Industry News

This article continues a discussion of AM DA maintenance; here’s a link to the first part.

In our earlier exciting episode, we promised a real-life story. There are many, but here is my favorite:

Years ago I was doing contract engineering work for KKCQ(AM) in Fosston, Minn., about 140 miles from home. It was nondirectional day, with a three-tower directional antenna system at night.

I just happened to be there one morning doing maintenance in the studio/transmitter building when the 5 kW AM transmitter shut down. I was pushing the plate-on button when a man walked in and said we should go out to the parking lot.

There it was: His potato chip delivery truck had snagged a guy line and pulled the center tower down onto the parking lot and beyond.

Trucks like that are large because potato chips take up a lot of space while weighing next to nothing. The downed tower was just 197 feet so there wasn’t a resounding crash when it fell. Astoundingly, no one was hurt, no vehicles were hit and there was little other damage.

The first order of business was to call the power company to have guy lines carefully lifted from overhead power lines. You guessed it, that now-horizontal tower was the non-directional day tower for the station.

Needless to say, the station was off the air. What to do about putting the station back on?

Well, two of the three towers were still standing. I used some #8 electrical wire to make changes in the phasor cabinet, sending all power into the north tower. The tube-type transmitter ran nicely at 1,000 watts even with some VSWR. More power was not going to happen that day because the antenna coupling network was designed to put no more than 1,000 watts into that tower.

On the positive side, I was the “hero of the day” because the station was returned to the air just in time for Paul Harvey’s noon news and commentary broadcast.

D VS. ND

In the final analysis, KKCQ ownership looked at losing a tower as a blessing.

The 2,500-watt night directional pattern, pointing north, served very few listeners while putting noticeable nulls in populated areas of town, just to the west.

They elected to go non-directional day and night. The station returned to 5 kW on the north tower during the day with 90 watts at night. That 90 watts is sufficient for the community and the directional nulls are gone.

They sold the phasor and antenna monitor. With that money, and insurance compensation, they had a good start to building an FM station. They’ve not looked back and have lived happily ever since.

KKCQ ran a Gates BC-250GY AM transmitter at 90 watts during night hours, which was becoming expensive to maintain. Replacing it with a Broadcast Electronics AM-5A transmitter was a wonderful choice. That 5,000 watt transmitter will run with good sounding/clean audio at the 90 watt night power level. The design is perfect for that kind of drastic power cutback. Most transmitter designs can’t give good audio performance at less than 10% of rated power output.

Another station I worked at uses that same model BE transmitter for 5 KW day and 30 watts at night. It also sounds great at both power levels with no interruption in audio as it slides between power levels.

RF Contactors
Minnesota is known for actual winter temperatures that dip to 40 below zero at times. Lowest overnight temperatures usually coincide with sunrise, a worst-case scenario. That’s when directional AM stations switch from night to day patterns.

Most contactors/RF relays have solenoids (AC magnets) to pull a contact bar. They get sluggish under cold weather conditions, as you can imagine. Some stations use 100-watt incandescent lamps or electric heaters to keep tower shacks warm in winter.

If you do this, it is best to put any heat source below an RF contactor so the heat will rise into the contactor. Do it in a safe way so a fire is unlikely to start. RF contactors are wear items and will need repair from time to time.

The stations I worked on usually had a spare contactor on the shelf because failure is inevitable. When replacing a contactor, I would take the failed one to the shop for repair. I would then put them in plastic bags and back in stock, at the transmitter site, for the next incident.

Tips & Tricks

Use 3M Scotch Brite to clean tarnished RF contacts. Tarn-X liquid is normally used in the home to clean silverware, but works equally well on silver-plated contacts.

My experience is that pure silicon lubricant spray works well to keep things moving. It makes sliding contacts slippery and adds some measure of protection against future corrosion. My sources for that are Ace Hardware and stores that sell Gunk brand products.

Yes, the contactor shown above needs cleaning of its contacts before lubrication and going into service.

Voltage Can Be Low

Towers in an AM directional array are often hundreds of feet from the transmitter building. That means power to the solenoid coils might be less than the rated 208 to 240 VAC.

About 212 volts is considered normal for 208 three-phase power nowadays, but it is still less than a full 240 volts. At four amperes of solenoid current, the voltage at a tower could drop to as little as 190 volts, hardly enough to make a contactor switch reliably.

One cure is to use larger-diameter wire to feed the towers. Another is to install a low voltage transformer, wired as a “boost.”

With a 24 volt transformer secondary winding wired in phase and in series with the incoming power, the 190 volts could rise to 214 volts at a tower. Dots on the schematic are for polarity of the windings.

Out of phase, the available voltage will be 24 volts less. You likely won’t use a 24 volt transformer for day and another for night at each tower. Instead, a single higher-current transformer could do the work for all towers, switching to both patterns.

Transformers of this nature need to be installed in a safe location. The most common place is inside a phasor cabinet which is interlock-protected. Fig. 3 is a transformer from my parts box that can supply 22 volts at 21 amperes. It weighs in at 26 pounds and is enough to help five RF contactors at four amperes each. This one also has more transformer taps for lower voltages.

A three-tower directional would likely need 4 amperes/contactor x 3 towers = 12 amperes of required transformer secondary current. RF contactors in the phasor would be getting the full normal voltage anyway so they don’t need a boost because they are at room temperature and there is less chance of them sticking.

Take Notes
Rarely did I go to a transmitter site without finding something that needed attention. I used a piece of paper, in a shirt pocket, to write a few words, jogging my memory to purchase or bring a repair part on the next visit.

Don’t let things slide. Keep sites clean and in good repair. Throw out failed parts and only retain usable ones.

Metering

Not all RF current meters are alike. Fig. 4 shows a thermocouple RF ammeter.

This one is classified as having an  “expanded scale” so it is FCC legal to read currents from 4 amperes to 20 amperes.

Less expensive “square law” thermocouple ammeters are only good to read down to one-third of full scale. That means a 20 ampere meter is only accurate above 6.66 amperes, as per FCC rules. Check meter specifications to be sure.

You’ll note the meter needle is not sitting exactly at zero. Best to tap on the side of the meter while adjusting the zero set screw on the front to achieve an exact zero when no current is flowing in it. Meter accuracy after that will depend on this easy first step.

Take readings with thermocouple meters during a pause in modulation. That is when the indicated current will be at its least. An FCC inspector will do that too.

Delta Electronics makes transformer coupled ammeters (TCAs) for measuring RF currents in AM antenna systems.

These use a toroid to sample RF and then diodes to turn it into DC to drive a meter. Those are good down to one-fifth of full scale. Their mirrored scales help give better accuracy when you look at one, lining up the meter needle with the needle in the mirror behind.

Delta also has meters with digital readouts, giving an astounding 100:1 ratio between its highest and lowest current readings at 2% accuracy. AM pioneers never even dreamed of that!

For those who are unfamiliar with amplitude modulation, an AM station’s average power increases 50% when 100% modulated with audio. Traditional thermocouple RF ammeters will read that additional power, but Delta meters do not.

However, they will show carrier shift, which is the result of transmitter power dropping a few percent as the transmitter’s modulator draws down the supply voltage during high modulation conditions. It can also happen when the transmitter has a weak PA tube. Solid-state transmitters typically have little or no carrier shift.

Meters were once required at the base of each tower to read current. The readings could then be compared as a “ratio” to the reference tower. I say ratio because they all go up or down together as transmitter power changes. The FCC deleted that rule because antenna monitors do the same thing with a lot less hassle.

If the system you are working on has base current meters, I recommend you take readings for future reference. Compare them to the original proof of performance as a double check.

RF Protection

Fencing to keep people away from radio frequency radiation has been required for many years (Fig. 6).

Keep fences in good shape; it’s the right thing to do. It’s also a liability issue. You don’t want to be held responsible, in a court of law, when someone claims they were injured because a fence was inadequate.

Monitor Points

Friend and fellow RW contributor Buc Fitch penned an informative article on field intensity measurements about 15 years ago. That information will help guide anyone in getting reliable field intensity readings. The text is at https://www.radioworld.com/miscellaneous/field-intensity-measurement-methodology.

And, of course, I am not the last word on this subject. For serious changes or repairs to an AM directional, it is best to call a consultant.

In sum: Think the job through to save yourself time and trouble. It makes perfect sense. 

The author built four new AM directional systems, from the ground up, using only schematic diagrams and parts in his time as a broadcast engineer.

Comment on this or any article. Write to radioworld@futurenet.com.

Mark Persons, WØMH, is an SBE  Certified Professional Broadcast Engineer and was SBE Engineer of the Year in 2018. Mark is retired after more than 40 years in business. His website is http://www.mwpersons.com.

The post More Best Practices for AM Directional Systems appeared first on Radio World.

This article is part of Radio World’s series “Radio at 100.” Read more articles in the series.

Before the dawn of broadcasting, women were frequently hired as wireless operators, and so it was not a surprise that women’s voices were heard as announcers and program hosts in the early days of broadcast radio.

Sybil Herrold was perhaps the world’s first disc jockey; she played Victrola records on her husband Charles Herrold’s experimental station, which broadcast in San Jose from 1912 to 1917.

In Boston, Eunice Randall’s voice was heard on a variety of programs over AMRAD station 1XE (which became WGI in 1922). In New York City, WOR audiences regularly heard Jesse Koewing, who was identified on the air only as “J.E.K.” while Betty Lutz was the popular “hostess” heard on WEAF.

At WAHG (now WCBS), 16-year-old Nancy Clancy was billed as the country’s youngest announcer.

Additionally, women were frequently hired as “program managers,” responsible for booking the live entertainment that filled their stations’ airwaves, and they often came before the microphone to introduce the entertainers.

But, by the start of the network era in the mid-1920s, there came to be a prejudice against women’s voices on the radio.

“Flat” or “shrill”

Broadcasters complained that the tone quality of early receivers and speakers made women’s higher-pitched voices sound shrill and dissonant; but this prejudice remained even as higher-fidelity receivers became available in the early 1930s. The conventional wisdom was that “audiences don’t like or trust women as announcers” and “only male voices can speak with authority.”

An audience survey conducted by WJZ in 1926, with 5,000 respondents, determined that listeners of both sexes preferred the male voice by a margin of 100 to 1. In 1934, an article in the Journal of Social Psychology concluded that “the male voice is more natural, more persuasive and more likely to arouse interest over the air than the feminine voice.”

In 1935, Cantril and Gordon Allport published “The Psychology of Radio, and determined that 95% preferred hearing male voices over the radio.

This prejudice against female announcers was expressed by station managers of the day. In a letter to the editor in Radio Broadcasting Magazine, a station director wrote that “for announcing, a well-modulated male voice is the most pleasing to listen to. I have nothing against a woman’s announcing, but really do believe that unless a woman has the qualifications known as ‘showman’s instinct,’ it really does become monotonous.”

Another station executive from Pittsburgh wrote, “I would permit few women lecturers to appear [on the radio]. Their voices do not carry the appeal, and so whatever the effect desired, it is lost on the radio audience. Their voices are flat or they are shrill, and they are usually pitched far too high to be modulated correctly.”

As a result, by 1930 women’s voices had virtually disappeared from the airwaves, except for mid-afternoon programs aimed at the housewife and discussing such banal topics as cooking, fashion and beauty tips.

This was especially true in network radio, with rare exceptions.

In a notable experiment, NBC hired the vaudeville comedienne Elsie Janis in 1934 to be the network’s first female announcer, joining a staff of 26 men. But when listeners complained that a woman’s voice was inappropriate for serious announcing work, an NBC executive commented that they were “not quite sure what type of program her hoarse voice is best suited for, but it is certain she will read no more press news bulletins.”

Janis was relegated to announcing the weather and variety shows, and seems to have left NBC within a year.

Over at CBS, they paired radio actress Bernardine Flynn with Durward Kirby to host a daily newscast. But Kirby was assigned to read the “hard” news stories while Flynn reported only the “human interest” items.

Perhaps the only woman to break the taboo on women reporting serious news stories during the network era was Mary Margaret McBride.

She began her radio career on WOR in New York in 1934, taking the air name Martha Deane and playing a grandmotherly-type woman who dispensed philosophy and common sense. In 1937, she moved over to the CBS network under her own name, and became recognized for her interviewing capabilities.

Her daily afternoon program included high-level politicians, generals and movie stars. She moved to NBC in 1941, where her daily audience numbered in the millions. She remained a regular feature on network radio until 1960, and then continued in syndication.

War years

World War II temporarily opened employment opportunities for women in radio, as the male staffs of the networks and local stations were siphoned off by the armed services.

Women assumed the roles of announcers and newscasters, studio engineers and sound effects specialists. In 1943, NBC hired 10 young “pagettes” to supplement its depleted staff of Radio City pages. Around the country, women were also hired as advertising sales persons, program directors, traffic managers, continuity directors and even station managers.

But sadly, just as occurred in manufacturing plants, when the men returned home after the war the jobs reverted to men who “had to support their families,” and the women were told to go home and be happy homemakers.

In the 1950s, as the radio industry adapted to the new competition from television, many radio announcers turned into disc jockeys, but the prejudice against female voices on the radio continued. The big-name deejays at local stations around the country were all men.

But there were a few exceptions. In 1955, Sam Phillips (of Sun Records fame) opened WHER in Memphis. Phillips enjoyed hearing women’s voices on the air, and he hired an all-female staff to run the station.

WHER operated from studios in a Holiday Inn motel, and this led to a spinoff program, sponsored by Holiday Inn. WHER personality Dottie Abbott, taking the air name Dolly Holiday, hosted an overnight program of easy listening music syndicated to stations around the country. Her soothing voice and soft music could be heard across the AM band after midnight almost anywhere in the country into the early ’70s.

Changing times

In the late 1960s, FM station WNEW in New York City experimented with an all-female format. Allison Steele won an audition against 800 other women and began working there as a disc jockey. She stayed on when the format was abandoned 18 months later, and gained popularity as “The Nightbird.” Her overnight show drew an estimated audience of 78,000, and she was chosen by Billboard Magazine in 1976 as the “FM Personality of the Year.”

As the 1970s progressed, the barriers against hearing women on the air gradually faded away.

CHIC in Toronto and KNIT in Abilene, Texas, both had all-female deejay staffs, although the newscasts continued to be voiced by men. An all-woman format was tried at WSDM in Chicago, where Yvonne Daniels sharpened her chops before moving on to the AM powerhouse WLS in 1973.

Also in Chicago, Connie Czersin debuted on WIND in 1974. Maxanne Sartori played progressive rock at KOL(FM) in Seattle before moving to Boston to take the afternoon slot at WBCN(FM).

Donna Halper, whose written work has appeared in the pages of Radio World, played the hits at WMMS in Cleveland, where she was credited with discovering the rock band Rush in 1974. Liz Kiley started her career at WLAV in Grand Rapids in 1976, and within three years had moved up the ranks to WABC in New York.

The many who came after them benefited from the work of the women named above, and dozens of others, in challenging radio’s glass ceilings.

View four more historical photos in the image gallery below.

John Schneider is a lifetime radio historian, the author of two books and dozens of articles on the subject, and a Fellow of the California Historical Radio Society. He wrote here in June about the centennial of KNX.

Image Gallery:

RESOURCES & MORE READING:

Women and Radio: Airing Differences, edited by Caroline Mitchell

Fireside Politics: Radio and Political Culture in the United States, 1920-1940, by Douglas B. Craig

“Remembering the Ladies—A Salute to the Women of Early Radio,” by Donna L. Halper, “Popular Communications,” January 1999

Broadcasting Magazine, July 1, 1934

“The Story of WHER, America’s Pioneering, First All-Woman Radio Station (1955),” www.openculture.com

“Dolly Holiday — A Dreamy Soothing Voice in the Night,” www.rumormillnews

“Mary Margaret McBride, American Journalist and Broadcaster,” by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Wikipedia: “History of Radio Disc Jockeys”

The post The Women Who Overcame Radio’s Earliest Glass Ceilings appeared first on Radio World.

The Telos Alliance has scheduled an audio over IP webinar for Aug. 6 that will focus on delivering audio to transmitters.

“Omnia MPX Node: Reliable FM MPX over IP, Real World Stories of New STL Possibilities,” features Frank Foti, Geoff Steadman and Kirk Harnack.

They will examine real-world cases of using the company’s MPX Node hardware and µMPX technology “to deliver their FM MPX (composite) signal reliably over a variety of IP links, including public internet.”

Topics to be discussed include µMPX technology, dual-path IP redundancy, forward error correction and multicast options. To learn more or register, go here.

The post Telos Preps Webinar for MPX Practice appeared first on Radio World.

Transmitter maker Nautel has put together an eBook full of tips for buying and setting up a new transmitter.

“9 Mistakes to Avoid When Buying a Transmitter” is “geared toward general and engineering managers,” and “discusses details that could be overlooked during the decision-making process including space requirements, potential delivery issues, site preparation and more.”

Nautel marketing maven John Whyte said, “Failure to account for even small details can drive up your total cost of ownership. This eBook addresses what we consider to be the top nine issues involved with a new transmitter purchase and includes questions you should be asking yourself in the preparation process.”

The ebook is brand agnostic when it comes to whatever transmitter is being discussed. It’s a free eBook that can be found here.

The post Avoid These Mistakes, Says Nautel appeared first on Radio World.

Above is a look inside the new Radio Play Control Room 2 at the Stuttgart facilities of German public broadcaster SWR.

The image was distributed by Broadcast Solutions, the system integrator working with SWR. It said the broadcaster has been upgrading its Stuttgart location to simplify production and improve its control and studio rooms.

Radio Play Studio 5 is being equipped similar to Radio Play Control Room 2, which was updated earlier.

“The control room is 5.1-capable and includes an AVID S6 console system, ProTools and Sequoia as DAW systems, as well as several source feed and effect devices,” Broadcast Solutions said.

“Three studios were equipped with mobile terminal boxes, which offer numerous connection options even for larger setups. The furniture’s overall design supports flexible working methods. Besides the director’s table, which is custom made for the S6 console, there are two additional mobile working tables for editing and production. The mobile tables can be moved and thus arranged according to the requirements of the respective production.”

The company said that by having two similarly equipped rooms, engineers and technicians can work and train more efficiently.

“SWR expects a consistently high level of capacity utilization in the coming years.”

Radio World welcomes information for our Who’s Buying What column, including facility images and descriptions. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post SWR Opens New Room in Stuttgart appeared first on Radio World.

Larger radio companies in the United States are not the only ones that have run afoul of the Federal Communications Commission in its investigations of online political files.

The FCC Media Bureau has announced that it reached consent decrees with four more companies: Center Hill Broadcasting Corp., Cookeville Communications, North Shore Broadcasting Co. and W & V Broadcasting.

In each case the company filed applications for one or more station renewals but was unable to certify past compliance with the rules for political record keeping.

The FCC then put those applications on hold — a total of 19 stations across the four companies — so it could investigate.

Now, with these consent decrees, the investigations are ended.

[Related: “Big Radio Companies Settle With FCC on Political Files”]

Just as it did in announcing consent decrees with big “name brand” radio companies recently, the Media Bureau said the pandemic “has caused a dramatic reduction in advertising revenues which, in turn, has placed the radio broadcast industry … under significant financial stress.” It said disclosures by these four companies combined with the “exceptional circumstances” of a pandemic led it to the consent decrees rather than other action.

Each company agrees to appoint a compliance officer; develop a compliance plan, including a manual and training program; and submit reports to the commission’s Political Programming staff. The FCC now will release the “hold” on the pending license renewal applications.

The post More Radio Owners Agree to Public File Compliance Plans appeared first on Radio World.

The impact of the pandemic can be seen in the latest financial numbers from SiriusXM, as with most U.S. media companies.

It said revenue for the most recent quarter was $1.9 billion, down 5% compared to the same period a year before, and net income was also down, though its adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was roughly unchanged.

CEO Jim Meyer called its business “resilient” with “improving results and visibility into the remainder of the year.”

The audio company saw ad revenue fall 34% in the quarter, though it said it compensated for this through “substantial” expense savings.

“Despite the incredible economic stresses brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, our self-pay net subscriber additions grew by nearly 200,000 over the first quarter of the year, and we reported improved churn of just 1.6% per month with rising ARPU,” said Meyer.

[Read: Stitcher’s Flexible New Facility in Manhattan]

Among other recent actions, he said, “We opened up our SiriusXM service for free during a time when people needed news, information and entertainment and we saw millions of new listeners take advantage of it.”

Looking ahead, he noted the pending rollout of the company’s hybrid radio platform 360L in cars from Audi, BMW, Fiat Chrysler, Ford, Buick, Cadillac, Chevy, GMC brands and Volkswagen.

The company also has been in acquisition mode, and it pointed out that it has committed $428 million to acquire Simplecast and Stitcher and a minority investment in Soundcloud.

It says the Stitcher transaction announced this month will substantially advance its position in podcasting. Senior EVP and CFO David Frear said, “We are excited to offer advertisers an attractive path for audience-based buys, including to over 150 million North American listeners across our platforms.”

In the company’s Pandora business, ad revenue fell 31% to $211 million, and gross profit fell 55%. “Numerous categories of advertisers cancelled or paused orders during the second quarter in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, revenue declines moderated throughout the quarter.” Monthly Active Users and total ad supported listener hours for Pandora were down while average monthly listening hours per active ad-supported user increased compared to a year earlier.

SiriusXM has about 34.3 million total subscribers, of which 30.3 million are “self-pay” subscribers (the company also has paid promotional subscribers). Total Pandora subscribers at the end of the period were 6.3 million.

The post SiriusXM Revenue Is Down; Meyer Calls Company “Resilient” appeared first on Radio World.

The author of this commentary is a veteran engineer and Radio World contributor. Opinions are his own.

I’ve been attending webinars about ATSC 3.0 with interest. Not just because of the potential impact for TV, but as a reflection to what radio is or isn’t doing with technology.

I’m not sure ATSC3 is the savior to OTA TV, but at least they are trying some things.

They’re pushing the notion that it could be “more internet-like,” which might be like saying “the horse and buggy wrapped itself with a car body so it looks like a car.”

ATSC3 does offer more channels and a better compression method, and that is a benefit.

I’ve been contributing ideas in these webinars and have had personal contact from one of the moderators, who reached out to discuss some ideas.

For instance, I do think ATSC could be much more “effective” if the technology included “store & forward,” meaning content is being uploaded to devices (TVs, etc.) by the transmitter delivering packets to individual’s personal devices based on MAC address.

This way, maybe commercials could actually be “custom tailored” to individuals. Maybe initially a viewer who is a vegetarian might not see a McDonalds spot about a Big Mac, but they only see one about the salads. Maybe someday the spot actually is customized to even reach out to the individual even saying “Dan, this weekend the Museum of Discovery and Science is hosting a history fair,” where the ad truly is for you.

ATSC3 has the potential to do this, but is that not technology that HD Radio could also have integrated?

Zoning & Personalization

If it’s simply about adding “more channels” (like HD), how much further do we fragment the audience? If the eight Albuquerque iHeart FMs add three sub channels in HD, do they really make 24 times the revenue — or instead of getting $24 per spot, do they now get $3?

ATSC3 also could allow “zoning” of spots, the same as a group of FM translator guys want to do. But is changing the spot on a transmitter the best way to do this; or would be using digital technology to “silently” upload content into players be a much better way to target the audience (not just within “zones,” but even for customer taste and preference)?

Since GPS tied to digital radio (like ATSC3) could actually play a spot based on a restaurant coming up in the next few miles, wouldn’t that make a lot more sense?

What if you are a “steak lover” driving down a busy road with 20 restaurants, and your food preference was known “to your radio,” and the “store & forward” of the audio spot in conjunction with GPS information meant that when the stop-set occurred, your radio played you a spot for Outback, Texas Roadhouse or Ruth’s Chris Steak House. …

Better yet, what if that car radio used Wi-Fi for additional metadata or positioning and could report back to the radio station when it played that spot and to whom it played it (including date and time)?

[Related: “Hybrid Radio Picks Up Momentum”]

Anyhow, maybe someday this will be the future. Right now, it seems that digital TV’s new ATSC3 is getting a lot of “tire kicks,” and the innovators seem to be hearing ideas and considering. Once again, we’ll require TV manufacturers to also incorporate the technology.

And radio is very fortunate that it does not have to deal with cable companies. The cable companies will want to compress the data and minimize the bandwidth, and they’ll want to rent the consumer a “box” (at a month charge) to benefit from any new ATSC3 innovation, and that may be the nail in that coffin!

Radio, unlike TV, doesn’t have “the middleman” kicking the crap out of us on every turn like the cable guys, and what we put out is what lands in the radio. So if our own digital innovation (even with tighter FM bandwidth) can come up with new ideas, we could see radio re-invented (or re-innovated).

I’d like to see an analog/digital radio with an IP-based back-haul to/from the station and with digital storage. If this could happen, each radio to every listener could be customized, and radio could still be the “content provider.”

What Only We Can Do

I do think certain large companies continue to destroy radio because the innovation of technology MUST include strong localism or radio WILL be wiped out for internet.

Where my MP3 can never beat radio is with local info. Tell me that “Third Street is closed because of a house fire” or “there’s a big pot hole in Walnut Avenue” or that there’s going to be a great “antique festival this weekend in downtown Strasburg”— those are things my MP3 cannot do.

To me, that is radio … and that brings us together to do what only WE can do!

Comment on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject field.

The post What Can ATSC 3.0 Teach Radio? appeared first on Radio World.

Commissioner Michael O’Rielly says rules created by the Federal Communication Commission to promote diversity in media have been a “complete failure.”

Speaking virtually to a luncheon audience of the Media Institute, the Republican commissioner said the “dearth” of African American ownership of local broadcast properties “is beyond embarrassing, resting in the low single digits.”

But he noted that the current state of affairs has occurred with FCC ownership limitations in place for decades.

“A very compelling case can be made that removing our limitations, in fact, would set the stage for more minority investment and ownership. Consider radio ownership, where allowing bigger clusters within a market could help stabilize, and alternately, enhance minority-owned stations in that market. Similarly, the same outcome could occur if the newspaper-broadcast limitations were struck as well, something the courts have approved numerous times, only to be foiled by claims of missing analysis.”

He credited Chairman Ajit Pai for leading an effort to adopt a radio incubator program that would entice broadcast owners to partner with minority small business entrepreneurs. “While supporting this initiative, I was unfortunately unsuccessful in my effort to extend the program to television as well,” he said.

“Alas, the entire effort was upended by a few squabbling industry participants and then captured by the legal morass that is the quadrennial [review]. Now, we effectively have returned to the broken status quo. Absent Supreme Court intervention, it will be years before any action is even considered again at the commission.”

O’Rielly said this outcome “represents a huge disappointment for the agency and a lost opportunity for society.”

“Mind-Boggling”

About media rules more broadly, O’Rielly thinks the entire federal media regulatory model “needs to be shredded.”

“The level of overregulation is mind-boggling. Ask yourself: Why does the FCC regulate where a broadcast tower is placed so long as it doesn’t cause interference with an adjacent market? Or, why does the FCC prescribe how a station should maximize OTA listeners or viewers when it is already in the broadcaster’s best interest to do so?”

Many of his remarks were about TV but overlapped with radio concerns.

“For example, in reviewing mergers, the Department of Justice has repeatedly and inexplicably failed to properly identify relevant advertising market participants,” O’Rielly said.

“We have seen the data. There is no question that in DMAs across the country, urban and rural, certain high-tech companies are taking an increasing share of local advertising. Yet, when, God forbid, two television or two radio stations in a market seek to combine, DOJ absolutely refuses to consider the existence of non-broadcast ad sales in its overall analysis.”

And he opined on the First Amendment, criticizing “certain opportunists” who claim to advocate for the amendment “but who are only willing to defend it when convenient and constantly shift its meaning to fit their current political objectives.”

He said, “We should all reject demands, in the name of the First Amendment, for private actors to curate or publish speech in a certain way. I shudder to think of a day in which the Fairness Doctrine could be reincarnated by some other name, especially at the ironic behest of so-called speech ‘defenders.’”

And he said the amendment’s protections apply to corporate entities, “especially when they engage in editorial decision making. It is time to stop allowing purveyors of First Amendment gibberish to claim they support more speech, when their actions make clear that they would actually curtail it through government action.”

O’Rielly’s nomination was recently approved by the Senate Commerce Committee and is awaiting action by the Senate. He is one of three Republicans on the five-member commission.

[Read O’Rielly’s text on the FCC website.]

The post O’Rielly Deems FCC Diversity Rules “a Complete Failure” appeared first on Radio World.

Codecs — and the remote, distribution and STL applications they serve — have seen a great deal of change in the last decade … or, perhaps more accurately, several waves of change.

Radio World’s new ebook explores this topic. In putting it together we sought input from equipment manufacturers and users in the field, asking them to describe recent trends, discuss how the technologies are being used and predict where they’re going next.

How are today’s technologies solving problems in new ways? How has the pandemic changed these trends further? What should someone know if they haven’t bought a codec or STL system in some time?

The experts we interviewed bring perspectives from organizations including 2wcom, AEQ, Barix, Comrex, Cumulus, Educational Media Foundation, Entercom, GatesAir, In: Quality, Multitech Consulting, SCA, the Telos Alliance and Tieline.

The transportation of high-quality digital audio has never been easier.

Read it here.

The post Trends in Codecs and STLs for 2020 appeared first on Radio World.