Industry News

East Valley Institute of Technology student Annaliese Stickle sitting at the board; behind, left to right, student and Drury finalist Finn Taylor, senior Jonas Pearson, Pulse Operations Manager Brian Mobley, student and Drury finalist Amber Solomon, Faculty Advisor Dave Juday and student Moriah Paynes.

A high school radio station has been honored with four national awards — including Best High School Radio Station — for their efforts in news reporting, promotion and coverage of key social issues.

KPNG(FM) Pulse Radio is a 5,000-watt public radio station on FM 88.7 that showcases the talents of students enrolled at the East Valley Institute of Technology (EVIT), a career and college prep school in Mesa, Ariz. The awards are part of the annual John Drury High School Radio Awards — named after TV news anchor John Drury — to recognize excellence in high school radio broadcasting in 17 areas including categories like best newscast, best sports talk program and best website.

Pulse Sports crew at a high school game. Left to right – East Valley Institute of Technology alum Jimmy Watters, students Finn Taylor, Braden Lilly and Moriah Paynes, alum Derek Montgomery, student Parker Gurash and staff engineer Amanda Krainski.

As part of the 2020–21 awards, Pulse Radio students within the Radio/Audio Production program at EVIT were honored with Best High School Radio Station, Broadcaster of the Year, Best Public Affairs Program and Best Station Promo.

[Read: Drury Awards Celebrate High School Radio]

“Words can’t describe how proud I am of our EVIT Radio students,” said Dave Juday, a radio/audio production instructor at EVIT and faculty advisor at the station. “Regarding the last school year, I’ve said multiple times that not only did our students survive in-person learning during a pandemic, but they also found a way to thrive. These awards are a testament to our students’ hard work and the dedication they have to see our program and radio station succeed.”

One of the newest categories — Broadcaster of the Year — was given to recent graduate Donoven Ong, who was also named Student of the Year by the school’s Radio/Audio Production department. Ong is currently a freshman at Northern Arizona University, where he has already launched his college radio career at KJACK Radio.

Radio students Annaliese Stickle (left) and Finn Taylor in one of the production rooms.

Recent graduate Essie Bianco was honored for Best Public Affairs Program for her Public Pulse show about mental health. The program focused on mental health of students and staff as they dealt with off-campus virtual learning and a return to in-person instruction in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Best Station Promo was awarded to senior Justin Brooks for his Halloween promo production.

This is the third year that EVIT students have competed in the John Drury High School Radio Awards and overall received 21 nominations — the most of any high school — in 11 categories. The honors continue a streak for the station: In 2019–2020, EVIT students were recognized for Best Public Affairs Show, Best PSA and Best Radio Drama. The previous year, EVIT earned awards for Best Promo and Best Station Advisor.

 

The post Arizona High School Station Named Best in the Nation appeared first on Radio World.

San Francisco contract engineer Bill Ruck awards Frank Hertel a gold star for his unique approach to a noise-reducing mic project as we described in August and shown here. Bill noted that a similar system was part of the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound.”

Bill adds that Frank connected his Pin 1 (ground) to the shell of the XLR connector, and says there are two camps in this regard. He has learned not to connect Pin 1 to the shell on his cables because it can induce all sorts of ground issues when interfacing to unfamiliar equipment. He says you never know what “The Other Guy” has done with his ground.

This is especially true with video. Remember that video is unbalanced and that the video folks tend to have a lot of crap on their ground systems. You could hear sync with analog NTSC; but today, SD just puts wideband noise everywhere.

Because of that potential for picking up noise, Bill made what Dan Healy, the Grateful Dead front-of-house mixer, called “the mother of all isolation boxes.”

It is a heavy steel box with four Western Electric 111C coils wired 1:1. The male and female connectors on the top were mounted in acrylic and therefore are insulated from each other.

Only Pins 2 and 3 are connected to the 111Cs. No matter how mangled the cables are, they can’t cause problems to the front-of-house or recording truck.

“Back in my broke misguided youth,” Bill continues, “I used to borrow mic cables for events. I learned the hard way to spend the night before the event testing and rebuilding them.” Nowadays Bill has several thousand feet of cables, all made properly, mostly with Canare L-4E6S.

Like most of us, Bill has seen Pins 2 and 3 reversed as well as the common error of reversing Pins 1 and 2. That can really cause havoc.

From all his cable experience, Bill has learned that even with Pin 1 floating, you can still have issues if the XLR shell is connected to Pin 1.

As a workaround, Bill constructed several 6-inch green cables that have Pin 1 floating at the female end and Pins 2 and 3 through. Pin 1 (the cable shield) is connected only at the male end. That way, no matter what Pin 1 and the shell are connected to, the ground is broken. This breaks up ground loops.

In Frank’s noise-cancelling mic application, tying Pin 1 to the shell shouldn’t make much of a difference, since microphones also tie Pin 1 to the mic body.

Splendid isolation

If you don’t have Western Electric transformers, you can pick up easy-to-wire isolation transformer boards from Newman-Kees RF Measurements & Engineering, as shown here

This Audio Hum and Lightning Isolator board from Newman-Kees uses high-quality transformers to isolate lines.

They provide lightning isolation to 1200 Volts and can be strapped for various applications as shown in the schematic. Features include 600 Ohms in and out, primary and secondary center taps, board traces for attenuators and 1/8-inch mounting holes. Cost: $35.50. Email newman-kees-hertel-rf-eng@twc.com.

 

Hard to use?

Another opinion came from Oliver Berliner of SounDesign Engineers.

“Call me a killjoy for fearing that Frank Hertel’s clever ‘Outtaphaser,’ detailed in the Aug. 18 Workbench, may be as tricky to operate effectively as it was to create,” Oliver writes.

“That’s because the output levels of the two crowd mics must match, leaving the level of the guest’s voice to be regulated intentionally and/or inadvertently by the mics’ moving toward or away.”

Oliver said a way to overcome this limitation while still reaping the advantages of stereo theory is to mount twin mics on a dual-mic stand and use them for the crowd noise throughout the game, giving a third mic to the interviewer.

Cancel that cancellation

I followed up with Frank about these comments.

First, in preparing the article, I should not have used the phrase “noise cancelling,” rather “noise reducing.” Frank’s out-of-phase mic scheme reduces the background crowd noise but doesn’t cancel it completely.

Although Mr. Berliner’s suggestion of using three mics certainly will work, it’s more appropriate for a fixed position mic. Frank’s system is best used for a roaming reporter, who is not stationary.

Frank also pointed out that this technique is based on “ideal theory.” If an identical sound, at an identical level, is intercepted by both microphones; and if those microphones have identical frequency response and equal sensitivity, the resultant audio output would theoretically be zero. But since we are living in a real world, with a lot of physical variations, the best that can be claimed is that a goodly amount of background noise will be greatly reduced.

Try it out and let Workbench readers know what you experienced. Email johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Workbench: Readers React to Frank Hertel’s “Outtaphaser” appeared first on Radio World.

Is a subscription to SiriusXM really worth the money, especially in a locale where HD Radio multicasts abound and Bluetooth connectivity puts audio from around the world through one’s car speakers in a matter of seconds? According to our Editor-in-Chief, the answer is an easy one: Yes. One day without SiriusXM wasn’t exactly a pleasant one, he writes in this RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION.

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Across three continents, more than 75% of buyers surveyed agree that “TV” is now both linear and streaming platforms. Concurrently, more than 70% of respondents believe that all forms of TV should be sold on impressions.

That’s the key conclusion from a global analysis of “converged TV” from TVSquared, which combines insights from close to 1,000 buyers in the U.S. and in the U.K., Germany and Australia.

Analyzing billions of ad impressions across 20 converged TV campaigns active on TVSquared’s ADvantage platform, the report also uncovers insights on incremental reach and how to best approach converged TV strategies.

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The individual who rose from an account executive to Local Sales Manager in December 2020 for iHeartMedia‘s Minneapolis-St. Paul radio stations has been promoted once again.

Meet the new VP of Sales for the company’s Twin Cities radio properties.

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From 2006-2010, he served as the financial controller of CBS Boston, comprised of WBZ-4 and MyNetwork TV affiliate WSBK-38. 

Now, ViacomCBS has chosen this company executive to serve as the successor to Mark Lund by taking the President/GM post for the stations, and its CBSN Boston OTT-delivered all-news offering.

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The NAB Broadcast Engineering & Information Technology Conference couldn’t meet in person this month, but its presentations and proceedings will be available online.

The National Association of Broadcasters said it will make the conference available as video on demand in November, via a purchase option on its NABAmplify.com site.

“Along with access to the majority of presentations originally planned for the 2021 NAB Show via VOD, viewers will receive access to the full set of papers compiled in the Proceedings of the 75th BEIT Conference,” it said.

[Read Radio World’s feature on the 75th anniversary of the BEITC.]

NAB said topics this year include all-digital radio, cloud technologies for broadcast, hybrid radio, mitigating facility risks (physical and cyber), Next Gen TV technologies, OTT TV technologies, radio broadcasting technologies, SMPTE ST 2110 / IP-based facilities, TV enhancements and using drones for broadcast engineering.

Related: “Drones Become Part of Radio’s Toolkit”

The conference program committee includes technologists from NAB member organizations and other experts, with representatives from the Society of Broadcast Engineers, the Broadcast Technology Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-BTS), the North American Broadcasters Association, and the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers.

The post BEIT Program to Be Available on Demand appeared first on Radio World.

The Board of Directors of Nielsen Holdings plc has declared a quarterly cash dividend.

The decision? To award a bonus payment of $0.06 per share of Nielsen’s common stock.

The dividend is payable on December 2, to shareholders of record at the close of business on November 18.

And, the dividend comes as Nielsen shares appear to have stopped a five-month dip in value. On May 17, a $28.10 finish was seen for NLSN, after starting the year just below $21. Since then, Nielsen shares have been on a steady downhill track, reaching $19.19 at the end of September for a year-to-date low.

As of 1:52pm Eastern on Friday (10/15), NLSN was trading at $19.83 — its lowest value since mid-December 2020.

Bonneville International Corp. has signed off on “modernizing and upgrading” its existing boosters for FM signals tied to three San Francisco radio stations.

In a filing made this week with the FCC, it became known that GeoBroadcast Solutions, the technology company behind Maxxcasting seeks Commission approval of the estimated March 2022 deployment of its FM Booster service at Adult Contemporary KOIT-FM 96.5, Top 40 KMVQ-FM “99.7 NOW,” and Adult R&B KBLX-FM 102.9.

A five-node single frequency network (SFN) with HD Radio operation, GBS seeks to improve each of the FM’s existing booster signals in a manner in which each station will share the antenna infrastructure through a multiplex system.

The improved signal in the terrain-challenged San Francisco Bay Area is designed to help the three stations’ detectability among holders of Nielsen Audio Portable People Meters (PPMs).

KOIT, KBLX and KMVQ were acquired in 2018 by Bonneville from Entercom, now Audacy.

“By implementing a MaxxCasting SFN system, the technology provides a solid, interference-free signal, sound, and HD Radio in the East Bay for all three Bonneville stations,” GBS explains.

Among the project partners is GatesAir, which manufactures the Flexiva transmitter.

KOIT presently uses a 3,300-watt booster in Martinez, benefiting listeners in San Ramon, Walnut Creek and Concord; KMVQ and KBLX each have a 185-watt booster in Walnut Creek.

Maxxcasting has been marketed by GeoBroadcast Solutions as a way for radio broadcast stations to fill-in signal holes in major metropolitan areas, greatly improving coverage. It has recently been put to work in Chicago, and for an Audacy Sports Talker in San Diego.

RBR+TVBR RELATED READ:

A Bustos Media FM Boosts With ‘MaxxCasting’ Plan RBR-TVBR There’s a Class C 64kw FM facility serving the Seattle-Tacoma region’s Hispanic audience by providing regional Mexican programming. It’s a big stick, hence its moniker: “La Gran D.” But, this station is licensed to Elma, Washington and uses a tower well to the southwest of downtown Seattle. The result: Signal holes in the metropolitan area. This issue has just been resolved in a big way, as the station is now the latest licensee of Maxxcasting technology.

For decades, Univision Communications has maintained a strong presence in the Miami-Dade County, Fla., city of Doral. Here, it has television studios and office space on NW 36th Street, a stone’s throw from Miami International Airport. There’s also a spacious rented facility that is home to Univision Radio/Miami, and had been used for the Fusion cable TV network operation.

However, Univision’s corporate headquarters happens to be on Third Avenue between East 39th and 40th Streets, just southeast of Grand Central Terminal and the Chrysler Building in Midtown Manhattan.

According to media reports in South Florida, that’s about to change, with Univision’s headquarters set to head out of New York.

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