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At a time when the FCC has taken a renewed interest in beefing up emergency alerting and limiting false alarms in the United States, a new report says cybersecurity professionals believe digital systems used to deliver localized emergency alerts are a top threat to so-called smart city technologies.

The term “smart city” is often used to describe deployment of, among other things, information and communication technologies to improve infrastructure and city services. Critics of smart city technologies point to potential threats posed when local jurisdictions adopt various digital systems.

[Read: 10 Cybersecurity Questions to Ask Yourself]

Emergency and security alert systems, street video surveillance, and smart traffic lights, were ranked as significantly more vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to a survey of cybersecurity experts conducted by a think tank at the University of California, Berkeley.

The school’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) asked 76 cybersecurity experts in late 2020 to compare the respective risks of cyberattacks against various connected digital systems and the potential impact of successful attacks if they do occur.

The survey ranked emergency and security alert systems that give critical guidance to the public during times of distress as most vulnerable. “Ten of the 76 respondents described how spoofed emergency alerts could cause widespread panic and civil unrest,” according to the report.

Other survey respondents noted the risk of hackers tampering with traffic lights that could cause accidents and gridlock and possibly prevent police, firefighters and ambulances from reaching emergency scenes.

IT security is seen as critical to those smart city technologies, according to the think tank’s white paper. It acknowledges critics who argue “introducing new technologies that increase the connectedness of service delivery systems and government operations with the internet can expose local communities to cyberattacks by a variety of malicious actors.”

The research project was authored by Karen Trapenberg Frick, associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, and Alison E. Post, associate professor of Political Science and Global Metropolitan Studies at UC Berkeley, along with several doctoral candidates.

“Our survey results indicate that smart city technologies are not created equally when it comes to cyber-risk. Cybersecurity experts judged emergency and security alerts, smart traffic signals, and video surveillance to be much riskier than many others,” the white paper concluded.

The cybersecurity experts participating in the survey were recruited from academia, government and private industry. The group was also asked to rank the risk of nine smart city technologies, including water consumption tracking, smart tolling, gunshot detection, smart waste and water leak detection.

The authors suggest resources are available for local officials concerned about IT security of their digital systems, including training programs available through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

The FCC recently issued a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) to explore the potential of internet-based EAS alerts, including audio and video streaming services, and whether such a system would have merit or even be feasible.

 

The post Public Warning Cited as Greatest Cyber-risk appeared first on Radio World.

Detailed rules involving licensing, fees, penalties and the nature of what defines a nonprofit station all came together when the Federal Communications Commission responded to an objection filed against a licensee operating two translators in Georgia.

Renewal applications were filed in December 2019 by Immanuel Broadcasting Network for two FM translator stations — W241AF in Rossville, Ga., and W271CV in Atlanta. The first is licensed to rebroadcast WKXJ(FM), owned by Entercom License LLC in Walden, Tenn., while the second is licensed to rebroadcast station WTZA (AM), owned by Radio Spice LLC.

[Read: FCC Nixes Idea to Rebrand NCE Translator as Commercial]

In March 2020, an informal objection was filed by Triangle Access Broadcasting, of Raleigh, N.C., alleging three things: that Immanuel submitted its application for the translators without the necessary application fees; that Immanuel previously did not pay required application fees for W241AF when it initially licensed the station; and that Immanuel has not paid required regulatory fees outright for either of the translators.

According to Triangle, Immanuel does not qualify for regulatory or application fee exemptions available to licenses of noncommercial educational stations because the translators, according to Triangle, have been operating as commercial stations. Specifically, W241AF retransmits WUSY, licensed by Entercom, as well as W271CV, licensed to Radio Spice. Although Immanuel is a nonprofit entity, Triangle said, it may not claim the nonprofit regulatory fee exemption because it uses the translators for a commercial purpose — contrary to the religious, charitable or educational mandates the Internal Revenue Code.

Triangle also argued that the commission’s rules are “clearly intended to exempt bona fide noncommercial stations from paying fees while subjecting commercial users to fees” and that nonprofits are not exempted from regulatory fees when they operate commercially.

Finally, Triangle argued that even under a nonprofit claim, Immanuel has “operated outside the framework of the Commission Policy on Noncommercial Nature of Educational Broadcasting,” by airing political advertisements.

Accordingly, Triangle urged the commission to allow the licenses for the translators to expire.

The Media Bureau agreed with one of Triangle’s allegations. While the bureau recognized that Immanuel is a nonprofit entity, it found that the licensee does not qualify for the nonprofit application fee exemption because this exemption is limited only to those nonprofits that operate in special emergency radio and public safety radio services.

Similarly, the NCE stations in the FM band are exempt from paying application fees. But to determine if a translator is an NCE station or not, the bureau looks at its primary stations’ status — is it NCE or commercial? According to the applications, W241AF and W271CV rebroadcast stations WKXJ and WTZA, each of which is a commercial station owned by commercial entities.

“We find that translators operate as commercial translators and are not entitled to claim the NCE exemption,” the Media Bureau said in its ruling. Therefore Immanuel should have paid application fees for the translators when it filed its initial application.

FCC rules say that if a fee nonpayment is discovered within 30 days of filing, the application is dismissed and can be refiled again. If the payment isn’t discovered after 30 calendar days, the commission will bill the filer the amount that is due plus a 25% penalty.

In this case, the applications were submitted without the fee and 30 days elapsed since that date. That means the commission will bill Immanuel retroactively and impose a 25% penalty.

But the commission disagreed with the allegation that Immanuel is required to pay regulatory fees for the station too. The bureau said that Immanuel established its status as a nonprofit station under section 501 of the IRS code. “Because nonprofit entities are exempt from regulatory fees,” the bureau said, “we conclude that Immanuel is not required to pay regulatory fees for the stations.”

Finally, the bureau said that Triangle’s argument that Immanuel may not air advertising is a faulty one. The translators are commercial stations and thus the section against advertising — which applies only to noncommercial stations — is inapplicable here. “Moreover, the determination of whether Immanuel is prohibited from airing political advertising under section 501(c)(3) is a determination to be made by the IRS, not the commission,” the bureau said.

As a result, the bureau granted part of Triangle’s informal objection and denied parts of it as well. The bureau also ordered Immanuel to pay a penalty charge equal to 25% of the still-unpaid application fee, which equals $175.

 

The post FCC Rejects Call to Let Two Licenses Expire Over Nonprofit Kerfuffle appeared first on Radio World.

By Joshua Dudley
Podcast Business Journal

Podcast attribution helps marketers understand how well their advertising dollars are working in their podcast campaigns. Podcast advertising attribution platform Podsights just announced the close of a $4M oversubscribed Seed+ round, led by Newark Venture Partners with participation from Graham Holdings, Aglaé Ventures, and existing investors Greycroft, Supernode Global, BDMI, and Betaworks.

Streamline Publishing’s Podcast Business Journal spoke to Podsights founder Sean Creeley about podcast attribution. It was an exclusive interview.

PBJ: Who do you usually work with?
Sean Creeley: We usually work with some of the larger heads of the market like an NPR, New York Times, or Hubspot to help them understand what is working in podcast advertising. There was a recent survey that measurability and attribution are still the leading reasons why people don’t buy podcast ads, and we’re trying to change their minds and sort of open up the floodgates a little bit to say that podcasting is measurable. We partner with leading ad servers like Megaphone News and Nielson to bring those insights into campaigns.

PBJ: How long have you been in the podcast advertising segment?
Sean Creeley: We started in 2018, and we did really well in 2020 and raised about a million and a half a year ago. We had really good growth through the pandemic, and podcasting, like all industries, was hidden at the beginning of it and then had a nice resurgence come q3 q4 when everybody started to figure out their routines and started looking for additional content in the world.

PBJ: So you think podcast advertising is going to continue to grow?
Sean Creeley: Absolutely. It’s a very powerful medium. I’m sure you can name a couple of brands that you’ve heard because of really high ad recall with specifically some host read first-run ads or host endorsed reads. For the advertisers that need scale, the dynamically inserted ads are even programmatic to an extent. So there’s a little bit of everything for marketers out there, and it’s getting to be a more diverse set of content, which is great to see. We’re just starting to see scale, and with more and more people listening to podcasts, a rising tide lifts all boats.

PBJ: What would you recommend for anyone looking to invest in podcast advertising?
Sean Creeley: Here’s the thing, marketers tend to be biased towards the shows that they listen to, assuming that people that buy their product are like them and listen to the same shows. But what happens is they find out their audience doesn’t like the same shows and those advertisers are never to be seen again.

What we’re advocating for here is more of a thoughtful approach of finding out about the audience a little bit before we push through an ad buy rather than find out after the fact.

The publishers do an incredible job of advocating for podcast advertising and talk about the benefits of the medium, and our job is to put data behind that because at the end of the day, discount codes are not the standard of attribution anymore and we’re seeing a lot more of the big advertisers enter the space.

I think what we’re going to start seeing more of again are the traditional companies that do well and then the larger brand advertisers that want high ad recall in the favorability of these ads.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On February 18, 2020, RBR+TVBR reported on the departure after a decade of American University from the Salisbury-Ocean City, Md., market. AU’s Board of Trustees on Jan. 31, 2020, signed off on the sale of WRAU-FM 88.3 in Ocean City.

That deal never transpired. Now, it’s found a new buyer.

And, it’s the owner of another big FM in the Nation’s Capital that seeks to do what AU did in 2010.

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Discovery Inc. has invested heavily in the promotion of its Discovery + OTT platform, launched January 4.

With some Wall Street watchers newly concerned that streaming revenue and subscriber growth may be lagging, the company’s stock on Wednesday was swept up in a wave of downward activity on Wall Street.

At the Closing Bell, DISCA completed the trading session at $61.94, a 13.6% day-over-day decline.

In early after-hours trading, however, some value investors were already in buy mode. This put DISCA at $62.15 as of 4:14pm Eastern.

With a $46.80 target price, Discovery shares may be a little overheated — similar to what some are saying about ViacomCBS’s recent run-up in value and subsequent two-day collapse.

For Discovery, its share price is where it was on March 3. Further, DISCA had been regularly trading in the low $20 range across the pandemic. It wasn’t until early November 2020 when the big growth spurt started.

With ViacomCBS‘s March 23-24 stock plunge largely fueled by a gargantuan $3 billion equity offering, there’s another angle to the decline some Wall Street observers have suggested.

With Paramount + not living up to its hype, in their eyes, companies with heavy investments in streaming could suffer from slower-than-anticipated growth. While that’s a leap and based purely on speculation, some key radio station owners have been caught up in the sell-offs.

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MIAMI — Grow with our audience, and grow with us.

That’s the pitch presented to new and returning brand managers and CMOs across a digitally delivered event that was one-part Upfront presentation and another part a full introduction to two new key members of the largest multimedia company superserving U.S. Hispanics today.

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Louis “Bob” R. du Treil Sr., an award-winning engineering consultant who was also both son and father to prominent broadcast engineers, has died at age 88.

The death was announced in an obituary from the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers, of which du Treil was a past president. He died last week in hospice in Sarasota, Fla., where he’d lived for 25 years.

in 2011 the former owner and president of du Treil, Lundin & Rackley was honored by the National Association of Broadcasters with its Engineering Achievement Award. NAB cited his reputation as a creative and insightful engineer and his work including contributions to international discussions on mediumwave (AM) directional antenna technology in the 1980s.

Colleagues told Radio World that year that du Treil’s strength was in visualizing designs for AM directional arrays and then making innovative proposals to the FCC in cases that had no clear-cut precedents.

“I’d bend the rules but not break them. Though the FCC may disagree with that,” du Treil told RW then. “I suspect it did get me in trouble a few times. I just tried to take advantage of what was available to me.”

[Read our 2011 profile of Bob du Treil.]

According to the AFCCE bio, Bob du Treil Sr. was born in New Orleans and was introduced to radio engineering as a youth in that city. His father Joe was a prominent engineer who contributed to the construction of AM station WWL in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

After early service in the U.S. Coast Guard, Bob Sr. moved to Washington, D.C. to work in the radio broadcast field. He completed his B.S. degree in electrical engineering at Louisiana State University in 1961.

Bob joined the firm of John H. Mullaney & Associates, where he remained until 1967. He then partnered for several years with his father at L. J. N. du Treil & Associates before moving his family back to D.C., where he joined Jules Cohen & Associates and later was made partner.

In 1983 he launched du Treil-Rackley with colleague Ronald Rackley. It later merged with A.D. Ring & Associates, then headed by John Lundin, in 1987 to form du Treil, Lundin & Rackley Inc.

The firm moved to Florida in the 1990s. Several of its employees have served on the AFCCE board. “dLR continues to the present day under the leadership of Bob’s namesake, Bob du Treil Jr, and partner, Jeff Reynolds,” according to AFCCE.

Du Treil retired in 2006 and pursued volunteer work at the Coast Guard Auxiliary and Sarasota Memorial Hospital. In addition to membership in AFCCE, he was a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).

According to his obituary, du Treil loved socializing, fine dining, boating, fishing, walking and gardening, and owned various boats throughout the years. “He will always be remembered as a jovial, warm, generous, loving spirit – leaving an imprint on all the hearts he touched with his wonderful nature.”

Memorial donations may be made to Tidewell Hospice in Sarasota or Sarasota Memorial Healthcare Foundation, in support of the Brian D. Jellison Cancer Institute in Sarasota.

 

The post Bob du Treil Sr. Dies, Age 88 appeared first on Radio World.

They’ve sued Entravision Communications for copyright infringement. A court fight against the Radio Music License Committee (RMLC) continues. Then, in early March, it handed Radio a decree straight out of the film Goodfellas: “pay up, or else” if you want to play any GMR artists on your stations from April 1.

Now, one of the nation’s biggest radio broadcasting companies has agreed to a “long-term partnership” with Global Music Rights (GMR), the eight-year-old music license lion founded by Irving Azoff.

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Mary Day Lee is seen with three of her protégés in this 1907 photograph. From left: Austen M. Curtis, Lee, Lloyd Espenschied, Frank Hart. ©Pennsylvania State Archives

The unexpected sometimes happens during a research effort. This was true in my quest to determine the truth about the fabled 1906 Fessenden Christmas Eve “first broadcast,” which is well known to Radio World readers.

In doing that research I learned about a cluster of young people — teenagers — who lived in a Brooklyn, N.Y., neighborhood, shared a strong interest in radio and eventually made careers of it.

They were all born around 1890, and as such, were the first generation of young people exposed to radio — the first true geeks or techno nerds. As radio was a hot item, and poorly understood by the average person, radio experimenters frequently provided grist for newspaper reporters.

One New York paper referred to the Brooklyn radio kids as “smart boys” and reported on their activities. One of these was Francis (Frank) Hart who, in 1906, began keeping a sort of radio log/diary. Hart and the remarkable perspective that his journal provided about early radio were mentioned in my articles writings about the “world’s first broadcast.”

Nowadays, it’s difficult to imagine not having instant 24/7 communications, or electric lights that work every time the switch is touched. Yet, 100 years ago, even in the largest cities, telephone service was a rather mysterious thing, subscribed to only by the rich; many electric power companies provided power only during the evening hours and shut down during thunderstorms.

High school science classes shied away from the teaching of subjects such as electricity, wireless, x-rays, flying machines and similar wonders. These inventions were too new, and most educators had little or no grasp of such technologies.

So where did the young people of that era turn to satisfy their hunger for knowledge in such areas?

Certainly, there were public libraries, but in the early 20th century, these weren’t universal, and — just as today — had to balance the reading interests of their clientele with resources available, meaning that the overwhelming majority of books were popular fiction rather than scientific treatises.

Magazines in the area of electricity and wireless were scarce — the first title printed in this country that catered to radio experimenters didn’t appear until 1908.

The Brooklyn Children’s Museum was in this donated Bedford Park mansion from 1899 until 1968. One of its radio station antenna masts is visible. It was erected in 1907–1908 and supported a 250-foot long antenna some 85 feet above the ground. Photo by George Flanagan

Filling an Educational Void

Children in Brooklyn were fortunate in having access to the first museum created exclusively for young people, The Brooklyn Children’s Museum, established in 1899.

Its mission was “to actively engage children in educational and entertaining experiences through innovation and excellence in exhibitions, programs, and use of its collection.”

Hart and his peers were in their early teens when the museum opened. It’s not known if they became “regulars” immediately after opening day, but it’s likely this happened with the arrival of a recent college graduate trained in the sciences, someone who would have a great influence on the lives of Hart and his friends, many who went on to successful careers in radio engineering.

Unusual for the times, their mentor was a woman.

It was not uncommon for women to work in the field of telegraphy or telephony. In fact, they were chosen over men for staffing telephone switchboards, based on perceptions about demeanor and temperament.

One of Lee’s charges, Frank Hart, operates the museum’s first radio station as an unidentified youth observes. The station was located in Lee’s office and was under her control. It operated with the self-assigned call letters of ‘CM’ for Children’s Museum. Photo by George Flanagan

However, radio in the early 1900s was very much “a man’s world.” It involved working with lethal voltages, physically large and heavy apparatus and the climbing of high masts — something women “just didn’t do” then. (Lee de Forest’s 1907 marriage to Nora Blatch wound up in the divorce courts because she persisted in her career as an engineer after their nuptials.)

Such stigmas notwithstanding, Mary Day Lee arrived at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum on Oct. 3, 1905, and began a nearly two-decade-long career in instructing boys and girls about the wonders of electricity, radio and the physical world around them.

Her arrival was heralded with a small note in the organization’s Museum News:

ANNOUNCEMENT: It gives us pleasure to announce the appointment of Miss Mary Day Lee, of New Rochelle, New York, to the position of First Assistant in the Children’s Museum. Miss Lee is a graduate of Barnard College and of the Teacher’s College, New York, where she gave special attention to physics and chemistry. Her work at the Museum will include popular lectures on these subjects and she will be glad to meet any boys and girls who are interested in physical and electrical apparatus and experiments.

Census records indicate that Mary Day Lee was born in Richmond, Va., but the surviving records are ambiguous as to her exact date of birth. College records give it as April 21, 1879. The circumstances of her family’s move to New York City are vague. College records indicate that she graduated from Barnard in 1905, making her about 26 years old at the time of her museum appointment.

Lee was soon to become a pivotal figure in the museum’s operations and in early radio itself. During her tenure, she also would serve as the mentor to young people interested in the physical sciences.

Popularizing Radio in Brooklyn

Lee wasted little time in bringing one marvel of electricity to neighborhood children: a wired telegraph system, which gradually spread out to interconnect the museum with the homes of the young people that she worked with. Within a few months, this wired telegraph system morphed into a full-blown “wireless” station.

The beginnings of that radio station are recorded in the Museum News in spring of 1906, in an article titled “Our Wireless Telegraph”:

“The wireless telegraph receiver is now in good working order and hardly a day passes in which we do not hear messages from some of the stations in the vicinity, or some of the vessels outside the harbor.”

Although the article carries no author’s name, clearly it was penned by Lee. Further in the account is a detailed description of how to make detectors for radio waves and of the construction of a spark type of radio transmitter.

A capacity crowd awaits the setup of electrical apparatus in the museum’s lecture hall. Lee demonstrated and operated such equipment on a regular basis. ©Brooklyn Children’s Museum

The museum’s radio room — collocated with Lee’s office — soon became one of the most popular attractions at that institution:

“The number of devotees of ‘wireless’ grows steadily, and each week brings one or two more High School boys who wish to investigate the subject seriously and to persevere until they make a transmitter and receiver that will work.

“More than fifty boys from high schools and colleges have come expressly to see the instrument and about ten boys come regularly two or three times a week to experiment on some part of the apparatus.”

Other evidence of her accomplishments is found in an undated newspaper clipping, probably from the Brooklyn Eagle during her first year at the museum. Its gist is that by acquiring radio skills, a person could eavesdrop on commercial and naval communication traffic; but the article also establishes that Lee had sufficient mastery of both the Morse code and radio apparatus to teach these skills:

Of course there is considerable intelligence required before the wireless wiretapping is a success. Worst of all the wireless people talk in Morse code, like any other telegraphers, and before you can understand the dots and dashes … it is necessary to learn that code. Right here is where the Children’s Museum in Bedford Park, Brooklyn, comes into the story.

That unique institution, which is one of Brooklyn’s greatest claims to fame, as everybody knows, runs a set of miscellaneous lectures and courses for the instruction of children, in addition to exhibiting the armadillo, flamingo, cassowary and other stuffed animals for their edification. The curator is Miss Gallop and her assistant is Miss Lee. It is Miss Lee who has taught the boys physics and incidentally wireless [author ’s emphasis].

Mary Day Lee is pictured with other Brooklyn Children’s Museum staff members. Rear row, from left: Miriam S. Draper, librarian; Agnes E. Brown, special assistant, Marguerite Carmichael, assistant to the curator. Front: George P. Engelhardt, assistant curator; Anna Billings Gallup, curator; and Mary Day Lee, assistant curator. According to information supplied by the museum, this photograph was taken in 1913 and was made on glass negative that was damaged in handling, resulting in the visible cracks. ©Brooklyn Children’s Museum

The wireless work was a result of the elementary course in physics which Miss Lee gives. The boys became very much interested in electricity, and especially in wireless telegraphy, and were soon constructing stations of their own.

The wireless station constructed and operated under the auspices of Lee was state of the art, employing a large induction coil for the generation of the thousands of volts of electricity needed for spark transmissions, and also a mechanical interrupter to drive the coil. The power supplied to the museum at the time came from an “Edison” power plant and was delivered as DC.

If Lee had accomplished nothing else during her lifetime, the construction and operation of one of the few pre-World War radio stations should be enough to put her in the record books.

Lee obviously took pride in the pioneer radio station she helped create, reporting in May of 1906 that it was undergoing “many improvements” and that “we soon expect to have the most powerful amateur station in this part of the country.

“We can receive without difficulty all the messages sent from stations within a radius of fifty miles, and sometimes we can hear Philadelphia,” she wrote in the Museum News. “Some of the boys have heard messages from Rockland, Maine, and Cape Hatteras, distances respectively of three hundred and four hundred miles. Unfortunately we cannot transmit as far as we can receive, but when we increase the height of the pole we hope to signal 25 or 30 miles.”

Behind the Mic

One of the “regulars” at the museum station was Frank Hart, who, concurrent with the establishment of the station, constructed a wireless station of his own in his bedroom. Hart is credited with assisting in the installation of the museum’s station — in particular, the erection of its large long-wire antenna, one end of which was anchored 85 feet above the building.

In addition to his logbook/diary, Hart kept a scrapbook documenting some of his accomplishments. One item is a newspaper clipping that describes his radio activities and apparatus. Although the date and newspaper name are missing, the story appears to have been printed in mid-1907, just a few months after Lee de Forest started his broadcasting activities in New York City.

What’s significant is that the clipping indicates young Hart was experimenting with something few others had tried: the transmission of speech via radio waves. And although this is speculative at best, the article lends some support in making a case for Lee to have been one of the first women — possibly even the first woman — to have her voice transmitted by radio.

Boy Holds Key to Wireless

There is a school boy, Frank Hart Irving [sic], at 942 St. Mark’s avenue, who though only sixteen years old, sat in his bedroom and by means of the perfect wireless telegraph instrument that he had made himself, followed the movement of every vessel in the fleet until it had reached Virgin Pass, and received every message sent out, even … official dispatches … which were intended only for official ears.

Frank has within the last two months constructed an electric arc and connected it with his wireless instruments, so that he may converse eight blocks away with a friend. It is an odd sight to see this boy stand in his bedroom, one wall of which is covered with telegraphic and electrical apparatus, and by playing the blaze from a Bensen [sic] burner on an arc light that he has rigged up, talk with a friend a quarter of a mile away without the use of wires …

The museum’s radio station was rebuilt under the direction of Lee in 1916 to improve its appearance and efficiency. In accordance with new federal regulations the station was operating with the government-assigned call sign of “2KP”. In describing the revamped facility, Lee notes that with the new transformer installed, “we can obtain 13,200 volts” and that it was rated at 500 Watts. The station was dismantled by government order when the United States entered the world war. ©Brooklyn Children’s Museum

What the reporter is describing is one variant of an early AM radio transmitter — known in some circles as an “arc phone.” (The Bunsen Burner mentioned supplied hydrocarbons needed to stabilize the arc.)

Such a device was fully capable of transmitting speech and music, and it was this technology that de Forest used in his early broadcasting experiments.

Hart was born on Aug. 12, 1891, making him 16 — the age indicated in the article — in 1907. He logged the first reception of de Forest’s speech transmissions on March 20 of that year. Therefore, we may assume he constructed his AM transmitter sometime in the spring or summer of 1907.

Hart made no entries in his journal about how this primitive radiotelephone transmitter came into being, but two scenarios are likely, and directly or indirectly involve Hart’s mentor and advisor, Mary Day Lee.

The first suggests that Hart approached her for information on construction of an arc transmitter. She certainly would have had the knowledge and skills to guide him in building such a device. Before he took it to his home, a period of testing and experimentation at the museum would have followed, providing her with access to this radiotelephone transmitter.

In a second scenario, Hart could have constructed the transmitter on his own. However, as a precocious teen, he likely would have been proud of his accomplishment and not hesitated in demonstrating this new “wonder” to Lee. Given her scientific curiosity, it’s almost certain that she would have tried it out herself.

In either case, Lee would have had the opportunity to experiment with the radiotelephone transmitter, and in doing so, could easily been the first female to have uttered words wirelessly across space — technically “broadcasting” to anyone within range.

The audience might have included other radio amateurs, as well as land-based or seagoing commercial station operators tuned to the proper wavelength, and possibly even the operators at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, who at that time were just getting used to de Forest’s frequent experimentation with speech and music transmissions.

I have no proof that Lee actually transmitted her voice via Hart’s machine. But I consider the likelihood high, given the availability of the transmitter and the timing. (See box at the end.)

Ms. Lee did not leapfrog into broadcasting as we know it; that business didn’t begin until the early 1920s. She remained in Brooklyn as a lecturer, teacher and mentor to museum neighborhood young people, continuing to operate and improve the wireless station there.

Both the world and radio were changing in the decade of the 1910s. The first U.S. radio laws were enacted in 1910, and two years later even stronger laws were passed governing radio station operations and apparatus. (See my June 3, 2009 article “When the Federal Government Stepped In”). The sinking of the Titanic also did much to create public awareness of the power of radio.

Mary Day Lee continued her work in educating young people about this increasingly valuable tool, and also continued to shatter “glass ceilings,” as she became — in 1917 — the first woman in New York City to be licensed to operate motion picture projection equipment. This was another “man’s world,” as it involved high-current electrical arc light sources, and the handling of extremely flammable and potentially explosive nitrate-based film.

The Great War

The entry in 1917 of the United States into the World War affected not only the museum’s radio activities, but also those of most other radio operations, amateur or commercial. On April 7, and by order of the president, all private stations were shut down or taken over by the government for its own use. This spelled an end to the wireless activities at the museum.

Lee noted the demise of the station in a house publication, the Children’s Museum News:

“[T]he Museum Wireless Telegraph Station was dismantled on April 9th. The wireless pole and all of the apparatus used in sending and receiving messages were removed.”

“While boys cannot hope to send or receive messages until after the war is over, the privilege of learning the wireless code and of practicing it on Museum instruments will be extended to beginners as heretofore.”

That publication also provided a partial listing of the young men — all trained in wireless by Ms. Lee — who by then had entered military service and were working in some aspect of wireless communications in the defense of their country.

Some of her former students kept Lee informed of their activities “overseas” as much as possible:

“Austen Curtis; the first boy who studied Wireless Telegraphy in the Children’s Museum announced in his last letter, dated at Paris, that he had been promoted to the rank of captain in the Radio Corps of the United States Army.”

Leaving the Museum

Although no formal mention of a wedding has been located, apparently Lee was married to Henry B. Weisse in, or sometime prior to, 1917. A New York museum association conference roster that year recorded “Mrs. Mary Day Lee Weisse” as an attendee.

Little is known about her husband; however census records indicate that he was a stockbroker and the couple lived in Queens along with her sister Florence and their father, Richard Lee.

A 1923 article chronicles the end of her tenure at the museum:

“The sudden resignation and departure of Miss Mary Day Lee early in February brought disappointment and regret to her many friends. For seventeen years, thousands of young people delighted in her lectures, and with her personal assistance many a troubled high school student solved his knotty problems in elementary physics and electricity. Under her direction for more than a decade there flourished an amateur wireless telegraph station where every eager inquirer into the mysteries of ‘Wireless’ found satisfaction. Full-fledged wireless operators, made during their recreation hours, emerged from this station at different times. Several of these gave noble service to their country during the World War; some in the quiet research of technical laboratories, others in wireless stations of ships at sea, and others amid the dangers of the trenches and dugouts of the battlefields of France maintaining what was of supreme importance, unbroken wireless communications.”

“We wish her all happiness in her new home at White Plains, New York, which is too far from Brooklyn to permit of her remaining longer in the museum.”

As far as can be determined, Lee Weisse was never directly associated with radio or broadcasting again, though the 1930 census showed that her sister, who still shared the couple’s dwelling, was employed in radio advertising.

In 1949, Lee Weisse received a small bit of recognition in connection with the post-war launch of television. That year, the Brooklyn Eagle published a story recognizing the accomplishments of one of her protégés, Lloyd Espenschied. He had enjoyed a long career at Bell Laboratories, and was being recognized as the co-inventor of coaxial cable, an essential commodity in television. Espenschied stated in the article that he and other Brooklyn youth had received early encouragement in their radio careers from both Lee and her supervisor, Anna B. Gallup.

Also mentioned were Austin Curtis and Frank Hart. Curtis had become a Bell Labs engineer too, and with Espenschied he participated in the world’s first long-distance test of radiotelephony in 1915. Hart was recognized as having served as the manager of a large trans-Atlantic shortwave communications station on Long Island.

Lee also was remembered by Alfred P. Morgan (1889–1972), who was in the same age group as Espenschied, Curtis and Hart. Morgan went on to author more than 50 books, popularizing the sciences for young people. Morgan recalled his association with Lee in the 1963 book “More Junior Authors”:

“I visited the Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, where an unusual young woman, Miss Mary Day Lee, a member of the Museum staff, not only encouraged boys to experiment with electricity and wireless telegraphy, but was able to aid and assist them. My hat is still off to the young woman who could discuss with you the fine points of winding a spark coil.”

Later Years

Lee Weisse and her husband spent the remainder of their lives in White Plains. After her relocation to this New York City bedroom community, she began a second career as a public school teacher, educating young people in science and biology. None of the records examined indicates that any children were born to the couple.

Mary Day Lee Weisse’s husband, Henry, died in late 1964 at the age of 87. She passed away on April 17, 1970 at the age of 90.

Postscript

The White Plains Rural Cemetery tombstone indicates that Mary Day Lee maintained her identity even after her marriage to Henry Weisse.

After Mary Day Lee Weisse left the Brooklyn Children’s Museum, little was written or otherwise recorded about her; I found it difficult even to determine when she’d died.

Census records are available only to 1930, at which time she would have been 70. Telephone books and city directories were of limited use, but did indicate that she was alive when 1970 editions were published.

My wife, Pamela, who grew up near White Plains, N.Y., suggested a visit to area cemeteries. Ultimately, we located Ms. Lee Weisse’ resting place and established her death date.

Photo: James O’Neal

She and her husband, Henry, are interred at the White Plains Rural Cemetery, which was established in 1795 and is only a short distance from their last home. However, even finding the couple’s gravesite proved a challenge. The cemetery’s keeper provided a map and general coordinates, but no visible grave marker was evident. It was only after pulling aside a large bush that we found the marker; even in death, Mary Day Lee Weisse remained elusive.

Judging by the size of the bush, we may have been the first to visit her grave since she was laid to rest 40 years ago. I note this only as a way of indicating how this person, a true pioneer and very much ahead of her time, has been all but forgotten. It is my hope that through this published account of her life and career, her memory will be kept alive and her deeds remembered. She was a remarkable person.

First Woman at the Mic?

Was Mary Day Lee the first woman to have her voice transmitted by radio?

In order to establish even a speculative case for such priority, we note that while de Forest was broadcasting on a somewhat regular basis in early 1907, it was not until 1910 that he experimented with live musical broadcasts involving Manhattan Opera Company diva Mme. Mariette Mazarin. She performed several operatic selections on the afternoon of Feb. 24, 1910, according to a report published that May in Modern Electrics. It’s possible that de Forest could have played recordings of female vocalists prior to 1910, but this appears to be the first documentation of his having transmitted a “live” female voice.

Another early radio experimenter and pioneer, Charles Herrold, started up a “radiotelephone” station, with his wife, Sybil, assisting with its operation and appearing on the air. However, this did not occur until 1909.

Another radio pioneer, Reginald Fessenden, in a 1932 letter recounting his early experiments in broadcasting, mentioned that “others” not specified — possibly his wife Helen, or his secretary “Miss Bent” — were supposed to have sung in his first radiotelephone “broadcast,” but developed an early case of “mic fright,” forcing Fessenden to go it alone. While Fessenden stated that this was at the end of 1906, it appears much more likely that his celebrated Christmas Eve broadcasting activities actually took place in December 1909.

In either case, this would clear the way for Mary Day Lee to have been first, if she indeed had worked with Hart in constructing or testing his arc transmitter.

The original version of this article appeared in Radio World in 2010.

The author thanks the following for help in preparation of this article: Pamela A. O’Neal; Jane Johnson, Mecklenburg County (N.C.) Public Library; Beth Alberty, Brooklyn Children’s Museum; Anne-Rhea Smith, Brooklyn Children’s Museum; Miriam Berg Varian, White Plains, N.Y. Public Library; and Harold Mercer, Jr., White Plains (N.Y.) Rural Cemetery.

The post Mary Day Lee, Radio Pioneer appeared first on Radio World.

It was once a construction permit owned by notable radio industry figure Randy Michaels. Since its February 2010 sign-on, its been owned and operated by the Seneca Nation of Indians.

Now, eleven years and two months after its debut, this Class B1 FM with a signal stretching as far north as the Buffalo Bills’ home stadium and into the Twin Tiers of Pennsylvania and New York is set to sign off the air.

There’s no buyer, or format change in the works. Rather, the station is going dark.

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Luken Communications no longer exists. The purveyor of digital multicast networks targeting niche audiences is now known as Get After It Media, and it seeks a bigger outlet for its offerings than on a DT signal a cord-cutter would tune to.

Get After It is jumping into the over-the-top space.

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Jeanna Berge

iHeartMedia has named Jeanna Berge to be market president for Eau Claire, Wis., and Rochester, Minn., as Rick Hencley retires effective April 1.

Her position oversees FM stations KMFX, KRCH, WATQ, WBIZ, WMEQ and WQRB, as well as AM stations KFAN, WBIZ and WMEQ.

Berge also continues as SVP of sales for Eau Claire. She will report to Division President Shosh Abromovich.

“As market president, Berge will work closely with the programming, business and sales teams for all station brands in Eau Claire and Rochester and will oversee the stations’ on-air and digital programming as well as create new revenue opportunities,” a press release states.

Rick Hencley

Berge joined the cluster in 2011 as an account executive and has worked her way up in sales management.

She described Rick Hencley as a mentor. “I am determined to share that same motivation, positivity and creativity to help these ambitious teams excel.”

Hencley has also worked at Laird Broadcasting, Great Duluth Broadcasting, Phillips Broadcasting, Cumulus and Clear Channel.

Send People News announcements to radioworld@futurenet.com. Management and engineering position announcements are particularly sought.

The post Berge Takes the Reins in Eau Claire for IHM appeared first on Radio World.

Better sound and audio quality. Data capabilities designed to bring new revenue streams to broadcast TV. Those are the principal promises of ATSC 3.0 and the arrival of NEXTGEN TV in a local marketplace.

Buffalo recently ushered in the NEXTGEN TV era. Now, a DMA two hours to the east along the ol’ Erie Canal has made the move into TV’s future.

Now offering ATSC 3.0-powered broadcast signals are Nexstar Media Group-owned ABC affiliate WSYR-9; WTVH-5, the CBS affiliate operated by Sinclair Broadcast Group that is the legacy of the defunct Granite Broadcasting; and Sinclair-licensed WSTM-3, the NBC affiliate in Syracuse.

Interestingly, Cox Media Group-owned WSYT-68 is not participating in this rollout.

As was the case in other market rollouts, BitPath led the planning process and coordinated efforts across the three television stations.

— RBR+TVBR, in Hurley, N.Y.

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