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It’s an all-too-common danger with live radio: A guest or caller gets a bit salty and drops a word (or several words) that could lead to an FCC fine or a suit for slander. Thankfully, a simple audio buffer can provide a seven-second delay — just enough time for the producer or jok to react and spare tender ears.

The latest installment in Eventide’s 50 Years of Gear flashbacks to important moments in the company’s history goes back to 1977 and the Eventide Clockworks BD955 with its big yellow DUMP button before moving forward through time to discuss the company’s advances in digital delay technologies.

Check out “Flashback # 9.2 Dump & Go — The Profanity Delay” to enjoy this celebration of a classic tool for keeping the airwaves clean.

Send your equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Eventide Celebrates the Seven-Second Delay appeared first on Radio World.

According to the just released Infinite Dial 2021 UK, 41% of UK residents over the age of 16 have listened to a podcast in the last month. That’s approximately 23 million people.

The Infinite Dial 2021 UK was conducted by Edison Research and sponsored by Bauer Media Group UK and Spotify. The study surveyed 1,000 UK residents age 16+ on a variety of measures including online digital audio platforms, radio, social media, smart speakers, and more.

The study revealed that 71% of those age 16+ are familiar with podcasts, and 59% of those age 16+ have ever listened to a podcast putting the UK on par with the United States in terms of monthly listening. .

The UK is slightly behind the U.S. regarding weekly podcast listening as 25% of the UK population age 16+ has listened to a podcast in the last week versus 29% in the U.S.

Weekly podcast listeners in the UK listen to an average of five podcast episodes per week.

Seventy-five percent of UK residents age 16+ listen to online audio each month, and 66% of UK residents age 16+ listen to online audio each week.

According to Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research, “It is exciting to analyze the findings from the UK Infinite Dial in the context of other countries. It is evident that the UK is on par regarding many measures of consumption, including monthly podcast listening, and actually outpaces the US in areas like weekly radio reach and weekly online audio reach.”

Download the full report HERE.

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Grants waiver of Auction 109 long-form filing deadline; proposes $3,000 forfeiture for late filing

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Grants waiver of Auction 99 long-form filing deadline; proposes $1,000 forfeiture for late filing

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The NBC affiliate serving the Panama City Beach, Fla., area of the Sunshine State has become the latest television station to receive a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture for failing to timely file its quarterly TV issues/programs lists.

How much is Gray Television paying to the FCC as a result of the transgression?

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The media company known for its conservative Talk radio programming and its non-secular media assets serving Christians will see its C-Suite leadership present at the upcoming Singular Research “Best of the Uncovered” Investor Conference.

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The town of Port Jervis, N.Y., lies at the heart of the “other” Tri-State Area within the vast New York City DMA — New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

It is situated along the bucolic Delaware River, a popular spot for canoeing and camping enthusiasts, and its proximity to fast-growing Sussex County, N.J., is likely why a low-powered TV station licensed to this municipality has just sold for nearly $2 million.

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From our interview this week with the part-owner, GM and News Director of a 1,000-watt AM serving Plattsburgh, N.Y., to exclusive conversations with SBS President/COO Albert Rodriguez, groupM’s Brian Wieser, AURN’s Chesley Maddox-Dorsey and musicFIRST’s Joe Crowley, the RBR+TVBR InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM, offers more insight on the key topics of interest to broadcast media’s C-Suite leadership. As 2021 soon comes to a close, take a moment and enjoy one of nearly 170 audio reports hosted by Radio + Television Business Report Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson.  

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For a full menu of our podcasts, simply click here

The FCC experienced a technical glitch just prior to Thanksgiving that knocked out hyperlinks to its Online Public Inspection File system on some radio station websites.

Service was fully restored by the afternoon of Dec. 1, according to the FCC.

What happened, exactly?

The OPIF is a way for listeners to view their favorite station’s licensing information and community involvement paperwork. Radio broadcasters are required to post a link to their online Public Inspection File on their own websites.

But a computer update to the OPIF portal apparently took the public file hyperlink offline for an unknown number of stations, according to the FCC.

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Users were getting “temporary bad gateway” errors because the online hyperlinks were not working. But public file materials were still available during the outage through the FCC’s website via the online public inspection search page. There were no compliance issues caused by the computer hiccup, the FCC said.

The commission regularly performs updates to its OPIF online database, and the most recent system update created the issue. “The public file information remained online at all times,” the FCC said, “with only the links at some radio stations’ websites unavailable.”

(Some quick thinking by several state broadcast associations, including the Alabama Broadcasters Association, resulted in some stations updating their URLs using all capital letters to remedy the situation. But radio stations need to make no further updates and all links to the FCC’s OPIF should be fully functional, according to the commission.)

Comment on this or any article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post FCC Computer Update Disrupted Public File Links appeared first on Radio World.

The President/CEO and the COO of Hearst Television’s Litton Entertainment arm have announced that they will each retire from their roles at the end of the year.

This puts Frank Biancuzzo, president of the recently created Hearst Media Production Group, in a position to directly oversee Litton.

Litton Entertainment is one of broadcast television’s top content providers, both in the U.S. and in the international marketplace. NATPE Miami is one of the big marketplaces for Litton, and come January its founder and chief executive, Dave Morgan, and Chief Operating Officer Pete Sniderman will no longer be involved in the operation.

Commenting on their retirement, Biancuzzo said, “Over the course of three decades, Dave has built a tremendous organization, recognized by the industry for unique programming that entertains, educates and inspires. Together with Pete Sniderman, they’ve positioned the company for an exciting and innovative period of growth.”

Commenting on his departure on December 31, Morgan said, “I’m most proud of our Litton partnerships and my Litton colleagues who helped me define the gold standard in quality, educational television in America. I leave the television industry better than I found it. We created a great company, and we’re pleased that Hearst Media Production Group will bring the resources to help grow Litton to the next level.”

Sniderman added, “I’m so gratified to have had the opportunity to make a contribution to programming that educated generations of young people. And I’m excited for the future of the enterprise — the people and the projects.”

Moving forward, Litton Entertainment’s management and creative teams, under the direction of Biancuzzo and the Hearst Media Production Group, will continue to expand original programming across linear and streaming platforms for domestic and international distribution.

Hearst acquired a majority interest in Litton Entertainment in 2017, and the balance in 2021, perhaps explaining the timing on the retirement of its founder/CEO and its COO.

Morgan created Litton Entertainment in 1989; he resides in Charleston, S.C.

Sniderman has been with Litton since 1995.

The E.W. Scripps Co.‘s digital multicast network super-serving African Americans has a new leader, effective today.

Taking the spot within the Scripps Networks arm is an individual who has held various roles at the network since it was launched in 2011 as the first offering from Katz Networks.

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Chris Evans (right) broadcast his morning show from aboard his yacht Sun Star.

From our Who’s Buying What page: AEQ shares an interesting application note about a user of one of its Forum IP consoles.

“Popular British presenter Chris Evans’ special relation with boats is well known, including the spectacular The Snapper and Sun Star yachts that he owns,” the equipment manufacturer related.

According to Motor Boat & Yachting magazine, early during the coronavirus Chris Evans hosted his Virgin Radio UK morning show from the Sun Star. For the broadcast, Evans traveled part of the River Thames near his home in Marlon, England; he characterized the broadcast as a trial to future-proof his show against Covid-related travel restrictions.

“Inside, all the technical equipment necessary to carry out a professional radio program was deployed, with the AEQ Forum IP console being the heart of the installation,” the company stated.

Send news of notable equipment uses to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Chris Evans Puts AEQ Forum in the Water appeared first on Radio World.

SANTA CLARITA, CALIF. — From Fresno to Bakersfield, she was widely known as “a first-class executive who is efficient, effective, and engaged.” One former co-worker took to LinkedIn to take note of her understanding of the media business, calling it “exceptional, earning her deep respect by those who work with her.”

Now, media and marketing leaders from across the San Joaquin Valley are paying tribute to Mary Lou Gunn, who died on November 24 after a brief illness.

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On November 24, three men were convicted of murder Wednesday in the February 2020 killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man on a leisurely run through a residential community near Brunswick, Ga. The trio of strangers, all of whom are Caucasian, trapped Arbery on a quiet street and, subsequently, used a shotgun to kill him.

The case drew national attention and condemnation for its racial overtones. Locally, a radio element surfaced that Media Services Group Managing Director Eddie Esserman — himself a licensee in the Brunswick area — believes is overlooked.

It involves a Talk radio station owned by iHeartMedia.

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The author is director of digital for Pattison Media.

At Pattison Media, we operate 48 radio stations across western Canada. Streaming is important to our group

Our programming team actively listens to our streams and promotes the use of smart speakers and mobile apps to our listeners. Our technical teams treat streaming with the same degree of importance as we do with our broadcast signals — if there is a problem, it requires urgent attention. This attention to detail has led to significant growth in our streaming cume and average time spent listening.

For the last 12 months, our radio stations have been using the Modulation Index StreamS encoder to encode our online streams.

We selected the StreamS encoder because of its support for modern audio codecs (HE-AACv2 and xHEAAC), native HTTP Live Streaming support, and metadata injection directly into ID3 tags.

The combination of these features makes it possible to address timing imprecisions that can often plague digital ad insertion. Encoding directly into HLS rather than converting to the format at the server-side has helped us align timing markers by being able to listen to HLS segments as they come out of the encoder and measure metadata offsets to the millisecond level.

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The injection of metadata into ID3 tags allows a consistent granularity of 42 milliseconds, which is a big improvement over traditional ICY metadata that can have significant variations in timing.

We have used the StreamS encoder in markets of all sizes, with some running just a single stream and others running up to six separate streams simultaneously. The configuration within StreamS allows for different settings on different streams and gives technicians the ability to customize encoding values for each stream.

We have also been happy to see the product continue to evolve with support for new codecs such as FLAC and new formats such as fragmented MP4. This evolution is important, as we continue to strive to deliver the best listening experience possible.

We’re happy with the StreamS product. Modulation Index helped support a fast rollout across our group and has been responsive to all of our questions. The encoder has been running reliably and continues to deliver quality audio to our listeners each and every day.

Info: Contact John Schaab at StreamIndex at 1-940-206-7702 or www.streamingindex.com.

Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.

The post User Report: Modulation Index StreamS Works Pattison Media appeared first on Radio World.