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Media Bureau grants consent to transfer control of licenses held by subsidiaries of Univision Holdings, Inc., subject to condition, and grants Univision's Petition for Declaratory Ruling to exceed the foreign ownership benchmark under Act.

Serving as Chairman of the FCC has been the honor of a lifetime. And soon, my time in this position will conclude. 

Those are the words of Ajit Pai, who will preside over his final FCC Open Meeting come January 13. The meeting won’t involve any new business, with Bureau, Office, and Task Force leaders summarizing the work their teams have done over the last four years in a series of presentations.

And, it could involve a lot of salutes to the man some detest for “killing net neutrality” while others highly admire for his wit, affability, love of the Kansas City Chiefs, and that oversized Reese’s coffee mug.

RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION: Chairman Pai, we hardly new you. But, in the time you served on the FCC, you proved to be a champion of local media. From tiny AM radio stations to the biggest TV stations, you showed you care — perhaps a lot more visibly than your predecessor. The radio and TV broadcasters of America owe you much gratitude, and we will miss you and that coffee mug of yours. And, who can we taunt when the Buffalo Bills advance to the Super Bowl? While our Editor-in-Chief met you once — by chance at Reagan National Airport and you returned to D.C. from a Boston event in November 2019 — you were pleasant, and took time to chat in that airport corridor. Be well, sir, and best of luck on your next role.

 

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American Tower Corporation has closed its acquisition of InSite Wireless Group.

The total consideration for the transaction, subject to certain post-closing adjustments, was approximately $3.5 billion, including the assumption or repayment of existing InSite debt, and was funded by a combination of cash on hand and revolver borrowings.

American Tower Chief Executive Officer Tom Bartlett said, “We are pleased to close this immediately accretive transaction and expect to quickly begin driving new leasing activity on these high-quality, well-located assets. As 5G densification initiatives in the U.S. accelerate and network deployments in international markets continue, we believe we are well positioned to generate attractive, sustainable long-term growth, including on these new sites, while playing a key role in enhancing mobile broadband connectivity.”

American Tower expects the assets acquired from InSite to generate approximately $150 million in property revenue and approximately $115 million in gross margin in 2021.

One of Kansas’ only independent broadcasters has just seen one of its two UHF television stations placed into receivership.

It’s a channel that serves both Wichita and Hutchinson with a host of digital multicast networks including COZI TV, Estrella TV, Bounce, LIGHTtv and NewsNet.

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In the border city of El Paso, an FM translator at 88.1 MHz and its sibling at 101.7 MHz have offered Christian talk and teaching programs tied to KELP-FM 89.3, a facility located to the north in Mesquite, N.M.

That’s changing. The nation’s No. 2 licensee by station count is buying them.

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On December 22, RBR+TVBR reported on a transaction that will see a reborn “Ritmo” offer Tropical programming to Hispanics across the Delaware Valley, courtesy of Miguel Amador and his Ritmo Broadcasting.

Ritmo also operates a Top 40 operation with call letters that pay homage to a pioneering hit music FM that once served Philadelphia, and a FCC filing now shows he’s buying the AM and FM translator used to power up WIFI.

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Keeping it would have placed a reconstituted iHeartMedia over FCC local ownership limits.

As such, a Class C1 FM licensed to a Minnesota town that serves Grand Fork, N. Dakota, was placed in one of three trusts overseen by Barry Drake, the retired President/CEO of former Jacksonville-based radio station owner Backyard Broadcasting. 

Now, just over two years later, iHeart is reclaiming this FM.

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Outgoing Chairman Ajit Pai will use his last FCC meeting on Jan. 13 to showcase the commission’s work over four years.

“Serving as chairman of the FCC has been the honor of a lifetime,” Pai wrote in a blog post. “And soon, my time in this position will conclude.” He departs on Jan. 20 as the new Democratic presidential administration comes in.

“The FCC’s monthly meetings showcase the agency’s highest-profile work. And by any metric, we have been more productive, more collaborative, and more transparent since January 2017 than at any time in recent history,” Pai wrote.

“At the 48 meetings held under my leadership, we’ve voted on a total of 286 items at our monthly meetings — an average of six (5.96, to be precise) items per meeting. That compares to a recent historical average of well under three. Of the votes on those 286 items, 205 (71.7%) featured no dissents and 253 (88.5%) were bipartisan. These figures are far higher than comparable figures from the four preceding years.”

Pai expressed pride in his efforts to increase transparency, for the agency to “show its work” by sharing ahead of time what the FCC would be voting on.

“It’s now routine for the agency to publish the exact text of commission meeting items three weeks in advance of any votes being cast; to include a one-page fact sheet describing in plain English what each item does; and to post a monthly blog from yours truly introducing the agenda in a hopefully-engaging way.”

And for the January meeting, Pai said he has invited FCC bureaus, offices, and task forces to prepare presentations highlighting their accomplishments over four years.

“Three weeks hence, the spotlight properly should shine on them.”

 

The post FCC Teams Will Summarize Work on Jan. 13 appeared first on Radio World.

Television viewers in the largest TV market in the Pacific Northwest can now get a taste of the future.

And, it includes broadcast radio.

Sinclair Broadcast Group subsidiary ONE Media 3.0 has combined both television and radio services for delivery in Seattle, thanks to ATSC 3.0 technology and the NEXTGEN TV voluntary rollout now underway.

How is broadcast radio involved?

Using radio content from Sinclair’s over-the-top service STIRR, the audio channels will be available for free immediately to anyone with a NEXTGEN television set connected to the internet.

But, what over-the-air radio is included? Sinclair’s press release, interestingly, references “radio channels” that are actually Stingray-produced music channels as found on Hotwire’s Fision cable TV service.

Intriguingly, Sinclair did not even reference its lone radio properties: News KOMO-AM 1000 & FM 97.7; Hot AC KPLZ-FM “Star 101.5”; and Talk KVI-AM 570.

However, Sinclair confirms that the Broadcast App developed by ONE Media 3.0 “is the centerpiece for delivery of these new services.”

Piloted by ONE Media 3.0 in Nashville, NEXTGEN radio services, branded as “STIRR XT,” are what’s now available in Seattle.

In Sinclair’s words, “The new technology brings a new ‘age of radio’ into the listening environment of NEXTGEN viewers by utilizing NEXTGEN-enabled TVs and mobile devices to expand the reach of audio services.  Combining these Internet audio services with over-the-air radio is next on the horizon for the Seattle market.”

While it did not offer one set of call letters as part of this new service, Michael Bouchard, ONE Media’s VP of Technology Strategy, said, “This breakthrough technology lays the groundwork for our future plans of enhancing the reception of terrestrial over-the-air radio services throughout the country, as NEXTGEN TV is deployed by broadcasters everywhere.”

 

Radio is part of the content pitch that Sinclair Broadcast Group is using as it highlights a new TV service in Seattle based on the NextGen TV standard.

Sinclair’s One Media 3.0 subsidiary described the benefits for viewers in that market: “Consumers can now begin receiving both television and radio programming in the new format,” it stated in a press release.

The “radio” content is online audio, but the company also indicated it plans to integrate OTA radio soon.

“Using radio content from its over-the-top internet service STIRR, the audio channels will be available for free immediately to anyone with a NextGen television set connected to the Web,” it said Wednesday.

“Included among the radio channels will be Stingray Hits List, Stingray Hot Country, Stingray Latin Hits and a dozen others.  The new service coincides with the launch of seven television stations using the new digital standard.”

Sinclair has been a big advocate of the ATSC 3.0 standard, highlighting its video quality as well as mobile delivery and the ability to combine wireless broadcast content with content from online. One Media 3.0 developed its broadcast app to take advantage of that.

“Piloted by One Media 3.0 in Nashville, NextGen radio services, branded as STIRR XT, are now available in Seattle,” the company said.

“The new technology brings a new ‘age of radio’ into the listening environment of NextGen viewers by utilizing NextGen-enabled TVs and mobile devices to expand the reach of audio services. Combining these internet audio services with over-the-air radio is next on the horizon for the Seattle market.”

It quoted VP of Technology Strategy Michael Bouchard saying the technology “lays the groundwork for our future plans of enhancing the reception of terrestrial over-the-air radio services throughout the country, as NextGen TV is deployed by broadcasters everywhere.”

The STIRR radio channels and some STIRR video channels are available to anyone with a NextGen TV connected to the internet.

 

The post One Media 3.0 Highlights Radio in NextGen TV appeared first on Radio World.

BRADENTON, FLA. — Gray Television has moved forward with the submission to the FCC of a formal Good Faith Complaint against Frontier Communications in response to the MVPD’s failure to reach a new retransmission consent agreement tied to one of its legacy systems for an ABC affiliate serving Sarasota and Manatee Counties along Florida’s Gulf Coast, and two stations in South Carolina.

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BRADENTON, FLA. — The Republican U.S. House of Representatives Member representing Florida’s Sarasota and Manatee Counties has reached out to the Federal Communications Commission to express his concerns over the failure of Gray Television and Frontier Communications to reach a new retransmission consent agreement for one of its legacy systems and the primary ABC affiliate for this portion of the vast Tampa-St. Petersburg-Lakeland DMA.

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In a formal letter dated Dec. 22 addressed to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, House Member Vern Buchanan expressed his concern “at the sudden blackout of a local news station in my Congressional district.”

Addressing the December 18 removal, by law, of Gray Television-owned WWSB-7 in Sarasota on Frontier FiberOptic TV, a.k.a. FiOS TV by Frontier, channel lineups in the absence of a new retransmission consent agreement, Buchanan says Frontier “abruptly deleted the local ABC station,” and instead began carrying WFTS-28 in Tampa on the cable channel previously home to WWSB.

“My constituents deserve an explanation as to why this happened,” Buchanan asks.

While Buchanan recognizes that both WWSB and WFTS are ABC affiliates within the same DMA, he points out that WFTS airs programming that is akin to less than 50% of WWSB’s weekly programming schedule.

As such, Buchanan concludes, “I urge the FCC to take any appropriate action to help ensure that Frontier acts in the public interest and that Gray Television receives fair and equitable treatment in their efforts to provide local news, sports and entertainment to my constituents.”

A Legacy TV Services Provider Sparks The Latest Retrans Spat Gray Television is dealing with a retransmission consent feud focused on a single Sunshine State property. The MVPD at the center of the dispute, which has led to the latest “blackout” of a free-to-air TV station? Frontier Communications. And, it’s a complex matter involving legacy customers to a grandfathered service.

Two of Nexstar Media Group’s broadcast television stations serving the Mile High City and surrounding area, DMA No. 16, are now serving the market with NEXTGEN TV signals.

As such, Denver-Boulder becomes Nexstar’s 12th market in 2020 to begin offering ATSC 3.0-powered broadcasts to those with TVs capable of receiving them.

And, Denver is the second Top 20 market where Nexstar owns stations to gain NEXTGEN TV accessibility.

The stations offering NEXTGEN signals are FOX affiliate KDVR-31 and The CW Network affiliate, KWGN-2, a former Tribune Media property (hence its WGN call letter reference).

And, like Nexstar’s other ATSC 3.0 television stations, FOX 31 and The CW 2 will participate in the BitPath broadcast data network launching in 2021.

Nexstar EVP/Chief Technology Officer Brett Jenkins says, “Not only does NEXTGEN TV deliver important upgrades for our viewers and advertisers, it also enables us to
begin exploring new opportunities to use this very efficient and effective content and data distribution technology to meet the challenges of today’s evolving digital world.”

This will see Nexstar likely roll out 32 more NEXTGEN stations across 20 markets in 2021.

“When we finish our 2021 deployments, approximately 33% of all television households reached by a Nexstar television station will receive a NEXTGEN TV signal,” Jenkins says.

Following today’s launch, the Nexstar owned or operated stations that have converted
to NEXTGEN TV this year include WFLA-8 in Tampa, DMA No. 13; and its stations in Portland, Ore.; Raleigh-Durham; Nashville; Salt Lake City; Austin; Las Vegas; Oklahoma City; Norfolk; Mobile; and Springfield, Mass.

From our Who’s Buying What page:

DHD Audio highlighted several uses of its technology in 2020. The company said it saw “an accelerating transition to IP technology throughout the broadcast audio business sector” this year.

It participated with Thum + Mahr in the integration of a DHD Audio platform into the new Cardiff headquarters of BBC Cymru Wales, and said the system is being used across the radio division. “The DHD environment comprises four independent audio clusters, serving as an adaptable infrastructure. Every area of the studio is able to broadcast autonomously.”

It said Radio Cottbus in Germany relocated to digital studios in August after 18 years at its former site. It is now one of Germany’s most modern media centers. The main control console is equipped with three DHD SX2 fader modules; audio signals are transmitted via Dante Audio over IP.

The DHD Assist app running alongside an RX2 audio mixer.

French language public broadcaster RTBF opened new studios in January at its regional center in Mons; the radio infrastructure is based on a DHD XC2 platform.

VRT regional channel Radio 2 Antwerpen inaugurated studios based on a modular structure in an open office environment, with a DHD 52/XC2 core serving the main on-air studio. And it said Studio Hamburg MCI chose DHD mixing consoles for Germany public radio station NDR Kultur.

DHD also announced a firmware update for broadcast audio mixing consoles, routers and control interfaces. “The latest firmware additions expand the capabilities of version 9.1 which we announced in Q1,” said International Sales Manager Christoph Gottert.

“That update included support for Unicode character sets such as Chinese, Russian, Japanese and Korean, Snapshots app and Labels app, enhanced log-in, hot configuration and refinements to the DHD REST API. We have now introduced two additional web apps — the Assist app and System app — plus an advanced SNMP interface.”

The post DHD Notes Recent AoIP Projects appeared first on Radio World.

iHeartMedia named Jordan Fasbender executive vice president, general counsel and secretary, a year and a half after she joined the company. She had been deputy general counsel.

She succeeds Paul McNicol, who will retire at the end of next year and meantime will remain as EVP and help with the transition.

She will oversee legal functions for iHeartMedia’s divisions and multiplatform assets, including its 860 radio stations, iHeart Podcast, the iHeartRadio App and other digital assets and the company’s “tentpole” live events like the iHeartRadio Music Festival.

Also she will continue to oversee government affairs, business affairs, compliance, regulatory and governance functions, and be responsible for operations and transactions, securities, intellectual property, litigation and privacy.

Fasbender came to the company in 2019 from Twenty-First Century Fox where she held several leadership legal positions. She was a lead team member on The Walt Disney Company acquisition of the company and the spinoff of Fox Corp. Before that she worked at Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP.

She will report to Chairman/CEO Bob Pittman and President/COO/CFO Rich Bressler.

The post iHeart Names Fasbender to Top Legal Spot appeared first on Radio World.

The recipient of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award for 2020–21 is Jason Ornellas, regional director of engineering for Bonneville International.

Recipients of the award represent the highest ideals of the radio broadcast engineering profession and reflect those ideals through contributions to the industry.

We selected Ornellas as the 17th recipient of this award because of his years of outstanding current and past work for four major broadcast companies; his project expertise, exemplified in recent large studio projects in California including one completed during early weeks of the pandemic; and for his role in streamlining and reimagining workflows at Bonneville.

We also salute the way Jason celebrates the successes of fellow engineers; for his work as part of the NAB Radio Technology Committee’s Next Gen Radio Architecture group and its PPM subgroup; and for his growing national profile including multiple terms on the board of the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

Jason Ornellas is 33, but he already has 15 years of solid engineering work and accomplishments to his credit. And we’re not the only ones who have noticed. Just this fall he was promoted to oversee Bonneville’s chief engineers and IT specialists in its West Coast markets of Seattle, San Francisco and Sacramento, a position in which he works more closely with senior leadership.

Quick learner

Born and raised in San Francisco, Ornellas was not looking for a radio technology career when he went to college. While attending the University of Indianapolis on a baseball scholarship, he took communication courses.

“One of the options was PR, radio, TV or journalism,” he told me. “And who doesn’t like music? So I ended up going for radio and got into it. [But] I realized really early on: I’m a terrible jock. I needed to not be on the air.”

He worked as a broadcast technician at the university’s FM station WICR, where he tinkered with IT, did remotes and maintenance, worked with audio consoles and automation, learned from the chief engineer and helped build his first AoIP studio.

“I really just got fascinated with signal flows and all of the under-the-hood stuff.”

He also had an internship with Clear Channel Radio in San Francisco during that time; and though it was a promotions internship rather than a technical one, it allowed him a foot in the door.

He stayed in touch with the staff in the Bay Area and told them of his interest; and at graduation time, when Clear Channel had an opening for a staff engineer there, Ornellas was ready.

During that two-year stint he managed 10 studios for the San Jose cluster and was responsible for the San Jose Sharks Radio Network.

He learned more about automation systems, facility and studio wiring, and networking. He gained experience with satellite feeds, on-call support, remote vans, webcasting, EAS and other meat-and-potatoes aspects of radio technology.

After two years, he was offered a job across the country as chief engineer of Greater Media’s New Jersey operations, including WDHA(FM) and WMTR(AM) and regional duties at several other stations.

“I’ve been very fortunate that the companies that I’ve worked for are all very well-respected and have always had great leadership from an engineering side,” he said.

He and his wife Ashley wanted to be back in California though, to be closer to family; so in 2014 they headed west again, and he became director of engineering for CBS Radio in Sacramento, overseeing technical aspects of a cluster of four FMs and one AM. During that time he also led the integration and worked on the design for the Jim Rome Studio in Costa Mesa, Calif.

Later, when Entercom merged with CBS Radio, four of the stations were sold to Bonneville — and Ornellas went along with them. He now reports to Scott Jones, Bonneville’s senior vice president for engineering and technology.

Along the way, people who have been particularly helpful in his career so far include Scott Uecker, general manager of WICR in Indianapolis and one of his college professors. “I owe him a lot for the opportunity, to have that kind of program at the University of Indianapolis that allowed this kind of hands-on experience.”

Also influential are David Williams at Clear Channel San Francisco (now iHeart); Milford Smith and Keith Smeal at Greater Media; and “all the legendary engineers at CBS, including Erik Disen and Sam Cappas … And here I am with Bonneville, and hopefully one day, I’m that mentor to someone else.”

Persistence

He’s had a super experience working for the company since he joined it.

“I’ve got a great team of engineers in all the markets. I love what I do. I’m a big believer in pushing the limits, trying to be innovative, and really thinking outside the box,” he said.

“I don’t like the answer, ‘It can’t be done.’ Well, let’s figure that out. Everything can be done. Someone has done something before, so let’s start peeling back the layers of what’s stopping it, and let’s move forward.”

To that end he has led two notable studio projects in the past two years.

The first came about when Entercom sold those Sacramento stations to Bonneville. As a result, studios and some operations of former CBS outlets KHTK(AM) and KNCI(FM) needed to move quickly to a location that was already serving KZZO(FM) and KYMX(FM).

“We left the facility in immaculate shape and successfully made the transition to all under one roof with zero downtime and under budget,” he recalls proudly.

Steve Cottingim, senior vice president and market manager for Bonneville Sacramento, told me, “When Bonneville began operating the Sacramento stations for the Entercom Trust, we had to move all of the stations to one building. Jason spearheaded the entire move and worked with Scott Jones to build out the studios and move all the equipment to get us back up and running with no interruption.

“Jason always rises to the occasion and delivers outstanding results. He is respected and loved by everyone in Sacramento. Jason is an individual who will go through walls to get things done. The engineering team that works with him all work together as a cohesive team because of his leadership.”

With Bonneville colleagues on a helo pad on Farnsworth Peak in Salt Lake City. From left: Shawn Calloway, Aaron Farnham, Jason Ornellas and Brad Russell.

The second project was construction of a new studio location for Bonneville’s four FM stations in the Bay Area, KOIT, KMVQ, KBLX and KUFX .

Scott Jones said, “Jason was our project manager for our move out of San Francisco to our new, state-of-the-art facility in Daly City. Integrating a new AoIP plant built on the WheatNet architecture, our new studios are the crown jewel of Bonneville. His leadership kept us on schedule, even during the shelter-in-place orders in effect due to the global pandemic.”

That project came with another complication, a personal one. Jason and his wife Ashley have three kids under the age of 2; when their twin boys arrived in January this year, the babies needed to spend time in neonatal intensive care.

“The NICU, visiting them every day, as well as making sure San Francisco’s project stayed on task — it was definitely balancing life and work,” he recalled.

“But family’s first. My wife — bless her, because radio engineers’ wives don’t get enough credit. I’ve had to leave her at the table when I’m taking calls on a vacation. But she understands the role of the job. And I love being a dad.”

Consistency

So what’s ahead?

Part of his job is to implement standards that Bonneville wants to roll out for its air chains, systems and workflows. Seeking consistency across its markets, the company is standardizing on important components like Wheatstone AoIP networks, consoles and routing; RCS Zetta Automation; Telos VX studio phone systems; and Mitel Office phone systems.

“Our next big project is taking a step back, looking at our infrastructure. What is critical and high-risk that we need to get our eyes on? We’ve got some older transmitters that we need to get up to par with the solid-state, as well as finishing our rollout of our automation system to markets that we haven’t finished yet. … We’ve got to make sure our transmitters, our tower sites are up to par with how nice our studios look. We also will be transitioning to standardizing our HD transport with GatesAir and the FMXi4g Importer/Exporter unit.”

He expresses excitement about Bonneville’s efforts at streamlining systems and workflows, and how the technology team supports one another — driving to help a colleague in another market, raising a hand to help out or logging into a GUI remotely to help with a problem.

Managing a remote workforce for a radio organization, he points out, multiplies the usual number of technical problems that must be investigated.

“What are their resources like at home, with their network? Is it their network having issues? Is it the VPN having issues? It’s very time-consuming. But with this regional engineering technical infrastructure, we now have engineering teams that [can say], ‘Hey, I can take this one; I’ll deal with this issue; I’ll work on this ticket. Hey, I’m on a transmitter site today.’

Embracing change Installing a Gates Air FAX20 at KZZO(FM)

Beyond his immediate projects, I asked him about important trends in our industry. Ornellas describes himself as “all in” on the connected car.

“The more information, the more data, the more content that we can put in that dashboard,” he said, the better. He also has been a key part of Bonneville stations becoming active with the RadioDNS hybrid radio initiative.

Radio, he notes, remains the most popular source for people in their cars. “Now it’s up to broadcasters and manufacturers to make sure we don’t lose our place there. We have competition; there’s no doubt about it. But we still have that connection that will be hard to beat, as long as we provide the content that our consumers and clients are looking for.”

Meanwhile, within broadcast companies, he expects functions will increasingly become “virtualized” and that more hardware will become obsolete.

He has first-hand experience with this. Ornellas is a member of the NAB Radio Technology Committee’s Next-Generation Radio Architecture working group, and he chairs the PPM subgroup that has been working with manufacturers to get Nielsen Audio PPM encoding built into on-air processors.

As part of that work, he participated in a beta test of PPM encoding inside an Orban AM audio processor; and the working group plans a similar effort for FM and streaming, he said. Perhaps someday processing can even move to the cloud.

In general, he said, “We’re eliminating hardware and we’re integrating more software, to the point where we’re going to have be taking care of a lot more software than hardware. And we can fix a lot more with software than fixing it with a hardware box. … It’s exciting to see.”

The pandemic seems to have accelerated a change in thinking around the industry.

“I think a lot of manufacturers hit that reset button, and it gave everyone that little jolt that we needed as an industry, to really start thinking of the cloud architecture, about WANcasting, using your automation systems to its full capabilities and beyond, not just scratching the surface.”

He’s eager to see how workflows change over three to five years. “Everything will have an IP [connection] by then — if not already, we’re very close to that — but just being able to do one click and let it do multiple steps in multiple markets for us.”

I asked if this trend means big facility jobs like the one he recently completed will be the last of their kind.

“I don’t think the San Francisco project is the last one. However, I do think that they will be designed a lot differently.” The pandemic forced the idea of “broadcasting from home” into the mainstream, and its lessons won’t be forgotten.

“Studios are still going to be studios. I do think the common areas, the performance studios, large break rooms,—those are where you’re going to start seeing square footage not needed. Does every AE and sales manager need an office? Maybe have four or five community desks, not a dedicated seat for everyone.

“There’s going to be a lot of questions. Until we get to the next build, I don’t know the answer. But the facilities aren’t going to get bigger; they’re continuing to get smaller.”

Service

One of the things that impresses about Jason is how active he is at the national level. He is already on his third term as a member of the board of the Society of Broadcast Engineers.

“SBE has done a great job with creating new programs within memberships to really educate and get people more resources to learn and grow, within a reasonable budget and membership cost,” he said.

“We’re trying to stay really relevant and get a younger core to embrace the SBE — and not forget the history of it as well.”

To that point, I reminded him that people have been asking where the next generation of engineers will come from for decades. At 33 years old he is, unfortunately, atypical — a relatively fresh face with potentially decades of career in front of him, a young man who radiates ardent enthusiasm for radio engineering and technology.

Is he, in fact, a unicorn?

“I think I’m definitely one of the few. But they are out there,” he replied. To encourage more, he hopes the industry will expand the way it defines radio engineering. “It’s not just radio. It’s audio. It’s streaming. It’s metadata. It’s IP packets. It’s algorithms of the processors and encoding,” he said.

“There’s so much more to it, and we probably do ourselves a disservice by just thinking of RF. The RF side has gotten a lot easier, with computer monitoring and remote controls and whatnot; the RF isn’t as daunting anymore, especially with solid-state transmitters and not having to worry about tubes and retuning the grid or the cavity.”

Ornellas is heavily involved in his company’s streaming and podcast systems. “Everything I touch has an IP on it. It doesn’t need to be physically touched anymore like in the old days.”

He feels the industry has hurt itself by pushing many engineers out instead of helping them grow into these areas. And he expects the need for this expertise will only grow, given the trend toward virtualization and software.

“We might have an influx of new type of broadcast engineers. They might be very IT-driven, yet understand the signal flow of radio — the microphone, the console to STL, to processor, to transmitter. Everything’s going to be a lot more simple. The job is getting easier because it’s become more streamlined and because of how companies are looking at doing things.”

Positive force

I should add that anyone who has seen Jason’s posts on social media knows that he’ll be the first to cheer on colleagues and to spread positive feelings.

His boss Scott Jones calls Jason Ornellas “a born leader, with a keen technical mind and an innovative approach to broadcasting. He’s a positive force with his encouragement and passion. I am very proud of his leadership in driving excellence for Bonneville.”

Radio World couldn’t agree more.

Jason reminds us that radio is supposed to be fun. “It’s something new every day. You might have a plan, but that plan might get derailed,” he said.

“I like that. I like the unknown. I like fixing things and repairing things, playing with new equipment, installing it, testing, doing the R&D. There’s just so much that falls into engineering that it’s never a dull moment.

“And I love what I do.”

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

HONOR ROLL

Recipients of the Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award represent the highest ideals of the U.S. radio broadcast engineering profession and reflect those ideals through contributions to the industry. (Read profiles of other recent recipients.)

2020-21 Jason Ornellas

2019-20 Dave Kolesar

2018-19 Russ Mundschenk

2017-18 Larry Wilkins

2016-17 Michael Cooney

2015 David H. Layer

2014 Wayne Pecena

2013 Marty Garrison

2012 Paul Brenner

2011 Barry Thomas

2010 Milford Smith

2009 Gary Kline

2008 Jeff Littlejohn

2007 Clay Freinwald

2006 John Lyons

2005 Mike Starling

2004 Andy Andreson

 

The post Jason Ornellas Makes His Mark appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Broadcasters is highlighting a new study about the challenges and opportunities for media as they cover the story of vaccines being deployed to fight COVID-19.

NAB and the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute commissioned the survey, which was conducted by SmithGeiger.

They found that “a strong majority of Americans are eager for a COVID-19 vaccine and interested in news coverage that provides expert testimony on the safety and efficacy of vaccination.”

They said a desire to get back to normal is the biggest motivator for getting vaccinated and that “media organizations could encourage vaccinations by focusing on messages regarding reducing loss of life and helping others.”

Respondents said local news, via TV, radio and print, are their most reliable source of information.

“The information respondents want most centers on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine. The most important voices to these respondents are those of their own doctors and nurses (88%) followed by experts at federal, state and local health agencies (87%), their own pharmacist (82%) and friends and family (78%),” the NAB and RJI said in a summary of the research.

“The survey finds the most impactful local news reporting would be an investigation into the safety/effectiveness of a vaccine or recommendations focused on wearing masks, with 58% of respondents saying this type of coverage would lead them to trust that news organization more.”

They said respondents want stories that “make recommendations based on detailed reporting,” to facilitate personal health decisions, rather than stories that offer information without recommendations or personal stories from journalists about the pandemic.

“They express a preference for coverage that focuses on ‘just the facts,’” according to the press release.

“Respondents prefer messaging that highlights concern for others, such as, ‘Don’t put your family through the pain of losing you…’ and, ‘Protect yourself, protect your neighbors’. In both cases, roughly half of all respondents say they are more likely to get vaccinated as a result of seeing that message, versus just 16% who are less likely.”

Six out of 10 respondents intend to get a vaccine once it is available to them, with 13% of respondents saying they “definitely will not” get vaccinated.

Among other findings, African Americans are “significantly more worried” than the broader public about the vaccine making people sick, and “significantly less confident” that it has been adequately tested. (Read the full press release including other findings.)

NAB and RJI will put together a “messaging toolkit” to be available early next year to help with local and regional vaccine education communications. It will be in English and Spanish and shared with local radio and television stations, journalists and partner groups.

 

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