Industry News

He’s a 30-year radio broadcasting veteran who joined Cumulus Media in 2018.

Now, this longtime programming and operations leader is transferring from the company’s “Texas Country” FM serving the Beaumont-Port Arthur area of the Lone Star State to the center of Georgia’s Coastal Empire: Savannah.

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One was the Chairman of the FCC when its cross-ownership rules were enact.

Another was the FCC’s Chairman that successfully, thanks to the Supreme Court’s input, erased many of those rules through “modernization” efforts allowing for common ownership of TV and radio, or newspaper and radio, assets in a given market.

They’ll be joined by the agency’s chairman during the second term of Bill Clinton as President, and by an interim FCC leader who, in taking the role, became the first female Chair of the Commission.

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In May 2018, a station swap was consummated that saw Salem Media Group trade a Class B AM serving the Seattle-Tacoma market to a company based in San Jose, Calif.

The agreement handed Salem the keys of an AM in Portland, Ore., it had been operating via an LMA with the station’s new owner, Intelli LLC.

Now, Intelli is selling that Seattle property to Salem.

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WorldDAB is highlighting the number of new cars in Europe that now ship with DAB+ as a standard feature.

“In the second half of 2020, over 80% of new cars in key European markets came with DAB+ radio as standard, a dramatic increase on the same period in 2019,” the organization stated in releasing a market report.

“This step-change reflects the impact of the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), which, from December 2020, requires all new car radios in the EU to be capable of receiving digital terrestrial radio.”

President Patrick Hannon was quoted saying that the numbers “demonstrate that DAB+ is firmly established as the core future platform for radio in Europe,” and he said progress in Germany, France, Italy and Benelux “has been particularly impressive.”

The report stated that as of the end of 2020, about 100 million consumer and automotive DAB/DAB+ receivers had been sold in Europe and Asia Pacific, “up from 92 million six months year earlier.”

The organization also released a detailed infographic with the rollout status in various markets in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The post WorldDAB Celebrates Automotive Penetration appeared first on Radio World.

By Rosemary Ravinal

Public speaking is the foundation of leadership. Whether you are facilitating an online meeting, delivering a new business pitch, representing your company on an industry panel, doing a podcast interview, or speaking at a condo board meeting, how well you communicate will set you apart.

Public speaking mastery is hard work and requires tons of practice and great coaching.  But if you take your delivery alone and the mental blocks that hold you back from greatness, there are a few things you can do improve right away.

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Automation provider WideOrbit has snagged a big win, reaching agreement with Salem Media Group to covert its radio properties to WO Automation for Radio.

Salem has 99 radio stations. WideOrbit said 56 of those in the top 25 U.S. markets.

Scott Foster is senior VP of engineering at Salem Media Group.

The announcement was made by WideOrbit VP of Radio Automation William “Dub” Irvin and Salem SVP of Engineering Scott Foster.

“Implementations are set to begin in July 2021 and will complete in 2023. Once implementations begin, 13 of the top 20 radio operators in North America will be powered by WO Automation for Radio,” the company said in its announcement.

Version 5 of the automation software was released this year; the manufacturer emphasizes its improved remote voice tracking capabilities and native apps to run live shows remotely.

Salem is an existing user of WO Traffic; the software company said integration with the automation platform will enable live log editing, playlist delivery, real-time reconciliation and automatic start and stop date synchronization between the two.

The automation system will also integrate with Salem’s MusicMaster music scheduling system.

Send news for Who’s Buying What to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Salem to Standardize on WideOrbit Automation appeared first on Radio World.

This is one in a series of articles from the ebook “The Real World of AoIP.”

This story is excerpted from the ebook “The Real World of AoIP.” Click the cover to read it for free.

Radio World recently asked several manufacturers to identify the most important technical development or trend in the use of audio over IP.

“The biggest trend in 2021,” said Greg Shay, CTO of Telos Alliance, “is the empowering of live broadcast facilities to use the full range of IT industry resources, including public and private server resources, global fiber optic networks, failover redundancy, all at global competitive costs, and the personnel to support it all.”

He said the experience of the pandemic supercharged the demand for broadcasting from anywhere, from home, and forced less reliance on purpose-built facilities.

“Both sides, the broadcaster and the IT service provider, have learned more of what it takes to operate the Professional broadcast facility over IP,” Shay said.

“Social networks blazed a trail for personal broadcasting, using no more end equipment than a phone. The hitch is that it ‘works when it works, as well as it works.’ I maintain this is not due to the underlying technology but comes from assumptions made in how it is deployed.”

So far, he noted, professional broadcasters produce content with highly hardware-centric facilities.

“Where is the coming together in the middle? Is all that hardware plant, duplicating the global IT infrastructure, really required to reliably create, produce and deliver professional commercial content?

The answer to produce the reliable, always-on broadcast channel, Shay said, is to leverage the same global IT infrastructure that underpins the social networks, but with the resource allocation and planning for consistency needed by commercial users.

“It is not good enough ‘if it works when it works’, it has to always work,” he said.

“Audio over IP was the entryway for getting professional audio broadcasting onto the IT infrastructure. The IT infrastructure providers are now becoming aware of the needs and requirements of the commercial professional broadcasters, and are stepping up the level of their services, both operationally and contractually, to meet those needs.”

The post Greg Shay on AoIP Empowering Broadcast appeared first on Radio World.

For the fifth year in a row, representation of people of color in local TV news improved overall and, for the fourth year in a row, a record high percentage of the local TV news workforce are people of color.

That’s according to the final installment of the 2021 RTDNA/Newhouse School at Syracuse University Survey.

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Vittoria is a dual-Dante digital audio network controller and engine.

According to Glensound, Vittoria was initially designed for a specific project — serving as a backbone for a large legislative debating chamber. It proved successful and was put into commercial product development.

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

Each of its two independent Dante networks has 32-channels of audio inputs and outputs for up to 96 kHz or 16 channels at 176.4 kHz or 192 kHz. In addition there are fully redundant power supplies and word clock in and out. Glensound says that the sample rate converters between the networks are “high-quality” and they support sampling rates between 44.1 kHz and 192 kHz. The networks can operate at different sampling rates.

Due to its original mission, to operate as part of the technical installation within a legislative chamber, the Vittoria network audio bridge has a strong firewall between the two networks. In essence one network cannot see the other network.

Glensound Managing Director Marc Wilson said, “There is increasing demand for products that provide isolated Dante networks or can work in Dante and AES67 simultaneously and independently of each other … This is something we have been asked for in recent years and we are very pleased to introduce Vittoria for this very specific but increasingly important application … and fulfills a growing need with the broadcast and sound markets.”

Send your new equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.

Info: www.glensound.com

 

The post Glensound Introduces Vittoria appeared first on Radio World.

Several changes to U.S. radio technical rules are on the agenda for the July 13 meeting of the Federal Communications Commission.

“We’re cleaning up our broadcast radio rules,” wrote Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. She said a notice of proposed rulemaking will be voted on that is intended to fix rules that are “redundant, outdated or in conflict with other rules.”

If this NPRM is approved, the commission would then take public comments on these proposed changes, for final action later.

What follows is a summary of the changes. The full proposal is posted on the Radio World website.

Maximum Rated Transmitter Power for AM Stations

This proposal would change section 73.1665(b) to remove the maximum rated transmitter power limit for AM stations.

“We tentatively conclude that an equipment limitation on potential transmitter power is outdated and unnecessary given our current reliance on actual operating antenna input power as the most accurate and effective means of ensuring that AM stations adhere to their authorized (nominal) power limits.”

The change would remove the maximum rated transmitter power for AM stations as set out in an appendix and delete a corresponding table.

NCE Community of License Coverage

This would change two rule sections that were adopted in 1997 to “harmonize” with the NCE FM community coverage standard in another section, which was adopted later.

“This change will create consistency across different rules regarding the requirement for community coverage for NCE FM stations,” the commission said.

The requirement in the newer section that stations reach 50% of their community of license or 50% of the population in their community would replace the more general requirement in the older sections stating that the station must cover “a portion of the community.”

“We propose to amend these two rules to state that an NCE FM station operating on a reserved channel must provide a predicted 60 dBμ signal to at least 50% of its community of license or reach 50% of the population within the community.”

FM Transmitter Interference to Nearby Antennas

The third change would eliminate section 73.316(d), “which we tentatively conclude is an unnecessary burden on applicants.”

The commission said this rule is used rarely and it tentatively concluded that the rule “does not prevent interference to any significant degree, if at all.”

The section says that applications proposing the use of FM transmitting antennas within 60 meters of other FM or TV broadcast antennas must include a showing as to the expected effect, if any.

The FCC says it is not aware of any industry complaints of this kind of interference over the 70 years that the rule has been on the books.

NCE FM Class D Second-Adjacent Channel Interference Ratio

Next, the FCC wants to change a section that sets out signal strength contour overlap requirements for NCE FM Class D stations, “to harmonize the requirements with the more permissive standard applied to all other NCE-FM stations.” It said it wants to be consistent across different NCE FM station classes regarding contour overlap limits.

“We tentatively conclude that the current Class D contour overlap requirement is not necessary given the proven efficacy of the less restrictive requirements for other stations and anticipate that this change will allow Class D stations greater site selection flexibility as well as the opportunity to potentially increase their coverage areas.”

Back in 2000 the commission said this change was warranted but it deferred action because of the pending creation of a low-power FM service.

“The LPFM service has now been established and is currently a relatively mature service, so we tentatively conclude that the time is ripe to extend the otherwise universal 100 dBu contour overlap standard for second-adjacent channels to NCE FM Class D stations.

Protection for Grandfathered Common Carriers in Alaska in the 76-100 MHz Band

Here, the commission would delete a requirement that radio stations in the 76–100 MHz band protect common carrier services in Alaska. It said there are no such services remaining.

Earlier, existing common carrier operations had been grandfathered in with the understanding that they would gradually move to other parts of the spectrum.

AM Fill-in Area Definition

The FCC wants to tweak the definition of “AM fill-in area” in one part of the rules to conform to the requirement in another part that the “coverage contour of an FM translator rebroadcasting an AM radio broadcast station as its primary station must be contained within the greater of either the 2 mV/m daytime contour of the AM station or a 25-mile (40 km) radius centered at the AM transmitter site.” The goal is consistency across the rules for fill-in translator transmitter siting.

International Agreements

Last, the commission plans to amend the allocation and power limitations for broadcast stations within 320 kilometers of the Mexican and Canadian borders to comply with current treaty provisions.

-The 1991 U.S.-Canada FM Broadcasting Agreement contains minimum distance separations but offers contour overlap parameters for short-spaced stations to demonstrate compliance, so the FCC wants to remove a reference to the agreement and include contour overlap-based protection for short-spaced stations. It would also replace an existing table with updated minimum distance separations agreed upon in 1997.

-Similarly, the commission wants to remove a reference to the 1992 U.S.-Mexico Broadcasting Agreement and include contour overlap-based protection for short-spaced stations.

-It proposes to update sections governing FM translators located near the Canadian and Mexican borders, to conform with the relevant treaties.

-Last, it would revise language about translator power limitations near the borders. The changes are intended to codify the international agreements, so if the NPRM passes, the commission will ask commenters “to focus on whether the proposed changes properly implement the relevant treaty provisions rather than suggest changes to any of the agreed-upon limits.”

The post Radio Technical Rules to Be Cleaned Up appeared first on Radio World.