Radio World

The percentage of women serving as radio general managers in the largest U.S. media markets shows “strong growth year over year,” according to the organization Mentoring and Inspiring Women in Radio.

In the top 100 markets, the percentage continues to run higher than the national average. In 2021, about 24% of stations in these larger markets were managed by women, up from about 22% the year before.

Overall, MIW finds that about 21% of stations in 2021 had women in the general manager position. “This is an increase of almost a full percentage point from 2020 … Notably, this number continues to show consistent growth from 2004, when the percentage of female general managers was only 14.9%.”

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The study is based on data about roughly 11,000 AM and FM radio stations in the United States, as accounted for by PrecisionTrak.

“Overall, the best management opportunities for women in radio continue to be in sales management,” MIW said. About 34% of stations had a female sales manager, basically flat from 2020.

“The greatest challenge for women in radio management continues to be in the area of program directors/brand managers.” Women currently program about 12% of stations, again basically flat.

The organization does not report the number of women in technical management positions.

MIW Board President Ruth Presslaff was quoted saying, “If the glass is half full, we should celebrate any upward movement, even if it’s incremental, as jobs continue to be eliminated in the continuing pandemic. However, it’s disappointing that the glass isn’t filling faster for those in programming and MIW is paying close attention to this issue.”

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Dick Pickens is being remembered as a consulting engineer, ABIP inspector and DJ.

His passing at age 85 was noted by the Texas Association of Broadcasters.

Pickens owned technical consulting company Microcom Systems Inc. One of its specialties, according to its website, was measuring, building, servicing and signal measuring AM and AM directional radio stations.

As one of the first four inspectors in Texas under the the Alternative Broadcast Inspection Program in Texas, Pickens helped hundreds of broadcast stations with FCC rule compliance.

Before he started his company in the 1980s, he had already been a top-rated deejay, program manager, production person, AV producer, radio chief engineer and teacher of broadcasting at the University of Texas College of Communication.

The TAB writes that Pickens began in broadcasting at the age of 10. He and nine-year-old Ben Laurie launched the “Keebie Kids” Saturday morning live children’s radio program on KEBE(AM) Jacksonville in 1946.

He met his future wife Nancy when she performed a piano piece on the program. The couple celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary last year, TAB noted.

Pickens began his DJ career in the 1950s with the air name Dick Laine, eventually joining the Gordon McLendon group of stations. He interviewed rock ’n’ rollers on-air and became a PD and DJ for the original KOKE(AM) in Austin. He later moved to top 40 station KNOW(AM) Austin. The Texas Radio Hall of Fame inducted him as Dick Laine in 2012.

“Throughout his on-air years, he expanded his knowledge of the engineering side of broadcasting, eventually earning his Amateur Radio license and in 1964 his FCC First Class commercial radio operator license,” according to the TAB. “He worked up to an Amateur Radio Extra Class License in 1975 with the call sign K5UD.”

In the 1970s he created, built and managed a radio common carrier business for which he had to learn to create computer programs; he designed and installed a number of radio studios and transmitter sites, according to the MSI website.

He later earned bachelor and master of divinity degrees from Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. “He was a man of great Christian faith who also would use his broadcast experience to assist several Texas religious broadcasters over the years,” TAB wrote.

“In 1997, he became one of the four original TAB ABIP inspectors. For the next 25 years, Dick and Nancy traveled throughout Texas, inspecting hundreds of radio and television stations throughout the state, helping stations achieve compliance with FCC regulations,” TAB wrote. “Nancy served as the team’s Public Inspection File specialist.”

A memorial service is planned for March 5 in Spicewood, Texas.

The post Texas Broadcasters Remember Dick Pickens appeared first on Radio World.

Colorado community station KAFM has joined the VuHaus Group’s “NPR Live Sessions” project. The Grand Junction, Colo.-based station will have a page on the project site featuring unquie, local music video content.

The non-profit Grand Valley Public Radio Co. Inc. owns the volunteer-run KAFM, which is heard on 88.1 MHz in Grand Junction and 96.9 MHz in Palisade, Colo.

“We are thrilled to be joining so many well-respected radio stations across the country and NPR Music’s ‘Live Sessions’ that support musicians and their craft,” stated Cyrene Jagger, KAFM executive director.

VuHaus is a non-profit organization focused on connecting public radio’s music discovery stations with artists and audiences across the country. It manages the NRP Music “Live Sessions” website, curating music from 21 public radio stations across the county, including WFUV in New York City, KCRW in Los Angeles, WMOT and WNXP in Nashville, and Mountain State in West Virginia.

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Pooja Nair of Xperi Corp. shares test results about the performance of MA3 HD Radio in electric vehicles. David Bialik explains some common streaming terms.

A top consumer electronics official talks about audio industry trends. Workbench explores the Pin 1 Problem.

And Buyer’s Guide looks at tools for remotes and sports coverage, including solutions from AEQ, Comrex, In:Quality, Henry, MaxxKonnect, TASCAM, Telos Alliance and Tieline.

Read it here.

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I have read many of Cris Alexander’s articles over time, but as a practitioner of broadcast engineering arts for 40 years, mostly in the large markets and networks, his article on air chains was an enjoyable must-read, a memory train ride.

I’ve been building stations since the days of deregulation and divestiture in analog, through AES, T-1 and ISDN, then cellular as a viable technology, to where we are with Livewire and the birth of AES67.

For me, AM was already in the past by the early 1970s. We listened to it for school closings and some country music, but by 1973, FM was king, and New York’s WPLJ was where I learned about rock ’n’ roll.

Cris drove us along a multi-lane highway, through tech corridors that divided, converged, intersected, over/underpassed and cloverleafed, via on-ramps and off-ramps of various construction and at various speeds.

Having never been happy to be Yesterday’s Man, I’ve tried to push the envelope on development and use of technology, pursuing what Steve Church referred to as the “artful application of science.”

Which brings me to the closing comment Cris made about sending 40 kW down twisted pairs. Why not? Maybe we are already there? The Holy Grail of digital broadcasting has always been pattern replication with audio improvement.

We have at least two technologies that push MPX over twisted pairs or UDP paths on wired and wireless networks. Those cabling standards work at 350 MHz or higher.

In the AV world, twisted pair to coax baluns are already being used for wireless mic, intercom and IFB, usually in fixed installations.

HDBaseT carries A/V and internet and has an extrapolation to carry 100 watts similar to POE.

We stream media over wireless devices. We have a few brands of radiating cable.

I like to say that my imagination is limited only by my budget. While not as efficient as a 40 kW SCPC “broadcast” signal, the technology to broadcast down the wire rather than up a tower is there but stifled by the regulatory climate.

We can build modern networks that feed localized transmitters, powered on POE, that broadcast transmitter location and content identification to receivers that could be directed to what channels are “subscribed” to an “edge recipient” in a given market, and thus achieve pattern replication with improved audio quality and possibly a lower capital and operating cost, some of which could even be a shared burden.

I am not even thinking of SFN, per se. We can achieve 50 kW or more ERP in a managed wireless network just by making good technology decisions. We have video ingested on mesh networks where selected channels are then broadcast over the same mesh to connectionless receivers.

If we can do that citywide for video, it’s only vision and money that prevent the use of such for audio networks.

I suggest that Cris’s 40 kW goal is way closer than we think, and may already be happening. Let’s get that puppy in the dashboard first and work from there.

Ed Bukont, M.Sc., CTS, CSRE, founded E2 Technical Services & Solutions, and is a Radio World contributor.

The post 40 kW Down Twisted Pair? Why Not? appeared first on Radio World.

The author of this commentary is communications systems engineer with Xperi Corp.

As carmakers increase electric vehicle (EV) offerings throughout their lineups, the availability of AM radio to consumers is declining. This is because the effects of electromagnetic interference are more pronounced in EVs than in vehicles with internal-combustion engines (ICEs).

Although the character and severity of this interference can be difficult to model and predict, it is clearly more disruptive to AM radio reception, often causing annoying static and limiting coverage. As a result, some EV manufacturers have begun removing AM radios — but not FM — from their vehicles.

EMI can be suppressed in EVs using well-known mitigation techniques such as shielding cables and electric motors, installing filters and carefully locating electrical components within the vehicle. Within receivers, EMI can be limited by isolating and shielding antenna and RF sections, filtering connections and carefully grounding and placing receiver components.

EV manufacturers that have successfully controlled EMI using these methods continue to provide AM radio services in their vehicles.

Even when analog AM reception is degraded in an EV, it does not necessarily imply that AM HD Radio reception will be similarly affected.

AM HD Radio signals are naturally more resistant to EMI than their analog counterparts. Much of the noise induced on an analog AM signal accumulates over the channel and down the receive chain, passing directly onto the audio. But digital waveforms leverage bit regeneration to allow noiseless reproduction of the audio signal.

Fig. 1: MA3 digital audio coverage in an ICE vehicle

Furthermore, advanced digital signal processing and digital communications techniques ensure that AM HD Radio signals are more robust than analog AM signals. In particular, the coverage of all-digital MA3 core signals significantly exceeds that of analog AM, and the coverage of MA3 enhanced signals is on par with that of analog AM.

Recent field tests supported by Hubbard Broadcasting — using AM HD Radio station WWFD in Frederick, Md. — and NAB PILOT allow comparison of AM analog and all-digital MA3 HD Radio reception performance in ICE vehicles and EVs.

Not surprisingly, signal coverage in ICE vehicles was consistently better than in EVs, presumably because the combustion engine in ICE vehicles emits lower levels of EMI.

Fig. 2: MA3 digital audio coverage in an EV with effective EMI control

Fig. 1 shows MA3 coverage of an OEM ICE vehicle (ICE #2) with solid core digital audio coverage beyond the 0.5 mV/m contour.

However, some EVs also afforded extensive MA3 core digital audio coverage, approaching that of the ICE vehicles, as shown for EV #2 in Fig. 2. This performance can likely be attributed to the application of effective EMI mitigation techniques.

In all vehicles tested, whether ICE or EV, analog audio quality was significantly degraded at the core audio point of failure, corroborating analytical predictions of more robust MA3 core coverage.

When AM radio is included in an EV, its reception performance is highly dependent on the manufacturer’s dedication to EMI control.

Fig. 3: MA3 reception comparison for EVs with good (EV #4) and poor (EV #3) EMI control

Fig. 3 illustrates the potentially wide range of MA3 reception performance among commercially available EVs, as EV #4 digital audio coverage exceeds that of EV #3 by several miles (the length of the pink route is about 25 miles). This difference is likely attributable to superior EMI mitigation techniques in EV #3. Fig. 3 serves as a graphic reminder that automakers who devote sufficient resources to mitigating EMI need not remove AM receivers from their EVs.

In summary, recent analysis and field testing of AM radio reception in EVs lead to the following conclusions:

• EMI generated by EVs can significantly degrade the quality of AM signal reception. Fortunately, as demonstrated in multiple commercial EVs, this harmful interference can be effectively suppressed in both vehicles and receivers using well-known EMI mitigation techniques.
• AM HD Radio signals have been shown — both analytically and experimentally — to be less susceptible to EMI than their analog counterparts. AM all-digital signals are especially robust and provide broader coverage than AM analog signals.
• Automakers are currently removing AM radio services from EVs. They should instead control EMI emissions and offer the superior consumer audio experience afforded by AM all-digital HD Radio technology.

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

The post Control EMI, don’t dump AM receivers appeared first on Radio World.

NAB President/CEO Curtis LeGeyt (NAB Photo by Jay Mallin)

New NAB President/CEO Curtis LeGeyt, appearing at The Media Institute’s Communications Forum, laid out four areas of policy that the association considers priorities — “where policymakers must focus to ensure broadcasters can compete and thrive in the current media environment.”

He said Congress should act to rein in what he called “the gatekeeping ability of the Big Tech giants who are stifling the economics of local news.” NAB supports passage of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which he said would allow stations to jointly negotiate the terms and conditions for their local content when it is accessed through the large tech platforms. “There is simply too much at stake if we don’t confront Big Tech’s online dominance.”

[See Our Business and Law Page]

Second, he said, lawmakers and regulators must modernize media ownership laws to reflect the realities of the marketplace. “A report released last Congress by Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell noted that Google and Facebook control an estimated 77 percent of locally-focused digital advertising. Yet broadcasters still operate under a set of rules that pretend they only compete with one another,” he said.

LeGeyt said Congress and the FCC “must take a fresh look at whether these decades-old regulations are helping or impeding broadcast competition and media diversity.”

Third, he urged the FCC to reorient how it thinks about broadcast policy more broadly.

“It is imperative that the FCC recognize that the broadcast industry’s ability to function in the public interest is fundamentally premised on its economic viability,” he said. “This means the commission must consider whether each existing and new regulation will help or impede broadcasters’ ability to thrive in a media environment dominated by other platforms. It means embracing the tremendous consumer benefits of ATSC 3.0 and adopting policies that enable its growth. And it means the FCC working hand-in-hand with broadcasters, to help us attract leading talent from all backgrounds to ensure our stations better reflect the diversity of the communities we serve … But if broadcast regulatory reforms remain bogged down in all that could go wrong instead of all that could go right, we will not succeed.

And he urged support for the Local Radio Freedom Act, opposing a performance fee on local radio stations that he said would be “financially devastating” to broadcasters and hurt their listeners.

The post LeGeyt: We Must Confront Big Tech’s Online Dominance appeared first on Radio World.

Engineering classes hosted by the Alabama Broadcasters Association will kick off again later this year.

The association will host the 2022 ABA Engineering Academy classes at intervals throughout the year, starting with radio engineering classes March 7–11 and Sept. 12–16. Another double set of classes will cover television engineering issues during April 4–8 and Oct. 3–7.

The classes, which run five days for each session, are open to anyone, not just ABA members, said Larry Wilkins, director of engineering services for ABA, who is a past recipient of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award.

“Before we had to stop in-person classes [due to the pandemic], we had students from across the country, even Alaska,” he said.

Classes will be held in person at the ABA Training Center in Birmingham, Ala.

Day one of the radio engineering classes covers basic electronics. “It is important that someone who works in any type of engineering understand the basics,” he said. The class covers electricity, Ohm’s law, the components used in circuits and the various formulas used in broadcast operations.

Day two covers analog and digital audio basics, including digital audio workstations and processors. The class also covers microphone selection and proper placement. New this year is the introduction of loudness units full scale (LUFS).

“Since we have seen that several engineers are also involved in mixing live audio or recording, we spend some time on audio mixer setup and operation,” Wilkins said. The course includes time in the training center’s digital recording studio with a 32-channel mixing console and digital audio workstation.

Day three covers AM and FM transmitters and antennas, including directional AM arrays and HD Radio. The classes touch on basic transmitter site maintenance, as well as legal requirements.

Day four looks at station operation including installation of EAS systems, background on FCC rules and regulations, required paperwork and technical management as well as good engineering practices. Day five is reserved for those looking to take the SBE certification exam.

“We are aware that attending a class for four or five days will not create a ‘chief engineer’ but our goal is to cover as much of the technical operation [as possible] so that someone that is looking at getting into broadcast engineering can work under a seasoned engineer more comfortably,” Wilkins said. “Also, there may those at a station that would like to learn more about the technical side of the operation and [this] can help with basic issues that come up after attending the class.”

Over the years, he said, the association has seen a number of seasoned engineers attend classes, both as a refresher and as an opportunity to learn about new technology.

The ABA also started a monthly engineering webinar covering various technical subjects that parallel the engineering classes. Those attending the classes can receive credit when recertifying with SBE.

Registration for classes can be found at the ABA website. The association also offers a series of continuing educational classes on a variety of technical areas such as audio production, network protocols and data rates, among other topics. In addition, the association offers seminars throughout the year with special presenters, both in person and on the association’s YouTube channel, found at abaengineeringacademy.

The post New ABA Engineering Classes on Tap appeared first on Radio World.

The FCC and the NTIA say they will be working more closely together on spectrum issues.

The Federal Communications Commission and National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced an initiative intended to improve U.S. government coordination on spectrum management.

“The Spectrum Coordination Initiative will involve actions by both agencies to strengthen the processes for decision making and information sharing and to work cooperatively to resolve spectrum policy issues,” they said in the announcement.

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced the agreement with NTIA Assistant Secretary Alan Davidson.

[Read More of Our FCC Coverage]

“Now more than ever we need a whole-of-government approach to spectrum policy,” Rosenworcel said in the statement. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen the cost of not having one — and we need a non-stop effort to fix that.”

They laid out a plan to reinstate high-level meetings; “reaffirm” roles and responsibilities; and renew efforts to develop a national spectrum strategy. They also said they would “recommit to scientific integrity and evidence-based policymaking” and revamp their technical collaboration.

Among other steps, the FCC will participate as an observer in the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, while NTIA will participate as an observer in the FCC’s Technological Advisory Council and the Communications Security, Reliability, and Interoperability Council.

The organizations wrote: “The FCC and NTIA jointly manage the nation’s radio spectrum resources, and the agencies have a long history of working together to ensure that spectrum policy decisions foster economic growth, ensure our national and homeland security, maintain U.S. global leadership and advance other vital U.S. needs.”

The post FCC, NTIA Seek Better Spectrum Coordination appeared first on Radio World.

In an effort to reflect modern campaign practices and increase transparency, the Federal Communications Commission has updated its rules about political programming and recordkeeping. The change takes effect March 14.

In late January, the Media Bureau at the commission released the order changing the way broadcast licensees, cable TV system operators, DBS providers and satellite radio licensees update their political programming and recordkeeping information.

It expanded the definition of the term “legally qualified candidate for public office” in an effort to better determine if a write-in candidate has made a substantial showing of a bona fide candidacy.

[Related: “FCC Adopts Revised Political Broadcast Rules”]

Generally, in order to be considered a legally qualified candidate, an individual must publicly announce an intention to run for office, as well as be qualified to hold the office and either have qualified for a space on the ballot or have publicly committed themselves to seeking election as a write-in. If they’re seeking election by write-in, they must make a clear, substantial showing that they are actually running for office.

The rule update adds two items to the existing list of activities that a station can use to determine if a write-in candidate has a bona fide candidacy. One is the use of social media; the other is the creation of a campaign website. Other previously listed activities include making campaign speeches, distributing campaign literature, issuing press releases, maintaining a campaign committee and establishing a campaign headquarters.

In its order, the commission also amended its political file rules. It requires entities to maintain not only records of each request for advertising time but also records of each request for advertising time that communicates a message relating to any political matter of national importance.

It also amended the rules to specify which records must be maintained in online political files for both candidate ads and issue ads. These records include:

• whether the request to purchase advertising time is accepted or rejected by the licensee
• the rate charged for the advertising time
• the date and time on which the communication aired
• the class of time that is purchased
• the name of the candidate to which the communication refers and the office to which the candidate is seeking election or the election to which the communication refers or the issue to which the communication refers
• the name of the candidate, the authorized committee of the candidate and the treasurer of such committee
• the name of the person purchasing the time; the name, address and phone number of a contact person; and a list of the chief executive officers or members of the executive committee or of the board of directors of such person

“These revisions ensure that the political recordkeeping rules fully and accurately reflect statutory requirements [and will] foster greater transparency about the entities sponsoring candidate and issue ads,” the commission wrote.

The post FCC Updates Political Programming, Recordkeeping Rules appeared first on Radio World.

Ray Quinn, area president of iHeartMedia’s Alabama area, will retire on March 22.

“Quinn has been with iHeartMedia for 14 years and has worked in the broadcasting industry for over 50 years,” the company said in its announcement.

“He has held leadership positions at several stations throughout his extensive career, including vice president/market manager for KOSI(FM), KALC(FM) and KQMT(FM) in Denver; WMYX(FM), WXSS(FM) and WSSP(AM) in Milwaukee.; WOLX(FM), WMMM(FM) and WBZU(FM) in Madison, Wis.; and many more.”

Among the prior broadcast groups for which he has worked are Entercom, Opus Media Group, American Media and Capitol Broadcasting.

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It noted that the governor of Kentucky had recognized Quinn as a Kentucky Colonel for participating in numerous charitable projects. He was awarded the March of Dimes “Order of the Battered Boot” for walkathon fundraising efforts over the years. Quinn was recruited by the U.S. State Department in 1992 to provide pro bono consulting work to the first companies to be awarded commercial radio and TV licenses in Czechoslovakia and Hungary.

Division President Shosh Abromovich described Quinn as “a unicorn of a leader with his passion, enthusiasm and constant innovative thinking.”

The Alabama area of iHeartMedia includes the Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, Gadsden and Tuscaloosa markets.

Send news of engineering and executive personnel changes to radioworld@futurenet.com.

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A schematic for an Oscilloscope “Circuit Octopus”

You probably have a junk box of components, but can you identify all of them? And do you know whether they all work?

I came across a neat video prepared by amateur radio operator W2AEW, a 10-minute tutorial on checking components. The video gives an example of performing simple component testing using a curve tracer or “Circuit Octopus” and an oscilloscope.

It describes the Octopus, then delves into how to check resistors, diodes, transistors and even capacitors. When feeding an oscilloscope with the test fixture, you can identify open or shorted components. Here’s the link for the video: https://youtu.be/Gwo3pEH7hUE.

There are hundreds of schematics for building your own Octopus. Stephen M. Powell’s design, shown above, is one of the simplest.

Old law, new take
Over the years consultant Frank Hertel has contributed many useful ideas for readers of this column. Frank’s brother, Johnny, likes to delve a little deeper into electronics.

He writes that he recently came across a list of electricity definitions. Most were familiar, but three jumped out at him:

The first is 1 Ohm, which was defined as the resistance of a column of mercury (at the temperature of melting ice) of a uniform cross section of 1 square millimeter and a length of 106.30 centimeters.

One Volt is the electromotive force that produces a current of 1 Ampere when steadily applied to a conductor with the resistance of 1 Ohm.

One Ampere is the unit of current strength. It is the current which, when passed through a solution of nitrate of silver in water (in accordance with certain specifications), deposits silver at the rate of 0.00118 of a gram per second. The flow of electrical current is measured in Amperes or Amps, using an Ammeter.

Kind of relates Ohm’s Law in a new way, doesn’t it?

You need a shrink
A number of years ago, 3M developed a product called Cold Shrink as a weather seal for cabling. Broadcast engineer and frequent contributor Dan Slentz called this line of cable joints and terminations to my attention and wondered why he hadn’t heard of it before now.

3M Cold Shrink pre-stretched tubes effectively seal coax connectors from weather.

When it was released, I recall that each Cold Shrink tube was pretty expensive, much more costly than other forms of connector weather-sealing. Apparently as the product has evolved, its cost has gotten more reasonable.

So what is Cold Shrink tubing? It’s an expanded tubular rubber sleeve, and 3M found a way to stretch the diameter of the tubing so it will fit over an RF connector.

[Check Out More of Workbench Here]

The sleeve is kept in its expanded state with a wound plastic core. After the sleeve is positioned over the connector to be weatherproofed, you unwind the plastic core. As the plastic core is removed, the expanded rubber begins to shrink, forming a constant radial pressure seal around the connector and cable.

An image from the 3M website shows installation of Cold Shrink for an underground cable run.

Originally designed for the power industry, Cold Shrink tubes are ideal for outside RF connections in the broadcast industry. Plus, in addition to protecting connectors, Cold Shrink tubes conform to the water seal requirements of ANSI C119.1.

See the video Dan found at the website of Thorne & Derrick International at www.powerandcables.com/cold-shrink-tubes/.

3M itself has a useful info page that we’ve linked at https://tinyurl.com/rw-coldshrink.

Can you imagine trying to use a torch to heat shrink a standard weatherproofing boot up on a tower? Keep this product in mind for your next tower cable run.

John Bisset, CPBE, has 50 years in the broadcasting industry and is in his 31st year writing Workbench. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance. He is a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award.

Workbench submissions are encouraged and qualify for SBE recertification credit. Email johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Use an Octopus to Check Components appeared first on Radio World.

The E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse (Photo by Paulo JC Nogueira. Used under a Creative Commons license.)

Oral arguments are set for April 12 in the broadcast industry’s lawsuit against the FCC, seeking to overturn the commission’s order mandating disclosures for foreign government-sponsored programming.

On Friday the National Association of Broadcasters, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters filed a reply brief with the federal appeals court. They are the organizations that brought this suit against the FCC.

They say the court should set aside the action because it violates not one but three crucial standards: the Communications Act, the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Among their arguments, the broadcasters say that the FCC order tells stations to engage in “reasonable diligence” to determine the true source of the programming aired on its station, which mandates independent investigation of government websites.

“But the broadcaster’s statutory duty is far narrower,” they said. “Congress required only that each broadcaster ‘shall exercise reasonable diligence to obtain from its employees, and from other persons with whom it deals directly’ information necessary to disclose to the public the person who paid for the programming.” The plaintiffs emphasized the underlined phrase, concluding: “The commission cannot ignore the restrictions Congress has placed upon a broadcaster’s duty of diligence.”

They also criticized “the regulation’s extraordinary reach and sheer pointlessness” and said mandatory investigation “redresses a phantom harm never known to occur: namely, a foreign governmental entity registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act or a U.S.-based foreign media outlet registered under Section 722 of the Communications Act who leased broadcast time without disclosure.”

And they say the rule imposes substantial burdens on thousands of broadcasters to address the phantom harm. It said the FCC’s limited evidence — which in any event concerns no “harms” that the order redresses — can’t justify requiring every commercial broadcast station in the country to conduct independent investigations for every existing and future lease.

[Read the reply brief.]

The rule was approved 4–0 by the commissioners last year. Now, when a broadcaster leases time, they need to ask the “lessee” if they or their programming are from a foreign governmental entity.

“If the answer is yes, a sponsorship identification will need to be placed on air and documented in the station’s public file,” Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote at the time.

“If the answer is no, a broadcaster will need to independently verify the lessee using the Foreign Agent Registration Act website from the Department of Justice and the FCC’s semi-annual foreign media outlet reports.”

The FCC believes that foreign governmental entities are increasingly purchasing time on domestic broadcast stations.

Rosenworcel said last year, “We know that foreign entities are purchasing time on broadcast stations in markets across the country, including Chinese government-sponsored programming and Russian government-sponsored programming right here in our nation’s capital.”

The post Broadcasters Reiterate Opposition to Disclosure Rule appeared first on Radio World.

We’re starting to hear from companies about their exhibit plans for the NAB Show in April.

RCS — which will be located in the new West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center — says it has expanded remote features throughout its product line, focusing on the user experience and automating everyday tasks.

Zetta automation has a revamped Zetta2GO Voice Tracker with Zetta tools like volume points, trim in and trim out. The platform now has multiple Zetta themes, performance improvements for scalability, Virtual Events (identifying multiple assets within a single long-form file) and redesigned Hot Keys.

New Zetta2GO features include expanded drag and drop, keyboard navigation with Windows shortcut functionality, and F1 dynamic help.

[Read more stories about the 2022 NAB Show.]

RCS Cloud will be another focus of the RCS booth. The company calls it a true disaster recovery cloud solution, written for and on Amazon Web Services, following best practices and securities. “RCS Cloud disaster recovery can not only back up your audio, logs, metadata, and SQL backups, securely with Zetta’s built in Site Replication service, but we’ve also incorporated business friendly workflows.”

New GSelector 5.0 got a subtle thematic facelift, the company said, with the addition of new themes, scalable icons and a user-customized Song/Link Window, allowing users to organize and hide or display metadata based on multiple layouts.

“Programmers can already view and schedule their time granularity by hours and minutes, but now, with GSelector’s Flex Clocks, users can build their clocks and grids down to the minute or a single clock up to 24 hours a day, allowing for endless programming opportunities to save time and efficiently.”

Selector2GO allows users to add or edit elements, adjust clocks, schedule and massage logs, and analyze their spins.

RCS also highlights Aquira, its CRM, sales and traffic solution; RCS News, a centralized location for reporters to monitor RSS news feeds and email accounts, customize alerts for breaking news, define sub-categories and create and edit rundowns or audio; and Revma, a content delivery network infrastructure.

RCS Booth: W5222

The post NAB Show: RCS Powers Up Its Remote Features appeared first on Radio World.

Software company WinMedia named Florin Velea-Grumezea as its new sales manager.

“Florin’s expertise in broadcast has enabled him to acquire knowledge of all broadcast products, from studio to transmitter,” the company stated.

WinMedia said it is managing an increasing number of turnkey projects that require knowledge of IP audio and NDI for video. Velea-Grumezea is also expected to help the company grow its business in countries in Eastern Europe.

The announcement was made by CEO Stéphane Tesoriere, who said that Velea-Grumezea “will continue the prospecting work that we launched three years ago and which is proving to be a real success with many customers who have trusted us with the modernization of their radio from audio-only to visual.”

See more recent People News coverage.

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Alexander Leschinsky

G&L has joined RadioDNS.

“We want to help bringing the right radio content to each listener on the device of their choice,” said co-founder and Managing Director Alexander Leschinsky in the announcement, citing the company’s experience in hybrid radio metadata and IP distribution.

RadioDNS promotes the growth of hybrid radio globally through its open-source standards. The organization will hold its annual general assembly later this month.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

G&L Geißendörfer & Leschinsky GmbH is headquartered in Cologne, Germany, and has offices in Berlin and Munich, as well as Pleasanton, Calif., in the United States. It offers solutions for processing and delivery of media content, and says its customers include providers of CDN services, vendors of players and encoders, and service providers for monitoring and controlling IT systems.

“G&L is a trusted partner to the German public service broadcasters, who represent a large amount of radio listening in Germany, the most populous country, and will be providing RadioDNS services for them,” according to the announcement.

Another recent new member is Hubbard Radio. The RadioDNS website has a list of members, which include familiar major media names like the BBC, NPR and the European Broadcasting Union.

The post G&L Joins RadioDNS appeared first on Radio World.

The FCC has issued a ruling in a dispute over a construction permit to move a FM translator in the city’s historic Beacon Hill area.

The WGBH Education Foundation, licensee of non-commercial WGBH(FM) in Boston, in June of 2020, filed a modification application to move the existing WGBH translator (W242AA) to a new site immediately adjacent to its licensed site in the city. WGBH also proposed a non-adjacent channel change from Channel 242 to Channel 247, and explained the swap would eliminate contour overlap with first-adjacent channel full-service WSRS(FM), licensed to Worcester, Mass.

It was the request to move the WGBH FM translator channel that would begin a domino effect and bring on a flurry of FCC filings by several other radio groups.

To start the FCC’s Media Bureau granted the WGBH modification request on June 24, 2020. The next day Beanpot License Corp., which owns WXRV(FM) at 92.5 MHz in Andover Mass., filed a request with the FCC to modify the facilities of its FM translator station Channel W243DC in Needham, Mass., to take advantage of the vacated WGBH channel on Chanel 242.

Then WJFD-FM Inc., licensee of full-service WJFD(FM) in New Bedford, Mass., in July 2020, filed a petition for reconsideration of the WGBH translator modification CP on the basis it would cause predicted interference to WJFD at 97.3 MHz.

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WGBH subsequently submitted a cancellation letter a month later to the Media Bureau stating it intended to stay put in its existing location and continue operating its translator on Chanel 242. Beanpot then objected to WGBH’s cancellation letter.

Beanpot in its argument supporting its objection to the of the WGBH translator modification cancellation cited several previous bureau decisions to support its claim that “once the FCC grants a translator modification application, the applicant must carry out the approved channel change and has at best an implied STA to continue operating on its original frequency while it constructs the new facility,” according to the Beanpot filing.

The back and forth between the parties continued with WGBH writing in its reply to the FCC “it has chosen not to change channels because information provided by WJFD has demonstrated to WGBH that it would not be practical for [the translator] to be built out on Channel 247.”

However, Beanpot continued to press the FCC to force WGBH to complete work on its new translator within the terms of its construction permit. “Beanpot disputes the validity of the predicted interference showing submitted by the WJFD application,” the broadcaster wrote.

Beanpot, which bills its WXRV(FM) as “Boston’s Independent Radio,” further argued that WGBH failed to formally serve the broadcaster with its CP cancellation letter in a timely fashion.

WGBH in Nov. 2020 attempted to resurrect its FM translator CP and move to the new site but to remain on the existing Channel 242 and at a lower power (3 watts ERP). In its second modification application, WGBH insisted its proposed transmitter facilities would not cause any prohibited contour overlap with the licensed Beanpot translator.

The NPR affiliate stated: “[The] proposed WGBH translator facilities would comply with respect to the first adjacent channel facility authorized in the Beanpot Modification Application because the area of existing overlap between the proposed WGBH Translator and the proposed Beanpot Translator would not increase as compared to the existing overlap between the licensed WGBH Translator and the proposed Beanpot Translator (in fact, would slightly decrease).”

Beanpot within a day filed an informal objection to WGBH’s second modification application.

Albert Shuldiner, chief of the FCC’s Audio Division, in a letter last week rejected Beanpot’s objections to WGBH’s cancellation letter and WGHB’s second modification application. The finding granted WGBH’s second modification application and appears to give the green light to WGBH to complete its FM translator move to the new facility site and remain on Channel 242.

It’s not clear from the FCC filings whether Beanpot License Corp. will proceed with its proposed modification request to switch FM translator channels.

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

The post FCC Rules in Dispute Over Boston Translator Move appeared first on Radio World.

Chuck Kelly has retired.

“Since the summer of 1973, all I’ve wanted to do was be involved with radio,” he wrote on LinkedIn. Forty-eight years later, he can say he met his goal.

Having worked early in his career as a jock, PD, news director and chief engineer for stations in Colorado and Illinois, Kelly moved into technology sales in 1980 by going to work for 3M, where he was sales manager of International Tapetronics for eight years.

From 1988 to 2006 he was with Broadcast Electronics, a face of the company to the international market as its director of international sales. He then went to Nautel and worked there for 13 years as director of sales and later regional sales manager for the Asia/Pacific region.

In 2019 he rejoined Broadcast Electronics, which was under the new ownership of Elenos Group, as vice president of market development. His last day was Friday.

Kelly also is a longtime member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers and was its president for two terms.

“Thank you to the folks who worked beside me and had endless patience with my mistakes as well as my enthusiasm,” Kelly wrote on LinkedIn. Thank you to the customers, business partners and friends from more than 120 countries in every corner of the world, I can never forget you.”

“While I won’t be working 8 to 5 anymore, I have several consulting gigs lined up to stay busy, and will hopefully continue my association with SBE Chapter 25 here in Indianapolis, as well as with the Holy Spirit at Geist 9:30 a.m. choir,” he wrote. “And I plan to fire up W9MDO on HF and DMR from time to time. I hope to catch you down the log.”

[Read Chuck Kelly’s 2018 commentary “Radio Matters, Here’s Why”]

The post Chuck Kelly Retires appeared first on Radio World.

The authors are, respectively, senior product manager and evangelist at ALC NetworX, and business development manager, OEM & Partnerships, at Ross Video.

Bill Rounopoulos (left) and Andreas Hildebrand

Remote production is clearly a hot topic today, as companies around the world race to maintain their existing workflows with their talent dispersed in many off-site locations. Such production is the new normal and — now that we have experienced its potential — is likely to continue to be a focus in the future.

While many solutions have been hastily cobbled together, there is a need for higher-quality productions with lower latency that integrate easily with existing equipment.

Starting Point
We started with a basic question: Can we send Ravenna/AES67 traffic over the public infrastructure and over long distances?

Then we wondered, would we be able to listen to something resembling audio? Would it be good quality?

It is one thing for a single company with their own equipment to do it, but could we also interoperate with equipment from other companies? After all, this is the whole point behind Ravenna and AES67.

Finally, we also wondered how we would do it and what challenges would we face.

Before digging into the setup and challenges that needed to be overcome, it is important to understand that Ravenna and AES67, even though they use IP, are designed to be used in local-area networks (LANs).

Despite this, Ravenna and AES67 have been proven and are being used commercially in wide-area network applications across private networks, even though their use in WANs was never contemplated by the standards.

Private dedicated networks, whether owned or leased, are well-architected, have predictable behavior and come with performance guarantees.

Public networks, on the other hand, are the equivalent of the “wild west.” You can’t control them. They are congested and unpredictable. Public networks suffer from packet loss due to link failures and have large, sometimes dramatic, latency due to packet re-transmissions.

This makes the public environment hostile for Ravenna and AES67!

Challenges
There are three main challenges: latency and packet jitter; packet loss; timing and synchronization.

Fortunately, the increased latency and packet jitter of the public network is handled by Ravenna by design, through the use of large receiver buffers that must be able to handle a minimum of 20 mS. AES67 only requires 3 mS but also recommends 20 mS.

Most well-designed Ravenna solutions, like all the equipment used in this experiment, have even bigger buffers and other associated techniques that can compensate for the added delay.

The AES Standard Committee working group SC-02-12-M is working on guidelines for AES67 over WAN applications, and a key recommendation is to increase the buffer size within devices.

Packet loss is another important challenge. Ravenna and AES67 are not designed to cope with dropped packets.

Fortunately, there are other transport protocols that are architected to deal with dropped packets without introducing a lot of extra latency. These include Secure Reliable Transport (SRT), Zixi and Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST), but there are many others.

We solved the challenge of packet loss by using SRT encapsulating Ravenna traffic within SRT.

The final but significant challenge is timing and synchronization. We start by having a separate Precision Time Protocol (PTP) Grandmaster (GM) at each site that is synchronized to GPS. All equipment at each location is locked to PTP locally in order to maintain synchronization among all participating devices. No PTP packets are sent across the WAN or through the cloud, which would simply not be practical as packet jitter is too high to achieve adequate synchronization precision.

The Demo Setup
These musings resulted in an ambitious proof-of-concept demo involving equipment from three Ravenna partners — Ross, Merging Technologies and DirectOut — across four sites over two continents, North America and Europe, that leverages the public cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services, or AWS.

Fig. 1: Block Diagram of Demo Setup

The Fig. 1 graphic gives a generalized view of the demo setup. Ross equipment in Ottawa, Canada, interfaced with AWS Virginia, while the Merging and DirectOut setups in Grenoble, France, Lausanne, Switzerland and Mittweida, Germany communicated with AWS Frankfurt.

On-site in Ottawa, Mittweida, Lausanne and Grenoble, various Ravenna/AES67 gear from Ross Video, DirectOut and Merging was used to create and receive standard AES67 streams. Gateways on the local networks were used to wrap these AES67 streams into SRT flows, which in turn were handed off to the AWS cloud access points using the public internet.

The flows were then transported within the AWS cloud between the access points, from where they were handed off (secured by SRT) to the local SRT gateways via public internet again. The gateways unwrapped the AES67 streams so that they appeared unchanged in the local destination networks and could be received by the Ravenna devices.

All SRT gateways were built from Haivision’s open-source SRT implementation. While Ross Video and Merging used separate host machines to run the SRT gateways, DirectOut was able to include the gateway functionality into their Prodigy.MP Multi-I/O converter.

Since all Ravenna devices were synchronized to the same time source via GPS, the generated streams received exact RTP timestamps that were transparently transported through the cloud, so that a deterministic and stable playout latency and inter-stream alignment could be configured at the receiving ends. Since streams were not processed or altered in the cloud or by the SRT gateways, the audio data was bit-transparently passed through with full quality.

Since any packet loss was coped with by the SRT protocol, a higher latency setting needed to be configured to accommodate the larger packet delay variation (PDV) due to occasional packet retransmission.

Thankfully, the Ravenna receiver devices used in this demo provided ample buffering capacity to allow adequate configuration. In practice, buffer settings (= overall latency setting) ranged from 200–600 mS, depending on quality and bandwidth of the local Internet connection.

A monitoring web page connected to a local loopback server hosted on AWS enabled listening to the live streams via http within any browser, including display of live VU metering and accumulated (unrecoverable) packet loss per stream.

More information and the live demo page are available on a dedicated page at www.ravenna-network.com/remote-production/.

Lessons Learned
The proof-of-concept demo worked well, and we are very pleased with the results. It required some expertise and fiddling with manual settings to get it to work.

Many lessons were learned from the proof of concept. Here are a few:

• “Local only” PTP synchronization locked to GPS works fine.
• There is packet loss, but this can be managed via SRT.
• Latency, at significantly less than 1 second, is lower than what we expected, but still substantial.
• To manage increased network delay, manual tuning of the link offset at each location was required, as expected, but the deep buffers of the receivers were able to compensate for it.

Future Considerations
There are a few items that require further study to make it a more practical and usable solution:

• A big one is how to transport timing through the cloud.
• We consciously decided on manual connections using session description protocol (SDP) files to keep things simple. It would be valuable to be able to use Ravenna or NMOS registration and discovery over the cloud to automate the connection process.
• Ease of use would be greatly enhanced if the link-offset could be handled automatically to compensate for network delay.
• To manage packet loss, it would be interesting to learn if ST2022-7 redundancy would work.
• Although SRT worked great, it would be good to experiment with RIST to understand if there are any performance or reliability benefits.

The proof of concept showed there is a lot of promise for Ravenna in the cloud and we are excited and motivated to tackle these items soon.

Thanks to Angelo Santos of Ross Video for providing the drawing of the proof of concept setup; Nicolas Sturmel of Merging Technologies for programming the monitoring website and setting up the AWS cloud access; and Claudio Becker-Foss of DirectOut Technologies for providing thoughts on gateway programming.

The post Ravenna Takes It to the Cloud appeared first on Radio World.

(Al-Ekhbariya TV via Twitter)

To mark World Radio Day, the Saudi Broadcasting Authority launched Al-Ekhbariya Radio, the first news radio station in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 13.

The station is affiliated with the government-owned Al-Ekhbariya TV channel and can heard on FM in the capital city of Riyadh (93.0 MHz), Jeddah (107.7 MHz) along the Red Sea coast, and Dammam (99.0 MHz) in the Eastern portion of the country.

SBA CEO Mohammed bin Fahd Al-Harithi told the Saudi Press Agency that the launch is part of the SBA’s effort to make greater use of all media platforms, develop more local content, and meet different societal tastes.

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Station director Mubarak Al-Ati told the Al-Ekhbariya TV “Today” program that the station is part of the kingdom’s Vision 2030 plans to build a more diverse and sustainable economy along with a vibrant society. “Launching the station is in the interest of the Saudi media renaissance to keep pace with the developments the kingdom is undergoing at all levels. Saudi media will continue to leap and advance in service of the kingdom’s leadership and people.”

According to UAE News, the station will have a network of 85 correspondents and will focus 80% of its programming on local news with the remainder focused on Arab and international news.

The post Saudi Arabia Launches Its First News Radio Station appeared first on Radio World.