ has one.

Software used by DJs to stream live at WXOX and WFMU includes AudioHijack, Rocket Broadcaster, LadioCast and BUTT (“broadcast using this tool”).

Pacifica Network has posted a discussion of software and strategies for remote broadcasting that includes Zoom, Squadcast, Riverside.fm, Ringr, Zencastr, phone interviews, Cleanfeed, split-tracking, Dropbox, Splashtop, VPN, Rocket Broadcaster and Radio Hijack.

ARTxFM also has a remote tutorial at www.artxfm.com/remotestations/. And additional tips can be found in the archived conference sessions at www.youtube.com/VirtualGRC.

In Ames, Iowa, KHOI(FM) show hosts have been doing live radio and interviews using Zoom video meetings. Station Manager Ursula Ruedenberg calls it the “simplest solution” for programs with co-hosts and guests, despite some audio sacrifices.

Listeners have been understanding. “It’s a COVID-19 sound … people freezing up or sound getting a little bit wonky just has become part of the way things sound now,” she articulated.

“There for each other”

Beyond technical glitches, the “COVID-19 sound” has unintended benefits.

In Albany, N.Y., Paul Smart of WCAA(LP) has led audio production workshops that eschew “professional gloss.” For him, providing access and building community are more important.

Hearing tidbits of extraneous sounds on the airwaves, like background noises from dogs barking and phones ringing, has sparked listener interest in making radio at WCAA. That has led to an uptick in home-produced shows, allowing the station to expand local programming.

Community building is at the core of these efforts. Scott said, “In the midst of political turmoil, civil unrest and a range of local disasters, community broadcasting is more important than ever. Meanwhile, the global coronavirus pandemic makes accessing our studios a formidable danger of its very own. Yet, as FM broadcasters, we have committed ourselves to being there for our local community in times of emergency. We must also be there for each other.”

 

The post Community Stations Share COVID Stories appeared first on Radio World.

RWEE’s format allows us to dig more deeply into specialized topics of interest to radio engineers.

In this issue, David Maxson describes a situation in which an FM station was accused of causing 8th harmonic interference to a cellular carrier, which complained to the FCC.

Also: John Kean on loudness; Tom Vernon on RadioDNS; Cris Alexander on project planning; and Bob Orban and Greg Ogonowski on protecting your digital audio quality.

Read it here.

The post Inside the Dec. 16 Issue of Radio World Engineering Extra appeared first on Radio World.

IEEE Broadcast Technology Society has announced it will host an IEEE BTS Pulse event from February 9–11, which will discuss topics including single frequency networks, applications for drone technology and 5G content production.

The second ever IEEE BTS Pulse event, the three-day virtual event aims to answer vital broadcast industry questions with top experts, according to IEEE BTS’ website.

[Visit the Radio World Calendar]

The first of the three days will be dedicated to SFN and virtualization cohesiveness. The session will look at the fundamentals of ATSC 3.0 SFNs as well as the virtualization of broadcast gateways and some of the challenges and uses of software-based SFN implementations. S. Merrill Weiss, Merrill Weiss Group LLC; Benoît Bui Do, Enensys; Mark Corl, Triveni Digital; and Ali Dernaika, Hewlett Packard Enterprise are slated to speak on day one.

Day two will focus on drones and thermography, specifically how thermal imaging can be used to scan broadcast transmission lines and antennas to identify possible areas of concern and how drones can help in this area. Paul Shulins, BTS vice president and president of Shulins Solutions, is tapped as the day two session chair. Session speakers will also include certified thermographers and an expert on using drones for broadcast signal measurements.

The third and final day of IEEE’s Pulse event tackles 5G content production. Organized by the European H2020 project 5G-RECORDS, the session will look at the opportunities and challenges of 5G for professional audiovisual content production. This will include presentations on the European Broadcasting Union’s 5G content production activities and 5G technology enablers from Ericsson and Nokia. David Gomez-Barquero, Universitat de Valencia, Communications Department, iTEAM Research Institute- Mobile Communications Group will lead the session.

For more information on the IEEE BTS Pulse event, visit IEEE BTS’ website.

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The outgoing chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is asking why broadcasters should be covered by special media ownership rules at all.

“We need a fundamental, intellectually honest reassessment of what the media marketplace looks like now, where it’s going and what this means for consumers,” said Ajit Pai, speaking to the Media Institute Tuesday.

He noted the huge growth in ad revenue for digital platforms over the past decade compared to other media. The result, he said, is that broadcast media are subject to far more regulation “to guard against [their] supposed market power” than companies that are now far bigger than they are.

“In 2020, for example, Google and Facebook are each expected to bring in more ad revenue than every TV and radio station in the U.S. combined,” Pai said.

Pai, a Republican, has made regulatory reform and streamlining one of the themes of his tenure. But he thinks bigger changes are called for.

He said Congress should expand the FCC’s “forbearance authority” so it could eliminate outdated rules for video providers, and also consider “a top-to-bottom re-write of the Cable Act.”

More dramatically, “I also believe that the federal government needs to fundamentally rethink the very concept of media ownership regulation. … We don’t have special rules about how many social media outlets you can own. We don’t have special rules for how many streaming services you can own. We don’t have special rules limiting how many Americans your internet platform can reach. Indeed, our so-called media ownership rules don’t contain ownership rules for much of the media, and in particular those parts of the media that are growing fast. For some reason, the only ones we have are for broadcasters.”

The problem, he said, is “a fundamental refusal to grapple with today’s marketplace: what the service market is, who the competitors are and the like. When assessing competition, some in Washington are so obsessed with the numerator, so to speak — the size of a particular company, for instance — that they’ve completely ignored the explosion of the denominator — the full range of alternatives in media today, many of which didn’t exist a few years ago.”

He said when determining a company’s market share, “a candid assessment of the denominator should include far more than just broadcast networks or cable channels. From any perspective… it should include any kinds of media consumption that consumers consider to be substitutes,” Pai said.

“When you ask the intellectually honest questions, the answers raise serious doubts about whether the FCC should have media ownership regulations at all,” he concluded.

“If general competition law is good enough for other sectors of our economy, why not the broadcast industry?”

 

The post Pai Calls for Reassessment of Media Marketplace appeared first on Radio World.

Streaming is not a static technology. New innovations are constantly being developed.

Many video and “over the top” streamers have discovered the advantage of CMAF, the Common Media Application Format. This format, explained in standards document ISO/IEC 23000-19:2020, offers advantages to the streamer that are finally being recognized for audio-only streaming.

Technology companies StreamS and StreamGuys recently announced joint support for it. StreamS is part of Modulation Index, a company that offers streaming encoders and internet audio products and is headed by Greg Ogonowski, founder of Gregg Laboratories and former VP of product development at Orban.

StreamGuys is a service provider of live and on-demand streaming, podcasting delivery, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) toolsets.

Why does this matter to Radio World readers?

As the companies put it, their goal is to provide “next-generation, high-performance live audio streaming using fully compliant standards-based CMAF HLS for low-latency, adaptive-bitrate HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). Together, both provide a complete end-to-end streaming solution that is reliable, scales to rapidly growing large audiences and reaches more modern devices with stunning audio quality.”

Container format

Please note that various companies will offer different flavors of a format, which is a problem with generic formats. Someone one said that the beauty of standards is that there are so many. Unfortunately, there are also a multitude of interpretations.

As a result, many existing streaming protocols have been modified and hacked to the point of becoming proprietary, leading to compatibility issues among streaming servers and player clients and devices. Will the disparity end? Probably not in the foreseeable future.

This particular solution is working hard to stay compatible with Apple Music. StreamS makes the hardware and software solution, and StreamGuys is the content delivery network or CDN.

Many formats are needed for streaming: the encoding format (i.e. xHE-AAC), the transport format (i.e. HLS), and the container format. CMAF is an example of a container format:

• It can contain your audio and video plus all the associated metadata.
• ID3 metadata is supported.
• Commercials can still be injected from multiple networks.

A diagram from StreamS/Modulation Index depicts the process.

Why is the announcement from StreamS and StreamGuys a good idea?

Consider that the World Wide Web was designed to present static or small files. It was not originally thought of for presenting non-ending streams; streaming was conceived later.

CMAF takes your content and chops it into segments, sending it to the Content Delivery Network. CMAF then instructs the player how to reassemble and present it, thus getting rid of many of the typical issues associated with streaming.

Greg Ogonowski, president of StreamS, notes that a “streaming server” is no longer essential to send the stream out.

What about latency? The delay of the content from encoding to playback has been the sworn enemy of the streamer.

CMAF can reduce (though not eliminate) latency. With a smaller payload, buffering and unwanted stream disconnections are lessened greatly.

To achieve less latency they are using this with HLS, which stands for HTTP Live Streaming, an adaptive bitrate streaming communications protocol developed by Apple Inc. Yes, that Apple. So there is instant compatibility with all of the iPhones out there. Yes, Android supports HLS out of the box, though support depends on the version of Android.

So compatibility is there. With HLS, latency is closely tied to the duration of the media segments that you’re using.

“HLS is getting a whole lot better with CMAF,” said Kiriki Delany, president of StreamGuys, in the press release announcing the partnership. “We are excited to support ultra-low latency and simplify deploying HLS.”

Delany said HLS provided efficient ways to switch networks while maintaining a stream, as well as savings on power consumption for mobile devices; it also introduced much higher latency than traditional true-streaming systems.

“CMAF changes that by allowing encoding to happen much faster, which greatly reduces file-based buffers. Meanwhile, xHE-AAC, once adopted by all major browsers and mobile platforms, will simplify what codecs are needed on the decoder side. It will support very low bitrates, like 12 kbps for speech, to very high bitrates, such as lossless ALAC/FLAC formats. This simplification will mean larger reach, and lower barriers to cross platform compatibility.”

As a bonus, the higher adoption of lossless formats ALAC/FLAC for “fine arts formats” also invites the audiophile to enjoy streaming.

The introduction of CMAF and HLS is a big step for streaming radio and audio-only services. Hopefully others will get on board.

The author is a broadcast and streaming consultant and co-chair of the Audio Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Broadcast and Online Delivery.

The post Putting CMAF HLS to Work in Audio appeared first on Radio World.

AVT Audio Video Technologies is highlighting a new digital radio installation in Germany.

“With the installation of NDR’s new DAB+ playout system supplied by AVT, listeners will be able to receive news and weather information from their respective regions via DAB+ with a coverage that was previously only possible via FM,” the manufacturer stated.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

Norddeutscher Rundfunk, or NDR, is part of the public broadcast association ARD. It serves Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.

“The DAB+ playout, which was previously divided into four regions, was replaced by a completely new redundant DAB+ Ensemble multiplexer system for 16 regions,” AVT stated.

It said the large number of different programs was a project challenge, because each of the 16 regional multiplexes can generate eight to nine independent DAB+ programs.

IP-based playout is done with a Magic DABMUX plus Ensemble Multiplexer with integrated DAB+ encoders licensed by FhG.

“The system’s internal redundant switching ensures seamless switching of the multiplex signal, which is available as EDI and ETI/E1 signal. The audio feed to the multiplexers including the audio monitoring is done via AES67 streams, which are connected to Prodigy audio converters from DirectOut,” the company stated.

“The regionally categorized slideshows are created by the PAD playout system of the company 4=1, Dynamic Label+, traffic announcements and TPEG traffic information is generated by the TIC system of the company GEWI. Linkage sets are triggered directly from CGI’s dira! automation software. The monitoring of the entire system is via EMBER+ with a GUI using Lawo VisTool. As management software, the new browser-based AVT DAB System Manager is used which enables the management of all 32 Ensemble multiplexers.”

Thorsten Geselle was the project manager at NDR.

 

The post NDR Gets AVT DAB+ Playout System appeared first on Radio World.

A sign directs residents to a COVID-19 test site in Aurora, Ill, in November, as cases spiked in the state. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Millions of jobs lost. Close to 300,000 perished. Over 16 million sick.

You know the facts because you’re living them. One thing most of us can agree on is that the science of this COVID-19 thing hasn’t changed and it remains highly contagious.

Being isolated for so long, it’s human nature that we are all past ready to return to normal activity. What’s constantly in play is the public’s attitude.

A friend of mine in Florida recently declared that she was “so done with COVID” and took a road trip to Key West with three friends, sharing a hotel room and reveling in the food and atmosphere of their favorite hot spots.

In touch with listeners

Understanding attitudes is the tricky part of being on-air during the virus. It’s the one discussion point your local team needs to update constantly so you can properly adjust what you’re doing on-air, online and with your social channels.

Nobody knows when this nightmare will end. Even once the vaccine deployment ramps up, it will be months before all public activity can safely resume in a normal way.

It’s super easy to be unintentionally tone-deaf about this tragedy, but doing so can damage your personalities and your brand, perhaps permanently.

In the beginning of the outbreak, from his yacht in the Caribbean, recording industry billionaire David Geffen posted a picture of a beautiful sunset for his 80,000+ Instagram followers. Seemed innocent enough, even with the caption that said , Sunset last night… Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus. I hope everyone is safe.”

He got roasted first by his followers and then by the media. This is a guy who’s been involved in raising millions of dollars for clinics, charities for the homeless, and even has a school of medicine named after him in California. None of that matters to the people who perceive him as a privileged jerk.

They’re thinking, Yeah, you’re isolated all right … from the risk and uncertainty the rest of us face every day!

The lesson is that we can’t let our guard down as the seasons change and we need to be ultra-aware of what we are saying to our listeners.

Community-mindedness

You’ve had to be living in a cave not to know that the act of staying home when possible, wearing a mas, and social distancing — and the extent to which any should be mandated or voluntary — has become a political sore spot. Therefore, unless your product is a specifically conservative or liberal talk format, it’s risky to take a position.

A transparent way to talk about masks is to have the voices of your listeners express their opinion. Stay calm and have your best tension-easing methods of diplomacy ready to roll.

As the recent election shows, the country is split on so many issues that your personalities or station will inevitably alienate many listeners if you go all-in on one point of view.

However, because the relentless contagion of this devastating virus hasn’t changed, all stations should encourage sick people to stay home, to be careful around the elderly or others of compromised health, and to remember that we are all in this together.

There is one scientifically proven fact that your station staff could highlight:  wearing a cloth mask (even a bandanna over nose and mouth) may not do much to protect yourself, but it is enormously helpful in protecting others.

It is a community-minded action, and local radio culture is, or should be, all about community. Imparting this information via PSA or to a genuinely interested caller is an important public service.

That said, if your community is overwhelmingly in favor of full-time masks while in public, you could also give out or sell masks or hand sanitizer with your logo to benefit a charity, as some stations have been doing for months now.

Offer resources

Most importantly, every station in America should continue doing their best to generate funds, food and supplies for those in need.

With unprecedented unemployment, we must create more avenues to offer support. This may be more-frequent PSAs urging both monetary and non-perishable donations to food banks; airing announcements about volunteer opportunities; and supporting loans for those in need.

Adams Radio Group of Delmarva broadcast the “Radio Cares: Feeding America Emergency Radiothon” fundraising event last spring to benefit the hunger relief organization Feeding America. Credit: Salisbury Business Journal

If you haven’t done it already, I urge you also to create a resource page on your website with links to such things as local employment search ideas and help in navigating loss of income; food security advice and dollar-smart recipes; articles on coping with disruption of family life and other relationships; and, of course, how to stay safe and healthy in the face of COVID-19. Enlist a member of your staff who is good at research to compile these resources and review it with your talent so they’re in the loop of what’s available to their listeners on the website and what’s being constantly updated.

During times of crisis, people have long turned to radio personalities as virtual friends. And just as a friend is genuinely warm and approachable, it’s more important than ever that talent express a desire to share in their listeners’ lives.

Most of this comes in the form of morning shows; many who expanded hours in April continue to stay on for longer, while others have already scaled back. The situation is so fluid that if your area goes into lockdown again, you should take a hard look at your schedule.

There was a piece of optimistic news in a Radio Advertising Bureau article in October from Pierre Bouvard, chief insights officer at Cumulus: “The growth of workplace commuting combined with the return of children to school has caused time spent in the car to surge. This is good news for both the outdoor advertising and U.S. AM/FM radio industries. From May to October, Nielsen finds daily time spent in the car has grown +81% from 36 minutes in May to 65 minutes in October. Among heavy AM/FM radio listeners, daily time spent in the car has doubled from an hour and six minutes a day to two hours and 11 minutes.”

Even if this goes sideways due to renewed school closings and new restrictions, the beautiful part is that we can rest assured that in-car will come roaring back.

Many of us have more questions. At the top of my list: Do you continue to respond to the times in your local community?

Reach the author at marklapidus1@gmail.com. Read more great promotion, content and management articles from Mark Lapidus at www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/promo-power.

Comment on this or any article to radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject line.

The post What’s the Right Tone on COVID-19? appeared first on Radio World.

A rendering of the new satellite

A new satellite serving SiriusXM is in orbit and “performing properly” after a Sunday launch.

That announcement was made by the company along with Maxar Technologies, which built the satellite, and SpaceX, which launched it.

The SXM-7 ready for launch in an image from SpaceX.

The satellite is SXM-7 and it has an expected service life of 15 years. There are five other active satellites in the company’s constellation, but SXM-7 and SXM-8 — which is scheduled to launch next year — will replace XM-3 and XM-4.

“SXM-7, a high-powered digital audio radio satellite, was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.,” the companies announced.

“Shortly afterward, SXM-7 deployed its solar arrays and began receiving and sending signals. Next, SXM-7 will begin firing its thrusters to commence its journey to its final geostationary orbit.”

“SXM-7 will deliver the highest power density of any commercial satellite on-orbit, sending more than 8,000 watts of content to the continental U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, increasing the power and reach of the signal for SiriusXM,” they stated.

The announcement was made by Megan Fitzgerald, Maxar’s senior vice president of space programs delivery;

Bridget Neville, SiriusXM’s senior vice president of satellite and repeater systems engineering and operations; and Lee Rosen, SpaceX’s vice president of customer operations and integration.

 

 

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The author is president of Nova Electronics in Dallas, Texas.

A serious consideration for AM revitalization is being overlooked. Rather than promoting digital, which is still not ready for prime time, how about making changes in facilities a little more friendly?

One way is to get rid of the three-channel rule, which has outlived its usefulness. Many stations are going dark, but the band is still too crowded for most stations to move within that range. In order to reduce interference and improve coverage (which the FCC claims is of high importance, but doesn’t seem to practice), a station may have a frequency available that accomplishes all the above but is outside the range; and waivers are nearly impossible to receive. 

At present you have to wait for an AM filing window, which may not happen for years to decades (the last one was over 20 years ago), in order to make a move outside the three channels. 

There is no good reason for this, with the number of stations recently going dark, whereby a struggling station could improve their coverage and reduce current interference if such a move were allowed. 

Another factor would be to allow more stations into the expanded band. There are only 52 stations across the nation in the entire expanded band, making it an additional resource that is being vastly underutilized. 

Keep adequate protections between stations so as not to overcrowd the band, and allow this underpopulated territory to be used for improving the AM band, which was the primary motivation for its creation. 

These simple changes can be made with no real costs or changes in regulatory structure required. Unfortunately that seems to be the exact opposite of what government does. 

 

The post Letter: Drop the Three-Channel Rule appeared first on Radio World.

Jerry Del Colliano, rear, with NYU students. “Go to any college campus,” he said. “To them Spotify is the new radio.”

Perhaps nothing spreads through the U.S. commercial radio industry’s C-suites faster than some juicy water cooler talk from Jerry Del Colliano.

Clippings from Del Colliano’s online newsletter often bash the corporate strategies of iHeartMedia and Entercom. But the publisher of Inside Music Media doesn’t see himself as a critic of the leadership at those companies.

“I don’t do it to be critical. I do it because I love the radio industry,” Del Colliano said.

Nevertheless he has called iHeartMedia a “zombie” company that exists simply to keep up with debt payments. He believes Entercom is on a path toward voluntary reorganization or bankruptcy in 2022 unless it quickly recovers from the economic chaos of COVID-19. He says Cumulus is living on a “hall pass” from the financial markets due to the pandemic.

Del Colliano also has been critical of the NAB, calling the group “National Assassination of Broadcasting,” and has castigated the Federal Communications Commission for radio deregulation that he feels has allowed major broadcast groups to shed countless jobs.

“Think about this: Radio broadcasters no longer need a local presence in their market of license. What a wonderful thing for radio broadcasters,” Del Colliano says sarcastically. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Making a mess of it”

It’s clear to followers that Del Colliano speaks with a passion about an industry he grew up in.

He began his broadcast career working on air for the campus radio station while a student at Temple University. He worked in radio and TV programming and management in Philadelphia for years and is the former owner and publisher of trade publication Inside Radio.

Now he is a professor at NYU Steinhardt Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions Music Business Program. He also has taught at the University of Southern California.

The New Jersey native often writes in his newsletter with a particular focus on the actions of major broadcast groups that he believes have doomed the radio business.

“iHeartMedia, Entercom and Cumulus are making a mess of it right now. This is not the radio industry we are capable of being. It’s not a radio industry that’s going to survive,” Del Colliano said.

“It’s an industry that has been hijacked by a bunch of carpetbagger private equity people who have gone in and wrecked it.”

Sweeping programming changes introduced recently by iHeartMedia and Entercom to use out-of-market voicetracking to replace local on-air talent in many markets have been a frequent target of his ire.

“It’s the assassination of live shows in just about any daypart. These groups claim they are improving the local product by using regional or national syndicated talent and centralizing operations, but being local wins every time,” he said.

He says the beginnings of the radio industry’s troubles can be traced to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed for mass radio consolidation.

“I don’t think radio has been a business that has done well with consolidation,” he said. “Just look at it. Who can say that consolidation has been good for the industry?”

He feels he can point directly to why radio began to fail.

“The thing that made radio bulletproof is the exact thing these big groups have eliminated: being live and local. iHeartMedia and Entercom run up billions of dollars in debt, they cut back, they eliminate talent and they do programmatic selling. It’s as if they are looking for ways to destroy themselves.”

In fact, Del Colliano isn’t afraid to name names when it comes to the management of radio portfolios.

“David Field at Entercom is about as qualified to run a radio group as I am to be in private equity. He botched the CBS Radio merger. I mean everyone wanted CBS Radio. How do you screw that up? And that was before COVID-19 so he can’t blame that,” he said.

Going around the horn, Del Colliano says of Mary Berner at Cumulus: “She’s a very nice person, but she is from a private equity background. She is at Cumulus because she knew how to get them through bankruptcy, not operate them as a successful radio group.”

As for iHeartMedia, Del Colliano says he believes the cost-cutting by Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman only invited John Malone of Liberty Media to come in and position himself to “steal the company for pennies on the dollar. And (Malone) will run it on the cheap like we have never seen before.”

Liberty Media Corp, which already controls Sirius XM and Pandora, has a 5 percent stake in iHeartMedia, but in July the U.S. Department of Justice gave its permission for Liberty Media to increase its shares in iHeartMedia up to 50 percent.

“And you know how this is going to go. Do I have to spell this out to you? Liberty Media buys distressed properties. Pandora was distressed. Sirius XM was distressed. They get a few board seats and boom they will have their own people running iHeartMedia.

“Then he will gut it. It will operate with so few people you can’t believe. And he’ll use a lot of the programming strategies of satellite radio to program a terrestrial group of stations. No local staff and national formats piped into all the 800 and some radio stations. There will be further homogenization of radio,” he said.

“It was never personal”

Del Colliano teaches media, music discovery, streaming and immersive technologies at NYU, mostly via Zoom these days. In his class “Music in the Media Business,” he says young students tell him they have no need for radio.

“Go to any college campus. To them Spotify is the new radio. In fact, just look at people under 30 years old. Look at the next new car when you buy it. People are more worried about getting the Apple CarPlay to work than finding the radio in the dash.”

And AM radio has been left to die, Del Colliano said, despite recent “revitalization” actions by the FCC.

“(AM) is not sustainable. You have major broadcast groups now turning off their stations. I don’t think all-digital is a way forward when you render all analog radios obsolete.”

Del Colliano thinks AM could have become a podcast platform.

“Radio really missed an opportunity. All of these different shows featuring only the spoken voice. It would have been perfect for AM, but instead the big radio groups wanted Premiere’s Rush Limbaugh on their AM stations coast to coast. It’s exactly that type of programming on AM that caused podcasting.

“And I don’t buy the sound quality argument that AM just doesn’t sound good enough. Most people listen to podcasts through tiny earbuds.”

The internet pool that entertainment platforms are playing in now is so huge and so fragmented, Del Colliano says, Gen Z might not miss radio if it went away entirely.

“Young people would never trade Spotify or Apple Music for radio. They would sooner have playlists and the systems that are in place today. Over-the-air radio is still so antiquated,” he said.

Del Colliano says he often receives anonymous tips with information on the dealings of the major radio groups.

“But you might be surprised that I get a lot of the information from the people I write about. CEOs are fascinating people. They like to talk about themselves and each other. I have built a lot of trust with them. They know I will vet the information they give me,” Del Colliano said.

In fact, he calls Cumulus’ Berner “a friend” and even remains friendly with former Cumulus Media CEO Lew Dickey, who was often a target of Del Colliano’s scorn until he left the company five years ago.

“I skewered him bad, but it was never personal. Lew has spoken to my class at NYU. I use his book ‘The New Modern Media’ in my class. I just disagreed with the way he ran Cumulus.”

Del Colliano predicts radio groups that maintain a local presence will eventually enjoy better ratings and increased revenue compared to those who centralize operations. He mentioned Hubbard, Saga, Beasley and Alpha Media as examples.

“And that’s because those stations will continue to do what radio does best: be live and local. They’ll have programmers in the local markets. They’ll have sales people in the local markets.”

But he insists it will take an industrywide effort for radio to survive.

“It’s going to be a big lift. It’s going to take more than one person to turn the industry around. It’ll take a number of people who decide the right way to move forward is decentralizing the corporate structure of programming and sales and making radio local again,” Del Colliano said.

He concluded: “Then perhaps the greed of the consolidators might end and help radio save itself from private equity mismanagement.”

RW welcomes comment on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject field.

The post No Soft Edges From Jerry Del Colliano appeared first on Radio World.

Looking into 2021, the WorldDAB Automotive Working Group plans to work with vehicle manufacturers and broadcasters to help develop DAB+ guidelines using voice control as part of hybrid radio in vehicles

This is particularly important given that a new EECC Directive requires all new passenger cars in the EU be capable of receiving digital terrestrial radio.

[Read: Metadata: Keeping Radio Strong in the Car]

The resultant guidelines will expand the existing WorldDAB User Experience (UX) Design Guidelines.

Expected efforts will focus on practices such as changing stations and searching for them through voice, allowing eyes to remain viewing the road.

Parties wishing to contribute to the new UX guidelines’ sections on voice control and hybrid can contact the WorldDAB Project Office.

 

The post WorldDAB Looking at Voice Control in the Car appeared first on Radio World.

In our latest issue, David Bialik comments on why CMAF HLS matters for radio streamers. Pam Johnston explains why WGBH in Boston dropped the “W” in its branding. David Antoine flips through the pages of “Radio’s Second Century,” a compilation of essays about radio. Jacob Daniluck offers hints on how to get the most out of your Tieline ViA codec. And group owner Gary Fisher relates how Equity Communications in New Jersey has reinvented itself thanks to the pandemic.

Read it online here.

Prefer to do your reading offline? No problem! Simply click on the digital edition, go to the left corner and choose the download button to get a PDF version.

On the Air

What’s the Right Tone on COVID-19?

For radio programmers, understanding attitudes can be a tricky business.

News Maker

No Soft Edges From Jerry Del Colliano

The newsletter author regularly dishes scorn on the actions of big commercial U.S. radio companies.

Also in this issue:

• Workbench: More on the STL Support Pole
• Book Takes Scholarly Look at Radio
• Putting CMAF HLS to Work in Audio

 

The post Inside the Dec. 9 2020 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.

Country music is getting into the holiday spirit and CMT Radio affiliates and open markets are invited to join in.

A virtual holiday party benefiting children’s hospitals and hosted by country music personalities will be part of a four-hour radio special hosted by Seacrest Studios. The program “Home for the Holidays with CMT’s Cody Alan” can be downloaded on Dec. 14 by affiliates to air any time during the holidays.

[Read: Ryan Seacrest Foundation Opens Studio in Nashville]

Cody Alan and female country trio Runaway June participated in the benefit, which was held at Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt in Nashville. Young patients and their families at the hospital were treated to an interview with Runaway June, a live performance of their current single “We Were Rich” and songs from their new Christmas album.

The virtual event will also feature conversations with country music stars including Dolly Parton, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, Maren Morris and others. The program will include stories of Christmas memories, favorite gifts and family traditions, along with a mix of holiday-themed songs. Highlights will air on CMT’s “Hot 20 Countdown” on Dec. 19 and 20.

The Ryan Seacrest Foundation was founded in 2009 and its first initiative was to build broadcast media centers within pediatric hospitals around the country. Those centers are now in Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Nashville, Orange County, Orlando, Philadelphia and Washington.

 

The post CMT Radio Virtual Holiday Party to Benefit Children’s Hospitals appeared first on Radio World.

Edita Kudláčová has been selected to be the new head of radio for the European Broadcast Union.

She is a 12-year veteran of the central European national broadcaster, having risen to chief content producer.

Kudláčová is a member of the EBU’s New Radio Group and, prior to that, the International Relations Radio Group until 2016.

She said, “I’m passionate about radio and audio and I believe strongly in the power of these mediums to create fantastic content and in their potential to innovate and develop. I’m really looking forward to working with the team at the EBU.”

Her laurels include first prize for Best European Online Project at the 2019 Prix Europa for “1968 Project,” an initiative that also won the Journalism Award in the category for best online journalism. She also claimed first prize for best public service podcast with “Turn The Lights Off!” in the 2018 Podcast of the Year awards.

She takes over from Graham Dixon, who is retiring at the end of the year.

EBU Director of Media Jean Philip De Tender said, “Edita is already well known to our community, having been highly visible in the New Radio Group and at our industry events. Her track record in innovation, inspiring creativity and delivering award-winning projects makes her a dynamic addition to the EBU Media Management team.”

Director General, Czech Radio and Vice-Chair of the EBU Radio Committee René Zavoral said, “Edita has championed change and innovation at Czech Radio and developed new ideas and concepts into concrete projects, which have been instrumental in the overall transformation of the organization. We’re delighted that her talent has been recognized with the Head of Radio role, but we’ll miss her collaborative spirit, her energy and her passion for everything audio.”

 

The post Kudláčová Named to Run EBU’s Radio Operation appeared first on Radio World.

Time has run out for a Florida broadcaster who saw its construction permit revoked and its call letters deleted after a series of weather delays and procedural errors.

Florida Community Radio was issued a construction permit with a three-year window to build station WRBD(FM) in 2015. But a series of storms and rule changes delayed that construction as FCR faced off against the effects of Hurricane Irma and the commission’s decision to eliminate the main studio rule for radio stations. FCR requested a six-month extension of the deadline, which was granted by the Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau. Before the end of that extension FCR applied to modify its permit to operate on a different tower. The bureau granted that request as well.

[Read: FCC Rejects Appeal From Florida FM Applicant]

Then came Hurricane Michael in October 2018. FCR requested another extension based on the effects of the storm surge and flooding in Horseshoe Beach, Fla., where FCR planned to build its NCE station. The new extension deadline was moved to June 2019.

A third request came in April 2019 when FCR asked for additional time to perform an analysis of whether the station’s power lines should be underground as well as a structural analysis of the potential impact of a future Category 5 storm on the station’s antenna. Before handing out another extension, the Media Bureau asked FCR for information showing a direct connection between Hurricane Michael and the licensee’s inability to construct the station by the June 2019 deadline, but the Media Bureau said FCR did not provide any information.

As a result, the bureau denied FCR’s third request for an extension. The bureau also noted that the analyses that FCR wanted to perform could have been done well within the extended construction term.

FCR responded with a petition of reconsideration (which was denied) and an application for review (which was denied). In the application for review, the bureau rejected FCR’s new stance that argued that the new tower site was in a designated floodplain. The bureau also denied portions of the FCR petition that claimed that an additional extension was warranted. “We noted that FCR had not made any showing that Hurricane Michael continued to cause delays in construction, and that FCR had not made any construction progress,” the bureau said.

Advancing to 2020, the commission dismissed FCR’s latest petition based on procedural issues. The commission rules state that when the Media Bureau denies an application for review, the follow up petition for reconsideration will only be considered if the petition offers updated facts that relate to the event. The FCC said the arguments that FCR makes in its 2020 petition do not meet those requirements.

In its 2020 petition, FCR argued that the commission should establish longer extensions for permitees faced with back-to-back weather emergencies like the ones FCR faced with Hurricanes Irma and Michael. It also argued that the commission failed to establish adequate policies on increasing minority ownership of radio and TV stations.

But the FCC said that none of those arguments fall under the category of “circumstances which have changed,” which is what the FCC is looking for within a petition of reconsideration filing.

As a result, the commission dismissed FCR’s petition for reconsideration and updated its records to reflect that the construction permit for WRBD has now officially expired.

 

The post Florida Licensee Sees Construction Permit Revoked After Procedural Missteps appeared first on Radio World.

The society presented Poray with his own bobblehead depicting him in the SBE booth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Executive Director James Ragsdale comes on board in January.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Gary Koster, Gerhard Straub and Macon Dail at the Greenville, N.C., Transmitting Station. Photo: VOA

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

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

[Read: DRM Advanced Radio for All]

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Just in time for last minute Christmas shopping, the “Global Radio Guide” from Teak Publishing is available in its new, 15th edition.

Gayle Van Horn’s treasure for the shortwave aficionado “dives into how and where to hear exotic shortwave stations transmitting in the world’s tropical radio bands.”

A release add, “[T]hese stations serve as a window into the culture and daily lives of countries not served by large international broadcast stations. Even in an increasingly connected and digital world, for many of the citizens in these countries, these radio stations serve as the only source of news and information they have at their disposal.”

The guide features 24-hour station/frequency guide with schedules for selected AM band, longwave, and shortwave radio stations; hourly schedules for all language services, frequencies, and world target areas for over 500 stations worldwide; listings of DX radio programs and internet website addresses for many stations, time and frequency stations as well as other odd signals in the shortwave ether.

In addition to contributions of Van Horn, W4GVH, Ken Reitz and Fred Waterer of Spectrum Monitor along with Larry Van Horn add significant content.

The “Global Radio Guide” is available as an ebook for $8.99.

The post Latest Edition of Global Radio Guide Available appeared first on Radio World.

SiriusXM announced a new automotive partner for its 360L hybrid radio platform.

The company said Maserati has made SiriusXM with 360L a standard feature in its 2021 vehicles in the United States.

“Maserati becomes the first manufacturer to make SiriusXM with 360L a standard feature in its vehicles,” it stated.

Like other hybrid radio systems, the 360L platform combines satellite and streaming content delivery. The company highlights its personalization and on-demand benefits not available in the more familiar one-way satellite service.

SiriusXM has made 360L-related announcements with other carmakers this year including BMW, GM and Audi.

Maserati owners will get a 12-month trial subscription to SiriusXM’s All Access package.

[Related: “Entercom Joins the DTS Connected Radio Ecosystem”]

The post Maserati Signs on for SiriusXM 360L appeared first on Radio World.