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David Oxenford

Attorney David Oxenford blogs often about developments in the U.S. radio industry, and he has thoughts about the just-completed FCC auction.

He notes that almost a third of the available channels drew no auction interest at all, as we’ve reported, and he wonders if the results say something about the FCC’s local ownership rules.

Ninety-seven channels were sold, but 42, including four AM stations, went unsold in the auction. The commission will raise more than $12 million from the auction, but $9 million of that is from just two FM CPs in particularly desirable areas.

“The 42 channels that were unsold range from channels allotted to small communities in states like Wyoming or Alaska that were predicted to serve very few people, thus having opening bids as low as $750 that no one was willing to meet,” Oxenford writes on his blog, “to channels in somewhat bigger communities including channels in New York state and Colorado that had opening bids of $75,000, indicating that they would serve a substantial number of people, but the prices were apparently deemed too high to justify for companies looking for a business return.”

[Read: iHeart Snags a Sacramento FM CP in FCC Auction]

“This lack of interest may also say something about the FCC’s local radio ownership rules.”

Oxenford said he has been told that parties would have been interested in bidding on channels that went unsold but “because of the FCC’s ownership limitations, they were precluded from owning those stations. So instead of providing new service to the public, these channels will lie fallow, providing service to no one.”

He notes that comments on whether changes should be made to the FCC’s radio ownership rules are due Sept. 2 in the commission’s latest rule review. Some broadcasters want the FCC to lift the subcaps that limit how many stations one company can own in a market.

“The results of this auction may well be instructive on the issues that the FCC will be considering,” Oxenford wrote.

“In comments filed in 2019, parties talked about stations in their smaller radio markets that are essentially nothing but a transmitter and a computer — providing no real local service — when local owners who do cover the issues of importance to local communities are precluded from using these channels to provide new services, as the ownership rules do not permit such ownership.”

“There are still broadcasters who want to serve local communities, and as recent congressional activity has suggested, a recognized need for such local services,” he writes.

Read his blog.

 

The post Spectrum? Who Needs Spectrum? appeared first on Radio World.

From the town of Spring Harbor, Mich., a Class A FM serves 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.

Soon, that will end, as the school that owns the FM translator is selling it to another religious broadcaster.

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The use of a low-power TV signal to reach communities that may not have access to a full-power station’s signal due to distance is one that’s increasingly common, especially in an era of “cord cutting.”

Perhaps that’s why The E.W. Scripps Co. is agreeing to purchase a LPTV construction permit in the Southernmost City in the U.S.

At the same time, Scripps is adding a LPTV in a swath of Southern California it presently has no presence in. Could this point to an expansion of Scripps’ digital multicast networks?

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The radio technology marketplace is hit by the global shortage of chips. Mark Lapidus talks about why you should reach out to friends right now. Michael Saffran thinks radio is guilty of virtue signaling.

Also, the wireless mic industry debates WMAS technology; the NAB and SBE have raised some caution flags.

And in Workbench, a noise-cancelling mic for sports remotes that would make MacGyver proud.

Read it now.

The post Inside the Aug. 18, 2021 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.

While linear TV vehicles have long been a mainstay of political ad spending, viewer consumption habits have changed drastically in the last year alone. Now, new findings suggest that in the next election cycle, 17% of political ad spend will to shift to streaming.

That’s a whopping $1.5 billion not going to broadcast or cable television.

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Quite a few devices in my broadcast technical environment report alerting information by email. I and others have come to depend on these alerts as what my Ops Manager Eric Thomas refers to as “the rhythm of life” as far as the radio station is concerned: pattern changes, tower lights on, like that.

In many cases these alerts come from old-school email origination clients without the ability to authenticate themselves.

These devices need a mail transfer agent or MTA that simply trusts and forwards, something you would never expose to the open internet. In addition, providers like Gmail and vtext have a variety of ways to detect and reject emails that are suspicious. It’d be nice if my mail was accepted without complaint or being bounced.

Like many firms of size, our company email has been SaaS outsourced to Microsoft 365, which requires meaningful email client authentication. The various broadcast devices I need to serve would never play nicely with an MS or Gmail directly. The system I want must live inside the private address, protective firewall environment of the corporate IT department. And it would be nice if it didn’t cost much.

This article takes you through the build process step-by-step for a send-only MTA. All it does is route alerts from your various non-authenticating devices to real-world email providers on the outside. It will not and should not receive mail.

Almost Anything Will Work

To begin the project, I found an old mid-tower Dell box in the recycling bin at the office. So my core system was free. So far so good. My application is low stress and almost any x86 castoff will work.

I updated the BIOS using the Dell tool and installed a 250-gigabyte flash drive. It could easily have been smaller, but it’s what I had. The box already sported a mighty 4 gigabytes of RAM. When this machine shipped it had Windows 7 Pro on it. It still had the hologram license sticker. Vintage 2013, Intel Core i3. Old, unsuited for office use, but more than good enough for this.

The next step was to load Ubuntu Linux 20.04 Desktop on it. Download a copy at ubuntu.com. The 2.7 GB download is an .iso file for which you’ll use your favorite DVD burner application to copy onto writable disk media or a thumb drive. Connect the box to a network segment that provides DHCP. Boot your boneyard PC from the media you created and install. If you see the choice, elect the “minimal” install. This skips the usual office desktop applications which aren’t needed for this.

Write down your username and password choices (because if you don’t, you’ll be repeating the install). Then open a terminal with CTRL-ALT-T key combination and make your first use of “sudo” which means, more or less, “super user do.” From the terminal you can invoke administrative privileges this way, needed for installation and configuration.

From now on, things you are expected to type will be bold, like… sudo apt upgrade, which will install the latest patches in case they aren’t in the .iso you downloaded. You might as well start from the latest and greatest. Everything is lower-case and yes, case matters. Do not type any punctuation marks. Answer “Y” when prompted and watch the process.

Next is the utility for remote terminal access… sudo apt install ssh, giving you the same terminal functions by IP address using an app like putty.exe. Check from another machine to confirm access via SSH. You can discover the machine’s DHCP assigned address with… sudo ifconfig which will probably complain that you need net-tools. Might as well add those using… sudo apt install net-tools.

You now have a generic Ubuntu Linux install. And for the record, this could probably be a Raspberry Pi just as easily as the scrap pile Dell I am using.

DNS Stuff

The process beyond this point requires two prerequisites:

1. You need a real registered host.domain hostname for your machine. Maybe you have a domain (and access to DNS records to assign its address and other attributes), or for a few bucks, just buy a name. If you buy one, make sure the name registrar provides DNS hosting. Most do for small operations like this.

1. You’ll need an actual registered (static) IP address, at least initially, to facilitate the creation of certificates and mail encryption keys, required for delivery to name brand mail service providers. Don’t worry, your MTA will retreat to the safety of a private address (i.e., 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x, 192.168.x.x) inside a proxy once it’s set up. But to get the needed badge of validity, it must stand on the street corner of the real internet for a few minutes.

Start with the prerequisites by choosing a name for your newly configured box. I suggest mail.your_domain_name.com. Obviously, replace “your_domain_name” with your domain name. If you chose some other name during OS install, don’t panic. Use the inbuilt nano Linux text editor to change it: sudo nano /etc/hostname. Replace the text as appropriate with the new hostname. Do the same with /etc/hosts: sudo nano /etc/hosts.

Commands are along the bottom edge of the little nano text editor. CTRL-O to write, RETURN, then reboot.

Using the config tool provided by your domain DNS host, create an A record using the full hostname you gave the mail server. Associate it with the public, registered IP address you will use temporarily. Create an MX record pointing to the same hostname.

Keep in mind that DNS records may take a bit of time to propagate across the internet. I suggest leaving the records you create permanently in place, even though they won’t point to the eventual resulting system anymore. Some mail providers check to see if your hostname is a real box.

Now let’s install the MTA software: sudo apt install mailutils.

When you eventually get a choice dialogue box, choose “Internet Site,” which is the default. Then tab to OK. If it asks for a system mail name, it’s the same name you gave the server you are installing on.

To do what we want, Postfix will require a bit more configuration. Proceed to the text file /etc/postfix/main.cf: sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf.

You’ll need to locate a few lines of the file for editing, so this would be a good time to test out the CTRL-W command in nano to find, first: mydestination = $myhostname, your_domain_name, localhost.com, localhost.

Substitute your domain name as indicated. $myhostname is a variable set earlier in the file by a “myhostname =” statement. Might be good to check that info is correct, but Postfix usually gets this right on install.

Then find… mynetworks =  and change it to read mynetworks = 10.0.0.0/8 172.16.0.0/12 192.168.0.0/16 to allow all the ranges of non-routable private addresses. These are the mail originating devices allowed to use your MTA for outbound messages.

The example config I show gets the whole universe of private IPv4 addresses. If you wish, you can restrict down to the individual device by using a complete address and /32 as the CIDR mask. Or anything in between. This is your gatekeeper. Let paranoia be your guide.

At this point save your changes to main.cf and restart postfix to allow the software to read the changes: sudo systemctl restart postfix.

Testing, testing…

Let’s test your server from the terminal (CTRL-ALT-T) with… echo “This is a test of email” | mail -s ” This is the subject line of the test” your_email_address.

Some receiving domains will probably accept the mail. Outlook.com (MS 365) might, but it’ll probably show up in junk or clutter. Vtext.com (Verizon email to text conversion) probably will as well and display in cellular text. Google Gmail won’t accept it at all; it’ll get bounced. So there is more to do. Time to enable encryption, certificate validation and transport layer security (TLS).

Meanwhile, take a look at the logging that Postfix provides, as it will tell you exactly what happened in the interaction with any outside service. Linux provides a nice utility to look at the last few lines of a log file and even monitor it as lines are added: sudo tail -f /var/log/mail.log (note: your install may name this log file differently, but it will be in the folder /var/log). Also notice that the -f argument makes the utility display new lines as they are appended in real time. You can have more than one terminal instance open at a time, allowing you to watch what happens with the gmails of the world in real time.

Next up is the authentication piece that real email services will be looking for from your MTA.

Let’s get the needed credentials from the free Let’s Encrypt folks. Consider making a contribution to their efforts. sudo apt install certbot.  As always, press “Y.”

Then sudo ufw allow 80. This tells the UFW firewall to open a port for HTTP. The command should answer with confirmation that it opened the port. Certbot’s process will reach out and “Let’s Encrypt” will reach back over port 80 to confirm the host presence at the address claimed, using the DNS records you created. But certificate information doesn’t include IP address directly, so a later move to a private address inside the firewall shouldn’t break anything.

Now let’s create a certificate that identifies this server as within the domain you’ve placed it in and provide a public key to go with the private key that’ll be stored on this host. sudo certbot certonly –standalone –rsa-key-size 4096 –agree-tos –preferred-challenges http -d your_domain_name (those are double dashes, by the way).

When complete, you should see this:

 

If it doesn’t work, check your DNS configuration, or maybe just wait a while and try again. When it completes, pay attention to certificate expiration.

Now let’s tell our server where the keys are kept. Back to the postfix config file we go:

sudo nano /etc/postfix/main.cf.

Under # TLS parameters find:

smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem

smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

 

and change it to:

smtpd_tls_cert_file=/etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain_name/fullchain.pem

smtpd_tls_key_file=/etc/letsencrypt/live/your_domain_name/privkey.pem

 

Finally, to further satisfy Gmail, add the line: “always_add_missing_headers = yes”.

Save, exit nano then restart postfix: sudo systemctl restart postfix.

If all went as described (it should have), then you have a mail transfer agent. Any mails from your devices, pointed to the private address the server has, will be forwarded to whatever mail service is indicated.

Finally, you can disconnect from the public internet (the registered static IP), bring this server inside the firewall and give it a private address.

Use the desktop “settings” tool to change the IP. So long as port 25 is open through the firewall, you are all set. Just point your various reporting devices to that same private address and watch the alerts flow.

If it doesn’t work, check your DNS configuration or maybe just wait a while and try again. When it completes, pay attention to certificate expiration. In my case, using GoDaddy DNS, I had to assign the IP address to my machine that is associated with the your_domain_name DNS entry. Your DNS provider may work differently. The error messages that certbot sends are helpful for Googling.

Now let’s tell our server where the keys are kept. Back to the postfix config file we go.

# Raspberry Pi differences:

1. Enable SSH terminal access using the raspi-config tool
2. net-tools are already installed in the Raspi Lite .iso
3. Use raspi-config to change the hostname
4. mailutils does not include postfix when pulled from the raspi repositories. sudo apt install postfix

It doesn’t take a lot to create a functioning MTA out of equipment already on hand. Having that functionality will ensure that important status and warning messages get through, which will make the engineer’s job easier and provide for faster responses to anomalies.

The post A DIY Mail Transfer Agent appeared first on Radio World.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF. — For years, Sirius XM has turned to its customer retention department to keep its churn level as low as possible by offering existing customers deep discounts off the “rack rate” for an annual subscription. There are also free trials for new users of the satellite radio service.

For one California man, those promotional rates are unfair, as they don’t justify the “regular” pricing structure at Sirius XM. As such, he’s suing the New York-based company in Federal court.

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On August 30, the Construction Permit for a 250-watt FM translator serving a city in northern Louisiana expires.

Rather than rush to put it on the air, or risk losing the license, the mini-station’s owner has opted to sell it by hiring Kalil & Co. as its broker. The buyer? The nation’s second-largest licensee of radio stations.

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Dear Radio World,

The advice that appeared at the end of a March Workbench column about resetting a generator fault remotely is something I discourage strongly.

Besides clearing the fault and possibly the run-time and error logs, cycling the DC power to the controller may also clear the real-time clock and reset the exercise timer, and may leave the generator in an offline state until the clock and timer are manually set.

As stated in the tip, you have no idea why it faulted in the first place. Attempting a restart without an inspection or a person present could result in catastrophic damage to the genset, a fire (if there was a fuel leak), or even harm to a technician who might be working on the unit and could have even been the cause of the fault or shutdown.

If there was a mechanical failure, running the engine without repairing the damage first could make things even worse.

I bet a generator technician reading the tip would cringe. Of course your local generator sales person would love to take this opportunity to sell you a new generator.

My own home standby generator, a Kohler 14RESA, resets just the clock and exercise timer if the battery is disconnected; the run-time and error logs are maintained in nonvolatile memory. But it won’t run until those two items are set. For safety reasons they tell you to disconnect the incoming AC power as well as the battery whenever you service the unit, but I find it more convenient to do neither of those things but just press the OFF button when doing the annual maintenance (oil, spark plugs, and filter changes).

Radio World welcomes letters to the editor about any article or relevant radio industry issue. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject line.

The post Letter to the Editor: A Genset Reset Rethink appeared first on Radio World.

Hull Broadcasting, Inc. enters into consent decree to resolve political file investigation

From Disco Duck and ruling Memphis’ morning show ratings in the mid-1970s to his long run across the 1980s and 1990s as the wakeup host at KIIS-FM in Los Angeles, Rick Dees is one of the most successful air personalities of his generation.

While Dees has largely focused on his syndicated Weekly Top 40 program in recent years, he’s about to get a new career boost that has nothing to do with radio.

Thank the nation’s No. 1 licensee of broadcast TV stations for its desire to rewind the clock with a segment of the viewing audience.

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He was an engineer and loved electronics and technology. That passion helped fuel a career as a cable television pioneer in Southwest Missouri, and the co-founding in 1993 with Stan Searle of the “Small Cable Business Association.”

That association is now known as ACA Connects, and it is being joined by others across the cable TV industry in mourning the passing of Alvin “Dean” Peterson.

Peterson died on August 8, two days shy of his 81st birthday.

His family built and owned cable and radio systems across the Springfield, Mo., region, while also serving in an advocacy role in Washington, D.C., to help advance cable TV industry issues at the FCC and on Capitol Hill.

Peterson served as president of Southwest Missouri Cable TV in Carthage, Mo., until its sale in 1999. At that time, Peterson stepped down from the board of what had become the American Cable Association (ACA).

“Everyone at ACA Connects is deeply saddened to hear the news of Dean Petersen’s passing,” ACA Connects President/CEO Matthew Polka said. “ACA Connects simply would not be here today without Dean’s vision and wisdom.”

Peterson and Searle created the Small Cable Business Association to create a voice in Washington, D.C., for independent, smaller providers in reaction to passage of the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act of 1992 and the FCC’s implementation of the rules associated with the legislation.

Services were held August 12 at at Knell Mortuary in Carthage, Mo., with a private burial following a service.

Sinclair Broadcast Group has chosen the individual who will succeed company sales veteran Dan Mellon, who retired on July 31.

It’s an individual with more than 25 years of experience in the broadcast and cable industry.

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As the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) reviews the results of a two-day attendee poll designed to help guide the nation’s biggest advocacy group for radio and TV stations on mask and/or vaccination protocols for its annual affair in Las Vegas, the organizers of the largest annual convention and expo to take place in the city has wasted no time in issuing a vaccination declaration for all in-person attendees.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) on Tuesday formally announced in an email communique that CES 2022, the world’s biggest technology event and an increasingly important convention for radio industry leaders, will require in-person attendees to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination.

What’s notable is that CES 2022 is scheduled to take place in Las Vegas on January 5-8, 2022. The NAB Show, which is eschewing a hybrid option, is scheduled to begin October 9, with the Radio Show events held October 13-14. As of now, it is reviewing its options while assuring the safety of participants will be stringent and per current guidelines.

Furthermore, those that are unable to travel to CES 2022 will have access to a digital event that will run in parallel with the in-person program. While this will not offer the same experience, the CTA says digital audiences “will have the opportunity to share the spirit of the in-person event.”

CTA President/CEO Gary Shapiro explains, “Based on today’s science, we understand vaccines offer us the best hope for stopping the spread of COVID-19. We all play a part in ending the pandemic through encouraging vaccinations and implementing the right safety protocols. We are taking on our responsibility by requiring proof of vaccination to attend CES 2022 in Las Vegas.”

CTA is also assessing the acceptance of proof of a positive antibody test as an alternative requirement and will share more details on this later.

In Las Vegas, CES 2022 attendees will be able to interact with representatives from some 2000 companies — including companies in the nascent space tech, food tech and NFT categories.

The show will undoubtedly highlight advancements in AI, AR/VR, gaming and computing, digital health, automotive and transportation, home entertainment, and the smart home.

Live keynotes from GM Chair/CEO Mary Barra and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert remain on the schedule.

Several organizations that push for diversity and civil rights are urging Congress to reinstate the minority tax certificate program.

“Supporting these pieces of legislation would eliminate barriers and create new opportunities for women, people of color and socially disadvantaged individuals to own local TV and radio stations,” they wrote to congressional leaders.

The letter supports H.R. 4871, the Expanding Broadcast Opportunities Act of 2021 introduced by Reps. G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina and Steven Horsford of Nevada, and S. 2456, the Broadcast VOICES Act, introduced by Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. All four are Democrats. Menendez has been pushing for reinstatement since at least 2008, when he introduced a similar bill.

The bills would authorize the Federal Communications Commission to reestablish what would now be called a Diversity Tax Certificate Program.

Individuals who donated broadcast stations for the purpose of training socially disadvantaged individuals in the management and operation of stations would be eligible for a tax credit equal to the fair market value of the station.

[Read: NAB Gives Thumbs Up to Minority Tax Bills]

The joint letter is from the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, the National Urban League, United States Black Chambers, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the Hispanic Federation.

“From 1978 to 1995, when the diversity tax certificate was instituted, it was an effective mechanism for bringing more people of color into station ownership,” they wrote.

“During this time, broadcast ownership by people of color increased by more than 550%. The elimination of the diversity tax certificate in 1995 disproportionately affected that rate. According to data from 2017, women make up less than 6% of broadcast TV station owners, and people of color account for less than 3%. Similarly, women own just 7% of broadcast radio stations, and people of color own less than 3%.”

 

The post Minority Advocates Speak Up for Tax Certificate appeared first on Radio World.

PreSonus has launched its new Revelator io24 USB-C audio interface, designed for both recording and streaming.

The unit is built around high-headroom mic preamps, a two-channel loopback mixer, and extensive processing with the aim of providing professional-sounding results for streaming, podcasting and music production.

The Revelator io24 sports a pair of analog mic/instrument/line inputs with PreSonus’ XMAX-L microphone preamps which can be stereo linked, as well as two balanced 1/4-inch line outputs, a headphone output, professional metering, and zero-latency monitoring. Users can record up to 24-bit, 96 kHz audio to the included Studio One Artist or other recording and production software.

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

The Revelator io24’s loopback mixer allows users to add backing tracks to live stream performances or conference in a Zoom caller to a podcast. With two dedicated stereo channels for loopback audio on Mac OS or Windows, users can simultaneously mix and record the audio from two different applications, along with the two analog input channels.

Each input channel can be processed using PreSonus’ Fat Channel DSP, which provides a high-pass filter, 4-band parametric EQ, compressor, gate and limiter. Effects include detuner, vocoder, ring modulator, filters and delay, while a dedicated reverb bus is also available.

Revelator io24 locally stores two presets per channel, and eight more factory presets can be loaded from PreSonus’ Universal Control software. Revelator io24 comes with Studio One Artist and Studio Magic Suite, which includes Ableton Live Lite, various virtual instruments and effects plug-ins, and more. The interface is currently available for $179.95.

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

Info: www.presonus.com

 

The post PreSonus Revelator io24 USB-C Interface Debuts appeared first on Radio World.

Sample screen of Audacy app

Two companies with significant radio assets have announced a digital content distribution partnership. Audacy signed a deal with Urban One under which the latter will provide live and on-demand audio content to the Audacy digital platform, including Urban One’s 57 radio stations.

Corey Podolsky, VP of business development for Audacy, described Urban One in the announcement as “a power player in the audio space” and said the agreement underscores Audacy’s own “unwavering commitment to amplifying diverse voices and delivering premier audio content to the communities in which we serve.”

Audacy, the former Entercom Communications, said its app now has more than 2,000 stations including its own 230 outlets. The app also includes podcasts and other audio programming. It is available on the Apple Store and Google Play, and via social media channels.

 

The post Urban One Joins Audacy App appeared first on Radio World.

“CES will be in person in Las Vegas in January 2022, and we will require all attendees to be fully vaccinated.”

That’s according to Gary Shapiro, president/CEO of the Consumer Technology Association.

“We have seen a spike in cases due to the Delta variant, which is severely hurting the unvaccinated population,” Shapiro wrote in a blog post today.

“Yes, there are breakthrough cases for the vaccinated, but many of those have few or no symptoms at all. And of the vaccinated getting the Delta variant, only a tiny percentage are hospitalized.”

“We prioritize the safety and security of CES participants.” Shapiro called it a “major decision” to require vaccinations.

“We are also assessing proof of a positive antibody test as a requirement and will share more details on this later. Importantly, we will continue to follow state and local guidelines and recommendations by the CDC and will announce additional protocols as we get closer to the show.”

Shapiro said that the past 18 months have been “a roller coaster of emotion” for him as a CEO “as I work to lead by example and make decisions that will have positive effects.” He described the difficult decision not to do last year’s event in person and the need to lay off employees last year because of the pandemic.

“We all play a role in stopping the spread — requiring proof of vaccination for CES 2022 is one way we can take responsibility on our part.” He said those who choose not to attend will be able to experience the show online.

In a separate email to the show community, Veronica A. Lancaster, vice president, Standards Programs, said the requirement to provide proof of vaccination will affect all attendees, support staff and exhibitors’ staff.

“CTA decided this based on today’s science which shows that vaccines offer us the best hope for stopping the spread of this pandemic. … While we are still more than five months from CES 2022, we want to communicate this decision early to give you time to plan. CTA is also assessing the acceptance of proof of a positive antibody test as an alternative requirement and will share more details on this later.”

CES has a page with info about health protocols.

 

 

The post CES Show Will Require Vaccinations appeared first on Radio World.

The company formerly known as Entercom is also the owner of a digital streaming app formerly known as Radio.com, and both now use the Audacy name.

While Audacy’s radio stations dominate the Audacy app found on smartphones and other devices, companies including Cox Media Group and Seven Mountains Media have partnered with Audacy to help bring their audio streams to the widest audience possible.

The nation’s leading media company focused on Black consumers has followed their lead.

Audacy has signed a content distribution partnership with Urban One, bringing their radio stations audio streams and on-demand content to the Audacy digital platform. Already, one can stream such stations as WKYS-FM in Washington from the Audacy app; localized advertising is heard pre-roll, based on information provided to Audacy from the user’s app.

The partnership is non-exclusive, as Urban One’s radio stations are also accessible via the TuneIn app and the iHeartRadio app.

This makes Urban One’s radio properties universally accessible across the three primary radio streaming apps found in the U.S.

Some 57 radio stations across 13 Urban One markets are now on the Audacy platform.

“This partnership underscores our unwavering commitment to amplifying diverse voices and delivering premier audio content to the communities in which we serve,” said Corey Podolsky, Vice President of Business Development at Audacy. “We’re delighted to unite with a power player in the audio space to expand and enhace our content offering and add dozens of dynamic brands to our library.”

Alec Drake, the Director of Sales for Cumulus Media’s radio stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth market, is retiring.

The company revealed August 17 that he will depart the stations at the end of August. This puts the wheels in motion on a series of promotions, with a VP/Sales named as two other individuals take key posts.

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