Learn how to find wahoo and kingfish using SiriusXM.
Meet SBE’s next president Andrea Cummis, the society’s first female president.
Find out why Xperi is interested in the Internet of Things.
And read about recent automation and traffic products from companies like Arrakis, ENCO, Smarts, BE, AEQ, Music1, NewsBoss, NextKast, WideOrbit and others.
The post Inside the Sept. 29, 2021 Issue of Radio World appeared first on Radio World.
The Texas Association of Broadcasters is supporting a lawsuit that challenges a prohibition against using drones in newsgathering in that state.
The lawsuit, filed last November, is by a Texas news photographer. It challenges the constitutionality of Chapter 423 of the Texas Government Code, which “broadly prohibits the use of drones by journalists in public airspace, yet arbitrarily exempts other members of the public from those proscriptions,” the brief argues.
TAB said the law is a “speaker-based regulation” that discriminates against the press and violates the U.S. Constitution by harming the free flow of newsworthy information to the public.
TAB said it was joined in filing the amicus brief by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 44 additional entities, including multiple station groups, the National Association of Broadcasters and other industry advocates.
“The brief outlines the public benefit of the technology when used for newsgathering, its similarity to other technologies such as news helicopters, and how the restrictions in state law constrain the devices’ use in newsgathering while permitting other, non-journalist speakers to deploy the devices at will.”
TAB said action in the case is expected this fall or winter.
The post Texas Broadcasters Speak Up Against Drone Restriction appeared first on Radio World.
A number of organizations that support EEO in broadcasting would like the FCC to consider nine proposals to help improve compliance and enforcement.
Their proposals are in a filing that was coordinated by the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council.
The FCC has open a further notice of proposed rulemaking in which it is taking comments about the collection of data to understand broadcast EEO trends by race and gender.
It wants fresh comments about the required collection of data on FCC Form 395-B, the broadcast station Annual Employment Report.
That form is intended to gather workforce composition data from broadcasters every year; but it has not been collected for two decades. The process was suspended in 2001 because of a legal ruling, and resumption was delayed in 2004 over issues involving confidentiality of the employment data. Those issues remain unresolved.
The EEO supporters told the FCC that resumption of data collection “would serve invaluable public purposes” but that this is not the only element that needs to be considered.
They asked the FCC to consider:
The 38 organizations participating in the filing include the NAACP, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the National Action Network, the Hispanic Federation and the National Bar Association.
The groups made particular note of a proposal to have the Enforcement Bureau examine whether a licensee, having been found to have violated the broad outreach elements of the EEO rule, may also have violated its core nondiscrimination obligation.
“It is hornbook law that EEO statistics should be considered as part of a tribunal’s consideration of whether a respondent company engaged in discrimination,” they wrote.
“As the commission has long held, excessive use of word-of-mouth recruitment by members of a station’s homogeneous staff is inherently discriminatory and could be disqualifying. If such a case arises, one piece of evidence that should be available to the Enforcement Bureau staff is data on the racial and gender composition of those whose ‘mouths’ are doing the ‘word of mouth’ recruitment.
“Broadcasting must not become the only industry in the country that is immune from the obligation to produce data that is useful to a finder of fact in determining whether an employer may have engaged in a discriminatory scheme.”
The post EEO Supporters Lay Out Their Wish List appeared first on Radio World.
Broadcast engineer Dan Slentz writes that when he was a teen working at WJER(AM/FM), the chief engineer had a speaker in each room wired with multiple 70-volt audio lines to a rotating switch and volume control. “You could listen to the AM station, FM station or any of the three production rooms,” he said.
Being 70 V, the audio quality wasn’t especially great, but when you were working after hours and you went into a room, you could monitor Air or what was going on. Dan says every station he has ever worked at had audio monitoring in the bathrooms. Even at CBS station WLVQ, “QFM” in Columbus, where the bathroom was in a public area down the hall, all occupants of the ninth floor of Nationwide Tower 2 could listen to QFM or Z-rock FM.
Dan recently visited the Monoprice website, www.monoprice.com. He loves it for its really good cables with lifetime warranty, and he says you can find other cool items on the site, like the old MCM Electronics used to have.
One such item was this 40-watt, wall-mount amplifier with a touchscreen, Bluetooth, auxiliary inputs and USB and microSD slots. The amp even has an infrared remote control. And it provides an FM receiver and stereo output.
Touchscreen controlsDan notes that of course, this is made offshore. But all this comes in a compact footprint and costs only $120.
The top image shows the USB and microSD slots on the underside of the module, and the wiring connections are shown below.
Connectors on the Monoprice unit.If it’s time to retire your old 70-volt speaker wiring or you’re thinking of adding a speaker monitor system, this module might be the solution. Consider mounting it in the breakroom, reception area or in your bathrooms. Use Monoprice product #36375. (As of mid-September the unit was listed as out of stock at the Monoprice website, with a November ETA.)
Sound ScrewIf you’re planning new studio construction next year, you may want to discuss with your architect or acoustic consultant the newly released acoustic Sound Screw, developed in Sweden.
Imagine a screw, the “head” of which is separated from the threaded body with a coiled spring. It’s an inexpensive method of reducing vibration from joists into the drywall, as the spring dampens the vibration transfer.
Although it is only available in Sweden at the moment, Akoustos AB is approaching companies outside Sweden to license its technology.The company says that in lab tests, a 9 dB reduction of sound transfer was measured. This calculates to about half the perceived sound transferred using traditional drywall screws to hold sheet rock panels.
Check out www.akoustos.se.
Keep fans quietIn an age when nearly everything seems to be in short supply, you may be tempted to substitute a fan in a piece of equipment. All fine and good, but contract engineer Stephanie Donnell has a caution if you’re installing a DC “brushless” fan in this situation. It could result in an EMC noise issue due to the current pulses generated by the driver circuit that operates the field coils of the fan motor.
EMC, electromagnetic compatibility, refers to the interaction of equipment with its electromagnetic environment and other devices. These electromagnetic fields could result in something that sounds like spark plug noise. You can correct this by adding a simple R/C filter on the fan’s “+” voltage lead.
Another tip involving muffin fans is to use models rated for 220 VAC but run them at 110. This is helpful in a situation where you need to improve ambient cooling around any equipment but where you don’t want a fan that produces a miniature hurricane or the noise associated with high-speed operation. Stephanie has used 220 V fans over the years to help cool everything from a very old computer to a Larcan-TTC TV translator.
Stephanie also saw Steve Tuzeneu’s recent tip about discouraging bees from nesting in satellite feed-horns. She adds that WD-40 brand spray lubricant works great for dealing with bees. We may not always have a can of flying insect spray, but who doesn’t have a can of WD-40 handy?
John Bisset, CPBE, has spent over 50 years in the broadcasting industry, and is in his 31st year writing Workbench. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance and is a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award. Workbench submissions are encouraged and qualify for SBE recertification credit. Email johnpbisset@gmail.com.
The post Workbench: Amp Up Your Bathroom Visits appeared first on Radio World.
This is one in a series of occasional articles about how to get the most out of popular radio broadcast products.
David Bialik consults to StreamGuys.
How the content might look on a mobile device.When I was working for radio.com, producers for the news and sport stations all wanted a rewind feature on the mobile app.
These producers were hearing from listeners who enjoy the rewind functionality of live video platforms like TiVo and video on-demand platforms like Netflix, and they wanted similar functionality for their radio stations.
With rewind controls, a user can play the content they missed or replay content for clarity. Dr. Who would be perplexed with this timey-whimey issue.
StreamGuys kept this user experience in mind when they developed SGrewind. This service allows the listeners to use a “scrubbing feature” within the audio app.
The scrubbing can be configured to go back to the previous segment or to go back in timed increments.
If you are streaming a sport, you are giving the audience their own “instant replay.” Listeners of a talk show may want to re-listen to the last person who spoke. How many times have you listened to the news and want to hear a story again for clarification?
My favorite use is to “rewind” and hear the weather or traffic again.
Not to worry, you do not have to get Mr. Peabody and the Wayback machine. SGrewind is relatively easy to set up.
You do not need to be using StreamGuys as your live streaming CDN (though I am sure they would not mind if you already a customer). You can send them the same encoded source as your live stream.
StreamGuys will provide you a graphical user interface to configure how SGrewind will work and what your audience will be able to do.
They will then do their SGrewind magic, encoding the stream and sending it out.
The SGRewind Management Module is web-based.They will work with your development team (if you have one) to enable the rewind feature on your player or they can provide a turnkey, rewind-capable player for your website.
Yes, I have simplified the process here, but SGrewind can add a nice feature for your streaming audience to use and make your streams look unique to potential advertisers. And isn’t that what it is all about?
Suggest a product to be featured in our “How to Get the Most Out of” series. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.
Related:
“Five Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do in Zetta”
“How to Get the Most Out of Your Remote Control”
The post How to Get the Most Out of SGrewind appeared first on Radio World.
Radio station owner Saga Communications has declared a quarterly cash dividend payable on October 22 to shareholders of record on October 8.
The aggregate amount of the payment to be made in connection with the quarterly dividend will be approximately $960,000, as the quarterly cash dividend’s value has been pegged at $0.16 per share.
The quarterly cash dividend will be funded by cash on Saga’s balance sheet. Including this dividend, Saga will have paid over $73 million in dividends to shareholders since the first special dividend was paid in 2012.
Saga currently intends to pay regular quarterly cash dividends in the future as declared by the Board of Directors. “Consistent with returning value to our shareholders, the Board of Directors may also consider declaring special cash dividends, stock dividends, and stock buybacks in the future,” Saga says.
Saga owns or operates 79 FM and 35 AM radio stations.
Since joining ABC in 2015, she has managed such projects as “The Little Mermaid Live!,” “The Disney Family Singalong” franchises, “JEOPARDY! The Greatest of All Time,” “Shark Tank,” and the revival of game show “The $100,000 Pyramid.”
That track record has led Walt Disney Television to name this individual to the role of SVP/Unscripted and Alternative Entertainment at ABC Entertainment and Walt Disney Television Unscripted.
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Kenya’s Radio Africa Group has taken a liking to Lawo equipment, recently choosing it for Kiss100 FM broadcast station and its Classic105 streaming station.
The Nairobi-based radio and TV broadcaster installed a Rɘlay PC-based virtual mixer at Kiss100 FM. After that proved successful, the company says, it turned back to Lawo to upgrade Classic105.
[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]
That led to the selection of a Lawo’s crystalClear “glass” touchscreen mixer. Included in that package are the VisTool virtual radio studio builder software and a Compact Engine, a 1RU mixing engine with AoIP audio interfaces and DSP audio processing. According to a release it was the first installation in East Africa of such equipment.
Lawo distributor and systems integrator BYCE Broadcast provided the equipment and services.
Radio Africa Group Technical Manager Philip Keter said, “We are happy with Lawo virtual consoles … We have had Kiss100 FM using Lawo Rɘlay mixing for more than one year now, and we have not experienced any downtime.”
Send news for Who’s Buying What to radioworld@futurenet.com.
He added, “We are even more excited about crystalClear; the presenters love its robustness, flexibility, and agility. It is not only easy to operate but actually helps enhance creativity!”
The post CrystalClear in Kenya appeared first on Radio World.
A broadcaster in Texas is facing a fine for not filing license renewal applications for two FM translators on time.
Carlos Lopez is licensee of the translators in Conroe and South Padre Island. License renewal forms were due by April 1 but were not received at the FCC until late May.
[Read: Expired Licenses Lead to $7,000 Forfeiture for FM Translator]
The commission says Lopez didn’t provide an explanation, so it has issued a notice of apparent liability for $3,000, which he has 30 days to pay or challenge.
Because he did file before the licenses actually expired, and because the FCC isn’t aware of any other problems, it said it plans to grant the renewal applications once the forfeiture proceeding is completed.
The post Two Texas Translators Face an FCC Penalty appeared first on Radio World.
Al Shuldiner isn’t the only Media Bureau leader seeking to bolster the Commission’s coffers by handing out more Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture letters to broadcast stations for a failure to follow the agency’s rules.
Barbara Kriesman, the Video Division Chief who works alongside Audio Division Chief Shuldiner, has been plenty busy with her own NALs to over-the-air TV operators.
In fact, two were released today to none other than the biggest licensee of TV stations in the U.S.
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