At a time when the FCC has taken a renewed interest in beefing up emergency alerting and limiting false alarms in the United States, a new report says cybersecurity professionals believe digital systems used to deliver localized emergency alerts are a top threat to so-called smart city technologies.
The term “smart city” is often used to describe deployment of, among other things, information and communication technologies to improve infrastructure and city services. Critics of smart city technologies point to potential threats posed when local jurisdictions adopt various digital systems.
[Read: 10 Cybersecurity Questions to Ask Yourself]
Emergency and security alert systems, street video surveillance, and smart traffic lights, were ranked as significantly more vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to a survey of cybersecurity experts conducted by a think tank at the University of California, Berkeley.
The school’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) asked 76 cybersecurity experts in late 2020 to compare the respective risks of cyberattacks against various connected digital systems and the potential impact of successful attacks if they do occur.
The survey ranked emergency and security alert systems that give critical guidance to the public during times of distress as most vulnerable. “Ten of the 76 respondents described how spoofed emergency alerts could cause widespread panic and civil unrest,” according to the report.
Other survey respondents noted the risk of hackers tampering with traffic lights that could cause accidents and gridlock and possibly prevent police, firefighters and ambulances from reaching emergency scenes.
IT security is seen as critical to those smart city technologies, according to the think tank’s white paper. It acknowledges critics who argue “introducing new technologies that increase the connectedness of service delivery systems and government operations with the internet can expose local communities to cyberattacks by a variety of malicious actors.”
The research project was authored by Karen Trapenberg Frick, associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, and Alison E. Post, associate professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies at UC Berkeley, along with several doctoral candidates.
“Our survey results indicate that smart city technologies are not created equally when it comes to cyber-risk. Cybersecurity experts judged emergency and security alerts, smart traffic signals, and video surveillance to be much riskier than many others,” the white paper concluded.
The cybersecurity experts participating in the survey were recruited from academia, government and private industry. The group was also asked to rank the risk of nine smart city technologies, including water consumption tracking, smart tolling, gunshot detection, smart waste and water leak detection.
The authors suggest resources are available for local officials concerned about IT security of their digital systems, including training programs available through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The FCC recently issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) to explore the potential of internet-based EAS alerts, including audio and video streaming services, and whether such a system would have merit or even be feasible.
The post Public Warning Cited as Greatest Cyber-risk appeared first on Radio World.
Detailed rules involving licensing, fees, penalties and the nature of what defines a nonprofit station all came together when the Federal Communications Commission responded to an objection filed against a licensee operating two translators in Georgia.
Renewal applications were filed in December 2019 by Immanuel Broadcasting Network for two FM translator stations — W241AF in Rossville, Ga., and W271CV in Atlanta. The first is licensed to rebroadcast WKXJ(FM), owned by Entercom License LLC in Walden, Tenn., while the second is licensed to rebroadcast station WTZA (AM), owned by Radio Spice LLC.
[Read: FCC Nixes Idea to Rebrand NCE Translator as Commercial]
In March 2020, an informal objection was filed by Triangle Access Broadcasting, of Raleigh, N.C., alleging three things: that Immanuel submitted its application for the translators without the necessary application fees; that Immanuel previously did not pay required application fees for W241AF when it initially licensed the station; and that Immanuel has not paid required regulatory fees outright for either of the translators.
According to Triangle, Immanuel does not qualify for regulatory or application fee exemptions available to licenses of noncommercial educational stations because the translators, according to Triangle, have been operating as commercial stations. Specifically, W241AF retransmits WUSY, licensed by Entercom, as well as W271CV, licensed to Radio Spice. Although Immanuel is a nonprofit entity, Triangle said, it may not claim the nonprofit regulatory fee exemption because it uses the translators for a commercial purpose — contrary to the religious, charitable or educational mandates the Internal Revenue Code.
Triangle also argued that the commission’s rules are “clearly intended to exempt bona fide noncommercial stations from paying fees while subjecting commercial users to fees” and that nonprofits are not exempted from regulatory fees when they operate commercially.
Finally, Triangle argued that even under a nonprofit claim, Immanuel has “operated outside the framework of the Commission Policy on Noncommercial Nature of Educational Broadcasting,” by airing political advertisements.
Accordingly, Triangle urged the commission to allow the licenses for the translators to expire.
The Media Bureau agreed with one of Triangle’s allegations. While the bureau recognized that Immanuel is a nonprofit entity, it found that the licensee does not qualify for the nonprofit application fee exemption because this exemption is limited only to those nonprofits that operate in special emergency radio and public safety radio services.
Similarly, the NCE stations in the FM band are exempt from paying application fees. But to determine if a translator is an NCE station or not, the bureau looks at its primary stations’ status — is it NCE or commercial? According to the applications, W241AF and W271CV rebroadcast stations WKXJ and WTZA, each of which is a commercial station owned by commercial entities.
“We find that translators operate as commercial translators and are not entitled to claim the NCE exemption,” the Media Bureau said in its ruling. Therefore Immanuel should have paid application fees for the translators when it filed its initial application.
FCC rules say that if a fee nonpayment is discovered within 30 days of filing, the application is dismissed and can be refiled again. If the payment isn’t discovered after 30 calendar days, the commission will bill the filer the amount that is due plus a 25% penalty.
In this case, the applications were submitted without the fee and 30 days elapsed since that date. That means the commission will bill Immanuel retroactively and impose a 25% penalty.
But the commission disagreed with the allegation that Immanuel is required to pay regulatory fees for the station too. The bureau said that Immanuel established its status as a nonprofit station under section 501 of the IRS code. “Because nonprofit entities are exempt from regulatory fees,” the bureau said, “we conclude that Immanuel is not required to pay regulatory fees for the stations.”
Finally, the bureau said that Triangle’s argument that Immanuel may not air advertising is a faulty one. The translators are commercial stations and thus the section against advertising — which applies only to noncommercial stations — is inapplicable here. “Moreover, the determination of whether Immanuel is prohibited from airing political advertising under section 501(c)(3) is a determination to be made by the IRS, not the commission,” the bureau said.
As a result, the bureau granted part of Triangle’s informal objection and denied parts of it as well. The bureau also ordered Immanuel to pay a penalty charge equal to 25% of the still-unpaid application fee, which equals $175.
The post FCC Rejects Call to Let Two Licenses Expire Over Nonprofit Kerfuffle appeared first on Radio World.
By Joshua Dudley
Podcast Business Journal
Podcast attribution helps marketers understand how well their advertising dollars are working in their podcast campaigns. Podcast advertising attribution platform Podsights just announced the close of a $4M oversubscribed Seed+ round, led by Newark Venture Partners with participation from Graham Holdings, Aglaé Ventures, and existing investors Greycroft, Supernode Global, BDMI, and Betaworks.
Streamline Publishing’s Podcast Business Journal spoke to Podsights founder Sean Creeley about podcast attribution. It was an exclusive interview.
PBJ: Who do you usually work with?
Sean Creeley: We usually work with some of the larger heads of the market like an NPR, New York Times, or Hubspot to help them understand what is working in podcast advertising. There was a recent survey that measurability and attribution are still the leading reasons why people don’t buy podcast ads, and we’re trying to change their minds and sort of open up the floodgates a little bit to say that podcasting is measurable. We partner with leading ad servers like Megaphone News and Nielson to bring those insights into campaigns.
PBJ: How long have you been in the podcast advertising segment?
Sean Creeley: We started in 2018, and we did really well in 2020 and raised about a million and a half a year ago. We had really good growth through the pandemic, and podcasting, like all industries, was hidden at the beginning of it and then had a nice resurgence come q3 q4 when everybody started to figure out their routines and started looking for additional content in the world.
PBJ: So you think podcast advertising is going to continue to grow?
Sean Creeley: Absolutely. It’s a very powerful medium. I’m sure you can name a couple of brands that you’ve heard because of really high ad recall with specifically some host read first-run ads or host endorsed reads. For the advertisers that need scale, the dynamically inserted ads are even programmatic to an extent. So there’s a little bit of everything for marketers out there, and it’s getting to be a more diverse set of content, which is great to see. We’re just starting to see scale, and with more and more people listening to podcasts, a rising tide lifts all boats.
PBJ: What would you recommend for anyone looking to invest in podcast advertising?
Sean Creeley: Here’s the thing, marketers tend to be biased towards the shows that they listen to, assuming that people that buy their product are like them and listen to the same shows. But what happens is they find out their audience doesn’t like the same shows and those advertisers are never to be seen again.
What we’re advocating for here is more of a thoughtful approach of finding out about the audience a little bit before we push through an ad buy rather than find out after the fact.
The publishers do an incredible job of advocating for podcast advertising and talk about the benefits of the medium, and our job is to put data behind that because at the end of the day, discount codes are not the standard of attribution anymore and we’re seeing a lot more of the big advertisers enter the space.
I think what we’re going to start seeing more of again are the traditional companies that do well and then the larger brand advertisers that want high ad recall in the favorability of these ads.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — On February 18, 2020, RBR+TVBR reported on the departure after a decade of American University from the Salisbury-Ocean City, Md., market. AU’s Board of Trustees on Jan. 31, 2020, signed off on the sale of WRAU-FM 88.3 in Ocean City.
That deal never transpired. Now, it’s found a new buyer.
And, it’s the owner of another big FM in the Nation’s Capital that seeks to do what AU did in 2010.
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Discovery Inc. has invested heavily in the promotion of its Discovery + OTT platform, launched January 4.
With some Wall Street watchers newly concerned that streaming revenue and subscriber growth may be lagging, the company’s stock on Wednesday was swept up in a wave of downward activity on Wall Street.
At the Closing Bell, DISCA completed the trading session at $61.94, a 13.6% day-over-day decline.
In early after-hours trading, however, some value investors were already in buy mode. This put DISCA at $62.15 as of 4:14pm Eastern.
With a $46.80 target price, Discovery shares may be a little overheated — similar to what some are saying about ViacomCBS’s recent run-up in value and subsequent two-day collapse.
For Discovery, its share price is where it was on March 3. Further, DISCA had been regularly trading in the low $20 range across the pandemic. It wasn’t until early November 2020 when the big growth spurt started.
With ViacomCBS‘s March 23-24 stock plunge largely fueled by a gargantuan $3 billion equity offering, there’s another angle to the decline some Wall Street observers have suggested.
With Paramount + not living up to its hype, in their eyes, companies with heavy investments in streaming could suffer from slower-than-anticipated growth. While that’s a leap and based purely on speculation, some key radio station owners have been caught up in the sell-offs.
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MIAMI — Grow with our audience, and grow with us.
That’s the pitch presented to new and returning brand managers and CMOs across a digitally delivered event that was one-part Upfront presentation and another part a full introduction to two new key members of the largest multimedia company superserving U.S. Hispanics today.
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Louis “Bob” R. du Treil Sr., an award-winning engineering consultant who was also both son and father to prominent broadcast engineers, has died at age 88.
The death was announced in an obituary from the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers, of which du Treil was a past president. He died last week in hospice in Sarasota, Fla., where he’d lived for 25 years.
in 2011 the former owner and president of du Treil, Lundin & Rackley was honored by the National Association of Broadcasters with its Engineering Achievement Award. NAB cited his reputation as a creative and insightful engineer and his work including contributions to international discussions on mediumwave (AM) directional antenna technology in the 1980s.
Colleagues told Radio World that year that du Treil’s strength was in visualizing designs for AM directional arrays and then making innovative proposals to the FCC in cases that had no clear-cut precedents.
“I’d bend the rules but not break them. Though the FCC may disagree with that,” du Treil told RW then. “I suspect it did get me in trouble a few times. I just tried to take advantage of what was available to me.”
[Read our 2011 profile of Bob du Treil.]
According to the AFCCE bio, Bob du Treil Sr. was born in New Orleans and was introduced to radio engineering as a youth in that city. His father Joe was a prominent engineer who contributed to the construction of AM station WWL in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
After early service in the U.S. Coast Guard, Bob Sr. moved to Washington, D.C. to work in the radio broadcast field. He completed his B.S. degree in electrical engineering at Louisiana State University in 1961.
Bob joined the firm of John H. Mullaney & Associates, where he remained until 1967. He then partnered for several years with his father at L. J. N. du Treil & Associates before moving his family back to D.C., where he joined Jules Cohen & Associates and later was made partner.
In 1983 he launched du Treil-Rackley with colleague Ronald Rackley. It later merged with A.D. Ring & Associates, then headed by John Lundin, in 1987 to form du Treil, Lundin & Rackley Inc.
The firm moved to Florida in the 1990s. Several of its employees have served on the AFCCE board. “dLR continues to the present day under the leadership of Bob’s namesake, Bob du Treil Jr, and partner, Jeff Reynolds,” according to AFCCE.
Du Treil retired in 2006 and pursued volunteer work at the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Sarasota Memorial Hospital. In addition to membership in AFCCE, he was a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
According to his obituary, du Treil loved socializing, fine dining, boating, fishing, walking and gardening, and owned various boats throughout the years. “He will always be remembered as a jovial, warm, generous, loving spirit – leaving an imprint on all the hearts he touched with his wonderful nature.”
Memorial donations may be made to Tidewell Hospice in Sarasota or Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation, in support of the Brian D. Jellison Cancer Institute in Sarasota.
The post Bob du Treil Sr. Dies, Age 88 appeared first on Radio World.
They’ve sued Entravision Communications for copyright infringement. A court fight against the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) continues. Then, in early March, it handed Radio a decree straight out of the film Goodfellas: “pay up, or else” if you want to play any GMR artists on your stations from April 1.
Now, one of the nation’s biggest radio broadcasting companies has agreed to a “long-term partnership” with Global Music Rights (GMR), the eight-year-old music license lion founded by Irving Azoff.
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