Radio World

I see trouble ahead in our business in the shortage of qualified broadcast engineers.

I am not speaking of IT people. I am speaking of the guy in a T-shirt and jeans who gets to the transmitter, looks for the problem, reads the schematic, crawls inside the box and replaces R-16, R-17, C-232 and Q-4, and the music again blares forth.

We are losing those guys every day, and they are being replaced by the guy who walks into the site, looks at the box, grabs his cell phone, calls BE or Nautel to find which board to pull, and ships it back while waiting for a loaner to get the rig going.

I never thought of myself as an old-timer. Starting in the business in 1963, old-timers were the guys I learned from, mostly World War II graduates. They knew everything about audio and RF. I wished I knew a tenth as much as they did.

My first real bit of engineering was converting a 50 kW FM station to stereo in 1963. No one listened to FM then, I think there were 10 FM radios in the city and five were in Cadillacs owned by mob hit men.

I remember putting the stereo generator in an eight-foot rack. It took up four feet of the rack and had enough 12AU7s in it to heat the building. It had two outputs, one L+R that went into the phase modulator of the serrasoid exciter and the L–R output that went into the exciter about 200 multipliers later (the crystal frequency was multiplied 864 times).

It was a technical nightmare compared to mono FM. Getting two matched phased phone lines from the studio to the transmitter over three exchanges was another task. But we were stereo most of the time.

The FCC had a rule that if you weren’t transmitting stereophonic program material for more than a certain length of time, you had to shut the stereo pilot off so as not to mislead the 10 listeners by illuminating their stereo beacon. So the pilot on/off was wired into the old Rust remote control so the studio could turn it off when a monophonic recording of a symphony played.

Times changed; we wound up with RF STLs, stereo generators on a single chip, CD players, computers and lots of stuff made in foreign countries that wasn’t worth fixing or whose parts were not available, so when they broke they wound up on a shelf at the transmitter site.

Concerted effort

Today many stations have guys who can swap XLRs or RCA plugs from one item to another. But we also still have transmitters, antennas, phasors and all of the other sundry items that make a radio broadcast station distinct from an internet music source (I don’t call internet streams “radio stations” because you can’t have radio without RADiate).

When we talk of RF, we talk of a whole lot more than 5 volts, maybe 3,000 times that, and a whole lot of amps both DC and RF. Sending an IT guy into that is like sending a 90-year-old woman into the Indy 500 with her Buick LeSabre. She ain’t gonna win and she will probably die trying.

One of the problems is lack of interest. When I was young I got a ham license at 12, built my own CW rig with a 6L6, turned it into a phone rig with another 6L6 and a Heising choke, built a superregen receiver and went on 80, 75 and 40 meters. Parts from a few old television chassis and old radios my dad brought home, parts from a military surplus store down the road  in 1960 there was still a lot of WW2 surplus.

Try that today; there are no radios or television sets with good parts or even worth trying to get parts from, there is limited surplus and most of the corner parts stores are gone. You can’t even build a Heathkit anymore.

A few years ago, I built a guitar amplifier for my son. What a project, just to find octal tube sockets for the 6L6s took forever. Kids have no interest in this kind of stuff anymore.

We all, especially big conglomerates who own most of the broadcast stations, have to make a concerted effort to get high school and college kids interested in broadcast engineering as a career.

Get them interested, get them educated, best by shadowing an old goat who can show them the tricks of the trade. Yes an EE degree is great to learn Kirchoff’s laws, but Kirchoff never spent several hours at 3 a.m. looking into a dead HT-25. The likelihood is that the old goat will tell the youth that he should probably look at the screen blocker kapton, a lesson the youth is not likely to forget.

Broadcasters have to realize that us old goats are going away, and they had better not only get the youth trained to take over but make the pay comparative to working in an office as an IT manager so they don’t do just that.

We, the limited number of old-timers who learned from the old old timers and through the wisdom of age and smelly fingers from getting too close to the ATU coils, have to keep alert for anyone who might express the slightest interest in our business. I ask around schools, especially the science teachers, if they have any students who seem interested in electronics.

We have to persuade them, nurture them and tell them lies (don’t mention having to walk into a remote site at 2 a.m. in a blizzard with the temperature at –30). Tell them they will have a job for the rest of their life, they can’t ship their job off to China or India or wherever.

At least if we all make an effort to replace ourselves, things can stay status quo. If our ranks aren’t refilled soon, the radio dials are going to start getting really quiet.

The author is a veteran industry engineer.

Radio World sidebar: TPTP Aims to Help

The Society of Broadcast Engineers recently announced a response to ongoing concerns about new technical talent choosing broadcasting as a career by creating the Technical Professional Training Program.

“As technology and the average age and tenure of technical professionals advances there is concern to adequately fulfill the technical staffing needs in the long term,” SBE noted. The goal of the program is to train new entrants to the field of broadcast technology through a series of webinars, mentoring, certification support and other resources.

Learn more about it at http://sbe.org/sbe-technical-professional-training-program/

Comment on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject line.

 

The post Commentary: “The Old Goats Are Going Away” appeared first on Radio World.

The Federal Communications Commission is co-hosting a virtual summit for applicants looking to research and find jobs in the technology sector.

A group of experts and participants will touch on new career opportunities in the tech sector, the best way to build a strong, competitive résumé, and how best to interview for and land a job. The summit, A Road Map to Tech Jobs, is set for Jan., 15, and will run from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

[Read: NAB Foundation Launches Diversity Resource]

The summit is focused on improving diversity in the tech sector and is co-hosted by the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment and the FCC’s Media Bureau. The goal is to reach a group of diverse high school and college students. Registration is encouraged and gives registrants the opportunity to submit questions in advance for speakers’ consideration. The event will be open to the public via a live feed from the FCC’s web page at www.fcc.gov/live and on the FCC’s YouTube channel.

Visit this link to complete registration.

The post FCC to Host Summit on Finding Jobs in the Tech Sector appeared first on Radio World.

 

The author worked at KWTX(AM/FM) in 1975–79 as an announcer, DJ and board operator. He is a personal collector and preservationist of Central Texas broadcasting memorabilia.

This is one in a series featuring radio station memories and early histories.

Once the home of the “Golden Sound of Beautiful Music,” KWTX-FM has now been entertaining Central Texas listeners in one form or another for 50 years.

Its inaugural broadcast was Dec. 7, 1970. The new Waco FM station at 97.5 MHz was owned and operated by KWTX Broadcasting Co., the licensee of KWTX-TV (Channel 10) and KWTX(AM) (1230 kHz). All local radio and TV programming originated from the company’s Broadcast Center at 4520 Bosque Blvd. in Waco.

The KWTX transmitter and tower were located along I-35 near Lorena, Texas, a few miles south of Waco. The station transmitted at an effective radiated power of 71 kW. Programming was sent from the Waco studio to the transmitter site by a microwave link licensed by the Federal Communications Commission as Auxiliary WAL 23.

Announcer Carla Smith circa 1980

Throughout the 1970s, the station aired easy-listening music in stereo with limited interruptions from 6 a.m. to midnight. Instrumental selections from albums by Percy Faith, Montovani, Ray Conniff, Ferrante and Teicher, Andre Kostelanetz, 101 Strings, plus many other similar musical artists were broadcast to listeners throughout Central Texas.

The station also carried national news on the hour from the Mutual Broadcasting System. The local FM announcers gave the time and temperature on the quarter-hour and a short headline news report and weather forecast every half-hour.

Dave South, former KWTX radio program director and Texas A&M play-by-play sportscaster, recently recalled a few of the obstacles faced before and after the first broadcast.

“We put the station on the air with a very limited music library,” South said. “I had gone to Dallas a number of times begging the record distributors for any help they could provide, which wasn’t much.”

RCA BC-7A stereo/dual channel consolette, Sennheiser MD 421-II cardioid dynamic microphone on an adjustable swivel arm, and ITC Model SP and Model 3D cartridge tape machines. Not shown were two Russco Cue-Master broadcast turntables. On-air announcer scripts to be read live can be seen above the console.

However, the station received programming help from an unexpected source. South received a letter from a man in Europe asking if the radio station played easy-listening music. The man’s father was an orchestra leader who had recorded 10 or 12 albums.

“He sent those albums to me,” South said. “We played just about every cut on each LP, and that increased our music library by 30 to 40 percent.”

South said station management would come into the control room occasionally and draw a line with a red grease pencil through album cuts they didn’t want to hear again.

“Lots of red circles became a part of our lives in FM,” South said.

Announcer Bill Castello in FM control circa 1979

On-air announcers also had to cope with working inside a small confined space, sometimes for up to six hours. The FM control room wasn’t much larger than a closet and crowded with equipment and storage shelves.

South said that it was often difficult to find someone willing to work long part-time hours for not much money — and who liked to listen to slow instrumental music.

“Our only full-time announcer was Clarence Garnes,” South said. “Clarence was a former radio guy and had a great voice. He was in his late 70s and smoked like a chimney. He didn’t make much money, but that was OK with him, because he was retired, and his wife had a good job at Baylor University.”

Many FM radio hosts brought “Beautiful Stereo Music” to Central Texas listeners for over a decade until the format changed in the early ’80s to personality DJs playing contemporary hits 24 hours a day.

A few noteworthy changes to KWTX-FM have occurred since. A new broadcast tower and transmitter facility was built near Moody, south of Waco, in 1979. FM power increased to 100 kW in 1986.

KWTX AM/FM/TV moved to a new facility at 6700 American Plaza in 1987. Both radio stations were sold to Gulfstar Communications in 1996, and are now owned by iHeartMedia.

Today, KWTX(AM) “NewsTalk 1230,”  KWTX-FM “97.5 FM #1 Hit Music,” and other Waco iHeartMedia stations are located at 314 West Highway 6.

 

The post Remembering the Early Days of KWTX-FM appeared first on Radio World.

The NAB says the FCC did the right thing last summer when it eliminated the radio duplication rule for FM as well as AM stations. It is slamming opponents who want to overturn the decision, calling them cynical and retaliatory.

The story so far

In August, the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the rule that restricted duplication of programming on commonly owned stations that operate in the same service and geographic area. However, it unexpectedly did so for FM stations as well as AM, a late change that was criticized at the time by Democratic Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks.

Subsequently, REC Networks, musicFIRST and Future of Music Coalition formally asked the FCC to overturn the decision in regards to FM stations. Among other things they basically accused the National Association of Broadcasters of pulling a fast one by seeking to change the terms of the issue at the last minute.

The opponents reminded the FCC that it had proposed and circulated a draft order applying only to AM stations and explicitly retaining the rule for FMs.

“In its Final Order, however, without warning or justification, the commission reversed course, eliminating the Radio Duplication Rule in its entirety,” they argued in November.

They said the elimination of the FM portion of the Radio Duplication Rule would “invite a reduction in diversity of programming, while encouraging corporate radio owners to hoard spectrum.” They believe the economic fallout of the pandemic should not be used as a justification because it is ultimately a temporary situation that could be dealt with through waiver requests, whereas the rule change will have lasting consequences.

And they said the FCC’s “sudden about-face” regarding FM violates federal law on administrative procedures. They said that on the day before the sunshine period, the general counsel of the NAB called senior aides to Republican Commissioners Pai and Carr to argue that the FM rule should be eliminated.

The effect of the timing, they said, “was to ensure that petitioners would not be able to speak to anyone at the commission about the matter on an ex parte basis prior to the commission’s vote. The timing of these actions is an affront to the stated purpose of the commission’s ex parte rules, namely to ‘ensure the fairness and integrity of its decisionmaking.’”

They laid out legal reasoning why a second round of public comments should have been held instead.

NAB replies

Now the NAB has replied formally to the commission.

The association says the critics’ arguments about competition “exhibit a complete misrepresentation of the business fundamentals of the radio industry and the intense competition radio faces, and a total lack of understanding of the market value of AM/FM radio spectrum.”

NAB slammed them as retaliatory: “Once again, we see musicFIRST and FMC file in commission proceedings concerning radio not because the companies and organizations those groups represent care about the proceedings at issue, but rather, to retaliate against broadcasters for those groups failing to convince Congress to enact a tax on radio stations when they play (promote) record labels’ music on terrestrial radio stations.”

The broadcast group also argued that the petition raises no new issues.

“The FCC correctly determined that, even absent the radio duplication rule, radio stations have no incentive to limit their appeal to listeners or advertising revenues by simulcasting the same content on multiple stations in the same market,” NAB wrote.

“To the contrary, the FCC explained that the best way for stations to reach the widest audience possible and maximize profits is to provide distinctive programming on their various stations, which is exactly the practice of broadcasters with multiple stations in the same market.” They said the opponents had not named one instance where a station has taken advantage of the repeal in the way the critics worry about.

NAB said these opponents also disregard the competitive incentives that broadcasters have to provide “diverse, distinctive content.” It said they “insist on demonstrating their consistent misunderstanding of what it takes for radio stations to survive in today’s hyper-competitive audio marketplace …  Both musicFIRST and FMC appeared blissfully unaware of how difficult it is for radio stations to endure in this environment, never mind serve the public interest effectively.”

It said the explosion in audio choices provides consumers with “nearly limitless content diversity.”

NAB also said eliminating the rule provides FMs the ability to “quickly repurpose programming on commonly owned stations,” especially when they need to share critical information during an emergency. There was no reason to retain the rule and force stations to incur the time and expense of pursuing a waiver. Eliminating the rule also could help stations to facilitate a format change on a sister station or more efficiently cover a specific issue of local interest, for a limited period of time.

“Finally,” NAB wrote in its conclusion, “the entire point of the FCC’s media regulation modernization initiative is to modify or eliminate regulations that no longer serve an important purpose. … [T]he rule is a perfect example of an unnecessary regulation that can needlessly hinder broadcasters’ ability to efficiently serve Americans, particularly during crises.”

The debate comes at a time of transition at the FCC, with an incoming Democratic presidential administration and the expectation of a new chairman soon. Chairman Pai will oversee his final FCC open meeting this month. Pai has said that regulatory transparency is one of the hallmarks of his tenure.

The deadline for comments on the opponents’ petition was Monday. Replies must be filed by Jan. 15.

The post NAB, Critics Duel Over Radio Duplication Rule appeared first on Radio World.

Leo MacCourtney of Katz Television Group was elected chairman of the International Radio and Television Society Foundation.

He succeeds Debra O’Connell, president of networks at Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution.

IRTS is a charitable organization “dedicated to building the next generation of media leaders and increasing diversity.” Its academic programs include a Summer Fellowship Program, Multicultural Career Workshop, Broadcast Sales Associate Program and Faculty/Industry Seminar.

MacCourtney is president of Katz Television Group, a television advertising sales organization that is part of iHeartMedia. He has been involved with the IRTS board for 25 years in various roles.

He also has served as chairman of the Television Bureau of Advertising and is involved with the boards of the Emma Bowen Foundation and Washington Media Scholars Foundation. He is the treasurer for the Broadcasters Foundation of America.

In a press release, MacCourtney said, “IRTS provides young people across the nation with meaningful ways to work and connect with high-level executives and companies in the media industry.” I’m extremely proud to help lead IRTS in its mission to support and mentor the next generation of media leaders with diversity at the core.”

Joyce Tudryn is IRTS president and CEO.

 

The post MacCourtney Is Elected Chair of IRTS appeared first on Radio World.

Below are the latest totals for the number of U.S. radio stations.

The Federal Communications Commission released its latest count of licensed stations as of Dec. 31, 2020.

We’ve added comparisons to one year ago and, out of interest in the longer-term trends, to 20 years ago.

Picking out a few data points, the total number of full-power stations is off slightly from last year but still well above where it was early in this millennium.

Also we see that the number of FM educational signals almost doubled in two decades. Meanwhile the number of FM translators and boosters far more than doubled in those 20 years (and grew by 238 just in the past year).

And the number of AM stations has continued to shrink, albeit slowly, a little bit each year.

 

AM, FM commercial and FM educational combined*

Dec. 2020: 15,445

Dec. 2019: 15,500

Late 2000: 12,717

*excludes LPFMs, boosters and translators, noted below.

 

AM only

Dec. 2020: 4,551

Dec. 2019: 4,593

Late 2000: 4,685

(In the 1990s, the number of AMs peaked at around 5,000)

 

FM commercial only

Dec. 2020: 6,699

Dec. 2019: 6,772

Late 2000: 5,892

 

FM educational only

Dec. 2020: 4,195

Dec. 2019: 4,135

Late 2000: 2,140

 

FM boosters and translators

Dec. 2020: 8,420

Dec. 2019: 8,182

Late 2000: 3,243

 

Low-power FM

Dec. 2020: 2,136

Dec. 2019: 2,169

Late 2000: n/a

(The LPFM services was created in 2000.)

The post FCC Releases Year-End Station Totals appeared first on Radio World.

Credit: iStock CinematicFilm

As heard in movies and on TV shows, the stereotypical computer-generated voice sounds awkward and unnatural. But thanks to artificial intelligence, today’s computer-generated voices can sound remarkably authentic and natural, especially if the voice has been generated after analyzing numerous samples of an actual person’s spoken words.

This is the approach being used by text-to-voice companies such as Descript. Billed as a tool to help podcasters edit and generate new speech simply by editing text transcripts, Descript starts out by having its clients read text samples into the company’s database, so that its AI-based text-to-voice engine has accurate sounds to work with.

“You can even create a range of delivery styles using samples of your voice,” said Jay LeBoeuf, Descript’s head of business development. “You could have one file labelled ‘Excited,’ a second labelled ‘Contemplative’ and so forth. Then when you input text that suits a particular style of read, you can tell our system which delivery style to use.”

The ability to create voice tracks from text, without actually stepping up to the microphone and speaking into it, has tremendous implications for the radio and voiceover industries.

In particular, the ability to create audio content from AI-generated “stock voices” (rather than cloned from individual human voices) could turn the market for human announcers upside down.

How good is text-to-voice?

This article was prompted by a Descript email received by Radio World with the subject line “Create Realistic, Synthetic Voiceovers Just by Typing.” It included a link to an audio file named “Descript Stock Voices.” It featured some of the 10 distinct AI-generated female and male voices that Descript offers to its text-to-voice clients for free. (A link to the audio file is at the end of this article.)

The file featured these non-human voices bantering back and forth, to illustrate how natural they sounded to the actual human ear. Again, their spoken words were generated directly from text.

In the subjective assessment of this writer, the AI-generated voices generally did sound authentic, although the need to leave distinct spaces between each of their words added a slight unnaturalness to the delivery.

Overall, the interplay between Descript’s AI-generated voices was impressive. In a short commercial or an on-air announcement consisting of two or three sentences, they would have been good enough to pass muster with most listeners.

Aimed at human announcers

Despite its mention of AI-generated voices, Descript says its services are aimed at human announcers/producers who want to make changes to their recorded content without having to go back to the studio.

“The most common use case for our Overdub voice cloning service is editorial corrections of human-delivered audio content,” said LeBoeuf. “It allows producers to make changes to this content as needed quickly and accurately.”

An image from a demo of Descript Pro Overdub.

Sam Sethi is a U.K.-based radio presenter heard on Marlow FM, BBC Berkshire and several other radio stations. He also podcasts and does voiceovers, and uses Descript Overdub as part of his production process.

“I read Descript’s prescribed text to train their system for 30 minutes, and then Descript created my unique Overdub voice,” said Sethi.

“In a blind listening test, my wife of 20 years couldn’t tell with 100% accuracy which was the synthesized voice and which was my own. I was genuinely amazed by that. Since then I have used my Overdub voice to make small edits or add additional audio quickly by using Overdub.”

Possibilities

As useful as Descript’s Overdub voice cloning is to human announcers and products, it’s the economical AI-generated voices that might get a cost-sensitive radio manager thinking.

Using a text-to-voice portfolio of AI-generated voices, a network could create individualized news, weather and sports casts for each market. The text would be generated by humans at a central location. Stories would be sorted and stored in online folders for each station, organized by playout order and then fed to a text-into-voice system that would generated market-specific audio broadcasts for each location. No announcers required.

In the same vein, station identifications and other branded content that are being created by human voiceover artists could be produced using text-to-voice. (To offset any cadence issues, the station could openly acknowledge that it is using a text-to-voice system: “Hi, I’m Bob, your friendly AI announcer.”)

Meanwhile, local ad campaigns could be changed constantly as required using text-to-voice, allowing stations to provide an unprecedented degree of custom messaging to sponsors.

Fans of human creativity in radio are shuddering right about now. But these scenarios certainly seem credible in an era when big media companies have been known to cut costs.

According to Rolfe Veldman, CEO of www.Voice123.com, an online marketplace for voiceovers, AI-generated voices are already turning up, mainly in advertising.

“There’s an increased trend towards short radio ads and more of them in a given campaign, which is ripe for AI in my opinion,” Veldman told Radio World.

“Meanwhile, the quality of AI-generated voiceovers is improving. Six months ago it was horrible and today it’s already more than okay. So you can only imagine how good it may be in a year from now as the AI-enabled text-to-voice systems continue to improve.”

Veldman says he isn’t concerned about AI-generated voices displacing human announcers in general. But he does worry that the low cost of AI voices will further depress rates for human talent.

“There are already more voice actors available today than there is available work,” Veldman said. “Adding AI to the market will only make things challenging.”

Limit to the technology?

Now that AI-generated voices are here, it seems unlikely that they will disappear. But can a voiceover generated by an AI software program ever match the very best work done by a human?

Gary Kline is a veteran engineering consultant and contributor to Radio World. He’s not convinced that AI can do the job.

“The AI voices are good enough to use for weather, sports, emergency alerting, giving the time of day, and other short-form informative material,” Kline said.

“But I do not think that they are ready to replace your AM or PM drive host. I don’t think they will be voicing commercials either, at least not yet. It remains to be seen if anyone will actually use the technology for true air-talent replacement and if they do, if listeners will accept it.”

Joan Baker is vice president of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences, and she is similarly skeptical of AI-generated voiceovers.

Joan Baker

“I can see this technology being useful to producers who think they can’t afford the minimal cost for hiring skilled voice talent, and are working on projects where there is no real need to appeal to the emotions and needs of the intended listener,” said Baker.

“Selling to people, however, requires cutting through a very dense layer of cynicism and apprehension. This is why the ‘conversational, natural, non-announcery’ style of voice acting has become so popular.

“Beyond selling, it is also tough to communicate critical issues about public safety, health and many personal concerns over which consumers — the public — are looking for inspired solutions and advice,” Baker said.

“In these cases, only real people can tap into the nuances of emotions that are symbiotic in how people think and feel during one-to-one communications with each other. Can a robotic voice know the difference between saying ‘I love you’ at a time when a person feeling romantic toward his soulmate, and when he is being comforting a friend on their death bed?”

It is hard to imagine that an AI-generated voiceover could surmount the communications challenges outlined by Baker and Kline. That said, not so long ago it would seem unimaginable that AI-generated voices could pass for human. You can assess for yourself how close the Descript Stock Voices audio file gets.

The post “Create Synthetic VOs Just by Typing” appeared first on Radio World.

The MIW Radio Group is all about mentoring; and it has now opened the application window for its annual mentoring initiative.

The Mentoring & Inspiring Women in Radio Group chooses four candidates each year from within the radio sales, marketing, programming and digital disciplines, and matches the “mentees” up with experienced female leaders in radio.

The Mildred Carter Mentoring Program was established in 2002. It is sponsored this year by vCreative. Applications are open until Jan. 29.

Here’s how to apply.

Entercom Vice President National Partnerships Lindsay Adams chairs the mentoring program.

The program is named in the memory of Mildred Carter, who, with her husband Andrew “Skip” Carter, founded the first African American owned radio station in the U.S. in 1950 in Kansas City. She ran the Carter Broadcast Group for many years after the death of Skip Carter.

 

The post MIW Group Opens Mentoring Applications appeared first on Radio World.

Radio World helps you kick off your new year with stories about the PreSonus PD-70 microphone; the impact of synthetic voiceovers; and tips for choosing your next console.

Also: In some countries, the “service following” feature of hybrid radio systems raises the possibility of “hidden” streaming fees for broadcasters; developers are working to minimize the impact. John Bisset on maintaining equipment for long life spans. And Doug Vernier offers tips on how to get the most out of a popular V-Soft FM software package.

Read it here.

The post Inside the Jan. 6, 2021 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.

The head of enforcement for the Federal Communications Commission says efforts to implement the new PIRATE Act against illegal radio stations have been hampered by the pandemic as well as a lack of funding from Congress.

Rosemary C. Harold, the chief of the FCC Enforcement Bureau, submitted the commission’s first annual report to Congress about its pirate radio work, as required in the act that became law a year ago.

That law raised the amount of fines the FCC can issue, up to $100,000 per day and $2 million total, and it expanded the definition of who can be fined to include people who “willfully and knowingly” help pirate radio operations.

The commission did report some enforcement activity for the year, as listed below. But Harold identified two issues that have limited its work.

Obstacles

First, the FCC in March implemented a mandatory telework policy. That complicated the work of pirate enforcement, which requires agents “to engage in significant, in-person activities to gather evidence, including witness statements and technical measurements of a pirate station’s operations.”

Second, the commission has received no funding to implement the PIRATE Act, she wrote.

“The Congressional Budget Office and the commission both estimated that it would cost $11 million for the commission to implement the Act,” she said.

“And yet, the PIRATE Act itself contained no appropriation or other funding source to cover its implementation costs. And because the commission’s FY 2021 budget ceiling level was established by the Office of Management and Budget on December 3, 2019, before Congress adopted the PIRATE Act, the commission did not have an opportunity to incorporate costs related to the implementation of the PIRATE Act during the president’s fiscal year (FY) 2021 budget process.”

The FCC also is supposed to conduct “sweeps” at least once a year in five markets that have the most pirate radio activity. It began studying this but the lack of funding and the pandemic-related restrictions prevented any sweeps.

Harold said the bureau’s ability to fully conduct the sweeps “will remain subject to obtaining new funding through the appropriations process” as well as the end of the pandemic.

And the FCC was supposed to develop a public database by April 2020 that listed all licensed AM and FM stations, as well as all entities that have received a notice of unlicensed operation, notice of apparent liability or forfeiture order.

But that too didn’t happen because of lack of appropriated funds.

Activities

Nevertheless, the Enforcement Bureau was not idle in 2020.

Harold cited new efforts to inform property owners and property managers of apparent pirate broadcasts from their properties and to describe the potential consequences to the property owner or manager. The first notices were issued in New York last month, as we’ve reported.

“Although these ongoing proceedings are in their early stages, initial discussions with the property owners have been promising,” Harold told Congress. The FCC is also doing more general outreach to educate commercial and residential property owners and managers.

The law also encourages the commission to skip the usual step of issuing a notice of unauthorized operation and proceed instead directly to a notice of apparent liability for forfeiture. The Enforcement Bureau implemented that in December.

And on the enforcement side, Harold listed several actions including the settlement of two long-running investigations. Acerome Jean Charles and Gerlens Cesar separately agreed to monetary settlements including “significant suspended” penalties that would be triggered if they resumed operations.

The post Lack of Funding Hampers PIRATE Enforcement appeared first on Radio World.

The EBU is based in Geneva, Switzerland.

The EBU has a new executive board, elected at its General Assembly in December.

The European Broadcasting Union is an alliance of public service media organizations. Its board will serve for a two-year period starting this month.

“Nine board members will join the EBU’s new President Delphine Ernotte Cunci (France Télévisions) and Vice-President Petr Dvořák (Czech TV) to help lead the EBU over the next two years,” it announced.

Headshots of the new EBU board

Thomas Bellut, Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė and Fran Unsworth join the board for the first time. Alexander Wrabetz rejoins after a four-year absence.

Bellut has been director general of ZDF since 2012. Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė was appointed director general of Lithuanian National Radio and Television in 2018. Unsworth runs the BBC’s news and current affairs programming and is a member of the BBC board as well.

Wrabetz has served as director general of ORF since 2007 and was an EBU board member from 2011–2016.

Cilla Benkö has been appointed for her fifth term as an EBU Board Member while Marcello Foa, Giacomo Ghisani, Sebastian Sergei Parker and Gonçalo Reis will be serving for a second term.

Ernotte Cunci noted the “balance of the geographical, economical and cultural diversity of the EBU members” in the composition of the board and that it includes three women for the first time.

Tony Hall of the BBC has served as president of the EBU for the past two years.

Executive Board Line-Up

President: Delphine Ernotte Cunci, CEO, France Télévisions (France)
Vice-President: Petr Dvořák, Director General, Czech TV (Czech Republic)

Thomas Bellut, Director General, ZDF (Germany)
Cilla Benkö, Director General, SR (Sweden)
Marcello Foa, President, Rai (Italy)
Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė, Director General, LRT (Lithuania)
Giacomo Ghisani, Acting Director General, RV (Vatican State)
Sebastian Sergei Parker, Deputy Director General, Channel One (Russia)
Gonçalo Reis, President and CEO, RTP (Portugal)
Fran Unsworth, Director of News and Current Affairs, BBC (UK)
Alexander Wrabetz, Director General, ORF (Austria)

The post EBU Welcomes New Board appeared first on Radio World.

A GoFundMe page has been created to assist the family of Andy Luberda, who died in late December from complications of COVID-19.

Luberda, 51, was the longtime operations manager of Skyview Networks, which announced his death. The support page is https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-loving-memory-of-andy-luberda.

Luberda joined the satellite distribution and syndication company in 2012 as a board op in its Broadcast Operations department, according to the company.

“In this role, he was responsible for the quality and execution of professional sports play-by-play broadcasts, showing leadership, reliability and passion,” it stated. “His love of sports combined with his approachable and warm personality made him a valued leader and friend to his colleagues.”

Skyview’s Director, Communication & Special Projects Renee Smith said Luberda took on additional projects that included managing ABC News Radio overnight broadcasts.

“In 2015, Andy was promoted to operations manager, where he focused on managing one of the company’s largest clients, TuneIn. In this role, he monitored and managed over 70 collegiate football and basketball live audio streams and 24/7 news and weather content.”

Luberda’s son Kade also joined the company in 2016 as a board operator.

Colleague and manager Aaron Mellis remembered Andy Luberda’s “warm heart and genuine care for his colleagues.”

According to his obituary Luberda was a graduate of Arizona State University. “His passion was being an avid sports writer for a multitude of high schools in Arizona,” the obituary states. “It brought him great joy when an athlete was recognized and signed by a college; but his greatest passion was spending time with his grandkids and just being their Grandy.”

The benefit page is to raise funds for medical and memorial costs and to provide financial support for his son.

The post Andy Luberda Dies, Was Skyview Ops Manager appeared first on Radio World.

A lifeline product image from the MSA site; see the safety notice for guidance about which products are affected.

Share this item with the person who climbs your tower: Safety equipment maker MSA has issued a user safety notice about one of its products.

“MSA has received field reports of a limited number of Latchways Standard Self-Retracting Lifelines (SRL) in which some internal bolts came loose,” the company wrote.

It said it has not received reports of injuries associated with the condition, but it advises customers to remove relevant ones from service and return them to the company.

It published information so users can determine if their particular units are affected.

“Over time, the loose bolts will be identifiable by the user as extraction of the cable from the SRL housing will no longer be possible. However, MSA’s investigation has determined that this may be preceded by a window of time in which a fall may not be arrested.”

The company will rework the product at no cost.

The notice was issued by Nathan Andrulonis, the company’s director of product safety.

The alert was forwarded by NATE, the Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, as an urgent industry safety alert.

Read the notice.

The post MSA Recalls Some of Its Lifelines appeared first on Radio World.

George Beasley, right, is shown in an archival photo with Al Jones, former general manager of WGAC.

Beasley Media Group will turn 60 in December 2021 and it has begun the commemoration.

It said it will celebrate throughout the year with a variety of on-air and online activities including archival photos that tell its story on social media channels; top-of-the-hour IDs; artist congratulatory messages; Community of Caring Initiatives in its local communities; and celebratory events in each market on the anniversary.

It also created a commemorative anniversary logo.

[Read Radio World’s 2015 profile of George Beasley.]

“On Dec. 2, 1961, a young high school principal named George Beasley launched WPYB(AM) in Benson, North Carolina with the vision of providing a voice for the voiceless in the local community,” it wrote in a press release.

“Today, Beasley Media Group is a multiplatform media company providing advertising and digital marketing solutions across the United States with 64 radio properties located in 15 large and medium markets across the country. Beasley also offer capabilities in audio technology, esports, podcasting, ecommerce, and events. Featured on the NASDAQ, BBGI is ranked among the publicly traded media companies in America.”

Beasley Media Group Chief Executive Officer Caroline Beasley announced the initiative.

The post Beasley Highlights Its Upcoming 60th appeared first on Radio World.

NAB’s PILOT technology initiative recently posted technology predictions for the coming year.

A sampling of those related to radio:

PILOT Executive Director John Clark wrote that consumers will have one-on-one conversations with their preferred local news providers over voice platforms.

“Chatbots and messaging apps with these kinds of personalized ‘conversations’ are already prevalent in other areas (e.g., customer service apps), including news. As these interactions extend to voice platforms, we’ll see local news being delivered not just as a request for a headline but as a conversation about a headline.”

David H. Layer, NAB vice president, advanced engineering, said U.S. broadcasters will embrace RadioDNS, as hybrid radios for vehicles become more prevalent. He called on stations to create a RadioDNS Service Information file so they will display properly.

“Broadcasters can do this themselves or work with a number of service providers who can assist free of charge. It’s vital for broadcasters to do this so that automakers can be assured that their investment of time and resources in developing great radio receivers is appreciated and supported.”

Jeremy Sinon, VP of digital strategy for Hubbard Radio, says companies are “waking up to digital channels that have been available to us all along and getting serious about maximizing their potential.” Key trends, he wrote, will include “doubling down on podcasting and social media, producing more digital video (live and recorded) and taking advantage of the built-in discoverability potential of YouTube.”

Joe D’Angelo, senior vice president of radio at Xperi, said the past year demonstrated broadcast radio’s vital role “to inform, calm and entertain.” With the FCC’s approval of optional all-digital transmission on AM, he said, “look out for launch of some very exciting all digital AM formats.” He also highlighted the company’s rollout of DTS Connected Radio.

Beyond radio, Jason Friedlander, senior director of product marketing at Verizon Media, said that “edge compute” will begin to make personalized experiences a reality. Mike Kelley, vice president and chief information security officer at E.W. Scripps, said ATSC 3.0 will begin to have dramatic and unexpected impact.

And Sam Matheny, NAB’s chief technology officer and executive vice president of technology, wrote, “NAB Show will roar back as the world’s largest trade show for media, entertainment and technology in October. With the benefit of a vaccine and time, it will be an early success story leading the way for large-scale in-person gatherings.”

Read their comments and others.

The post Tech Predictions for Radio and Digital appeared first on Radio World.

Tom Hartnett is the technical director for Comrex.

This article appeared in Radio World’s “Trends in Codecs and STLs for 2020” ebook.

Despite being around for decades, FM broadcasting remains the most popular audio media around. A lot of the reason FM thrives, despite the attempts to create a “better” digital alternative, is technical. FM was defined with technical standards that deliver a low noise signal that allows for easy reception in most environments. But more than that, FM was defined as having deviation standards that allow for an audio bandwidth that covers the majority of the hearing spectrum. Sure, modern audio media bests FM in frequency response and signal-to-noise, but the fidelity of FM remains “good enough” for the vast majority of listeners. So much more than features like stereo imaging and dynamic range optimization, it’s the fidelity of FM that keeps listeners engaged. The ability to hear the funky bass line along with the high-hat cymbal, or the ability to derive the emotional nuances of a speaker’s voice is what makes FM radio shine.

But any broadcast airchain is only as strong as its weakest link. With digital recording and production, it’s relatively easy to make a great-sounding in-studio product. But generating live, remote audio has always come with its own set of challenges and costs. Too many times, broadcasters have been willing to compromise on the fidelity of remote feeds for the sake of cost and convenience, airing live audio from telephones. Telephone systems, by design, convey only the fraction of audio spectrum required for intelligibility. They filter out lows to avoid noise pickup, and they filter out highs for reasons having to do with the dated economics of 20th century digital telephony.

[Check Out More of Radio World’s Ebooks Here]

Comrex has built a company, and I’ve built a career, finding alternatives to live telephone audio for radio broadcasters. It doesn’t take any scientific studies or high-priced consultants to know that telephone audio is grungy, thin, and fatiguing to listen to at length. If the competitive challenge is to avoid listeners hitting the “next station” button, then maintaining listenable audio throughout your programming should be the primary goal. At the same time, it’s incredibly important that stations engage in their community (and monetize their brand) with remote broadcasting. Technology has helped combine these goals.

I’ll spare the reader a detailed history of this science, but a list of recent technology is helpful. Dedicated loops (when telephone tariffs reigned supreme), RPU radios, frequency extenders (maturing to multiphone line models), ISDN and POTS codecs each saw their era of popularity and utility wax, and each waned for their own reasons. Something new was always available that was more cost-effective or easier to procure. But the main objective — fidelity — was always either equaled or improved.

We all use IP pretty much exclusively for live out-of-studio audio these days, due to ubiquity and cost. And luckily, IP makes carrying higher fidelity audio feeds easy. Audio coding science has come a long way and implementations are now cheaper and lower power. Wireless IP has made the remote broadcaster’s dream a reality. It’s now possible to carry a handheld, battery powered device into the field, and generate programs that rival the sound of in-studio sources.

So game over, right? What could possibly come next? Problems remain to be solved. We still air telephone audio from listeners. Setting up a remote broadcast can still be a challenge for the nontechnical. And specialized audio encoding gear has significant cost.

Meanwhile, nonbroadcast industries have discovered that offering “toll quality” audio for communication isn’t good enough. Like broadcast, a competitive edge can be had by offering an experience with higher audio fidelity. The recent boom in video chat apps proves this point.

While audio challenges exist in that world with regard to echo cancellation and delay, fidelity has never been an issue. Developers saw early on that high-quality audio needs to be part of any system from the ground up. Facetime, Skype, Zoom, Teams, Messenger and Duo all use high-fidelity audio encoders.

Voice-over-IP systems, now common in office environments, aren’t constrained by the legacy telephone system within their borders. They can by default deliver high-fidelity audio encoders when talking exclusively over their LANs. Even on a relatively poor audio system like a telephone handset the difference between an in-office call and out-of-office call can be startling.

This is because calls outside the LAN must convert the fidelity of the audio to the “lowest common denominator,” which is the legacy phone system.

Mobile phone audio quality is a long-time frustration for broadcast. For programming with listener call-ins, there’s been a routine need to disconnect callers who are unintelligible. This makes programs suffer and wastes valuable airtime. But even here, we see that the industry has realized there’s not always a need to stick with legacy low-fidelity audio.

As mobile phones and networks mature, it’s becoming increasingly common to experience high-fidelity “HD Voice” calls between mobile callers. Modern audio encoders like G.722, AMR-WB and EVS are integrated into late model phones, and the voice-over-LTE networks that support this traffic are quickly replacing the legacy networks. Several carriers are able to cross-connect high-fidelity calls between them, expanding the number of users who experience HD Voice on calls.

On VoIP and mobile networks the existing challenge is the same: there’s no easy way to “bridge the gap” and bring this high-fidelity audio into a broadcast studio reliably. So even when calls originate from these advanced networks, the caller audio is converted into the thin fatiguing sound we all know, in order to be compatible with legacy “bridging” systems.

So the next step in the evolution of high-fidelity remote audio for broadcast clearly involves finding a way to leverage existing systems into the studio. While that work is underway, there’s already one existing tool that can be used today to improve telephone audio: WebRTC.

When I first introduced this concept to broadcasters several years ago, it was a hard sell as it was difficult to describe in a concise sentence. But don’t be afraid of the scary technical-sounding name. WebRTC is essentially a video chat app that’s built into virtually every web browser, whether desktop or mobile. It’s an open standard and allows anyone to create a video chat service without requiring any software installation on the participant’s system. That’s because the critical pieces are already in the browser, waiting to be “woken up.”

Like other video conferencing apps, WebRTC uses a high-fidelity audio encoder by default. This encoder is called Opus, and it’s becoming the de facto standard for live web conferencing.

Because WebRTC doesn’t require the video part of a call, every web browser, both desktop and mobile, can now be considered a high-fidelity audio encoder using Opus.

Using WebRTC can be as simple as subscribing to an audio-only service provider like ipDTL, Cleanfeed, or SourceConnect Now. This will require a pro-grade audio-ready computer at each end of the link. The Comrex Opal provides a pro-grade hardware solution that handles all the complexity within its server box.

Either way, by using WebRTC you’re leveraging the power of developments that were never intended to be used for broadcast. This is the way things have been done for decades — from POTS codecs, ISDN to IP, broadcast always finds a way to leverage new developments for their unique requirements.

We’ll continue to do that as existing “HD Voice” networks converge and interoperate. Maybe someday soon the goal of banishing telephones from the radio will come to pass.

The post As Remote Audio Evolves, Fidelity Reigns appeared first on Radio World.

Audio equipment maker TASCAM has added to its USB audio interface line with the US-HR series. These are high-resolution audio versions, 24-bit/192 kHz sample rate compared to the 24-bit/96 kHz of the current US line of USB audio interfaces.

The new kids match also out with the US line in its I/O complement with the US-1x2HR, US-2x2HR and US-4x4HR.

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

The core of the US-HR line is the Ultra-HDDA mic preamplifiers with +48V phantom power. Naturally, the line is compatible with Mac and Windows systems.

The US-1x2HR has XLR and 1/4-inch inputs; the US-2x2HR and US-4x4HR offers XLR-1/4-inch combo inputs along with MIDI I/O.

TASCAM says that bundled free software includes Steinberg Cubase LE/Cubasis LE 3, IK Multimedia SampleTank 4 SE, and a free, three-month subscription to Auto-Tune Unlimited.

The maker also points to the physical build of the line: “[the] aluminum honeycomb structure on the side panels with [has] a slight upward tilt. This design not only provides a sleek, eye catching design, it also provides just the right amount of weight so the interface won’t move when cables are connected or disconnected. Equally important, the upward tilt provides the ergonomic benefit of being angled in such a way as to make these interfaces easy to work with.”

Info: www.tascam.com

 

The post TASCAM Adds to USB Interface Offerings appeared first on Radio World.

I’d like to kick this column off with a heartfelt thank you to all of the Workbench readers and friends who sent congratulatory words on reaching the 30-year Workbench milestone. It’s been great reconnecting with you, and I am truly blessed by each of you. Thanks for your support as we start year 31!

Not all wipes are created equal

One of those messages came from Pennsylvania’s Tim Portzline.

Fig. 1: Cleaning wipes may be conductive, posing a risk to electronic parts.

Tim has been reading the column since it first appeared, and he included his first submission with his latest note! He is now an engineer with the Pennsylvania House of Representatives while also doing contract work for several radio stations.

Tim notes that sanitizing wipes are a popular way to clean desks, countertops, doorknobs, etc., especially when trying to stop the spread of COVID-19. However, don’t forget that not all sanitizing wipes are safe for electronics.

He recently got a call from a radio clients about a PR&E BMX console that had failed after being cleaned with wipes that were not intended for use around electronics.

In fairness to the staffer involved, the product labeling didn’t mention anything about sensitive devices. But the liquid in the wipes apparently leaked between the modules and ran down the printed circuit boards below the console’s surface. Channels began turning on and off on their own, and the problem made operating the board impossible for a short time.

By the time Tim arrived at the studio, most of the solution had evaporated so the board was beginning to return to normal. But as a precaution, Tim removed the modules and cleaned them with isopropyl alcohol to eliminate any possible residue that remained.

Fig. 2: Note the resistance of a towel soaked in isopropyl alcohol.

After he finished working on the board, Tim got curious about whether the fluid in the wipes had any measurable resistance.

Ideally, the resistance should have been infinite. However, Tim measured as little as 28K-ohms across a small area with a digital multi-meter, as shown in Fig. 1.

The resistance was certainly low enough to interfere with normal circuit operation of the board, akin to dropping hundreds of stray resistors across the traces of the printed circuit board.

Taking the experiment a step further, Tim tested a paper towel saturated with 91% isopropyl alcohol, shown in Fig. 2.

Here the resistance was infinite, or at least greater than the 2M-ohm maximum resistance of the DMM, making it high enough not to interfere with most low voltage circuits.

So, Tim’s tip: Don’t assume that cleaning wipes are non-conductive! Check them first.

[Related: “Radio Equipment Pandemic Cleaning 101”]

Down the drain

ELWA Ministries Association is a U.S.-based nonprofit, nondenominational Christian ministry providing spiritual and physical aid to the West African country of Liberia.

In addition to a hospital and dental clinic, the organization runs ELWA Radio (Eternal Love Winning Africa), and we welcome their readership.

ELWA engineer Alan Shea writes about condensate drains, which we discussed in Workbench in October. Alan’s tip originates with his dad, who was also a broadcast engineer and was Alan’s first mentor.

To keep the drains clear, especially the trap where water can sit, take a piece of bare #12 solid copper wire and snake it through into the trap where it can sit. The copper leaches out into the trap water and helps kill algae by binding to it, which damages the algae cells, causing them to leak and die.

Another point while we’re on the subject of drains: If you have multiple air handlers, make sure that the condensate drain for each is plumbed individually outdoors, or to a larger drain.

Sometimes, to save time and installation cost, drains are tied together in a manifold-type arrangement. When the tech blows out one drain with compressed air, any algae plugs are simply blown into another A/C unit because of the manifold. Separate drains make more sense.

Alan also had an interesting experience with washing equipment. He encountered a piece of gear with a primary power supply toroid transformer that was a single piece of coiled-up steel. It was running hot, and constantly blowing the input fuse.

Alan realized that the steel laminations had too much eddy currents running through them.

He soaked it in a saltwater solution for an hour, then allowed it to air dry for a day. This created enough rust “insulation” between the laminations to cut down the eddy currents so that the toroid ran cool and no longer blew the input fuse.

Sometimes rust can be a good thing!

Down at the Shack

Any engineers with a little gray on the sides of their heads will remember the ubiquity of RadioShack. I and hundreds of other engineers used their parts more than once, in emergencies, to keep a critical function working.

RadioShack is a shadow of its former self. As a recent AP Business story put it, the company “was unable to capitalize on the PC boom that began in the mid-eighties … it also found itself largely on the outside of the portable device revolution of the aughts and drifting toward irrelevancy. It booked its last profit in 2011.” The brand has been through two bankruptcies in recent years.

Longtime Workbench contributor Dan Slentz dropped us a neat note about an online revival of RadioShack. According to business news reports, the new majority owner Retail Commerce Ventures is a retail acquisition group whose strategy is to buy well-known brands that can benefit from its e-commerce expertise. They previously bought Modell’s Sporting Goods and Pier 1 Imports out of bankruptcy.

The new RadioShack will be online, selling from its own website and via an Amazon storefront. Let us know of any experiences you have with it.

The existing 400 or so brick-and-mortar RadioShacks operate independently and remain open.

What’s hard to believe is that the brand will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2021.

E-commerce sites

Speaking of the internet, Frank Hertel, a consultant with Newman-Kees and another longtime Workbench contributor, was intrigued by the online store Ali Express, which is part of the Alibaba Group based in China that you may have read about. The site is www.aliexpress.com. It offers a most varied selection of “things” — wall-mounted stands, brackets, cables and even gaming accessories.

Have you had experiences good or bad with that e-commerce site or any other alternatives to Amazon, in shopping for things to help you in your engineering work? Drop us a note and let us hear about them.

John Bisset has spent over 50 years in the broadcasting industry. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance. He holds CPBE certification with the Society of Broadcast Engineers and is a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award. Workbench submissions are encouraged, qualify for SBE recertification and can be emailed to johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Workbench: Germicidals May Kill Your Electronics appeared first on Radio World.

Younger listeners play music and shows online and from digital personal collections. My research finds that this music is distributed almost entirely in its original, unprocessed form (Getty Images/JGI/Jamie Grill)

The author is senior engineer with Cavell Mertz & Associates Inc.

Audio processing has reached a level of performance where audio content can have high loudness without the traditional artifacts of audible clipping, pumping, intermodulation distortion, etc.

Of course, audio processing in a broadcast medium is justifiable for over-modulation protection and combatting noisy listening environments.

Due to freedom from distortion in processors and loudness wars, however, much of radio has reached a state of hyper-compression, where already-compressed popular music is fed to multiband compressors and limiters that aggressively reprocess the audio.

This situation is hard to reverse in broadcast, where competitive loudness remains a concern, but I believe minimal processing may be the right direction for online radio media.

I hate to be nostalgic, but FM was once considered a “high fidelity” medium (I’m old enough to remember!).

Consumers used to buy exquisite, expensive tuners to get the best FM sound for their living room systems. Today a number of my non-technical friends don’t even hook up the antenna on their multimedia receivers.

What happened to that reputation, and is it connected to FM’s gradual loss of listeners to online media?

A look at the General Electric transmitter two-page ad in a 1940s issue of Broadcasting Magazine says a lot about FM’s change. (You can see it in detail by clicking the image.)

Click to enlarge.

The signal-to-noise ratio of the new FM system promised to deliver “double the Dynamic Range” of AM and remove “the unreality of artificially controlled sound levels that compress a fortissimo.”

Using an ingenious size comparison between AM and FM (using a photo of an all-woman orchestra during World War II) GE touted the “contrasts of sound intensities … in all its glorious realism.”

Along the way, years ago, FM radio got the idea that dynamic range had no value, and louder was better.

The development of stronger and stronger FM audio processors began. That seemed to work for FM for many years — after all, it was a portable and in-car medium with lower noise and wider frequency response than AM, as well as stereo.

However, the 2000s brought a newer medium: online digital audio that could be delivered to smart phones as well as home computers.

Is less more?

While FM’s decline of listeners may be due to a combination of causes, online audio (streams, podcasts and on-demand playout) have flourished.

Online audio is a 16-bit digital system having a dynamic range greater than 90 decibels, regardless of the bit rate, and lossy compression codecs have continued to improve in sound quality.

Younger listeners play music and shows online and from digital personal collections. My research finds that this music is distributed almost entirely in its original, unprocessed form.

This is true of major on-demand music services, and some are now are offering high-fidelity channels with higher bit rates and even “lossless” coding. The tracks are simply normalized (gain offset) to a common loudness target, without touching the dynamic range of the content.

In a recent project for a major radio group, I found that some online distributors of live station audio are using substantially less processing than their on-air broadcasts. Perhaps some are learning that “artificially controlled sound levels” are not preferred by listeners.

Similarly, podcasts — the fastest growing segment of online audio — are produced and delivered with little or no audio processing.

The target loudness of the online industry is changing to a lower value to permit greater dynamic range.

Rethinking the target

I have the privilege of chairing a drafting committee at the Audio Engineering Society, which is writing a new technical document for online audio parameters.

These interim specifications will evolve to a profile with even wider dynamic range to match audio-for-video standards — and we know how much dynamic range video services deliver!

Broadcasters are now faced with another choice if they adopt “hybrid radio,” which provides a streaming alternative to radio reception as listeners drive outside the broadcast coverage.

FM stations could choose to match the audio processing of their stream to the (hyper-compressed) broadcast audio, to avoid changes as the dashboard receiver switches between off-air and stream.

Or should they? Perhaps radio should reconsider what it broadcasts and move with the audio industry and away from heavy compression.

When hyper-compressed audio is normalized to the same integrated loudness as lightly-processed audio, a heavily-compressed stream sounds weak and flat by comparison. Compressing a stream to sound like air can’t compete with natural, dynamic sound.

Considering this, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the FM stations, too, returned their own air audio to a high-fidelity condition, as FM promised 75 years ago?

A free Radio World ebook explores trends in processing for radio, including the management of over-the-air and streamed signals. Find it at radioworld.com/ebooks.

The post Is It Time for Radio to Restore Dynamic Range? appeared first on Radio World.

Minnesota broadcaster Greg Borgen died in December. He was 64.

According to his obituary, he died unexpectedly on Dec. 21.

He was owner and president of Borgen Broadcasting, licensee of Twin City-area stations WDGY(AM) and WREY(AM) and several associated FM translators; and he has been a member of the board of the Minnesota Broadcasters Association.

“Greg was a second-generation radio broadcaster who was known, loved and admired throughout Minnesota, western Wisconsin and beyond,” the obituary read. “He was a true family man, who did everything and more for his family that he loved so dearly.”

 

The post Greg Borgen Dies, Age 64 appeared first on Radio World.