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

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

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

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

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

 

 

“Fighting Fake News and Truth Decay.”

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

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

Topics covered include:

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

Webinar information and registration can be found Here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A MID-MARKET MUST

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Engagement, passion and fun.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week we’re featuring highlights of Radio World’s 2021 ebooks.

The online WorldDAB Automotive 2021 Conference in June provided looks at various aspects of digital radio in the car environment. Here’s a sampling of presentations, all viewable on WorldDAB’s YouTube channel. This story originally appeared in the ebook “Trends in Digital Radio 2021.”

Extra displays

“Co-driver” displays — those targeting the front-seat passenger — are among “mega trends” dominating the European automotive industry. Another is Android Automotive.

Martin Koch of Volkswagen CARIAD said the arrival of “co-driver” displays will increase the demand for high-quality visual content in the dash. This image shows a passenger display on the MBUX Hyperscreen, introduced by Mercedes-Benz in January.
MBUX Hyperscreen: Co-driver display

Radio has to act fast to respond to both of these trends, said Martin Koch, head of development entertainment & car functions at Volkswagen CARIAD, during his talk “What’s Driving the Automotive Industry?”

He said such displays are turning up now in high-end cars, and their arrival is spurring a demand for high-quality visuals, which can include sophisticated slideshows, full-motion videos, games and multimedia tied to “browsing through the latest releases of your favorite artists,” he said.

Unfortunately, only about only 20 radio stations in the world currently support online slideshows, he said.

“This is not enough to really talk about providing a brilliant visual experience to drivers and co-drivers. So my recommendation for the broadcast industry is to make use of the technologies we already have in place and to develop concepts for attractive visual content to accompany their audio programming,” Koch said.

“And it’s not only the station logo or weather information: It can be so much more that attracts your customers and keeps them listening to your station and not switching to another media source or other content.”

Further, the presence of Android Automotive apps into the car will compete with DAB+ in the space and could undermine broadcast radio if these apps do not incorporate DAB+ features. Koch’s advice is for radio stations to build their own apps on the Android Automotive platform and “provide them, through the relevant app stores, to the dash of the car.”

Android Automotive

During the presentation “Global, Open and Available: A Broadcaster-Led Initiative for Radio on Android Automotive,” Joe D’Angelo, Xperi’s senior vice president of broadcast radio, asked Guru Nagarajan, Google’s engineering manager with Android Automotive OS, about the progress being made to bring that OS into the world’s cars, and about broadcast radio’s place in it.

“The first cars with the Android Automotive OS were launched this past year, and they were on Volvo Polestars,” Nagarajan said. “We’ve been very pleased with the user feedback and the feedback that we’re getting from our partners.”

Through efforts like the one led by NAB PILOT, radio broadcasters are working to be present in Android Automotive, in order to preserve their traditional prominence in car/truck entertainment systems. Fortunately, Google seems enthusiastic about radio’s place in this new app-driven environment.

“We continue to be very excited about broadcast radio,” said Nagarajan. “We think we can bring in a lot more capabilities for broadcasters and provide a platform that allows partners like Xperi and others to innovate and bring in the best from a user experience perspective.”

He added that Google is developing an Android Automotive application programming interface, or API, that will allow radio stations to localize their content on the app, and to generally enhance the platform to work better for broadcast radio.

“We would like to continue working with the broadcast ecosystem in both developing as well as innovating in the [Android Automotive] platform, and helping you all accelerate what you are really good at, which is providing the best of services to our users,” Nagarajan said.

France moves ahead

At present, about 30% of France’s population can receive DAB+ over the air. By the end of 2022, that should hit 50%, and roadway multiplexes will play a big part in helping them listen in the car.

These points were raised by Jean-Marc Dubreuil during his presentation “France: Automakers and Broadcasters’ Preparations for National DAB+.”

Dubreuil is WorldDAB’s manager for France and a member of the French joint broadcaster/vehicle manufacturer working group.

According to Dubreuil, 25 of France’s national radios services will be available in DAB+ on the country’s roadways by this fall. This is no small feat: “That means almost 12,000 kilometers of highways and a little more than 10,000 kilometers of main roads to cover,” he said. “It’s quite a lot.”

While this work is proceeding, challenges remain in coordinating the DAB+ rollout between broadcasters and car manufacturers. Specifically, carmakers and radios don’t necessarily understand their respective business model, said Dubreuil, nor the need to ensure that the in-car digital radios are kept up to date.

For instance, he said, “Radio stations were surprised not to see their logos on the dashboard of cars because the logos are sometimes burned into the receiver and often obsolete — because those radios were designed in 2014,” he said.

“Since then, life has moved on. The logo has changed.”

Meanwhile, the complexity of the French radio landscape, with its more than 1,000 FM stations and “a few hundreds of DAB+ services,” can make coordinating seamless coverage difficult. This is why it is important for all players in the French DAB+ ecosystem to work together, said Dubreuil.

Radioplayer hybrid app

WorldDAB has produced a set of User Experience guidelines for automotive manufacturers and broadcasters to help them offer provide the best digital radio interfaces for motorists.

An image from Radioplayer’s presentation of its hybrid radio app that combines DAB+ and FM broadcast radio with online streams in the Android Automotive Operating System. It was developed with technology supplier Panasonic Automotive Systems Europe. Radioplayer said the app “has a single, multi-platform station list that hides the platform from the user and allows them to select a radio station from the strongest available signal, prioritizing DAB+, then FM, followed by streaming, and automatically switching between platforms if the car moves out of coverage.”

In the presentation “From Principle to Product: Bringing the WorldDAB UX Guidelines to Life in a Hybrid Radio App,” Radioplayer’s Caroline Grazé and Laurence Harrison described using these guidelines to guide the design and development of their hybrid radio app for the Android Automotive platform.

Grazé is managing director of Radioplayer Germany, Harrison is director of automotive partnerships at Radioplayer Worldwide.

“One of our main aims in building the app was to learn about Android Automotive and work with Google and others to improve the standard radio experience and make sure that it becomes hybrid,” said Harrison. When thinking about the user interface “the foundation of our design principles were taken from the WorldDAB UX guidelines.”

Ease of use is fundamental to the Radioplayer hybrid app design, Grazé said.

“The goal that is the most important one for the listener is ‘What am I listening to?’ I need to know. (And) I need to navigate simply through the UX.’” The app’s tuning database also has to be able to decode listener voice commands, including requests for stations that don’t use official call signs.

At an early stage in the user interface design, Radioplayer tested it on the road with consumers. By doing so, “you learn a huge amount about how intuitive the design is and also about the different positions of certain icons, and the features that people really value,” said Harrison.

The Radioplayer app now provides a “great hybrid radio experience,” he added, and “is being made available to car manufacturers to use on their Android Automotive platforms.”

Swiss DAB+ Retrofits

Switzerland’s plan to turn off FM by 2023 is driving DAB+ car radio retrofits, according to the presentation “Case Study: Switzerland, Getting Ready for FM Switchoff With the Auto Supply Chain.”

Speaking with host Ernst Werder of Weer GmbH, Jeremy Arztmann of Exclusive Car HiFi and Hans-Peter Saar of Robert Bosch AG described strong consumer demand for DAB+ adaptors to work with existing analog radios, as well as full DAB+ system replacements.

To ensure that Swiss motorists are satisfied with their DAB+ radio upgrades, Executive Car HiFi road-tests products before selling them to consumers.

“Since most larger auto importers are our customers, it’s usually very easy for us to get our hands on vehicles where we can test the products in order to ensure that the product is good and fine,” said Arztmann.

“Our company has been focusing on DAB+ for quite a long time, and we offer workshops with our partners so that all this technical know-how has grown continuously.”

Robert Bosch AG has been working with aftermarket partners such as Executive Car HiFi to meet the demand for DAB+ radio retrofits, said Hans-Peter Saar. In Switzerland, this market is geared towards higher-quality vehicles whose drivers don’t want to see adaptors and other devices detracting from original interior decors.

“The end user wants to use the OEM radio like he’s used to, and he wants his buttons on the steering wheel to work as he is used to,” said Saar. At the same time, they want to see song titles and other graphics, “on their regular radio screen and not on the small adaptor screen.”

Finally, some DAB+ equipment upgrades have been tailored for tasteful installations in older vehicles, including those that have achieved “vintage” status, built in 1991 or earlier.

“We have developed a solution where you can mount or install the DAB+ radio in a way that the vehicle doesn’t lose its vintage status or its historic status,” said Arztmann.

Localization and personalization

In the final WorldDAB Automotive 2021 presentation, “In-Vehicle Localization and Personalization: What They Mean for Radio Today and in the Future,” Swedish Radio Head of Digital Partnerships Tomas Granryd spoke with Francis Goffin, special adviser to the CEO of RTBF in Belgium, and Chris Ambrozic, TiVo’s VP of discovery, about using DAB+ to localize and personalize content to improve listener experiences, and to keep them listening longer.

In Belgium, RTBF, the country’s French-speaking public radio-TV broadcaster, is using DAB+’s localization capability to provide enhanced program choice to its VivaCité regional radio audiences.

For instance, this capability allows RTBF to provide seven different radio feeds, historically carried on seven separate FM stations, over four DAB+ regional multiplexes.

“Thanks to DAB+, listeners can choose to listen two different regional morning programs,” said Goffin. “This is impossible in FM, where they can only listen to the morning show that is available in their region.”

Localization is also allowing VivaCité to give listeners choices between live sports and non-sports programming over DAB+, which is not possible on FM.

RTBF and the private radio networks in the Belgian French-speaking digital radio alliance maRadio.be are looking at offering personalized radio programs to listeners using IP feeds triggered by inaudible tones in over-the-air DAB+ broadcasts. This platform could include “addressable radio advertising, just like the addressable TV advertising that started in Belgium last year,” Goffin said. It would do so using some kind of DAB+/IP hybrid platform that has yet to be developed by a new working group of RadioDNS, the hybrid radio open standard proponent.

TiVo’s Chris Ambrozic spoke about applying the TiVo TV “carousel” model of program choice, using titled images of actual TV programs, to in-car DAB+ to boost listener engagement and loyalty.

Picking up on the personalization thread, TiVo’s Chris Ambrozic spoke about applying the TiVo TV “carousel” model of program choice, using titled images of actual TV programs, to in-car DAB+ to boost listener engagement and loyalty.

“When personalization is utilized, we see very significant changes in viewer behavior,” Ambrozic said. “We see people watching about 25% more content on the video side. We see people churning away from their suppliers of content to the tune of about three times less.”

TiVo hopes to achieve the same results on DAB+ vehicle displays. “We’re taking that concept over into the car and to deliver a series of carousels, algorithmically driven with an understanding of what the person enjoys listening to,” he said.

A DAB+ content provider who takes this approach to in-car listening “is going to be able to monetize and deliver the right type of experience, not only from what to listen to, but also from an advertisement point of view.”

The post Passenger Displays, Apps and FM Switchoffs appeared first on Radio World.

The PreSonus PD-70 dynamic broadcast microphone is specifically designed for capturing the human voice and improving intelligibility, even in acoustically unfriendly spaces. The cardioid pickup pattern reduces the amount of extraneous and unwanted background noise entering the mic’s sides and back while focusing on voices in front of it—just what you want for podcasts or radio broadcasts.

The all-metal PD-70 is an end-address dynamic mic with an integrated (yet removable) foam windscreen and a simple, compact mechanical design that will fit and look great on the smallest of desktops.

PreSonus PD-70 Dynamic Broadcast Microphone

You can thread the mount onto a standard mic desk stand or boom, and connect a cable to any preamp using its gold-pinned XLR output jack. It comes ready to use with a gimbal-style integrated yoke mount that allows tilting the mic up or down to aim it precisely. Once in position, it has a single knob to lock it down. It does not get any simpler than this!

I tried the PD-70 in my studio as a vocal mic feeding a Retro Instruments 500PRE preamp; I also put it up for a Zoom meeting into an SSL 2 USB Audio Interface.

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

The PD-70 has a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz with a shelving boost starting at about 1.5 kHz and extending out to 10. I can hear that little boost in the midrange — especially on small computer speakers — and it does impart a certain gravitas and authority to speaking voices. I found it helpful for somber-sounding online speakers, as long as they stayed close in front of the mic to maintain a fat-sounding “lift in the bass” due to the cardioid proximity effect.

At the same time, the PD-70 suppresses p-pops better than some other dynamic mic I have, with or without a pop filter. Removing the foam windscreen, you can see a resemblance to the internal mechanical design of the Shure SM7B dynamic mic.

Paired with the 500PRE (tube-based preamp), the sound was rich and noise-free, and I would have no issues using the PD-70 for a loud lead vocal track — provided the singer could stay aimed at the mic. The SSL 2 USB preamp worked well except for very quiet singing, when that unit starts to run out of available mic gain.

The PreSonus PD-70 wins as a workhorse of a mic that will improve the sound of anyone doing online podcasting, internet radio or hosting/participating in Zoom meetings.

This article originally appeared in our sister publication Mix. Radio World invites both users and suppliers to tell us about recently installed new or notable equipment. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post PreSonus PD-70 Designed to Improve Intelligibility appeared first on Radio World.

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MB enters into consent decree with Estate of George V. Domerese, Timothy Domerese, Administrator