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A global media company operating 42 TV channels and multiple digital products across six continents that’s a major player in content distribution and broadcasting worldwide is joining forces with Paris-based Canal+ Group.

CANAL+ is taking a 70% majority stake in SPI International. It’s a move that’s also a vote of confidence in SPI, as has pledged to keep the current management team and operational structure in place.

SPI’s Founder Loni Farhi and CEO Berk Uziyel will continue to manage and develop SPI’s business with the support of their executive committee. “The parties will be able to generate reciprocal synergies to further strengthen the two groups’ presence in the
international markets,” Canal+ says.

In a joint statement, Farhi and Uziyel said, “It is very exciting news and the start of a new era for SPI INTERNATIONAL. CANAL+ and SPI share a common vision for continuous growth and a strong international presence. We have been strategic partners for years, where we have built a great tradition of collaborations and achieving mutual goals. Now we will have the chance to join forces under one roof. SPI will further accelerate its growth with CANAL+ while leveraging natural synergies. SPI International has an amazingly talented team that has produced incredible growth in the last decade. Now, with this great team and with much enthusiasm, we are delighted to become part of the CANAL+ family. Our joined forces will strengthen the existing entertainment products and expand the distribution of our compelling content to far larger audiences.”

Maxime Saada, CEO of CANAL+ Group, adds, “The acquisition of SPI INTERNATIONAL is
part of the strategy we have been implementing for several years. We have set ourselves the goal of reaching a minimum of 30 million subscribers by 2025, and SPI INTERNATIONAL will certainly be a key asset in achieving this ambition.”

The completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is designed to help CANAL+ expand its content investment strategy, which already includes Studiocanal, and Kino Świat in Poland.

The power of the auto insurance brands can be seen once again at Spot Cable.

The latest Media Monitors Spot Ten Cable report is out, and for the last week, four of the top 10 spots by play count are represented by auto insurance specialists. Who’s at No. 1?

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As social media and technology companies face criticism for not doing enough to stem the flow of misleading information on their platforms, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that some 48% of U.S. adults get news on social media sites “often” or “sometimes,” a 5 percentage point decline from 2020. 

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The latest Media Monitors Spot Ten Radio report has one big takeaway with respect to the most active ad category at broadcast media: auto insurance brands.

At radio, there is a leader that is not present at Spot Cable. It shows that broadcast media is the preferred way to go for achieving stronger ROI.

That’s because Progressive is the category leader at Spot Radio once again, with GEICO at No. 9.

Some 46,194 spot plays are attributed to Progressive, as DuckDuckGo is the No. 1 paid advertiser by play count for the week.

Meanwhile, it is another big week for Babbel, and it and McDonald’s are back in the Spot Ten.

Cumulus Media has selected two individuals who will serve in newly created positions across its Music & Entertainment and Sports divisions.

Their role: to lead new content development across the audio content creation and distribution company’s platforms.

Reporting to EVP/Content and Audience are Doug Cohn, who’ll take the role of SVP/Music & Entertainment, Content and Audience; and Bruce Gilbert, filling the role of SVP/Sports, Content and Audience.

Cohn was formerly SVP/Music & Talent for Nickelodeon, where he played a key role in the career success of JoJo Siwa. He previously spent more than a decade at such entities as Atlantic Records and VH1.

For Gilbert, the role is a promotion for the 7 1/2-year company veteran, who will continue to direct all sports programming for Cumulus’ stations and for its Westwood One Sports arm.

For two generations of rock and roll fans, it was a South Bay monster, gaining steam against a direct format rival in the early 1980s with such industry veterans as Ken Anthony in afternoon drive. By 1998, powered by the Lamont and Tonelli morning show, signals were added around the San Francisco Bay area to expand the station — perhaps the first opportunity to “microcast” and target specific communities.

Now, thanks to GeoBroadcast Solutions technology being tested, the ability to narrowcast for this station, now targeting Bollywood music fans, by using one FM signal appears to be a success.

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SiriusXM has selected three new senior marketing executives as SiriusXM continues its current growth initiatives by launching a new national brand advertising effort designed to reach larger audiences.

Now reporting to Chief Marketing Officer Denise Karkos and supporting the company’s SiriusXM and Pandora brands are:

• Jasmin Chanana, Senior Vice President, Digital and Customer Experience
• Anne Milan Alo, Executive Creative Director
• Kimberly Wilson, Senior Vice President, Brand and Advertising

Karkos comments, “Their collective experience across major consumer and business-to-business brands will help accelerate our brand and business growth. The diversity of this set of leaders at my table is imperative in our pursuit to build SiriusXM to new heights.”

Chanana joins SiriusXM from EY, where he was a Managing Director in their Digital Practice, leading the New York office. Milan Alo joins SiriusXM from Netflix, where she was the streaming services Head of Creative Studio, Title Promotions, leading a multi-disciplinary creative team responsible for fully executing the creative campaign for The Queen’s Gambit.

Wilson joins SiriusXM after a 16-year tenure at The Walt Disney Company where she served as VP/Multiplatform Marketing and held several distribution marketing leadership positions. Wilson previously worked for iHeartMedia and BET Networks. Wilson will lead SiriusXM’s brand marketing and advertising, digital content and audience engagement teams.

NEW YORK — There’s a new over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV offering that’s now available for viewers across the U.S., accessible via such platforms as Roku and Amazon Fire TV. It allows viewers “to connect with local news and information relevant to their lives.”

Yes, there are plenty of apps that do this already. But, this is the first to involve Hearst Television stations.

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All Marketron services were offline as of Monday morning due to a “cyber event.”

Whether this was the result of an attack or another kind of issue is unclear, though the company is using a cybersecurity firm to resolve it. It wrote overnight on its website that it had invested heavily in recent years “to prevent a situation like this.”

This is a significant outage, given that the company serves approximately 6,000 media organizations and, according to its website, manages $5 billion in annual U.S. advertising revenue.

The company’s products include sales and traffic management software tools used by broadcast and media organizations.

“Marketron is experiencing a cyber event, which is impacting certain business operations,” the company wrote in a tech update on its website.

“Currently, all Marketron customers may experience an interruption in services as a result.”

As of 9:30 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, all Marketron services were offline.

Marketron Traffic, Visual Traffic Cloud, Exchange and Advertiser Portal were all affected. The company said it decided to take down RadioTraffic and RepPak as well “out of an abundance of caution.” Its Pitch platform was not affected.

The company wrote that it had been unable so far to confirm the root cause of the problem and that it was working to identify the scope of the event and whether there was any threat to customer data.

“Marketron and an industry leading third-party cybersecurity firm are working around the clock to restore service. Our only priority as a business is to get your business up and running. We hope to have a better sense of timelines on Monday morning.

“We understand that any impact to your business is unacceptable.”

 

The post Marketron and Its Users Slammed by “Cyber Event” appeared first on Radio World.

Supply Side is a series of occasional interviews with industry manufacturers and service providers,

Ben Barber is president/CEO of Inovonics Inc.

Radio World: What’s the most significant technology trend for radio stations in your part of the business?
Ben Barber: Monitoring of their stations. That is the biggest growth sector in equipment that we see. Engineers are spread thin, and they need to know what is happening at their remote stations.

RW: How is the company approaching that?
Barber: Inovonics has two new HD Radio Modulation Monitors. Model 551 is a 3U box with lots of meters and diagnostics on the front panel. The Model 552 is a 1U box that is more for the remote site where you use it to log in remotely to obtain all the pertinent data you need.

RW: How are these different from what’s on the market?
Barber: Both models, 551 and 552, have web interfaces so they are accessible from any web-enabled device and not from a PC application. This makes them much easier to monitor and remotely operate. Second is SNMP functions for everything in the box, both monitoring and control.

As I mentioned, monitoring your station’s modulation and overall signal health has become a larger part of our sales over the past year or two. I think the reasons are twofold.

Engineers are stretched more thinly and the ability to know what is going on at stations they can’t easily monitor is essential. Secondly, more and more networks are centralizing their operations and they want to know what is going on in remote markets. So, for the single engineer monitoring a number of local stations or the large network wanting to monitor all of their stations, the needs are very similar.

For years, engineers have approached us to come out with an HD modulation monitor with a number of key features that have been missing from current offerings.

1. The ability to check your FM/HD modulation from any web-enabled device, and from anywhere. Having a PC application is fine but what about when you’re using your tablet or smartphone and you need to check modulation levels, Artist Experience or other transmission metrics? A comprehensive web GUI can’t be beat.
2. SNMP. This is a huge piece of the pie that has been missing. More and more remote controls are using SNMP to aggregate alarm data and then feed that information to engineers. Networks that have NOCs (network operation centers) need to be able to poll all of their sites to get up to date information on their health. SNMP is the way to do this.
3. Monitor multiple HD Channels simultaneously. Both of our new HD modulation monitors can monitor 4 x HDs simultaneously in real time and supply metrics and audio back to the engineering team.
4. Meter History. Our monitors can show the past 24 hours of RF metrics, audio metrics and alignment measurements. This is very useful in seeing trends and finding problems in the field.

Model 551 is a 3 RU monitor; a 1 RU version is intended for remote sites.

RW: How has the pandemic affected Inovonics’ business?
Barber: Sales were where you would expect them for such a year. The shutdowns of 2020 were hard on us, though we all came through with our jobs intact! The good news is that we were able to focus on product development.

The post Inovonics Highlights New HD Mod Monitors appeared first on Radio World.

The Federal Communications Commission (Commission) adopts targeted enhancements that will modernize the Commission's marketing and importation rules to allow radiofrequency (RF) equipment manufacturers to better gauge consumer interest and prepare for new product launches. These steps will further the communications sector's ability to drive innovation that will advance America's global competitiveness and promote economic growth. As product development cycles have accelerated, new marketplace models and assessment tools have emerged that rely on individual interest to fund products, optimize production, and match imports to anticipated sales. The rules the Commission is adopting will allow manufacturers to better use these tools to quickly deploy new technologies and devices to consumers while ensuring that communications equipment subject to equipment authorization continues to meet the Commission's stringent program requirements.

In this document, the Commission announces that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved, for a period of three years, the information collections associated with certain rules adopted in the Report and Order, Mitigation of Orbital Debris in the New Space Age, which stated that the Commission would publish a document in the Federal Register announcing the effective date of those rules.

David Honig is a civil rights lawyer practicing before the Federal Communications Commission and federal appeals courts. David co-founded the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC). He currently serves as MMTC’s President Emeritus and Senior Advisor, focusing on broadband adoption, literacy, redlining, and employment and ownership diversity.

He was interviewed by Suzanne Gougherty, director of MMTC Media and Telecom Brokers at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council. Answers were edited for clarity and brevity by Veronica Devries, MMTC Earle K. Moore Law Fellow. MMTC commentaries appear regularly in Radio World, which welcomes other points of view on industry issues.

Suzanne Gougherty: Decades ago, the minority tax certificate program was an economic incentive provided to broadcast companies to sell their stations to potential minority buyers — was it successful? 
David Honig: It was very successful. It quintupled the number of minority-owned broadcast stations in the 17 years the program was in effect.

Gougherty: Please explain how the tax certificate program worked for broadcast companies.
Honig: If you sold a radio/television station or a local cable system to a minority-controlled entity, you would be given, by the FCC, a certificate which states if you had a capital gain on the sale you can defer payment of the tax on the capital gain if you reinvest in comparable property. It was a way of incentivizing sales to minorities.

The history of it is interesting. In 1970 the FCC was requiring companies that exceeded the station ownership caps (the number of stations you can own in a local market) and other local ownership rules to divest in order to comply with these standards. Because these were compulsory divestitures, to make it go down somewhat easier, the commission said capital gains taxes could be deferred on these compulsory sales.

[Read: Building the Public Interface of the Black Information Network]

Subsequently, this tax certificate was extended to voluntary divestitures. In 1977, then FCC Chairman Dick Wiley convened a Federal Advisory Committee to examine whether there were more aggressive steps that could be taken to diversify broadcast ownership. He did this because there were very few minority-owned stations at the time (one television station and 60 radio stations in 1978 when the program was announced). I helped staff that committee. In 1978 the tax certificate program was extended to sales to minority-owned companies. In that way it built on existing framework that the industry was familiar with. The economic impact was spread widely, and it was certainly an incentive to sell to minorities. The program was announced in 1978 and continued until 1995.

Gougherty: Did broadcast companies use the program to increase their ownership portfolio into larger markets or stations?
Honig: Yes, there are examples of it being used by incumbent minority broadcasters to expand the size of their portfolio or the markets they were able to be in so that they could leapfrog up from medium markets to large markets. That was a common use of the economic incentive.

Gougherty: Why was the program stopped?
Honig: Suffice it to say that there was a misinformation campaign.

For 26 years, we have been trying to get the program back. This seems to be the year that has the greatest chance so far of having it come back in some form.

Gougherty: There is a proposal pending in Congress by Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), Sen. Gary Horsford (D-Nev.), Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to bring back the Tax Certificate program. Is it basically the same program; if not, what’s different about this current proposal?
Honig: It is no longer a race-conscious program. It focuses on the eligible companies, that is who can be a buyer, as being socially disadvantaged individuals. There’s extensive case law that points out how an agency must justify a finding that people of color or women are socially and economically disadvantaged and it tracks those standards very closely. It also provides for reports to Congress, to assure that the program won’t be abused. I looked at more than 200 tax certificate deals at the time and there was only one deal where there was fraud, and the FCC did punish that company eventually.

There is also a new provision in the Senate version of the bill that would allow a station owner to receive a tax credit equal to the value of the station, if he or she donates the station to a training institution such as an HBCU. A tax credit is a very valuable thing:  it’s tax you don’t pay. This is a way to help small broadcasters especially, and we are hoping this provision will make it to the final version of the bill after both houses of Congress come together.

Gougherty: What will be the process to ensure fraud does not occur with the certificates — such as the involvement of a nonminority entity using a “front” person, who does not have any activity with the organization at all?
Honig: There’s very high visibility with a program like this. It’s a small industry in terms of the number of companies. Everyone would be watching them to make sure that no one is playing games with the program or trying to create a fraudulent buyer. The commission has been very aggressive in cracking down on frauds in other contexts. It would be very stupid for anyone to think they can try and outsmart the FCC Enforcement Bureau.

Gougherty: Is there any opposition to the bill?
Honig: First, the NAB has been wonderful helping to organize support on this issue. All 50 state broadcasting associations wrote a letter to the members of Congress endorsing the return of the tax certificate policy. That has never happened before. No one has come out in opposition. That doesn’t mean there won’t be opposition, but no one has chosen to go public and oppose it. We hope that its value will be recognized in a bipartisan way. We note, for example, that nine former FCC chairs voiced their bipartisan support. There was a voice vote on the House version in the House Commerce Committee that passed with no dissents. So, all the Democratic and Republican members were at peace with how the legislation was presented in the House a few months ago.

 

The post Pushing Broadcast Ownership Diversity appeared first on Radio World.

Debbie Kribell and Johnny Schad

Smarts Broadcast Systems grew out of a radio station in Emmetsburg, Iowa, and introduced its first software in 1983. In an interview for our recent ebook about trends in automation, we spoke with software developer Johnny Schad and the company’s manager Debbie Kribell.

Radio World: What do you see as the most important trends or capabilities readers should know about in automation?

Debbie Kribell: Working remotely.

John Schad: Yes. Remote control of systems, remotely contributing content, remote management of content, being able to distribute data throughout multiple systems.

Another big item is security. Our systems are Linux-based, so that puts us a little ahead of the game versus Windows-based systems, which are much more susceptible to viruses, such as CryptoLocker-style viruses.

We can still get hit with them though. We have a couple of [products] we’re about to release that will help safeguard data as much as possible. And because we’re Linux-based, we have the network monitoring tools to investigate people trying to attack our systems. We can see them trying from all over the world.

So far we’ve had a pretty good track record of data recovery and blocking the attackers, but we see this as a big issue, especially as we work towards more distributed system, where you’re constantly interconnecting with other machines.

RW: With that in mind, any particular advice for users?

Schad: If you’ve got a system dedicated to, say, production, in your automation system, or any Windows system, be very, very cautious about Trojan Horse emails — somebody emails you saying, “Hey, you’ve won a contest, click here.”

Kribell: Or free music.

Schad: A warranty. Some of them look very deceptive.

Kribell: They’re getting pretty good at it.

Schad: “There was a problem with your bank statement, click here to figure it out.” And in short order, a system can be compromised

Stations adopt virtual private networks, where they put their entire organization essentially behind one LAN that’s spread out over the internet. This is great for functionality, but it also introduces a whole different side of security.

Laptops are most commonly a problem, they’ll get infected and then log into your VPN, bypassing the firewall, and they can contaminate your entire empire if you’re not careful. So really scrupulous use of internet tools.

Kribell: And backup. You can’t have too many.

Schad: There’s no CryptoLocker virus in the world that can stand up against an offsite backup that you’ve safely put in a bank vault somewhere.

Our normal systems have at least two or three automated backups; and we have a product called “Super Paranoid Backup” that allows customers to cycle through USB drives, put those on the server and take them offsite.

RW: Will automation eventually all be in the cloud?

Schad: Sure. Although one has to remember what the cloud means. All the cloud is, is somebody else’s computer. Stations should make use of cloud services; but when it comes to 24/7 automation, and maybe it’s just a control freak in me, but I would rather have the computer that’s running my station under my own roof.

A lot of our customers are located at their transmitter facilities, in rural locations with iffy internet connections. Failure in an internet connection really compromises your ability to get to the cloud.

Kribell: I deal a lot with the traffic, and it’s so important to have control of that data. As Johnny said, the cloud is just somebody else’s computer. If you have a backup on a flash drive, you can pull that out of your purse, because every day you take it home with a new backup on it. It’s much easier and faster than trying to figure out who has it, did we pay for it, trying to find your password. That all takes time; and you’re not in control.

Schad: That said, the cloud will be extremely useful for convenience. We have services now — you could call them in the cloud, although they predated that term — for internet transfer of audio files and storage. But to your question of entire automation being cloud-based, I don’t know that I would recommend that at this stage.

RW: One engineer told me, “Ninety-nine percent of problems I’ve had are caused by Microsoft messing around with the operating system.” You probably have a unique take on that.

Schad: There’s a reason we didn’t choose Windows. And it was not an easy decision. All of our competitors were and are in Windows.

But in the DOS days when we were trying to make the leap from Microsoft DOS to one of the many versions of Windows, we weren’t happy with the result. Windows was meant to have a person sitting in front of it, interacting.

A system could be brought to a screeching halt with a modal dialogue box, where some kind of an error where the whole system comes to a halt or makes a big “dunk” sound on the air.

With Windows you don’t have the control over the sound system the way you do over a system like Linux, which we were able to customize.

That was a big learning curve for us, but we really appreciate what Linux has done for us, because we have complete control over the hardware and software in the operating system. We don’t have to worry about software updates, we control what gets updated and when.

RW: If your users have a need for technical support, what’s in place to help them quickly?

Schad: In some ways I see tech support as our product. It’s almost consultation-level interactions with our customers. Often we are the number they call when they just don’t know what else to do; and often a problem has nothing to do with us, we just happen to know.

I just had a call from a customer a 4 o’clock Sunday morning. He had no audio over the air. We troubleshot everything with the Skylla system and found audio on the program channel but no audio on the external air monitors. I sent him after his STL link.

We don’t just say, “It’s not our problem, call us back when you fix it.” We want to get to know the customer. And when you get to know the customer, you don’t leave them hanging.

Kribell: Our normal support is 8 to 5 Central time, but we do emergencies 24/7. They are not just a number, they’re a person to us, almost like family.

[Related: “With Automation, You’re Buying More Than a Product”]

RW: Do people have a contract for a monthly fee, or is it a one-time thing?

Kribell: You get free support for six months when you buy the system, then you can pay it monthly, quarterly or annually. It’s very reasonably priced. We’re like a way cheaper employee.

RW: On the traffic and billing side, what are the important trends?

Kribell: Being able to access your data remotely. EDI, the Electronic Data Interchange, has been a big one with agencies, we’ve been doing that for quite a few years, though I still get people who have never used it.

Traffic is still at the basics — getting that order in, getting it on the air, then billing it, doing your affidavits to verify that it ran. That’s not really changing.

RW: How do you feel about the health of the U.S. radio industry and the customer base that you rely on, the people who are your clients and our readers, this whole ecosystem that we work in?

Kribell: I feel good. It depends on how you’re doing it. If you are taking care of your local market, doing the ballgames and the remotes and the home shows, you’re present, you’re not just music on the air. You are involved in the community, fundraisers, the parade downtown in the summer.

When they are involved in the community, I see them continuing to grow.

Now, the pandemic has absolutely kicked every one of us. This hurt, none of us were expecting this. But those stations that turned around to help, they’re staying alive.

We had stations giving away advertising to keep their clients alive on the air. When they’re doing local, they’re not only helping themselves, but they’re helping that community.

Schad: I grew up in radio and I have been hearing predictions of radio’s demise since I was a kid. MTV — video is going to kill the radio star, that kind of thing.

The industry is amazingly flexible and resilient, and it has found a new home online. It’s feeling out what it can do there, but everybody has hit on the idea of content provision as being key to its survival and relevancy.

The people we market to most are small- and middle-market stations. That’s definitely our strength. These are the most resilient people, they come up with all kinds of crazy ways to keep their stations relevant in the community. We love being a part of that.

RW: You mentioned a pending new security offering.

Schad: We’re calling it Portcullis, like the gates at the castle that close down. We think that it’s going to help secure our stations against certain kinds of attacks. Nothing is 100%, but we sure want to cut down on vulnerability.

It’s going to be distributed in stages, the basic version first. Later updates will be free.

RW: What else should readers know?

Schad: The industry is losing a lot of its engineering talent, and as engineers retire, it’s getting harder to find willing people to step in. The IT world is a seductive one. Your average IT person isn’t going to be standing on a metal transmitter floor below a thousand-foot lightning rod in the middle of a thunderstorm trying to get a transmitter back on the air.

It’s a difficult job and it’s getting harder and harder to find engineers. That’s something the industry has to contend with.

Kribell: Also, sometimes people can get in — for lack of a better way to say it — a rut. If you’re still doing certain things manually —your weather, or countdowns or health shows manually — we have ways to automate that.

Schad: Sometimes, users already have features that they didn’t know they have.

The post Smarts Sees Resilience in Smaller Markets appeared first on Radio World.

AKG has unveiled the Ara, a two-pattern USB condenser microphone that should find use with content creators and musicians.

Ara captures 24-bit/96 kHz audio, offering two pickup patterns that allow users to either focus on a single source or everyone in the room. As the mic is largely intended for podcasters, bloggers, gamers, videoconferencing and for recording voice and instruments at home, the directional front (cardioid) pattern captures sound directly in front of the mic while rejecting sound from other sides. Meanwhile, the Front + Back (omnidirectional) pattern picks up sound evenly from all sides, enabling the recording of interviews with multiple speakers.

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

Ara’s essential functions, including pattern selection, mic mute and a headphone volume knob, are located on the front of the mic for easy access; a 3.5 mm-1/8-inch headphone jack allows latency-free monitoring.

Ara’s compact footprint and mounting options aid its use in both desktop and studio scenarios, allowing users to set it on a desktop using the included yoke and base stand, or attach to a boom or standard mic stand. They can also record on the go with a mobile device and optional adapter.

Included accessories include a two-meter USB-C to USB-A cable, a 3/8-inch to 5/8-inch threaded mic stand adapter and a free registration card for Ableton Live 11 Lite recording software. Ara works with all major live-streaming, video conferencing and music-recording applications. Price: $99.

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

Info: www.akg.com

 

The post AKG Launches Ara USB Microphone appeared first on Radio World.

This QForce custom-configured mapping drone is an advanced RF spectrum collection platform. It is shown in use near Salt Lake City.

(This article originally was prepared as part of Radio World’s preview of the NAB Show so it cites only sources who planned to present at that convention. The NAB Show subsequently was cancelled. — Ed.)

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are rapidly carving out an important place in the toolkit that radio broadcasters use to manage tower sites more efficiently.

Drone-based tower structure surveys are used widely now to diagnose the health of RF systems and broadcast structures. In addition, tech departments use drones to take elevated RF measurements to analyze signal coverage and validate antenna radiation patterns.

The Federal Aviation Administration approved the commercial use of drones in August 2016. Industry experts say this unleashed an industry loaded with potential applications for broadcasters, including using video and still photos of broadcast antennas and their structural components for preventive maintenance measures.

“This is still a relatively new industry, where there’s so much creativity and potential. The integration of the technology has made a dramatic impact on broadcast operations,” one executive-level engineer told Radio World.

The FAA’s small unmanned aircraft rules (Part 107) allow a range of businesses, such as radio broadcasters, to use unmanned aircraft that weigh up to 55 pounds including their onboard systems. Drones must remain within line of sight of the remote pilot and be used during daylight hours.

The maximum altitude is 400 feet, though an exception allows more height when operating within 400 feet of a tall structure such as a broadcast tower.

“When surveying a tower, a drone is commonly permitted to fly an additional 400 feet above the top of the tower, if the aircraft remains within 400 feet of the tower laterally,” according to one expert.

Advocates say drones can more easily determine the integrity of transmission lines via infrared camera inspections and more safely and accurately assess antenna performance by limiting the amount of tower climbing and drive-by coverage analysis. While nothing can replace an actual physical inspection, they say a drone can help reduce the number of climbs, verify asset locations and heights on a structure, and increase safety.

Blossoming Services
A number of broadcast tech companies have expanded into unmanned aircraft services since 2016 as UAS have gained in popularity.

Paul Shulins, president of Shulins Solutions, said drones, used effectively, can help cut costs and increase safety margins for both humans and broadcast systems.

“The main operations that broadcast engineers use drones for are visual tower inspections, thermal tower inspections and antenna pattern verification measurements.” He said broadcasters are quickly discovering the advantages.

“Costs for tower crews vary wildly across the country, but in general it is fair to say that drones are less expensive to operate than hiring a tower crew. They can also be deployed with very little notice, operate in a wider range of weather conditions and provide perspectives not possible with a tower crew,” Shulins said.

Unmanned systems are becoming a preferred method for RF pattern verifications, he said, for reasons of both cost and safety.

A drone-based FM and HD Radio measurement system from Sixarms.

“Drones have a clear advantage because typically these measurements can be made within a single day, where ground-based measurements can take several days or even weeks to accomplish. Helicopters are commonly used for pattern measurements as well, but are much more expensive to operate and are limited on how low they can fly.”

Recently, affordable, gyroscopically controlled infrared cameras have come on the market at a reasonable cost, Shulins said, though he added that drones will never replace human tower climbers for certain operations.

“What (drones) can do is help tower crews by pointing out areas in advance where problem exist though photos, saving time and labor.”

Jason Schreiber is managing director of RF measurement and consulting firm Sixarms, which has developed specialized RF measurement payloads to attach to drones. He says new RF measurement instrumentation can be adapted and installed on a drone and allow for automation and reliable data capture. In addition, the data can be used to optimize antenna patterns and verify radiated power.

“The automation, accuracy of signal capture, ease of flight, large altitude range and easy deployment make drone-based RF measurements a more attractive setup than the traditional van with a 30-foot pump-up mast. All broadcast standards can be measured, including AM radio, DRM, FM and HD Radio, VHF and UHF ATSC and DVBT as well as DAB,” he said.

Sixarms uses its off-the-shelf Airborne Radio Measurement Systems (ARMS) software and hardware to measure and characterize broadcast antenna patterns to help identify any installation and manufacturer defects.

He said the use of machine learning and AI to capture critical RF information will continue to grow and further expand the applications of drones for RF measurement.

Drones are being used not only to perform visual tower inspection but to identify damage and structural defects, Schreiber said, by making use of thermal imaging for hot spot analysis as well as being fitted with LIDAR (light detection and ranging) to help with automated structural analysis.

“Sophisticated capture algorithms interweaved with drone-based positional data allow for unprecedented accuracy and reporting functionality.”

Full-Time Coverage
The burst of drone activity in U.S. broadcasting is leading to more innovative tools and ways to use data, said Phil Larsen, VP of airborne operations for QForce, part of QCommunications.

“The RF contour is not just a report to be filed away anymore. It is now a tool, one to assist broadcast engineers and help the listener receive a better signal. The drone allows for engineers to review data immediately upon the aircraft landing,” he said.

Larsen hopes to see the broadcasting industry reach the point where a fixed drone is stationed at all tower locations that can remotely operated or programmed to fly routinely or whenever needed.

“Drones and the sensor capabilities are by oneself growing expeditiously, thus the use case will increase.” He said QForce offers a means of installing a drone at each location and the ability to fly inspection operations at any time of day all year long without the need of a pilot, autonomously. “This is specifically useful for hard-to-reach locations.”

There are some limitations to using drones near broadcast towers. The FAA has specific rules surrounding the inspection of broadcast towers. Operators must be familiar with FAA Part 107.65 rules, experts say.

In addition, Larsen said some broadcast tower applications do require FAA waivers or special permissions.

Antenna Modeling
Keith Pelletier, vice president of antenna manufacturer Dielectric, said drones are a much more economical way of collecting data than traditional field measurements and equipment.

An azimuth pattern from Sixarms showing an incorrectly installed FM antenna. The black trace shows the drone measurement, the red shows the theoretical designed pattern.

“Dielectric has developed a way to characterize the antenna azimuth and elevation patterns with the data collected by the drone. Typically this was done with a van with a large mast, which included multiple runs of data and thousands of points of collection to be analyzed to determine if the antenna was performing per the antenna manufacturer’s specifications,” he said.

The company’s involvement began when drone measurement companies started having difficulty with the waivers required and time spent on waiting for approvals. Dielectric came up with a method of collecting all the data required at the 400-foot level so no waivers were required.

Dielectric is able to assess whether electrical characteristics of the antenna are correct when measured only in the near field. “The Dielectric solution is to draw the entire array to analyze the near-field elevation pattern and compare that data to the near-field elevation pattern measured by the drone. The 3D rendering and analysis is done utilizing High Frequency Simulation Software, or HFSS,” Keith Pelletier.

Essentially the antenna’s far-field elevation pattern as simulated in HFSS is compared to what Dielectric measured at the factory to validate if its modeling is correct, said Pelletier.

“We then take the near-field elevation data collected by the drone to see if it matches up to the same cut in HFSS; and if so we know the far-field elevation pattern when formed is correct.”

There are several training programs available to get FAA Part 107 licensing, which is required for any type of commercial work. The exam requires an applicant to become familiar with FAA airspace regulations and a variety of other rules.

“It’s important to keep airspace safe. The hobby-type drones are fun but are not necessarily safe around towers, guy wires and high RF environments,” Shulins told Radio World.

“Either training and licensing yourself to operate a drone, or hiring a skilled licensed pilot with the right equipment and skillset to safely fly your tower and accurately interpret the results, is the smart thing to do.”

 

The post Drones Become Part of Radio’s Toolkit appeared first on Radio World.

Daniel Anstandig

The perception of any given consumer is apt to change over time about any number of things, be it brand quality, trustworthiness or favoritism.

But a new study proposes that consumers’ perception — at least when it comes to media consumption and revenue — may be a permanent change.

This new study claims significant shifts in how American consumers perceive, consume and pay for media content. It also reveals media executives’ predictions for the media sector and how well they think they can address emerging challenges.

“Future of Audience and Revenue” polled more than 2,000 Americans, nearly 200 media executives and a series of focus groups about five key verticals: radio, TV, social media, digital publishing and esports.

“This study reveals tectonic shifts in how media is being produced, perceived, consumed and purchased across all levels of society and media,” said Daniel Anstandig, CEO of Futuri Media, which conducted the survey. “The message is very clear to media executives: now is the time to accelerate innovation to keep pace with media’s evolution, or risk being left behind.”

The survey looked at audience habits, media reliability, and the impact of radio broadcast streaming and radio, among other areas.

One of the survey’s most interesting finds: that media consumers now seem to use the terms “radio” and “TV” fluidly when describing media content, regardless of its true source. While it may have been quite clear to consumers 20 years ago as to what they were watching (watching cable vs. watching network TV, for example), focus group members consistently highlighted non-broadcast content when asked to describe their experience with “radio” and “TV.” Consumers used the terms interchangeably when describing audio or video sources. This suggests an evolution in terms of defining what actually is “radio” or “TV” programming.

When it comes to reliability, however, there is no confusion. The study offered that local radio and local TV are considered reliable for clarity and facts. More specifically, when consumers were asked to consider a range of audio and print brands, those respondents named local radio as the most reliable source for clarity and facts. Specifically, the study found that a majority of those responding said they depend on radio for their pandemic news, a finding that seems to demonstrate the medium’s importance for critical updates.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the study found that content consumption has grown even while content teams have been downsized and revamped. And now consumers want even more content. According to the survey, 57% of respondents watched streamed content more often over the past few months. Approximately, 30% listened to local AM/FM stations more often as well as more TV (51%) and social media (48%).

The study also said that the media executives that responded are nervous about the future. There are gaps between emerging issues that media executives considered to be important and their confidence in the industry’s ability to address them. For example, 84% believe it’s important to respond to new and disruptive competitors. Unfortunately, only 54% feel confident in the industry’s ability to do so.

The study also explored the impact of self-driving cars, 5G, broadcast and streaming radio, music streaming, eSports and gaming.

The study was conducted by Futuri, a provider of cloud-based audience engagement and sales intelligence software. They were aided by SmithGeiger Group, a market research specialist. Additional details on the study will be released on Sept. 23. There will be a series of in-depth webinars on Oct. 12.

 

The post Study Dives Into Consumers’ Perception of Media appeared first on Radio World.

Issued an Admonishment to Central Ohio Association of Christian Broadcasters for public file violations for Station WXCB-CD, Delaware, OH

Issued an Admonishment to Central Ohio Association of Christian Broadcasters for public file violations for Station WOCB-CD, Marion, OH

The Media Bureau enters into a Consent Decree with Southern Broadcasting Corporation