Industry News

With report after report of late illustrating the seemingly ceaseless wave of cord-cutting that’s upending the pay TV industry, it was only a matter of time before a research report emerged that put a date on when U.S. consumers will cough up more cash for streaming video than for MVPD-delivered channels.

That, according to Strategy Analytics, is coming in three years.

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

The coronavirus pandemic may have stalled its progress, but live music is making a comeback in time for Europe Day.

The membership organization Liveurope and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have joined forces to boost support for the European live music scene. Fifteen young European artists will record music at 15 venues across Europe in an initiative that will culminate in a series of live performances on May 9, otherwise known as Europe Day. The collection of musical performances will be made available to public radio stations worldwide starting May 2.

[Read: EBU’s New Head of Radio Sees Opportunity, Peril]

The live music sector took a significant hit from the COVID-19 pandemic as venues around the world shut their doors more than a year ago. In response, Liveurope, EBU and a handful of creative and cultural organizations joined forces to highlight the important role that concert halls play in shaping the European music industry. Organizers say this is an opportunity to underline the importance of live music to see a way out of the crisis.

“In our everyday work, we see how music has the power to bring people together and to build bridges between cultures and territories from all over the continent,” said Elise Phamgia, Liveurope’s coordinator. “At a time when the pandemic has pushed forward social isolation, we believe culture can be a vehicle to regenerate enthusiasm for the future, especially among new generations. And this initiative is a prime example of that.”

As part of the initiative, each artist’s showcase will consist of one or two songs for broadcast by EBU public radio stations. Broadcasters have the option to use the content anytime from May 2 through the culmination of the campaign on May 9, a date that traditionally promotes cross-border cooperation and collaboration across the European continent.

Some of the 15 artists include the Grammy nominated Turkish-Dutch band Altın Gün, the Spanish musician Stay Homas, the Hungarian electro-duo Belau and the Norwegian act Pom Poko.

Some of the 15 participating Liveurope venues include Melkweg, a concert and cultural center in Amsterdam, the Village Underground in Shoreditch, London, and the A38 ship in Budapest, located on the River Danube.

A full listing of artists and venues is available.

The post Support for Live Music and Artists Culminate on Europe Day appeared first on Radio World.

Ad spend and pricing data research and analytics firm Standard Media Index (SMI) has a new Vice President of Sales.

It’s someone who brings 20 years of leadership experience within media and technology to the SMI team, and will oversee the expansion of the ad intelligence company’s sales strategy and new business development.

“It’s truly a pleasure to welcome Dave Dembowski to the SMI family,” said Ben Tatta, President of Standard Media Index. “As an accomplished sales executive, he brings with him two decades of sales leadership and experience from top digital platforms. In this new role, he will be instrumental in further developing the sales pipeline and driving growth for the business, across the board.”

Dembowski most recently served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development at IgnitionOne, and previously held various sales leadership roles at Yahoo and EDGAR Online.

From April 2007-September 2017, Dembowski was a key Yahoo! executive, serving as VP/Sales through its acquisition by Verizon.

Public stations in the U.S. get new satellite receivers. The work of NAB’s Radio Technology Committee pays a dividend.

Digital Alert Systems and AudioLogger make product announcements. We review the new CC Radio Solar receiver.

And John Bisset tells us about a way to blast through concrete without using dynamite!

These stories and more are in the new issue. Find it here.

The post Read the April 28, 2021 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.

On March 19, Discovery Inc. shares closed at a remarkable $77.27, climbing from $20.24 on Oct. 30, 2021. There was lots of buzz about its Discovery + OTT launch, which features a massive marketing campaign that continues to dominate the Media Monitors Spot Ten Cable report.

Then, the bubble burst for DISCA on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market, with Wall Street responding to signs that the OTT growth could perhaps wound core MVPD-distributed channels a bit too rapidly.

With Tuesday’s Closing Bell, DISCA finished at $39.01. Wednesday will be a difficult trading day for Discovery.

Why? Its Q1 2021 results missed Street expectations.

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

The author is assistant chief engineer of Radio One Dallas.

For years, Radio One Dallas had a Nortel phone system that seemingly required a service call for anything beyond switching out a handset cord.

In order to change an IVR (interactive voice response), a service technician had to come to our location, plug a laptop into a secret port, enter a super-secret password and fiddle with the system for half an hour or more just to change the main phone greeting. Then would come the bill for at least $150.

In 2013, Chief Engineer Don Stevenson and I decided we could do better.

From mutual friend Joe Talbot, who was with Telos Systems at the time, we had learned about an open source PBX system called Asterisk that ran on a standard desktop computer running Linux. Not having much Linux experience yet we were a little wary but decided to dive in and figure it out.

Up and Running

Two years later and after a steep learning curve, we were up and running with Asterisk and a whole new crop of VoIP phones.

The Nortel was gone, and so was its high cost of maintenance and upgrades. Phones for a VoIP-based system are a fraction of the cost of phones for the system we replaced. And we were generating our own ISDN and POTS lines.

Asterisk configuration was done via the Linux command line, but we had learned enough to be able to maintain the system ourselves with only an occasional call for help from our friendly neighborhood Linux geek.

We still use Asterisk to this day, and it has been the most reliable phone system we could ask for. It’s online in many other Radio One markets as well.

We no longer need to worry about command line configuration, where a single mistyped character can send you down a rabbit hole you don’t want to drop into. Instead, we’re using FreePBX (www.freepbx.org), an open source graphical user interface originally built on top of Asterisk by the open source community.

Over the years, FreePBX has transitioned from a clunky piece of software originally called “Asterisk Management Portal” to a polished, highly configurable interface that makes building and using an Asterisk PBX easy for just about anyone.

It was maintained by Schmooze until 2015 when the project was purchased by Sangoma, a business phone system company based in Canada. They are now the primary developer of FreePBX. The company purchased Asterisk developer and hardware manufacturer Digium in 2018, making Sangoma the primary developer of Asterisk as well.

Setup

Hardware requirements are pretty simple. A 64-bit desktop computer or server that has been retired but still runs should suffice. If you use a PRI (Primary Rate Interface) you will want to get a single or multiport PRI card for the computer. If you are using SIP you won’t need any additional hardware.

To install FreePBX, download the latest stable build from freepbx.org. Sangoma has packaged their own build of Linux, based on Centos, along with Asterisk and the FreePBX system and it’s all installed through one process. Burn the ISO to a CD or USB drive and boot your system off that image. The process is GUI-based and straightforward. In most cases you can accept the default or recommended selections.

We recommend building two systems. These can be set up in what FreePBX calls a “warm spare” configuration. The main system automatically sends a complete config backup to the warm spare on a regular basis, including voicemail messages and faxes, and in the event of a failure of the main system, you only need to change the IP address of the warm spare and you’re back up and running having lost virtually nothing.

In Dallas, we have three systems. One for our office lines, one for all of the radio station and Reach Media studio lines, and a spare we can use to backup either main system.

With fewer people in the office for most of us in the radio business, and with companies like Avaya sunsetting support for their legacy phone systems, now might be a good time to get rid of the mammoth old-school phone system and bring in a VoIP-based system like Asterisk/FreePBX that is easy and inexpensive, but has all the features of traditional PBX systems and many more.

You can build a system in a few hours. There is plenty of free online support, as is typical with open source software. You’ll find thousands of searchable questions and answers on the FreePBX community forums and other sites. Paid support is available if you need it.

Happy PBXing!

Learn More

The FreePBX Blog has info about product updates and access to support, engineers and developers. It’s at www.freepbx.org/blog.

The post My experience with Asterisk and FreePBX appeared first on Radio World.

Pandora who? As the fourth month of 2021 nears its close, Spotify is arguably one of the most popular audio streaming services in the world. Its penetration in Mexico City is among the company’s best. Across the U.S., Spotify is nothing to shirk at.

So, how did it do in the first quarter of 2021? Futuresource Consulting lead market analyst for music and audio Alexandre Jornod digested the numbers early today from London, and offers up the details.

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

It’s described as “a unique identifier that enables the resolution of both linear viewership and digital audiences into a common identity framework.”

Introducing OpenID from Comcast-owned NBCUniversal’s advanced advertising company OpenAP.

As OpenAP sees it, OpenID has the power to “unlock” cross-platform capabilities for advanced TV advertising.

The news follows the recent launch of OpenAP’s SSP, which offers advertisers transparency and visibility of available premium video inventory at scale.

OpenID enables efficient matching with viewership currencies for distribution to multiple television publishers, NBCU notes, “evolving advanced TV from age and gender demographics to ID-based targeting.”

The ID is built on a graph of offline and online data and is able to connect directly with buy-side data partners and sell-side platforms.

“With this launch, advertisers will start every campaign by identifying an audience that will be resolved to a set of OpenIDs, which can be broad or narrow based on campaign objectives,” OpenAP notes. Audiences are defined at the ID level then matched to viewership data and platform IDs for linear, digital and addressable activation to create a unified, cross-platform OpenID audience. OpenIDs are shared with TV publishers for use in linear and digital campaigns, with publishers using their internal tools to build targeted media plans.

The OpenID is designed to allow TV publishers to maintain control of data and protect data leakage through the central identity framework, reducing onboarding costs, while creating standards that can unlock cross-publisher measurement and attribution.

“For advertisers, the OpenID increases speed of audience activation, reduces the reporting lag for OpenID audiences, and enables cross-platform use cases to drive investment,” OpenAP says. “Advertisers benefit from more effective campaigns and now have the ability to see who they are reaching across each environment.”

Participating publishers able to accept OpenIDs include AMC Networks, A+E Networks, Crown Media, Discovery, Disney, Fox Corporation, NBCUniversal, Univision, ViacomCBS, WarnerMedia and The Weather Channel.

“The acceptance of OpenIDs will facilitate cross-platform convergence when used to seamlessly onboard and activate data across publishers and platforms, powering cross-platform use cases requested by the buy-side with new capabilities planned for launch in Broadcast Year 2022,” OpenAP says.

The first agencies to integrate with and activate all audiences for advanced cross-platform TV campaigns as OpenIDs are dentsu Media, GroupM, Haworth Marketing + Media, Horizon Media and Omnicom Media Group.

Meanwhile, OpenAP has partnered with TransUnion as its identity backbone.

In an effort to provide increased value for advertisers, OpenAP is collaborating with The Trade Desk on behalf of the TV ecosystem to drive interoperability between the OpenID and Unified ID 2.0, the industry-wide initiative to create an upgraded alternative to third party cookies.

The Federal Communications Commission last week finalized the dates for its planned NCE FM new station application filing window.

The Media Bureau announced that the window will be open Nov. 2 to Nov. 9, 2021.

The opportunity is just for 88.1 to 91.9 MHz, which is the FM reserved band (Channels 201 to 220).

“New applications must be filed electronically on FCC Form 2100, Schedule 340 in the Bureau’s
Licensing Management System (LMS),” it stated. “The commission recently amended its rules and procedures for filing NCE FM applications and selecting and licensing competing NCE FM applications.”

As we’ve reported, any given entity is limited to filing 10 applications.

Details about filing procedures and requirements will be in a subsequent public notice and posted on the Audio Division Web Page when published.

The post Dates Are Set for NCE FM Filing Window appeared first on Radio World.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — On February 1, television stations located in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi were required to file applications for license renewal for terms expiring on June 1, 2021.

Eight stations failed to file license renewal applications. A goodbye to said facilities is in the works, but can be prevented.

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