Industry News

John Burtle has died. His career included stints at technology companies Automatic Tape Control (ATC) and Broadcast Electronics, where he once held the position of VP of product development.

He was 80, according to an obituary on the website of Hansen-Spear Funeral Home in Quincy, Ill.

“He was the force behind the BE automation products including the Control 16,” wrote his friend Chuck Kelly of Broadcast Electronics on social media.

According to the obituary, Burtle served in the U.S. Air Force and graduated from Chicago DeVry Tech School.

Andy Rector met Burtle while making a sales trip for ATC in the mid-1960s. Burtle eventually joined ATC, which would be purchased by Gates Radio, and he moved with the company from Bloomington to Quincy, Ill.

“John followed Larry Cervon when he purchased Broadcast Electronics and was instrumental in moving the BE operation [in 1977] from the Washington, D.C., area to Quincy,” Rector recalled.

Later in his career Burtle worked at ETC Computerland in computer training prior to retiring.

“John was a good friend and a fellow conservative,” Rector said. “He helped me put together a history of the broadcast tape cartridge machine which we presented to the Madison Broadcasters Clinic in 2008, the 50th anniversary of that device.” He called Burtle a great friend and fellow broadcaster.”Information about graveside services on Friday are on the funeral home website.

The post John Burtle Dies, Worked in Radio Tech appeared first on Radio World.

The iHeartMedia Region Senior Vice President of Sales for the Kentucky-Indiana Metro has been selected to serve as Market President for its Indianapolis radio stations.

Earning the promotion is Kristy Beebe.

As Market President, Beebe will work closely with the programming, business and sales teams and oversee all of the station’s on-air and digital programming as well as create new revenue opportunities.

She will report to Earl Jones, President for iHeartMedia Kentucky-Indiana Metro.

Beebe will be based in Indianapolis.

“I am so excited for Kristy’s well-deserved promotion to Market President,” said Jones. “She has earned the opportunity to lead our Indianapolis market. Kristy has been an incredible sales leader, coach, and major contributor to the success of iHeartMedia Kentucky-Indiana Metro.”

Beebe has held various sales leadership positions throughout her career, including Local Sales Manager and General Sales Manager for iHeartMedia Toledo and iHeartMedia Louisville. She began her career in sales at iHeartMedia in her hometown of Toledo, Ohio and is a graduate of Lourdes University.

“I am so thankful to Earl Jones and the iHeartMedia team for this new leadership opportunity,” said Beebe. “I am ready to lead the Indianapolis team to new heights as we work together to provide unmatched service to our listeners, advertisers and the community.”

On Sept. 17, 2019, East Arkansas Broadcasters (EAB) — the radio broadcasting company owned by Bobby Caldwell — agreed to a transaction that would bring a local newspaper back to life.

There’s just one problem: His plan to purchase the Stuttgart Daily Leader in Stuttgart, Ark., and resume daily print publications at present runs afoul of media cross-ownership rules that the FCC rewrote, but were remanded by the Third Circuit federal court of appeals.

With the Supreme Court considering whether to uphold or toss the Third Circuit decision, Caldwell has moved forward with another deal — one that doesn’t involve cross-media concerns.

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

Each year at Radio World we receive hundreds — if not thousands — of press releases about radio executives, general managers, air talent and sales people. We get very few about engineers. I like to celebrate them when I do.

Leighton Broadcasting in St. Cloud, Minn., wants us to know that it has a very special director of engineering and IT. He is Tony Abfalter, K0VSC, recipient of its MVP Award for 2020.

CEO Bob Leighton writes on his blog, “When the government called for a shutdown to protect against the coronavirus, we, like many others, had to quickly rethink how we worked … Our account executives were going remote but still needed access to company resources and new ways to connect with their clients. Our on-air announcers needed a safe environment to broadcast in and when they were self-quarantined due to potential exposure, they too, needed to be able to work from home.

“With the clock ticking, we called the department all station managers call when things aren’t working: engineering. …  Tony Abfalter was already formulating a plan.”

I contacted Abfalter to ask him to describe how he approached the pandemic.

“We had been focused on taking a look ahead on what could become problems in the future. While COVID-19 obviously was not something seen, our planning was easily adapted to it,” he replied.

“Over the past few years, broadcasters have had to take a look at some new challenges, like, ‘What if we can’t access the studios but still need to delivery timely, quality content? How do we do that cost-effectively? How do we make the process easy to implement on the fly?’

“Some of the solutions we implemented in building out this plan was moving to cloud-based services that can be accessed easily. The use of Microsoft 365 services, especially Teams, allowed staff to communicate and keep things moving. For remote studio live studio work the Comrex Opals we installed three years ago proved to be extremely valuable.” A secure VPN also was part of the process.

Bob Leighton said, “Tony accomplished all of this seamlessly and swiftly, which we considered exceptional and instrumental to our success, as an organization — a real MVP.”

Leighton presented the award in the original KFAM building in St. Cloud, Minn, recently refurbished in a retro style. “The remodel not only looks cool, but it allows our director of engineering to monitor and maintain all of our company signals from one location,” Leighton noted.

The family owned company has 190 employees, 64 RF/streaming audio sources, 26 format brands, six markets and one engineer.

Kudos to Tony Abfalter — and a tip of the hat to Leighton Broadcasting for highlighting the important contributions of radio engineering.

[Related: Read the Radio World ebook “Remote Radio Phase II.”]

The post Engineer Tony Abfalter Is an MVP appeared first on Radio World.

It was developed to help entertainment providers improve content discovery and viewership KPIs on their platforms.

Introducing “Personalized Imagery,” a Gracenote platform the Nielsen-owned entity says brings linear and streaming TV providers the ability to display program images capturing different aspects of a TV show or movie based on viewer consumption.

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

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Sinclair Broadcast Group‘s broadcast TV stations will now be using air chain technology that comes courtesy of a South Korean software company expressly designed to assist the company as it deploys NEXTGEN TV across the U.S.

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

Frequency control remains one of the biggest pain points in TV advertising.

Now, three major broadcast TV station owners are addressing this issue. It involves the use of a “full stack solution” — an infrastructure-as-a-service adtech platform designed to increase local reach.

Consider it a programmatic vitamin now in place at FOX Television Stations, properties owned by The E.W. Scripps Co. and at TEGNA TV stations, courtesy of MadHive.

FOX, Scripps and TEGNA are now tapping MadHive’s full stack solution to address this problem.

MadHive’s platform has incorporated tools for fraud detection, attribution, audience based-buying and delivery guarantees. Now, MadHive is offering the clients its “Audience Forecaster” platform.

The company says it can help the TV station owners in measure and control frequency across providers and DMAs.

There’s also the lingering issue of transparency for OTT and Connected TV, areas where broadcast TV companies are growing thanks to the availability of local news programming through station apps and platforms including Haystack TV and NewsOn.

MadHive CEO Adam Helfgott says, “The concept of delivery guarantees is a longstanding tradition in the world of linear, but delivery can be difficult to predict in the programmatic landscape. Developing an accurate forecasting methodology involves building a robust technical infrastructure capable of ingesting, organizing, and optimizing billions of signals.”

A Tampa Bay-based live event broadcast production firm and its streaming-for-broadcast tech subsidiary are teaming with a veteran WFTS-28 news anchor by having her newly launched business handle all local marketing and PR services.

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

Total Traffic & Weather Network (TTWN), the iHeartMedia-owned provider of traffic, weather, news and sports content, has signed a new partnership agreement with “the world’s largest road-facing camera network.”

That’s Vizzion, and the new pact ensures its visual transit coverage reaches TTWN broadcast partners without cessation of service.

Vizzion’s nationwide aggregated traffic camera network encompasses imagery and live-feeds for use in traffic and weather reports.

The live look-ins are used by TTWN traffic reporters in more than 120 U.S. markets.

“Live imagery acts as a visually appealing add-on to the high-definition maps and graphics available through TTWN’s traffic presentation systems,” said Sean Beaudoin, Account Manager for Vizzion. “It’s important for broadcasters to deliver the most accurate data to their viewers, and the combination of TTWN’s hand-collected, real-time traffic and weather partnered with Vizzion’s 35,000 US-wide cameras makes for engaging and informative reporting.”

Michael Panarello, Vice President of TV Affiliate Sales and Operations for Total Traffic & Weather Network, added, “Live video enhances traffic storytelling. TTWN partners with Vizzion to give presenters the video content they need to create compelling, solutions-based reports showing viewers and digital users the real-time impact of incidents, congestion and weather on commute times.”

Shane Toven, CSRE CBNT, is senior broadcast engineer at Educational Media Foundation.

This article appeared in Radio World’s “Trends in Codecs and STLs for 2020” ebook.

Radio World: What’s the most important trend you see in the design and performance of codecs for remote or STL use for radio broadcast facilities?
Shane Toven: I see a trend toward combining multiple codec channels in a single unit. This helps with consolidation of facilities where multiple content streams and locations are involved. I also see codecs becoming more powerful as newer and more efficient encoding options are available.

The most exciting development that I see is increasing quality with less bandwidth usage. As broadcasters shift toward consolidating more facilities and interconnecting remote talent, this will be an important consideration for balancing quality versus bandwidth cost.

RW: How are today’s technologies solving problems in creative ways, or being deployed in your own facilities?
Toven: Codecs have been an invaluable tool for me, going all the way back to the original POTS codecs. Unfortunately, ISDN was not an option in rural Minnesota where I started my career. I purchased a Comrex Vector at my first station when that technology became available. It made a significant improvement in the quality of remote broadcasts when the options for connectivity in rural areas were limited.

Once IP connectivity started becoming more ubiquitous and there were an increasing number of IP codec options on the market, I took advantage of that to execute some very complex remotes, one of which involved live events at two different venues, and full talkback facilities between the studio and the two venues.

The latest application for codecs at my current facility has been converting multiple channels of audio on the AoIP network at the studio to encoded audio for carrying across lower bandwidth links. This conversion is done entirely inside the codec itself without any actual transition to AES or analog audio. Livewire I/O on one interface, codec I/O on the other interface. It really makes for a very nicely integrated solution.

[Check Out More of Radio World’s Ebooks Here]

RW: What role are codecs playing in this new world of at-home broadcasting?
Toven: Codecs have been critical in this role, though not in the traditional hardware sense. Some broadcasters have chosen to deploy hardware codecs for this purpose, but many others are using services such as CleanFeed or ipDTL. Both have advantages and drawbacks, but the biggest advantage of a software-based solution is ease of use and reduction in hardware costs. I could also envision a scenario where the codecs themselves become an integrated software component of a virtual infrastructure. Your smartphone becomes your codec and the talent can work from anywhere with very little hardware.

RW: How have AoIP technology developments been reflected in the look and function of codecs? 
Toven: AoIP has made implementing multichannel codecs much simpler. Instead of a rack full of AES or even analog audio wiring, the codec has no traditional audio I/O at all. One such product that we currently use is the Telos iPort. This streamlines the installation and implementation of codecs in our AoIP based facility considerably. The codec has very few physical controls and metering on it. Instead you have a 1RU box that can handle eight or more channels of encoding and decoding with all monitoring and control performed via the network.

RW: What will the codec of the future look like, if we use one at all? 
Toven: As connectivity continues to improve, we may in fact not require codecs anymore. I can envision a time where we are able to pass multiple channels of uncompressed AoIP between facilities directly. This would further simplify installations by eliminating one more step in the chain and improve audio quality by reducing the number of cascading codecs, a problem that has plagued engineers since the early days of bit-reduced encoding. I think what will become more important rather than codecs in this scenario is precision timing sources synchronized to GPS.

The post Increased Quality, Less Bandwidth appeared first on Radio World.