Industry News

RBR+TVBR this week has offered no less than three articles about licensees who have opted to turn in the license of their respective AM radio stations. By January 8, 2022, four stations — each of them at least 65 years old — will disappear forever.

A Georgia Association of Broadcasters 2018 Hall of Fame inductee shares that this news shouldn’t be that surprising. Speaking of the Friday final sign-off of KDKD-AM in Clinton, Mo., Art Sutton says, “If this station and the other AMs leaving the air were viable businesses, they wouldn’t be going dark.”

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With the Closing Bell on Wall Street and at Nasdaq headquarters in Times Square on Wednesday, nearly every broadcast media company RBR+TVBR tracks had declined from Tuesday’s trading.

Among the companies seeing declines of particular note is The Walt Disney Co. Approaching $177 on November 8, shares in DIS dipped as low as $142.15 on December 1 before attempting a comeback. On December 29, Disney was down 33 cents to $154.87 in regular trading, and off an additional penny in immediate after-hours trading.

Meanwhile, technology company Veritone saw a $1.75-per share dip, as Sinclair Broadcast Group saw its shares decline by 72 cents per share.

 

 

“Fighting Fake News and Truth Decay.”

That’s the name of a webinar scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022, that is being presented by The Massachusetts Broadcasters Association.

Al Tompkins from the Poynter Institute will host the online event.

Topics covered include:

⦁ Where does information come from and who is behind it?
⦁ Why do people spread disinformation?
⦁ How can you detect fake photos?
⦁ What is metadata and what will it tell you?
⦁ What does every journalist need to understand about algorithms?
⦁ See the newest tools fakers use to alter video and audio.
⦁ How to use polysearch tools to get to the root of an images’ origin.

Webinar information and registration can be found Here.

The 2021 NAB Show was cancelled. Then came IBC, in Amsterdam.

By December 22, Twitter, T-Mobile and the parent of Facebook had pulled out of CES 2022. Then came iHeartRadio, and P&G.

Despite the dark clouds, there was no hard stop on product rollouts and big plans for the year ahead from broadcast media’s biggest technology partners. RBR+TVBR‘s all-new Winter 2022 Special Report, distributed digitally on January 24, 2022, offers exclusive insight and full details about their latest gadgetry and technological advancements key broadcast media tech companies are eager to show off.

Among the broadcast media tech players with new products they’re ready to share with radio and TV industry leaders is GatesAir. In late October 2021, GatesAir added audio processing to its Intraplex IP and Cloud Transport products. For those asked to sign off on a purchase order, cost savings is certainly a big selling point when it comes to auxiliary equipment. But, how does CEO Bruce Swail explain to the C-Suite executive who may not understand what this technology advancement brings to broadcast media means in layman’s terms?

Swail points to the two-year growth of the Ascent product line, which was officially introduced at the NAB Show in 2019 — the last Las Vegas gathering.

On the subject of monitoring and compliance, broadcast monitoring and analysis-focused technology firm Qligent has seemingly been silent across 2021 when it comes to product development and updates to its existing process. “You’re right, we have been quiet,” notes CEO Brick Eksten.

That’s why NAB 2022 is the focal point of Qligent’s “pause,” one that serves as a way to look internally while reviewing the general transition of the market.

With the April affair in Las Vegas marking the “big return” for many a broadcast media technology vendor, as key withdrawals from CES 2022 emerged heading into Christmas, CP Communications has perhaps emerged as one of the more active players of late.

CEO Kurt Heitman is excited about what lies ahead for the company in 2022. That very much includes RF coordination, which CP has done “for many, many years,” he says.

To ensure you’re getting the full story, please take a moment to become a RBR+TVBR Member. All Members will receive a digital copy of our Winter 2022 Special Edition, the only home of our all-new Broadcast Media’s Top Tech Leaders ranking. Sign up by clicking on the menu at the top of the page.

As the holiday season comes to an end and 2022 comes into focus, broadcasters have several dates and deadlines to keep up with in January and early February.

David Oxenford, the respected Washington, D.C., communications attorney with Wilkinson Barker Knauer LLP, has noted some of the important dates media industry C-Suite professionals should be tracking.

Oxenford starts with some of the annual dates that always fall in January.

By January 10, full-power radio, TV, and Class A licensees should have their quarterly issues/programs lists uploaded to their online public file. The lists are meant to identify the issues of importance to the station’s community and the programs that the station broadcast in October, November and December that addressed those issues. “Prepare the lists carefully and accurately, as they are the only official records of how your station is serving the public and addressing the needs and interests of its community,” Oxenford advises.

Class A licensees must upload to their public file by January 10 documentation of their continuing Class A eligibility for October-December 2021.  For noncommercial educational stations not affiliated with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, if your station conducted on-air fundraising for third parties during the last three months of 2021 that interrupted normal programming, documentation of those efforts must also be uploaded to the public file.

An annual obligation for television stations is to prepare and file their annual Children’s Television Programming Report (Form 2100, Schedule H – formerly Form 398).  Also due is a certification of compliance with commercial limits in children’s programming.  Schedule H would normally be due to be filed at the FCC on January 30 but, as that date falls on a Sunday in 2022, the FCC filing deadline this year is January 31, the next business day.  Records documenting compliance with the limits on the number of commercial minutes that stations can allow in children’s programming are also due to be uploaded to each full-power and Class A TV station’s public file by January 31—another January 30 deadline pushed to the next business day.  As a reminder, the quarterly filing requirements were replaced with annual filings as part of the 2019 KidVid rule changes.

An important deadline also falls this month for LPTV stations and TV translators. 

Analog TV translators and digital LPTV construction permit holders whose CPs have expiration dates that have expired that received a one hundred and eighty day extension of the July 13, 2021 digital transition (or construction) deadline must be operating digitally by January 10, 2022 or by an earlier January date specified on the station’s extension authorization.

“While in a few cases, the FCC is granting requests to toll that deadline, very specific showings as to why construction was delayed for reasons beyond the control of the broadcaster need to be made or the authorizations of stations not operating digitally by the January 10 deadline will be cancelled,” Oxenford says.

A MID-MARKET MUST

Also important for some TV stations, specifically those in DMAs 71-80 affiliated with one of the top four TV networks, is the requirement to comply with the FCC’s audio description rules beginning January 1, 2022.

The audio description (formerly known as video description) rules make video programming more accessible to blind or visually impaired persons by requiring the use of an audio subchannel to provide descriptions of the visual action in a TV program that is occurring on screen. The affected DMAs are Omaha; Wichita-Hutchinson; Springfield, MO; Charleston-Huntington; Columbia, SC; Rochester, NY; Flint-Saginaw-Bay City; Huntsville-Decatur; Portland-Auburn; and Toledo.

For radio, January 1 brings new higher rates for all digital streaming, including simulcasting, as a cost-of-living increase in the increased SoundExchange royalties as recently announced by the Copyright Royalty Board (though payments are not due for January streaming until 45 days after the end of the month).  But most webcasters do need to pay their minimum annual fees by January 31 (now $1000 per stream for commercial and noncommercial streams not affiliated with a school or CPB).  Noncommercial educational webcasters (affiliated with a school or college), not covered by deals with NPR and CPB, must make elections about recordkeeping requirements that will apply to their stations by January 31.

Looking ahead to February, television and radio stations in several states must file applications for license renewal and file and upload EEO reports.  By February 1, TV stations in Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma and radio stations in New York and New Jersey must file their license renewal applications through the FCC’s Licensing and Management System (LMS) on Form 2100, Schedule 303-S.

Stations filing for renewal of their license should spend the next few weeks reviewing the contents of their online public file and making sure that all required documents are complete and were uploaded on time.

Also on or before February 1, all radio and TV station employment units (a station employment unit is a station or stations that share at least one full-time employee, are in the same geographic area, and are under common control) with five or more full-time employees licensed to communities in Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma must upload to their online public inspection file an Annual EEO Public Inspection File report.  This report covers their hiring and employment outreach activities for February 1, 2021 through January 31, 2022.  

These broadcast licensees must also post on the homepage of their station website (if they have one) a link to the most recent report.

As the Noon hour approached in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Classics IV single from late 1970, “Where Did All the Good Times Go?,” segued into “Teach Your Children” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Those songs are “Real Oldies,” and they’ve been a key part of a most unusual noncommercial Class B AM that also offers NPR newscasts.

On Friday, January 7, the station — and its Muskegon simulcast partner — will become the latest operating in the kHz band to call it quits.

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For 17 years, Mike Scott anchored the newscasts for a Salem Media Group conservative Talk station serving the nation’s third-largest market. He did so through a relationship with Total Traffic and Weather Network and NBC News Radio.

On Friday, that arrangement between iHeartMedia-owned TTWN and Salem will end. But, Scott’s not going anywhere, as “The Answer” is engaging in an “overhaul” of its news and traffic operations.

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From the town of Spring Harbor, Mich., a Class A FM has served the cities of Jackson and Albion with a student-run Christian music format. Until now, it has reached the Ann Arbor area via a FM translator outside of the city that’s home to the University of Michigan.

That’s come to an end, however, as the school that owns the FM translator has completed the facility’s sale to another religious broadcaster.

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Engagement, passion and fun.

Those are perhaps the lone things in common between a Director of Operations for a Harley-Davidson dealership and the General Manager or Operations Director for a radio station.

Yet, these traits helped fuel a successful 22-year career with Harley-Davidson for a former Program Director for radio stations in Jackson, Miss.; Hartford; St. Louis; and Cleveland — an individual who even worked on Imus in the Morning at the famed WNBC-AM in New York some 40 years ago.

Radio industry professionals may want to revisit this October 2020 InFocus Podcast, presented by dot.FM, with Lyndon Abell, today at All American Harley-Davidson in Charles County, Md., to the southeast of Washington D.C.

It’s a great chat, conducted by RBR+TVBR Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson, full of great insight and observations.

Listen to “RBR+TVBR InFOCUS Podcast: Lyndon Abell” on Spreaker.

As a treat to help get your 2022 off to a good start, I thought it might be fun to spend a Saturday afternoon at a hardware store to identify items useful for any radio engineer.

This year’s visit was to Ace Hardware, but these or similar items can be found at Lowe’s, Home Depot or online. I have tried to stay under $25 to $35.

Let’s start with an economical tool box by Stanley. There are lots of varieties at different price points. The one pictured — a 19-inch, one-latch model — has two snap-lid hinged compartments that will hold your rack screws, washers and other frequently used small hardware. No more removing tools to dig out a little box of hardware at the bottom!

The deep toolbox also has enough room for something anyone over 40 needs to have: AirFlow gel-filled kneepads, shown in Fig. 2. With these gel cushions, made by CLC Work Gear, you could crawl on your knees under consoles all day long. (My alternative before discovering these was bubble wrap!)

Fig. 1: Start with a heavy-duty Stanley toolbox; Fig. 2: The toolbox is big enough to store gel-filled kneepads like these from CLC Work Gear; Fig. 3: A small inspection mirror gets into tight spaces; Fig. 4: This probe set from General is ideal for troubleshooting components.

A small inspection mirror like the one shown in Fig. 3, made by General, will come in handy, especially if you can’t squeeze your smartphone into a tight space to take pictures.

However, if you do a lot of inspections, search online for a smartphone endoscope. The scope has a lighted lens on the end of a three-foot cable that plugs into your smartphone. The camera image is displayed on the phone, and the best part is that it’s under $20.

Speaking of medical/dental instruments, the General probe set shown in Fig. 4 is ideal if you troubleshoot and repair to the component level. Another must-have for your kit is a multi-tool like the one pictured in Fig. 5. This Stanley 12-in-one multi-tool can really come in handy thanks to its many functions.

Some other products that can find uses around the transmitter site are Scott Rags in a Box work towels and GoJo Natural Orange Pumice Hand Cleaner (Figs. 6 and 7). And show me an engineer who doesn’t want a can of WD-40 lubricant around, as pictured in Fig. 8. Don’t forget to spray your transmitter site padlocks to guard against frozen lock mechanisms.

Fig: 5: A Stanley 12-in-one multi-tool takes the place of multiple tools; Fig. 6: More absorbent than paper towels are Scott Rags in a Box; Fig. 7: GoJo Natural Orange Pumice Hand Cleaner really cuts the grease after you work on dirty components; Fig; 8: WD-40 keeps locks lubricated and guards against freezing. Squirt in the keyhole and where the hasp locks, then work the mechanism to coat internal parts.

Fig. 9 certainly won’t fit in that toolbox, but the 5-gallon diesel fuel container by Midwest Can may come in handy if your generator runs low on fuel and access for a fuel truck is blocked. Yes, you’ll be making multiple trips to refill the tank; but that’s better than being off the air.

Speaking of the generator, diesel block heaters are welcome signs for rodents seeking a warm home in the winter. Rodents can’t squeeze through half-inch hardware cloth like the Garden Zone product shown in Fig. 10. Make sure all your vents and ventilation openings are sealed. This size screening should deter rodents while not obstructing air flow.

Fig. 9: A 5-gallon diesel fuel container is great insurance for your generator; Fig. 10: Half-inch-square hardware cloth keeps vermin out of generators or air vents; Fig. 11: For really big rat problems, supersize the glue trap!; Fig. 12: Stay warm in unheated buildings with this small but efficient Honeywell ceramic heater.

And while we’re on the subject of rodents and snakes, we’ve all seen (and maybe used) the little glue traps for mice. The JT Eaton Stick-Em Pro Series comes in dimensions suitable even for king-size city rats and large snakes; the “Elephant Size” ones I saw in the store were a foot square.

As we wrap up the tour, consider investing in a ceramic heater — such as the Honeywell Heat Bud pictured in Fig. 12 — as well as an LED trouble lamp, which gives plenty of light. Plus the bulb doesn’t break when it’s dropped.

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

What other useful items should be on an engineer’s New Year shopping list? Email johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Gifts to Yourself to Start the New Year Right appeared first on Radio World.