Aggregator

.

.

The third quarter 2021 results from the largest audio content creator and distributor in the U.S., iHeartMedia, were released shortly before the company’s two top leaders, Bob Pittman and Rich Bressler, played host to analysts and investors in a conference call scheduled for 4:30pm Eastern.

How did the company do? As the answer was shared, investors snapped up iHeart shares in immediate after-hour trading on Thursday.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

In 2021, Entravision Communications fully transitioned from a Hispanic-centric U.S.-focused media company to a global digital advertising player with its decision to take full ownership in Cisneros Interactive. This followed Entravision’s acquisition of Singapore-based Media Donuts.

Now, Entravision has invested in Africa, with its acquisition of a South African digital ad solutions company.

The news came just as Entravision distributed its third-quarter earnings results.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

Mentoring and Inspiring Women in Radio, the non-profit charitable organization dedicated to the advancement of female leadership in radio broadcasting, has teamed with vCreative to recognize and celebrate women in radio “whose unsung efforts ensure efficiency, both operationally and financially, for their stations and groups.”

The program’s inaugural free webinar, “Recognizing Women in Operational Excellence” will be held Thursday, December 2, from 1pm-1:45pm Eastern.

Hosted by vCreative CEO Susie Hedrick and MIW Board Member Valerie Blackburn, the webinar showcases three uniquely talented women who make a significant impact daily on their company’s operations:

• Becky Deneger, Vice President of Traffic Operations at TSM
• Mildred Sibley, Vice President of Station Traffic Operations at Entravision
• Melissa Mitchell, Director of Finance and Corporate Controller at Bonneville

Webinar participants will hear how these professionals strategically embrace emerging technologies; integrate new products into existing workflows; and hire and train teams.

Reserve your spot and learn more here: https://hubs.la/H0-z_pz0

It’s a question Lee Miller, Executive Director of low-power television and OTT advocacy group ATBA, addresses in a new opinion piece.

And, it is a major topic facing broadcast media leadership and air personalities alike that will serve as the centerpiece to a highly anticipated Forecast 2022 conference panel.

In a communique distributed to Advanced Television Broadcasting Alliance members on Thursday (11/4), Miller says, “On the heels of recent ransomware attacks, as an industry, we need to take a look at our systems and networks.”

The good news, in Miller’s eyes: Keeping ransomware off your system isn’t difficult — especially for a small operation.

“Much like preventing malware and viruses, best practices are pretty much the same,” he writes. “A ransomware attack must have some access to your system, usually through a rogue application. Be sure you and your staff are cautious about downloading or opening any files from the web or your email if you’re not very certain of their source.”

Miller notes that hackers now use a variety of social engineering methods, such as spoofing an email that looks like it’s an urgent message from a staff or family member; these typically include links that will install and/or download spyware and other files used by ransomware attack agents.

“Consider strongly again and again before opening and running anything on your computer, especially if it arrives without your expectation,” Miller advises. “Besides being careful about what you click on or download, there are three rules of system security that you should always apply: Protect, update, and back up. All malware, including ransomware, often exploits older or unpatched operating systems and software, and just because you might be on a macOS, don’t think you’re immune!”

Cyber threats are coming fast and furious nowadays. Every day we hear of another ransomware attack or data breach, and it seems that the cyber adversaries are taking over companies unopposed. Cyber security expert Steve Morgan, founder of Cybersecurity Ventures and Editor-in-Chief at Cybercrime Magazine, sits down with WABC Radio’s Juliet Huddy at Forecast 2022 for a provocative interview that will cover, in non-technobabble, how the cyber adversaries are doing it, why people and companies are in the dark when it comes to cybercrime, and what they can and should do to protect their organization. This session is presented by RCS Sound Software To hear what Morgan has to share, you have to be there. REGISTER TODAY AND SECURE YOUR SEAT AT FORECAST 2022!

 

The direct broadcast satellite company presently at war with broadcast TV station owner TEGNA over a new retransmission consent agreement suffered a severe gut punch on Wall Street, following the release of Q3 2021 results that failed to live up to analyst forecasts.

At 2:20pm ET, Dish Network shares were down by 14% on five times the normal trading volume.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

(Click here to enlarge.)

NPR and Wondery in October held their top positions in Podtrac’s list of top podcast publishers as measured by U.S. audience.

Most of the rest of the list looks like last month’s too, with a few swapping positions.

But this month, ViacomCBS joined that list and enters at #12 (bumping Hidden Brain Media out of the top 20).

Ranking data only includes publishers that participate in Podtrac measurement:

The company said Unique Monthly Audience for 19 of the top 20 publishers was up or flat in October over the month before.

(Click here to enlarge.)

 

It also found that Total Global Downloads for the Top 20 were up 9% from the month before but down 9% compared to October of 2020.

The list of top individual podcasts also looked similar at the top compared to the month before, with the NYT at the top, and NPR holding five of the next 19 slots:

[Related: “iHeart, NPR Have Their Prints All Over Podtrac Rankings”]

 

The post Podtrac Issues Monthly Podcast Rankers appeared first on Radio World.

Cox Media Group named Chris Eagan as its VP of audience and operations for radio.

“In this role Eagan will lead the overarching programming strategy, audience development and multiplatform distribution for CMG Radio,” it stated. “He will also lead the CMG Digital Content team and partnerships to drive innovation for CMG Radio.”

The company owns 54 radio stations in 11 markets, as well as 33 TV stations and other media assets.

[Visit Radio World’s People News Page]

Eagan was most recently senior director of operations for CMG Atlanta Radio, a cluster that includes B98.5 WSB(FM), News Talk WSB(AM), 97-1 The River WSRV(FM) and Kiss 104.1 WALR(FM).

The announcement was made by Rob Babin, SVP-head of radio, and Jaleigh Long, VP and general manager of Atlanta radio.

Send news of engineering and executive personnel changes to radioworld@futurenet.com.

 

The post Cox Appoints Eagan to Radio Audience and Ops Role appeared first on Radio World.

Communications tower owner Vertical Bridge said its leadership team has donated $1.1 million personally to benefit two industry foundations.

The money is going to help Warriors4Wireless and the Tower Family Foundation.

“The donations were made in support of the work that these non-profit organizations do to help veterans enter the telecommunications industry and to support the families of those injured on the job,” the company stated in a press release.

The announcement was made by CEO Alex Gellman and EVP of Operations Bernard Borghei.

[Read: Vertical Bridge Remains in Acquisition Mode]

Warriors4Wireless was formed “to bridge the gap between the demand for trained and deployable wireless technicians, and the thousands of qualified service men and women eager to transfer the skills they have learned in the military.”

The Tower Family Foundation provides financial assistance to family members of a severely injured, permanently disabled or deceased tower worker.

Vertical Bridge said that last year it donated $1.5 million to 149 causes chosen by its employees.

 

The post Vertical Bridge Execs Donate to Industry Foundations appeared first on Radio World.

What’s the fiscal health for one of the biggest radio industry pure-play operations that’s publicly traded on Wall Street?

Pretty darn good, actually, as Saga Communications released a Q3 2021 report card that shows the owner of small and medium-market stations turning from a net loss to significant net income.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

It is a low-powered TV station that in summer 2018 was heading to HC2 Holdings, with a $400,000 transaction proposed.

Then, HC2 was a much different company, with spending under the guise of former CEO Philip Falcone. He’s now at Sovryn Holdings, and that 2018 deal never came to fruition. Now, the LPTV facility has found a new buyer, and it is paying significantly less for it.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

“The company is in good shape, from a leverage standpoint. We’ve come a long way.”

Those are the words of Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins III, who had many good things to share during his company’s third quarter 2021 earnings call held Thursday. Among them: the shaky automotive category was up by double-digits for Urban One in Q3, a reflection of commitments to Black-owned media in the wake of social justice efforts that have played out over the last year.

However, the City of Richmond referendum defeat for the company clouded the report, and the earnings call, with Liggins sharing what the company’s next steps will be on what to do with its cash.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

Third quarter 2021 earnings reports are being released one after the other on Thursday, and who better to chat with than the distinguished Global President of Business Intelligence at groupM, Brian Wieser. Wieser is considered by many to be Madison Avenue’s de facto Chief Economist and previously served as a key Wall Street analyst at Pivotal Research Group.

In this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.fm, RBR+TVBR Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson asks Wieser if the broadcast media sector is in for a Q4 ad dollar scare because of the well-reported supply chain problem.

Wieser also shares his insight on what the biggest positives are for radio and TV station owners in this exclusive conversation that serves as a precursor to a Forecast 2022 discussion on Broadcast Revenue Trends and Expectations for 2022.

At Forecast 2022, Jen Soch, Executive Director/Specialty Channels at GroupM, joins Leah Casterlin, Founding Partner of Media Fortitude Partners; Katz Media Group CEO Mark Gray, and TVB President/CEO Steve Lanzano for a panel discussion on what is in store for broadcast media in the next year. Moderating the panel: Media ecologist Jack Myers.

REGISTER NOW FOR FORECAST 2022!

 

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Brian Wieser, groupM” on Spreaker.

Yes, supply chain issues are “significantly impacting” automotive ad dollars at TEGNA. But, every other ad category was up by double digits in Q3, and this trend is continuing across Q4.

With home improvement, insurance, education, CPG and finance showing no signs of a slowdown, the owner of broadcast TV stations and the Premion Connected TV/OTT advertising platform for regional and local advertisers enjoyed a strong Q3, easily beating the forecast of analysts polled by Zacks Equity Research.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

The Zacks Consensus Estimate was for net revenue that came in higher than anticipated. But, instead of positive earnings per share growth, Gray Television‘s EPS ended up in the negative, with the company suffering a net loss in Q3 2021.

Ahead of the Opening Bell on Wall Street, investors expressed their disappointment, with GTN down 1.7% in pre-market trading on the NYSE. But, these traders may need to understand that unfair comps — and growth initiatives designed to make Gray a bigger player in local TV — are the reason for what is largely a short-term blip.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

“Our outstanding third quarter results underscore the enormous opportunities that lie ahead for Univision.”

That positive statement comes courtesy of Wade Davis, who earlier this year succeed Vince Sadusky as CEO of Univision Communications.

Just how strong was Q3 for Univision?

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)

You listen to a radio station and like a particular air personality. Then, you happen to find what appears to be their social media profile.

Who knew that all of the interaction between the air talent’s listeners was with not the hosts, but impostors who hijacked the pages and then led listeners to invest in phony business investments?

That’s the trouble associated with two iHeartMedia air personalities in Chicago, illustrating yet another cybercrime ill impacting broadcast licensees across the U.S.

Cyber threats are coming fast and furious nowadays. Every day we hear of another ransomware attack or data breach, and it seems that the cyber adversaries are taking over companies unopposed.  Cyber security expert Steve Morgan, founder of Cybersecurity Ventures and Editor-in-Chief at Cybercrime Magazine, sits down with WABC Radio’s Juliet Huddy at Forecast 2022 for a provocative interview that will cover, in non-technobabble, how the cyber adversaries are doing it, why people and companies are in the dark when it comes to cybercrime, and what they can and should do to protect their organization.

This session is presented by RCS Sound Software To hear what Morgan has to share, you have to be there.

DON’T HESITATE, AS THIS LIMITED-CAPACITY EVENT IS FILLING UP FAST.
REGISTER TODAY AND SECURE YOUR SEAT AT FORECAST 2022!

 

As reported by WLS-7 in Chicago, Leon Rogers of the WGCI-FM morning show and WVAZ-FM “V103” part-timer Ericka “Sundance” Ingram each had their Facebook pages apparently taken over by hackers.

And, they claim fans who interacted with the fakers were asked to invest in phony business deals.

Among the listeners who apparently got caught up in the scam is one Phillip Vaser, who enjoys Rogers. Vasser spotted an opportunity posted on Rogers’ Facebook page to make some extra cash. He questioned it.

In an effort to prove Rogers’ identity, he sent a Facebook message to confirm the opportunity to make $1,000 from a $100 investment. “I said, I’m not sending you a dime unless you prove to me that you you!” Vasser told WLS-7. In return, Vasser received a picture of Rogers posing with his ID, in his house, with “legible reading of his face and his address.”

That was enough for Vasser … unfortunately. Vasser sent to the person he assumed was Rogers some $4,700 in gift card codes and bitcoin. Something seemed weird about it. The fake Rogers requested Vasser’s Facebook password and login information, claiming it was part of their verification efforts. Vasser complied; minutes later he was locked out of his Facebook account, with his money taken.

Vasser wasn’t the only person to fall for the scam. Rogers told WLS-7 he has received “thousands of messages” from people across the Chicago area who were ripped off.

How did the person behind the scheme get the photo of Rogers? Earlier in 2021 Rogers received a message he believed to be from Facebook. It asked him to send his login information and a video of him holding his ID up next to his face as an identity test.

Rogers did what was asked; he was subsequently locked out of his Facebook account.

For Ingram, she told WLS-7 a similar Facebook page takeover has occurred.

Has Facebook responded to Ingram or Rogers, who have reported the hacks “dozens of times” to the social media giant? No, they claim.

Contacted by WLS-7, Facebook parent Meta noted that its support team is reviewing both Rogers’ and Ingram’s accounts so they can take appropriate action.

Quick, can you name a Christmas song that gets virtually no radio airplay, yet was streamed more than 57 million times last year?

It’s one of the insights in a report from P1 Media Group and MRC Data, which reported on America’s top Christmas songs and dug into what data about music streaming can tell radio programmers.

The companies tested the appeal of the 40 most-played and 40 most-streamed Christmas songs from the 2020 holidays, which ended up being 60 unique songs. They used BDSradio, an MRC Data tool; and P1 Media Group conducted a survey with 400 radio listeners in top markets who were likely to listen to a local all-Christmas radio station.

For the fifth consecutive year “Jingle Bell Rock” by Bobby Helms is America’s #1 testing Christmas song, they reported.

But eight songs from the top 40 most-streamed list tested better with likely Christmas radio listeners than eight songs from the top 40 most-played songs list. “The data suggests these eight songs can be played more on all-Christmas radio stations,” the companies said:

• Frank Sinatra – Jingle Bells (ranked #47 on the 2020 BDS Airplay chart)
• Jimmy Durante – Frosty the Snowman (#50)
• Perry Como – It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas (#69)
• Chuck Berry – Run Rudolph Run (#70)
• Earth Kitt – Santa Baby (#78)
• Dan Hathaway – This Christmas (#84)
• Michael Bublé – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (#182)
• Nat King Cole – Deck the Halls (#1,119)

Classic songs dominate the top 20 including “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” two versions each of “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Jingle Bell Rock,” and three versions of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” from 1994 is the newest song in the top 20.

Ariana Grande’s “Santa Tell Me” from 2014 and Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” from 2010 are the highest testing original Christmas songs from the Millennium, at #46 and #48.

Intriguingly, four of the top 40 most-streamed songs received very little radio airplay in 2020. Three are “Deck the Halls” by Nat King Cole, “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” by Kristen Bell and “What Christmas Means to Me” by John Legend.

And the fourth is the answer to the question posed at the top of this article: The song that got only 1,736 total spins last year by radio but was streamed 57.5 million times was Dean Martin’s “Baby it’s Cold Outside.” P1 Media Group co-founder Ken Benson noted: “Radio all but banned this classic song from the airwaves in 2018 due to the ‘Me Too’ movement.”

The companies have posted their full list of “America’s Top 60 Testing Christmas Songs” for 2021.

The post This Is the Song No One Plays on the Radio Anymore appeared first on Radio World.

Dave Hershberger, Geoff Mendenhall and Cliff Leitch are shown during installation of an MS-15 FM exciter breadboard for on-air testing at WGEM(FM) in Quincy, Ill., in 1977. Mendenhall’s left hand is on the exciter breadboard.

Dave Hershberger’s work with exciters and modulators for transmitters and with low-level signal processing is considered legendary by many in broadcast. In fact, he co-developed the world’s first digital FM exciter as an experimental prototype that was tested on the air in 1986.

The National Association of Broadcasters presented its 2021 Radio Engineering Achievement Award to Hershberger, saluting his work at Harris Broadcast, Grass Valley Group, Axcera and Continental Electronics.

The veteran engineer even worked on X-band uplink transmitters for the JPL/NASA Deep Space Network. He retired in 2017 as senior scientist at Continental.

Hershberger does occasional consulting but is mostly enjoying retirement life. Radio World asked him about his career, which was about evenly split between radio and television design projects, and his thoughts on current events in the world of broadcast engineering.

Radio World: Where did you grow up and what sparked your interest in broadcast engineering?
Dave Hershberger: I grew up in Sycamore, Ill., just west of Chicago but beyond the suburbs. When I was 13 years old I got my ham radio license. After a few years of ham radio, a neighbor suggested that I should look into broadcast radio. That’s what got me going.

[Read: Hershberger Honored With 2021 NAB Engineering Award]

When I was 16, I studied and got my FCC First Phone commercial license. That was my ticket to getting into broadcast. After high school, at age 17 I got my first radio job at what was then WCLR in Crystal Lake, Ill. — AM 850. They had a directional antenna and needed a First Phone licensee on duty.

David at his ham radio station (WA9QCH)

RW: Describe your early days at Harris Broadcast when you started in 1975. What was it like in Quincy?
Hershberger: Harris was a lot of fun. Quincy, Ill., less so. But it was where the work was.

I started out in the TV transmitter group, but after talking with Geoff Mendenhall, who worked in FM, we started brainstorming at lunchtime on what we would like to do in a new FM exciter.

The TE-3 was old, expensive to manufacture and had its shortcomings. Geoff worked with management, got authorization to start a new FM exciter development and I got transferred to FM. We added some more engineers on the project and away we went.

We broke new ground with a new kind of stereo generator, overshoot controlled filters, improved PLL dynamics to eliminate tilt on low-frequency square waves, and many other features.

RW: What do you consider your most important contribution at Harris?
Hershberger: That would probably be the overshoot-controlled low-pass filters. When we were developing the MS-15 FM exciter, we heard that there was a popular new stereo generator with built-in audio processing being made on the West coast. It was called the Optimod. One of its most important features was its ability to control overshoot in the 15 kHz low-pass filters integral to the stereo generator.

Bob Orban had come up with a brilliant solution for dealing with the problem. He took a systems approach, and the filtering and filter overshoot correction were tightly integrated with the audio processing.

We were also developing a stereo generator option for the FM exciter. But if we did not solve the overshoot problem too, then we would not be able to sell very many stereo generators. So my job was to find a solution to the problem.

And it was a difficult problem, controlling both amplitude and spectrum simultaneously. One way to begin to address the problem was to filter, then clip off the overshoots, and then filter again. That would reduce the overshoots somewhat but would not get rid of them completely.

Theoretically the process could be repeated: filter, clip, filter, clip, filter, clip and keep doing that until the overshoots were low enough. Of course such a system would not be practical.

Eventually I figured out that what I needed was something that did more than clipping. A clipper can be analyzed as a gain reduction device, which reduces gain only during overshoot. If I could reduce the gain more than what is necessary to accomplish simple clipping, then I could make the overshoot controller converge in just one pass of filter-clip-filter.

So the trick was to take the overshoots, clip them off, amplify them with a gain of about two and then subtract them from the clipped waveform. Linear phase filtering of that signal resulted in near complete elimination of filter overshoot, while still providing a sharp 15 kHz cutoff.

The advantage was that this was not part of an audio processor. It was a stand-alone function. So you could use any audio processor you wanted, run it into our stereo generator and the 15 kHz low-pass filters would not overshoot and create overmodulation. Any audio processor could gain the overshoot control capability of the Optimod.

We did our first on-air testing of the MS-15 exciter at WGEM(FM) in Quincy in early 1977. The overshoot control, along with greatly improved low-frequency dynamics, allowed a huge increase in average modulation.

Brian Cox was one of the engineers on the MW-1 AM transmitter. He had left Harris and was working for another company in Quincy. He would leave his car radio tuned to WGEM, and one morning he got in his car to drive to work. He turned on the radio and Brian said it was so loud that it blew him into the back seat. That was the first morning we had the prototype on the air.

RW: How about the highlights from Continental?
Hershberger: In general, deployment of digital signal processing in several different product lines: FM exciters, ATSC exciters (including linear and nonlinear adaptive equalization), and VLF and LF transmitters.

RW: Is there a career project that stands out?
Hershberger: Probably the coolest project was the JPL/NASA Deep Space Network uplink transmitters. They generate up to 80 kW in the 7 GHz range

Dave Hershberger

These were nonbroadcast transmitters but it was a most interesting and challenging project. JPL wanted very low phase noise — not for communications, but so they could also use the transmitters for science experiments. Those included searching for gravity waves by detecting phase bumps, and bistatic radar imaging. Bistatic radar has the signal source on earth, with the receiver on the spacecraft.

So everything we did required attention to low noise performance. RF amplifiers, the klystron beam supply, focus magnet supply and filament supply, and even the water cooling system all needed to be very low noise.

The first production transmitter was installed at the Goldstone station and was first used for the Pluto flyby in 2015. In addition to communication, it was used for the bistatic radar mapping of Pluto.

RW: You wrote in Radio World over the years about implementations of HD Radio. Can you discuss that work and assess the state of HD Radio in the United States, and where it may go next?
Hershberger: I’m rather disappointed. There are interference problems. The audio codec cannot be upgraded to more modern technology. There is no “Oh, wow” factor — such as having your radio figure out your preferences, and then find and record shows it thinks you might like — features that are found in some DVRs.

There is little or no ability to provide different commercial announcements and music to different listeners, based on age, interests or location. There is no non-real time transmission and storage capability.

There are many such features that should be part of a new digital sound broadcasting system. As it is, we just have plain old real-time, single-stream radio but transmitted digitally.

RW: You were an advocate for moving AM stations to TV Channel 5 and 6 below the FM band, which didn’t happen. What are your feelings about that now and about the future of AM radio in general?
Hershberger: It was unfortunate yet predictable that it wouldn’t and didn’t happen. But there is a similar opportunity now. ATSC 3.0 includes the ability to carry audio-only programs. And those audio-only programs can be broadcast with optimization for mobile reception, with robust coding, independent of the modulation and coding for the video signals.

Hershberger is shown installing AM stereo at WLS(AM) in Chicago in 1983.

I would like to see AM radio begin simulcasting on ATSC 3.0 signals. A single ATSC 3.0 transmitter could carry all of the AM signals in a market, in addition to TV programs. Car radios could be made to receive at least the audio-only streams in ATSC 3.0. And that would be a solution to the electric car problem, where the drive train makes so much electrical noise that including an AM radio is just way too expensive because of the required EMI suppression. ATSC 3.0 is also a way to make AM programming receivable in homes again.

Meanwhile, I am participating in the AM Improvement Working Group of the National Radio Systems Committee, which is studying ways to keep analog AM viable.

RW: You thanked Geoff Mendenhall and Dan Dickey for their support through the years in your NAB acceptance video. Any other mentors?
Hershberger: Absolutely. There were many. At Harris, there was Hans Bott, Tony Uyttendaele, Terry Hickman, Bob Weirather, Hilmer Swanson, Tim Hulick and there were more. At Continental there was José Sainz, Grant Bingeman, Michael Pugh, Howard Butler and more. And the late Dr. Steve Reyer, an EE professor at Milwaukee School of Engineering, was certainly a mentor.

RW: If you were chairman of the FCC, what one technical change would you want to make?
Hershberger: If I could only make one change, it would be to enforce radiated and conducted emission limits. Don’t let cheap noisy power supplies and chargers into the country. Force recalls of products that are in gross violation of the rules. Make AM radio receivable in homes again!

RW: What do you think is the most important trend or recent development in the management of technical infrastructure for radio? We hear a lot about centralization of engineering departments.
Hershberger: I’m not a manager or an accountant. But I am disappointed to see management make decisions which greatly increase off-air time when there are problems. I am disappointed to hear stations with audio problems that last for years at a time.

Better engineering is sorely needed. And that costs money, but it is well spent.

Letting broadcast infrastructure decay saves money in the short term but not in the long term. You can do the same thing with your car — don’t do maintenance — but it will come back and bite you eventually.

RW: What do you see as the most pressing technical issue facing radio broadcasters today?
Hershberger: Interference. Switching power supplies, chargers, lighting, etc. not only affect AM frequencies but also VHF and even UHF. Allocation and regulatory mistakes create legal interference which only adds to the problems.

RW: As you talk to fellow engineers, what are their most common complaints or career challenges?
Hershberger: Not many broadcasters want to do things the right way. They want to spend as little as possible, even if performance and the on-air product is degraded.

RW: What is your advice to younger folks entering a technical field like this?
Hershberger: Don’t expect to be proficient if your education is digital-only. You still need to understand analog concepts, even if they are all implemented digitally. Learn control and feedback systems, filtering, modulation theory, signal processing and complex math.

Also, beware of computer engineering philosophies invading radio engineering. As more and more digital technologies are applied to broadcast engineering, there have been clashes of culture, which turn into real technical problems. Computer engineers are interested in sending the bits in a proper format without errors.

Dave and his wife Sandy at NAB 1980. She was a software engineer for Harris and worked on remote control systems.

That much is fine. But computer engineers often pay no attention to phase noise in their clocks, or in selection of clock frequencies which are appropriate for broadcast radio, or frequency accuracy of such clocks. And why would they? Data are still transmitted without error, even if the clock is noisy or off frequency.

Bottom line, don’t assume that digital signals have low enough phase noise and frequency accuracy to meet broadcast standards.

RW: You and your wife have certainly been together a long time. Any marital advice to offer?
Hershberger: I have been married to Sandy for 44 years now. She has been a music teacher, a software engineer, for which she won an Emmy award, and a licensed marriage and family therapist.

As for marital advice, I think I would say to change compatibly. We all change as we age, and it’s important to consider our mates as we do so.

Also I think there is some luck involved. I feel pretty lucky. We are blessed to have a gifted 17-year-old daughter who aspires to a career in the sciences.

RW: Retirement life in California seems to be treating you well. Why do you love it? 
Hershberger: We live in a log house we built on our rural property adjoining Tahoe National Forest, near Nevada City, Calif. We have deer, bears, foxes, coyotes and other critters for neighbors. My voluntary hobbies include ham radio. My involuntary hobbies include property maintenance — cutting, hauling and splitting firewood from downed trees, and plowing snow with my tractor. We have alternative energy — solar electric and diesel generator backup  — for our frequent power outages, but it is beautiful here.

 

The post Hershberger Honored as a “Renaissance Engineer” appeared first on Radio World.