It’s the No. 5 MVPD by size in the U.S. It also sells advertising and production services under the OnMedia brand.
Now, this cable television service provider has a freshly inked carriage agreement in place with the owner of the NBC affiliate serving an area of Kentucky recently battered by fierce twisters.
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From 1989 through 2012, he was widely known for his sales roles and leadership of the AM and FM radio stations once owned by ABC Radio serving the New York Tri-State Area. He’d later join WOR-AM in New York as Station Manager before taking a post with Times-Shamrock Communications in the Poconos.
Now, there’s a Shamrock back in Steve Borneman‘s professional life.
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Thirteen days ago, RBR+TVBR was first to share the news that Gray Television had agreed to purchase a low-power TV construction permit and five fully built LPTVs from the licensee led by Jeff Winemiller.
It is now known that this transaction was just a taste of bigger trading to come between the Gray and Winemiller’s Lowcountry 34 Media.
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“This update offers a free, updated version of Infinity’s Dashboard software, enhanced compatibility options, and includes firmware for Infinity panels, desktop stations and beltpacks,” the company announced.
[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]
VP of Business Development and Infinity Product Director Martin Dyster was quoted: “Infinity has always been plug-and-play due to the design principles inherited from its Livewire+ AES67 heritage, but these v2.0 integration enhancements open up new possibilities for users and make it easier to control Infinity using the broadcaster’s preferred method.”
The update makes Infinity Dashboard Software free for all Infinity users, eliminating a licensing scheme and giving users access to Dashboard’s full feature set.
It also makes Infinity hardware systems compatible wi5th the new Telos Infinity VIP Virtual Intercom Platform. “By adding seamless integration of Infinity VIP with the hardware-based Infinity IP Intercom system, users have a wide range of deployment options for diverse applications; whether on-prem, site-to-site, in the cloud or as a hybrid of these.”
Telos said Axia users also will find the update useful because it contains enhanced integration with the new Axia Quasar AoIP Mixing Consoles. And integration with Elgato Stream Deck is included, making it easier to control the intercom system with that third-party device.
The free download is available via the Infinity portal.
Send your new equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.
The post Telos Releases V2.0 Software for Infinity appeared first on Radio World.
A Kansas broadcaster has agreed to a consent decree with the Federal Communications Commission that will allow the licensee to renew several of its stations’ licenses and to reassign one FM station to a different entity.
But the consent decree also includes a $7,000 civil penalty that the broadcaster must file before Jan. 1, 2022.
In a Memorandum Opinion and Order issued by the Audio Division of the Media Bureau, the bureau reminded Rocking M Media that FCC rules require broadcast stations to adhere to minimum operating requirements. And in cases where limited or discontinued operation has taken place, the licensee must request special temporary authorization to be permitted to be quiet longer than 30 days.
In addition, any station that is silent for 12 consecutive months will automatically forfeit its license, unless the commission is involved with extending or reinstating the station’s license.
[See Our Business and Law Page]
Rocking M Media filed six renewal applications, as required, before the stations’ licenses were set to expire on June 1, 2021. At the time, Rocking M revealed that each station had been off the air for substantial periods without an STA, although none of the stations had been silent for 12 consecutive months, the broadcaster said.
In 2020, Audio Division Chief Albert Shuldiner sent an inquiry letter after learning that some of the Rocking M stations might be silent without authority. Soon after, Rocking M filed a request for and was granted STAs for a six-month period.
The licensee also acknowledged periods of silence without authority, which it attributed to eviction from the stations’ shared studio location, a failed multistation sale, financial difficulties, and inadvertence by its manager and a contract engineer.
As part of its research, the bureau compiled a chart listing the dates and percent of time the stations were off the air — including the amount of time the station was off the air without an STA. According to the Media Bureau, time spent off the air during the discussed time period ranged from a low of 8 percent to a high of 38 percent. When it came to operating without an STA, one station was off the air 25 percent during that time period, adding up to a total of 329 days.
As part of the order, the bureau and the licensee adopted a consent decree that resolves issues related to the station’s failure to receive an STA. The bureau also agreed to a reassignment application that would grant the KKGQ(FM) renewal application to Pinnacle Media LLC.
The bureau also found that for those stations with a significant record of silence during its past license term — which included KKLE(AM), KIBB(FM), KLEY(AM), KVWF(FM), KWME (FM) and translator K262CQ — the FCC would only agree to renew the license for a one-year term due to a “record of failing to serve the public during [the stations’] substantial periods of silence,” the bureau said.
The bureau, however, concluded that the licensee still possesses the basic qualifications to be a commission licensee. As a result, Rocking M agreed to pay a civil penalty of $7,000 to finalize the consent decree.
The post Kansas Broadcaster Enters Consent Decree appeared first on Radio World.
An AM station in Arizona is experiencing first-hand what happens when a licensee fails to file a license renewal application on time.
Sonora Broadcasting was required to file a license renewal application for KAPR(AM) in Douglas, Ariz., on June 1, 2021, which was a full four months before the license was to expire. According to the FCC Media Bureau, the application was not filed until five days before the license was set to expire on Oct 1, 2021. According to the bureau, Sonora did not give a reason for the late filing.
[See Our Business and Law Page]
The commission’s Forfeiture Policy Statement establishes a base forfeiture of $3,000 for failing to file a required form, although the bureau may adjust that amount depending on the facts of the case.
While Sonora failed to file its application on time, the bureau said the broadcaster has not committed any other serious violations of FCC rules and did (albeit without explanation, according to the bureau) file the application before the Oct. 1 deadline.
As a result, the bureau notified Sonora it is now liable for a $3,000 forfeiture and must pay the full amount within 30 days. Within that same time period, the broadcaster also has the right to request in writing a reduction or cancellation of the proposed forfeiture.
The post Late Renewal Could Cost Arizona Station $3,000 appeared first on Radio World.
A station licensee faces a $17,500 monetary forfeiture after discontinuing operation of its station and translator without permission and for failing to upload items to its online public inspection file on time.
In January 2020, Southfield, Mich.-based Birach Broadcasting Corp. filed a license renewal application for KTUV(AM) in Little Rock, Ark., and its FM translator, K260DT. At the time, Birach certified that there had been no violations during the license term and that the stations had not been silent for any period longer than 30 days. The licensee also said the stations were currently on the air.
On March 6, 2020, due to what it called “catastrophic failure of its transmitter,” KTUV and K260DT went silent. FCC rules require radio stations to notify the commission within 10 days of temporarily discontinuing operations and must obtain commission authorization to stay silent longer than 30 days.
But an objection filed by an individual on May 20, 2020, revealed the stations were apparently still off the air. Birach balked at the objection, saying that although K260DT was silent, “requests for silent authority are on file.” And while Birach filed requests for a special temporary authority for its stations, those STAs were filed after the initial objection was filed.
The FCC Media Bureau reiterated in its Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture that Birach did not have the authority to remain silent between April 6 (a month after the transmitter failure) and May 22 when it filed the STA. KTUV resumed operations on July 29, 2020, and K260DT on Sept. 25, 2020.
[See Our Business and Law Page]
Among the missteps here: Birach should have notified the FCC of the discontinued operations by March 17, 2020, and it should have filed STAs for each station by April 5. As a result, the bureau found that Birach willfully and repeatedly violated FCC rules.
In a separate incident, the bureau also found KTUV failed to properly maintain its online public inspection file — specifically by failing to upload on time its issues/programs list for 2018, as well as lists for the first and fourth quarters of 2019. In addition, the bureau found several issues/programs lists were missing, including the third quarter of 2020 as well as the first, second and third quarters of 2021.
The bureau also noted that Birach failed to provide accurate and complete information to its pending application. FCC rules state that within 30 days, an applicant must update a pending application if information is no longer accurate. In this case, the application was filed on Jan. 29, 2020, and remains pending. As a result, Birach should have amended its application — and it did not do so.
The bureau moved to propose a monetary forfeiture for each of the licensee’s apparent violations of allowing two stations to remain silent for two-and-a-half months without authorization, failing to update its pending application and failing to upload on time its issues/program lists for KTUV.
As a result, the bureau proposed a total forfeiture of $17,500. At the same time, the bureau did not find the violations serious enough to warrant an evidentiary hearing that could potentially impact approval of Birach’s application renewals. Given the importance of keeping a radio station’s online public files updated, however, the bureau said the application grant is conditioned on Birach submitting a report regarding KTUV’s compliance with public file requirements.
Birach has 30 days to pay the full amount or file a written statement seeking reduction or cancellation.
The post Arkansas Licensee Faces $17,500 Forfeiture appeared first on Radio World.
When it comes to serving Spanish-speaking audiences in Atlanta, iHeartMedia has worked hard to attract them against such local competitors as Davis Broadcasting Inc. Over the years, this has seen signal swaps, and format changes — including the May 2020 decision to simulcast Latin Pop WBZY-FM 105.7 “Z105.7,” following that station’s April 2020 move from 105.3 MHz.
Now, iHeart is re-entering a direct format battle with Davis by taking WBZY’s simulcast partner and returning to regional Mexican after a little more than three years.
As of Saturday (1/1/2022), WRDG-FM 96.7 in Union City, Ga., is now “El Patrón 96.7.”
The format? Banda, Norteño and Rancheras, putting its mix of music from such artists as Grupo Firme, La Adictiva Banda San Jose de Mesillas, Calibre 50, Los Dos Carnales, Banda MS and Christian Nodal against DBI’s genre-leading WLKQ-FM “La Raza.”
Serving as Program Director for El Patrón is Z105.7 PD Orlando Rosa. He says, “With the rapidly growing Hispanic population in Atlanta, as well as emerging musical tastes, this move puts us in a position to super-serve all of our Hispanic listeners, advertisers and the community.”
The lineup features Adrian Martinez in overnights, Rico Hernandez from 6am-Noon, Gina Ulmos from Noon-6pm and Luis Treviño from 6pm to midnight.
For iHeart, memories of the original “El Patrón” could benefit the company in luring listeners to the reincarnated offering. On Nov. 26, 2006, WBZY-FM 105.3 took on the branding and regional Mexican format. Twelve years later, iHeart scrapped “El Patrón,” bringing the “Z” brand to the market.
With the shift of “Z” to a different frequency and continued shifts in the market dynamics, regional Mexican listeners now a new choice — one iHeart hopes opens up more marketing and advertising opportunities in 2022.
The nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System last August showed improvement over the previous test in 2019, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
“Receipt and retransmission rates increased, while reported monitored source complications markedly decreased,” it stated in a new report.
But the commission said technical glitches that did occur highlight the importance of those EAS stations that are monitored by many others.
“It is critically important that those EAS participants that are widely monitored use testing to ensure their EAS equipment is in reliable working order.”
Some key data points from the report:
The national test message reached 89.3% of EAS participants, up from 82.5% two years ago. Its overall retransmission success rate was 87.1%, up from 79.8%. Seven Primary Entry Point stations experienced technical complications, fewer than last time. And test participants reported roughly half as many complications with receipt and retransmission this time around.
The FCC concluded: “As observed in 2019, the system would largely perform as designed, and it would reach the vast majority of the public, if activated without the availability of the internet.”
That last phrase is important because this particular test — performed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in coordination with the FCC — used only the broadcast-based distribution system, the so-called “EAS daisy chain,” and did not involve the internet-based IPAWS system. The goal was to check the system’s capability to deliver messages in event that the internet path was not available.
DIGGING INTO DETAILSThe FCC said the large majority of EAS participants reported successful receipt and retransmission. There are more than 25,000 EAS participants, including radio and TV stations, cable TV systems, direct broadcast satellite, SiriusXM, digital audio broadcasting systems and wireline video systems.
Where problems did arise, they involved equipment configuration, performance issues, audio quality, alerting source issues and clock errors. Audio quality issues were the most frequently reported on receipt. The test “shed light on challenges that impeded the ability of some EAS participants to receive and/or retransmit the test alert.”
There are 76 Primary Entry Point stations in the country; seven reported technical complications this time compared to 12 in 2019.
“We believe it is reasonable to infer that these improvements in PEP stations’ performance significantly contributed to the marked increases in receipt and retransmission rates,” the FCC concluded. “Additionally … many 2021 PEP complications resulted in low audio rather than total failure to transmit the nationwide test.”
The PEP stations with problems were in North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Florida, Virginia and American Samoa. Premiere Networks, a satellite-based PEP station that is monitored in several states, also transmitted no audio.
Of those seven PEPs, three relayed low audio; two relayed no audio. One PEP was hit by lightning immediately prior to the test, and another had a communications issue and did not receive the test.
FEMA told the FCC it is taking measures to improve PEP performance. “In particular, FEMA is continuing its work with SECCs in several states to conduct state-level tests on a monthly basis and station-level tests on a weekly basis through the PEP stations.”
Among non-PEP stations, the number of reported problems “significantly declined.”
SECC representatives in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Kansas and Washington did report some local broadcast distribution chain issues.
In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the issues were specific to one widely monitored source in each state that experienced equipment configuration issues on test day. “Each station engineer reports to have fixed the issue.”
In Georgia, the southern portion of the state relies on intermediary sources like local primaries and state relays to receive the test message. On test day, the FCC said, a state relay experienced a technical issue that disrupted transmission of the alert to parts of southern Georgia. The SECC reports that the issue has been fixed.
In Kansas, one widely monitored EAS participant received the alert from Premiere Networks and as a result retransmitted an alert that lacked audio. This participant was monitored by 41 others, of which 32 reported also retransmitting an alert that lacked audio.
In Washington, the SECC reported that several stations in the eastern part of the state received and retransmitted an alert message with low, and at times, no audio.
Some other findings:
-The overall participation rate of 75.3% was down from 78.6% in 2019. Radio broadcasters had a participation rate of 79.9%, down from 82%.
-The number of stations that apparently don’t know what participant type they are has increased. (Participant types include national primary, state primary, state relay and local primaries 1 and 2.) “Test participants need to better understand their role in the EAS and there is still room for improvement in this regard,” the FCC found.
-There were 2,550 test participants on receipt and 1,506 on retransmission that said their stations did not receive the alert due to audio quality complications. “Many test participants reported background noise, only tones and no message, and/or unintelligible audio.”
-There were 389 test participants that reported equipment performance issues on receipt and 565 on retransmission involving non-working equipment that required returning equipment to the manufacturer. “Participants cited that the equipment simply was out for repair, failed during the test, was missing or malfunctioned.”
-Participation by low-power broadcasters is an area of concern. Low-power stations are required to broadcast the alert, though not required to have equipment capable of generating the EAS codes and Attention Signal. The commission had made an effort to improve low-power radio and TV participation, reaching out to offer targeted resources including a webinar just for them. Yet LPFM participation in the test was 49.5%, much lower than that of radio overall and down from 2019’s LPFM participation rate of 55.9%. Similarly, LPTV participation (47.4%) was lower than that of TV broadcasters overall and lower than 2019’s participation rate. Of the 3,700 or so radio broadcasters that were expected to file but failed to do so, more than 28% were LPFMs; and of the 1,500 or so television broadcasters that were expected to file but didn’t, almost 70% were LPTVs.
NEXT STEPSFor more details, see the full EAS report.
The commission reminded EAS participants that they can reduce complications by redundant monitoring. “We continue to emphasize the importance of multiple monitoring sources as required by our rules. We also recommend that stations located far from PEP stations consider the viability, technically and otherwise, of satellite sources of the broadcast alert, such as NPR Squawk Channel, Premiere Networks and SiriusXM.”
The FCC also noted that it has launched a proceeding to improve the accessibility of visual content for alerts that are distributed via the EAS protocol and to explore other possible changes in the EAS system. “We encourage parties with an interest in these issues to submit comments in this proceeding in PS Docket 15-94.”
It also said it will continue to tweak the online forms that stations and others must fill out after a national test. It will explore how to use state EAS plan data to streamline and improve the accuracy of those ETRS filings “such as by educating EAS participants of their EAS designations and better ensuring that they monitor their assigned alerting sources.”
It said it will work with state emergency communications committees to help ensure that state EAS plans, which must be updated by July 5, 2022, assign monitoring sources to participants that ensure redundancy and coverage for areas that have difficulty receiving broadcast signals.
And “EAS participants can address some deficiencies with more education, continued training and improved communication with other broadcasters and their SECC to better understand their role and obligations as a participant in the EAS,” the FCC wrote.
“We encourage EAS participants to use this process to ensure their EAS equipment is in reliable working order, confirm that they are monitoring appropriate sources, and verify that the audio level of the alert is correct. Specifically, it is critically important that those EAS participants that are widely monitored use testing to ensure their EAS equipment is in reliable working order.”
It said participants that fail to receive an alert or note any issues during a scheduled test “should work swiftly and closely with their SECC to identify why and take all necessary steps for corrective action.”
The bureau separately released a report on the nationwide test of Wireless Emergency Alerts that was conducted the same day. It said the WEA test “demonstrates that, on the whole, WEA generally is performing reliably but there is room for improvement.” Many mobile devices erroneously received a duplicate nationwide WEA test message, it wrote, “and there may be opportunities to improve WEA’s reliability.” (Read the full WEA report.)
The post National EAS Test Showed Improvement, FCC Says appeared first on Radio World.
Xperi has been actively testing HD Radio in Delhi, India, in cooperation with All India Radio. HD Radio, which has been implemented in more than 4,700 digital channels around the world, reaching over 400 million listeners, utilizes existing broadcast infrastructure to add a digital transmission that delivers a more compelling and engaging over-the-air experience for listeners.
HD Radio testing in India begun in January 2020 was completed in Delhi in February 2021 following a 10-month interruption due to COVID-19 restrictions. Additional testing in Jaipur, India, was conducted in March 2021.
The testing is part of HD Radio’s initiative to fulfill India’s roadmap for digital radio through the Digital India initiative. HD Radio services can be key to establishing a much-needed, digital, world-class broadcast network to serve all the citizens of India.
While most other technologies are transitioning, or have already fully transitioned, to digital services, digital radio in India has lagged behind. In India, radio has a long history of providing critical public services and important information, in multiple languages to the population. Unfortunately, not everyone has ready access to internet and data services, especially in rural regions.
But, because HD Radio can easily and inexpensively be integrated into mobile handsets for ease of use, it can digitally provide real-time emergency and disaster notifications through cellphones across India’s multilingual population, as well as enabling access to national, regional, and local information and entertainment programs.
Key metrics
Xperi partnered with leading industry experts to demonstrate the HD Radio digital FM system in India.
HD Radio receiver with All India Radio logoAn HD Radio transmission system was configured on 100.5 MHz from the Akashvani Bhawan transmission tower in New Delhi. The digital FM broadcast operated in a simulcast mode (hybrid analog–digital operation) between Jan. 13, 2020, and February 2021 (with interruptions due to COVID-19 lockdowns). All India Radio conducted additional combiner tests in Jaipur in March 2021.
The tests successfully addressed the key performance metrics established by All India Radio. The HD Radio system tests in Delhi and Jaipur were consistent with operations of the HD Radio system in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. All service modes met predicted performance metrics for signal quality, coverage, and adjacent channel interference protection.
Commercial receiver products were used in the field test to demonstrate the capability of consumer-grade receivers for the general public and to evaluate the following performance metrics for All India Radio:
Outdoor and indoor reception for all consumer-level radio products were successfully achieved in the test. Each of the products tested featured the key components of the HD Radio system. Of note, the BeatBoy feature phone demonstrated the potential digital radio offers when integrated into a mobile handheld device.
The positive results of the testing in Delhi clearly strengthen the case for HD Radio operations on FM stations in India. That being said, the success of a new digital broadcast service depends on four main points:
The HD Radio testing successfully demonstrated each of these points.
Today, the HD Radio FM broadcast solution is well positioned to support digital FM transitions in India. Xperi’s HD Radio team continues regular dialogue with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the government broadcaster Prasar Bharati (the parent company of All India Radio), and private broadcast groups, while showcasing the success of HD Radio in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Broadcasters in these markets have experienced increased revenue through HD Radio features such as multicast audio programs, Artist Experience and advertising, and data services to devices and cars. Public safety and digital alert warnings have also benefited HD Radio listeners.
These applications can be quickly implemented in India and will increase access to information and diverse content across all socio-economic groups.
In short, the future for digital radio in India is bright.
The test report is published at www.hdradio.in.
The post Xperi Completes Successful HD Radio Tests in Delhi appeared first on Radio World.
Terry Baun, an influential and award-winning engineer who worked in both commercial and public broadcasting and was deeply involved with the Society of Broadcast Engineers including two terms as its president, has died at age 74.
His passing was announced by his wife Linda Baun.
Terrence M. Baun was born in 1947 and began his broadcast career in 1967 at classical music station WFMR(FM) in Milwaukee, according to a summary of his career she shared.
After 10 years, he began a series of jobs in corporate engineering and also soon formed consulting firm Criterion Broadcast Services. Employers over the years included Sudbrink Broadcasting, Multimedia Broadcasting and Cumulus Broadcasting.
He finished his broadcast career at the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, where he oversaw engineering and operations of the delivery system for Wisconsin Public Radio & Television throughout the state. He retired in 2017.
[Related: “Baun Retires After 50 Years”]
Baun had a close and longstanding relationship with the Society of Broadcast Engineers, which he joined in 1976 and which he served at various times in Chapter 28 Milwaukee and Chapter 25 Indianapolis. But his profile was national. Baun was elected to the national board in 1987 and went on to serve as vice president and then two terms as president starting in 1995.
“During his terms as national president, the society instituted the Leadership Development Course,” according to the obituary. “Terry worked to develop stronger ties and awareness of the SBE by the state broadcaster associations nationwide; he initiated a significant upgrade of the society’s national office data management capability. The society successfully transitioned from the multi-association World Media Expo, which ended in 1996, to the SBE National Meeting concept that we still use today.”
The SBE published the EAS Primer, written by Leonard Charles, during his term, and held its first strategic planning meeting during his presidency. Linda Baun said that during his years as president, SBE’s membership and financial strength grew.
He also was active as a mentor and proponent of the SBE Certification program, serving on its national Certification Committee for 21 years, three of them as chair, and he was instrumental in creation of the SBE Certified Broadcast Networking Technologist (CBNT) and AM Directional Specialist (AMD) certifications.
He was named SBE’s first Broadcast Engineer of the Year in 1991, an SBE Fellow in 1999 and SBE Educator of the Year in 2003. In 2010, he received the SBE’s John H. Battison Award for Lifetime Achievement.
He also worked to support the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association. He was an original member of its Summer Engineering Conference Steering Committee, and he founded the WBA Media Technology Institute in 2011. “He played a key role in developing the self-inspection program within the broadcast industry and is considered a leader in this field,” Linda Baun wrote. “Terry was one of the architects of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association’s Alternative Broadcast Station Inspection Program, serving as the WBA’s chief inspector for more than 10 years, beginning with the program’s inauguration in 1995.”
He also conducted alternative station inspections for broadcast associations in Indiana, Michigan and Ohio. “His desire was to have stations comply with the rules, rather than simply looking for reasons to cite them for noncompliance.”
In 2000, Baun initiated a 24-hour hotline for engineers in the state of Wisconsin through the WBA, and he manned the phone 24/7. “Based on his program model, other state broadcast associations have adopted the 24-hour engineering hotline.” Baun was inducted into the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Foundation Hall of Fame in 2004.
Terry Baun in an undated photo published in Radio World at the time of his retirement in 2017.“Terry Baun is the consummate example of servant leadership,” said Wisconsin Broadcasters Association President and CEO Michelle Vetterkind upon his retirement in 2017. “He has dedicated his career to meeting the needs of students, scholars, colleagues, broadcast stations and the broadcast industry. His approach has been to look beyond what is wanted and to assess what is needed. Through his actions and initiatives Terry has been a game changer for the broadcast industry.”
Linda Baun said one of Terry Baun’s great skills was his ability to share engineering expertise as a communicator and teacher. She quoted his comments upon entering the Wisconsin Broadcasting Hall of Fame (which can be viewed here): “Engineers are a critical part of the broadcasting enterprise. They’re technologists who bring broadcasting to life. I’ve always thought of myself as a broadcaster. Period. And within the scope of broadcasting, I feel that my contributions have been primarily in the technical side, the engineering side. … I guess the educational aspect of what I’m doing is probably going to be my proudest moment when it’s all said and done.”
He spoke at industry events and seminars on technical topics; and his articles appeared in Radio World, Broadcast Engineering, Milwaukee Magazine and the Milwaukee Press Club Annual. He co-authored a chapter on Facilities Documentation in an edition of the NAB Engineering Handbook and applied for a patent on an internet media streaming delivery system.
For the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board, Baun played an important role in the transition of Wisconsin Public Television to digital broadcasting. He also implemented a planning process with ECB staff for the next generation of the Broadcast Interconnect, which delivers Wisconsin Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Television, EAS and Amber Alert programming.
Among work he oversaw were a WHHI tower project, the WHAA(FM) Coloma Radio project, the University of Wisconsin System build in 2011, and the Chilton Gap Filler tower, a joint project with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. He also watched over HD Radio installations at ECB’s FM stations.
Baun was also a member of the Audio Engineering Society, the Association of Federal Communications Consulting Engineers and the IEEE. He served on the Milwaukee Area Technical College Broadcast Communications Engineer Advisory Committee.
Among his non-professional interests were reading, trains, classical music and the Green Bay Packers.
Terry Baun married Linda Godby in 2002. Linda worked for 15 years for the SBE including as its certification director and later was a key executive at the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.
Survivors include her two daughters Leslie and Stacey and five grandchildren.
“Terry wanted a party, a big one,” Linda Baun said in an email. “Therefore we will celebrate his life with food, friends, drink and music and many other surprises on Sunday, Jan. 16 at the Madison Marriott West.” Details are to follow.
The post Terry Baun Dies at 74 appeared first on Radio World.
The Consumer Technology Association is going ahead with its CES 2022 convention this week, but has decided to shorten the schedule.
The in-person event in Las Vegas now will run Jan. 5–7.
“The step was taken as an additional safety measure to the current health protocols that have been put in place for CES,” the CTA announced Friday.
Although news accounts have carried word that some notable companies recently have withdrawn from the event given the omicron surge, CTA said more than 2,200 exhibitors were confirmed as of Dec. 31.
“In the last two weeks, 143 additional companies have signed up to exhibit in person. Construction of exhibitors’ show floor space is well underway and soon attendees will be able to see and experience the latest tech innovations.”
President/CEO Gary Shapiro said in the announcement, “We are shortening the show to three days and have put in place comprehensive health measures for the safety of all attendees and participants.”
All attendees must be fully vaccinated and have proof. The show website has updated health protocols.
The post CES Show Is Shortened by a Day appeared first on Radio World.
The author is a development engineer for Wheatstone Corp.
This article is based on a paper prepared for the 75th NAB Broadcast Engineering and IT Conference. Conference videos and proceedings are available at https://nabpilot.org/beitc-proceedings/.
(Getty Images/natrot)The broadcast industry is in a transitional phase, heading toward a world in which a large portion, perhaps even a majority, of listeners will receive the station’s program via an internet stream rather than terrestrial radio broadcast.
Many accomplished engineers and station managers, while experts in traditional radio technology, find themselves feeling like neophytes once again when it comes to internet streaming. This paper aspires to present an instructional overview of what’s involved in this generation of an internet audio stream, as well as a better understanding of where standards and practices are still developing.
Signal flows
Streamed content starts out on the same path as broadcast content, typically originating from the automation system if it’s music or from the studio microphone if it’s voice, or both.
One, however, goes to the broadcast chain and the other goes to the streaming encoder, and that one difference introduces new considerations in both processing and metadata for streaming. To understand these considerations, it helps to get a closer look at the signal flow of each.
Broadcast signal flow
For broadcasting purposes, content is fed into an automation system, which sends its audio output to an FM (or AM) processor, where it is processed and multiplexed, and then passed on to a transmitter that disseminates the program to the public.
As a side channel, the automation system has also been stocked with metadata (artist, title, album, duration, label, ISRC, etc.) for every piece of audio in its playlist; this metadata is also transmitted to the FM processor, where it is turned into an RDS signal that rides as a sideband on the MPX output.
There are, of course, variations in this flow path. For example, the metadata from the automation machine may be routed instead to an “aggregator” that cleans and ensures the accuracy and consistency of the metadata before it is forwarded to the FM processor. Or it might not even go to the processor, but to a separate RDS encoder, the output of which is then mixed with the MPX from the processor.
The exact details may change, but the steps along the path remain essentially the same.
Typical broadcast signal flow.Stream signal flow
For streaming purposes, content enters the automation system as before, but in this case the output is routed to a stream encoder (also called an “origin server,” for reasons that will be clear later), and from there to a CDN, or Content Distribution Network.
The stream encoder has three jobs:
CDN streaming and add-ons
Before looking at the inner workings of the stream encoder, let’s examine the Content Distribution Network. The CDN plays the role of the transmitter in the streaming paradigm, but its unique position in the program flow path actually gives it a bigger and more important job.
The main function of the CDN is to serve your stream to thousands or tens of thousands of listeners. But the twin facts that A) your program and all associated metadata passes through the CDN’s servers; and B) they know who is listening, from what location, and for how long — gives them an opportunity to provide a whole suite of add-on services.
A big one is ad replacement, which is usually geographically based but could also be tailored to whatever can be deduced about the individual listener’s tastes and habits.
Geo-blocking, logging, skimming, catch-up recording and playback, access to additional metadata (e.g. album art, fan club URLs), listener statistics and click-throughs, customized players, royalty tracking, redundant stream failover, transcoding from one format to another — these are some of the services that CDNs typically provide.
Thus, the CDN basically controls the distribution of the stream to the listening public. It is the responsibility of the stream encoder — the origin server to the CDN’s ingest and distribution servers — to make sure that the CDN gets the right data at the right time and in the right format.
Especially with regard to metadata, the CDN determines what the format will be. The stream encoder is therefore also a mediator/translator between the automation system and the CDN, as it must be able to transform the format of whatever it ingests into the format that the CDN requires. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the stream encoder.
Job 1: Data compression
The stream encoder performs various functions. The central function, which all others are designed in relation to, is to apply data compression to the audio stream, thereby reducing the bandwidth required both to transmit the stream up to the CDN, and for the listener to receive it.
By far, the most widely used compression codec for high-quality audio storage and transmission is AAC, but its predecessor MP3 is still used for legacy streams (to support legacy players). All compression algorithms operate by reducing the information contained in the audio signal to as few bits as possible; you therefore want to maximize the value of those bits by removing extraneous artifacts from the audio signal before it hits the compression codec. That cleansing and conditioning of the raw audio signal is the job of the DSP section at the input.
The encoder’s central function is data compression.Encoder handoff to CDN
The compression codecs produce periodic output in the form of chunks of data, each of which represents a small segment (typically 5 to 20 milliseconds) of the continuous audio signal. These chunks are wrapped in a transport format and transmitted to the CDN’s ingest server as discrete, time-stamped packets. Common transport protocols include Icecast, RTMP, HLS, MPEG-DASH and RTP.
Metadata is typically received by the stream encoder on a TCP or UDP socket, and most commonly arrives formatted as XML. What happens after that depends on the transport protocol being used.
For Icecast streams, metadata updates (including ad triggers) are sent to the server out-of-band, as separate HTTP messages. For RTMP, the metadata update is embedded in the transport stream itself, as a special INFO type packet. For HLS, metadata may be reformatted as ID3 data and embedded into a separate channel of the underlying MPEG2 Transport stream, and ad triggers can be woven into the manifest file as SCTE-35 “program replacement opportunities.”
For all of these methods, the exact details can differ from one CDN to the next since there are no universally accepted standards for handling metadata, so setting up a stream and getting the metadata to update correctly and in sync with the audio stream often requires a short period of trial and error while negotiating protocols with the CDN.
RTP is a special case. RTP is the only stream format that is commonly used to carry uncompressed, full-bandwidth audio (in the form of AES67, for example), although it can be used to carry virtually any kind of data, including AAC, Opus or MP3 audio.
RTP is typically used in a studio-to-studio or studio-to-transmitter link, rather than as an ingest feed to a CDN.
Metadata formatting
The final area we want to examine is the metadata itself. We’ve been talking about transforming it from one format to another, but what does that mean, and why do we need to do it?
To answer, let’s look at some examples of raw metadata received from various automation systems. (Names and numbers have been changed to protect the innocent.)
Some systems export simple tagged text:
artist=Sonny Rollins
title=God Bless the Child
length=00:07:29
More commonly, metadata arrives in XML or XML-like form. Note that many fields may be empty:
<nowplaying><sched_time>220200</sched_time><air_time>402000</air_time><stack_pos></stack_pos><title>TheSkyIsANeighborhood</title><artist>FooFighters</artist><trivia>*</trivia><category>MNJ</category><cart>R585</cart><intro>14000</intro><end></end><station>93.5HD1</station><duration>243300</duration><media_type>SONG</media_type><milliseconds_left></milliseconds_left><Album>ConcreteandGold</Album><Field2></Field2><ISRC>USRW9170028</ISRC><Label>RCA</Label><Tempo></Tempo><Year>2017</Year></nowplaying>
The HTML ampersand entity in this one will require special handling:
<audio ID="id_3155460704_30756200">
<type>Song</type>
<status>Playing</status>
<title>JINGLE BELL ROCK</title>
<artist>Hall & Oates</artist>
<length>00:02:03</length>
<category>Classic</category>
</audio>
Here’s a station ID and a liner from the same source. Some CDNs may want this data, some may not:
<audio>
<type>Link</type>
<status>Playing</status>
<artist></artist>
<title>ROCK91.7 | LEGAL ID2</title>
<number>120002</number>
<length>00:00:11</length>
</audio>
<audio>
<type>VoiceTrack</type>
<status>Playing</status>
<artist></artist>
<title>VT TLA3 - Rock: 2021-03-25 08:37</title>
<number></number>
<length>00:00:06</length>
</audio>
Here’s a sweeper and an ad from another source, below. Notice that the <media_type> tag distinguishes one from the other. The arrival of a SPOT is often used to trigger an ad replacement by the CDN. Durations shown here are in milliseconds.
<nowplaying><sched_time>67199000</sched_time><air_time>67267000</air_time><stack_pos></stack_pos><title>CYQTONEQUICKSWEEP#12DRY</title><artist>201971108:06:28</artist><trivia></trivia><category>IM5</category><cart>BIBE</cart><intro>0</intro><end></end><station>95.7KQED</station><duration>3900</duration><media_type>UNSPECIFIED</media_type><milliseconds_left></milliseconds_left><Album></Album><Field2></Field2><ISRC></ISRC><Label></Label><Tempo></Tempo><Year></Year></nowplaying><nowplaying><sched_time>33716000</sched_time><air_time>33721000</air_time><stack_pos></stack_pos><title>ShopLocalAWestfieldMerchantsFriday</title><artist>WestfieldMerchantsJune</artist><trivia>shoplocalgreencountry</trivia><category>COM</category><cart>4652</cart><intro>0</intro><end></end><station>95.7KQED</station><duration>30000</duration><media_type>SPOT</media_type><milliseconds_left></milliseconds_left><Album></Album><Field2></Field2><ISRC></ISRC><Label></Label><Tempo></Tempo><Year></Year></nowplaying>
None of the metadata messages in these examples can be transmitted to the CDN ingest server in the form they are in. Instead, the relevant data must be stripped out and reformatted into a protocol that the ingest server can understand. This protocol often requires that additional information, which is not available in the original metadata received from the automation system (such as login credentials, the server URL, and query parameters) be woven into the message. For an Icecast stream, that might take a form like this:
http://source:abc123@ice5.streamnet.com/admin/metadata?mount=/BRAVOFM1im&mode=updinfo&song=Foo%20Fighters|The%20Sky%20Is%20A%20Neighborhood|00:04:03|SONG
Likewise, an ad trigger might look like this:
http://source:abc123@ice5.streamnet.com/admin/metadata?mount=/BRAVOFM1im&mode=updinfo&song=|Shop%20LocalA%20%2D%20WestfieldMerchantsFriday|00:00:30|COM
In the stream transmitted by the CDN, the local ad from the origin server might be replaced with another ad targeted to the geographic location of the listener. The CDN may use the duration of the ad (30 seconds in this example) as the queue for switching back to the original program, or it may wait for the next SONG update to switch back.
For RTMP and HLS streams, the metadata is reformatted in a particular manner and “injected” into the stream as in-band data. For example, for RTMP, a “setDataFrame” message is assembled, typically containing an array of three strings: title, artist and “url” (a container for everything else). With the Foo Fighters example from above as our input, the schematic form of the output, ignoring the header bits demarcating the various sections, would look more or less like this:
@setDataFrame
onMetaData
title:The Sky Is A Neighborhood
artist:Foo Fighters
url:http://www.blaze105.com?autoID=R585&autoCat=SONG&cat=MNJ&album=Concreteand Gold&label=RCA&ISRC=USRW9170028
Note that the mapping of the tags in the original message to some of the query parameters in the output “url” string is neither obvious nor predictable, and in this case was in fact determined by the CDN. The underlying implication is that the manufacturer of the stream encoder cannot know ahead of time what format either the incoming or the outgoing metadata will look like.
A common solution for effecting the transformation of arbitrary input to arbitrary output is a programmable, embedded scripting language, such as Lua. Current stream encoders often provide a menu of Lua filters that are able to transform common patterns of metadata input into similarly common output patterns. Usually all that is required to customize the transform filter for the station’s own particular needs are a few tweaks to the script.
In closing, we’ll show an example of one of the pitfalls of relying on metadata for accuracy, and why many stations are now employing metadata cleaners and aggregators in their flow path. This is a real message received from an automation system (which shall remain anonymous):
<audio>
<type>Song</type>
<status>Playing</status>
<artist>Beyonc�</artist>
<title>Crazy in Love</title>
<number></number>
<length>00:03:56</length>
</audio>
Obviously, Beyoncé is the intended artist, but how would a computer know that? The odd character sequence at the end of her name is actually a single character: the Unicode Replacement Character /uFFFD, or one representation of it. (The lozenge-question-mark � is another representation of the same character.) How did it get there? Some automated transcription program back in the day encountered a character it wasn’t designed to handle (in this case the é), and replaced it with a wild card. The problem for any metadata transform filter is that the wild card can refer to anything — there’s actually no way to know except from the context what the original character was supposed to be.
And so there we are, at the interface of data and chaos. Even in the age of digital streaming, keeping entropy at bay is still the constant battle.
Comment on this or any article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.
The post The Politics and Protocols of Streaming appeared first on Radio World.
For radio stations, streaming of our programming has changed considerably over the past decade.
In the early days, it was a novelty. It represented just another way for listeners to “tune in” to their favorite stations. There was little in the way of value in an internet-delivered stream, but many stations got on the bandwagon for various reasons, including (and perhaps especially) because the competition was doing it.
Those early streaming efforts were … primitive (to put it nicely). Bit rates were often low because bandwidth costs were so high in those days, and the streams sounded, well, not great. They were full of artifacts, and many exhibited that watery sound that was and is so common to low bit rate streams. Most were either unprocessed or poorly processed — wrongly processed is probably a better descriptor, and that didn’t help matters much on the listener’s end.
Special low-bit-rate processing algorithms properly used can make your stream sound great.As time went on and bandwidth costs came down, bit rates were improved and things stated sounding better. We began to figure out how to monetize our streams to make them pay for themselves at the very least and be somewhat profitable at best. This roughly coincided with reduced costs for mobile data plans, making it possible for listeners to connect to our streams using their mobile devices.
Squeaks and chirps
We started figuring out how to process our streams right, using processing algorithms specifically created for reduced bit rate audio.
This made a big difference in our 32- and 64-kbps MP3 and AAC streams; they became downright pleasant to listen to. Gone were the watery sound and chirpy, squeaky artifacts. And because we weren’t trying to beat the guy(s) across town in a loudness war, our streams could actually have some dynamic range.
With the advent of hybrid radio, the quality of our streams has taken on a whole new level of importance. When the blend to the stream occurs in the listener’s radio, we want to avoid big difference in sound quality. It should be imperceptible, or almost so. The challenge is much the same as it has been for hybrid HD Radio for the past 15+ years: The blend has to sound good.
Streaming encoders have come a long way, too. Most, as far as I can tell, are still software encoders running on the station’s own hardware, but both the encoding software and the hardware are getting better and better.
In addition to traditional sound cards ranging from under $50 to over $1,000, stations with AoIP studio infrastructure have the option to feed their encoders via IP using PC drivers compatible with whatever AOIP system they are using.
Hardware like this Dell Precision rack-mount workstation using an AOIP driver can handle multiple stations with multiple streams each.In the bigger markets, my company employs Dell Precision rack-mount workstations with some horsepower, dual-port NICs and employing multi-channel AoIP drivers to produce the streams. These machines can easily handle streams for multiple stations with multiple streams for each station. Streaming service for our stations is provided by Triton, and we use their proprietary encoder software on these workstations.
Purpose-built hardware encoders are now available from various manufacturers that will accept a variety of input sources, including AoIP. These encoders will produce multiple streams in different formats and with different data rates. Some include integral audio processing, providing a “one-stop” encoding solution.
Making it pay
As noted, monetizing our streams is important in many stations. Preroll and midroll audio or video ads, ad replacement and programmatic ad sales are elements that we have to deal with in many cases. Some of those things require special triggers from our playout systems, and that can be really tricky.
RIAA reporting for royalties is another important element that we have got to get right. Underreporting or missed reporting can get us in hot water legally; overreporting can cost us in unnecessary royalties. This reporting is a function of metadata export from our playout systems.
Some of the same metadata export is used to provide title/artist display on media players, and even to trigger lookup of album art for player/app displays, another reason to get it right. Listeners get irritated when incorrect information — or no information — is displayed. I know I do.
On a related note, stream listeners who don’t show up in the Nielsen data don’t count, so we’ve got to get our watermark encoding right. Program directors and station managers get really irritated when PPM doesn’t pick up on listeners that we have.
In the current issue of RWEE, Rick Bidlack, a development engineer at Wheatstone Corp., walks us through the building blocks of a stream.
There’s a lot at work here, from the playout system, the encoder, audio processing, metadata aggregation and conversion, and transmission to the masses. There are plenty of places for things to go wrong, but the better our understanding of the signal flow, the better equipped we as broadcast engineers will be to deal with it.
I remember a decade or more ago pulling out my iPhone and describing it to the president of our company that this was the “transistor radio” of the future. In a lot of ways, I missed that prediction by quite a bit; nobody walks around with an iPhone in their shirt pocket audibly playing a radio station stream. But in some ways I was right. There are plenty of folks using their smartphones to stream audio to their Bluetooth earbuds, and there are just as many that play streams through a Bluetooth-connected audio system, in cars, homes, even airplanes. And listeners in cars equipped with hybrid radio will sometimes listen to our streams and don’t even know it.
The bottom line for us is that more than ever, our internet streams have got to be right. They have to be reliable, meaning that someone (or something) has got to monitor them to be sure they are up. They have to sound good, be artifact-free and carry the correct metadata. Ad replacement has to be smooth and seamless, with overlays fitting exactly. And watermark encoding has got to be done right, too.
There is a lot at stake. We can’t afford to be anything but diligent.
Read more about streaming trends and best practices in Radio World’s free ebook “Streaming for Radio in 2021.”
Cris Alexander, CPBE, AMD, DRB, is director of engineering for Crawford Broadcasting and technical editor of Radio World Engineering Extra.
The post A Stream of Thought … on Streaming appeared first on Radio World.
The Dec. 22 issue of Radio World features our Buyer’s Guide for antennas, RF support and power products. Buyer’s Guide features application stories like this one.
Saga Communications station KOEZ(FM) in Iowa, serving the Ames and Des Moines markets, completed installation of a new Dielectric DCR-C ring-style antenna this fall.
The circularly polarized, center-fed antenna replaces an antenna knocked off the air by a partial tower collapse caused by a February ice storm. The station had been operating with a lower-power auxiliary antenna for months; the eight-bay DCR-C was operating below full power at press time, with full commissioning for KOEZ’s 100 kW ERP expected shortly.
KOEZ opted not to replace the top 100 feet of the tower lost to the storm. The side-mounted DCR-C has a center of radiation just short of 900 feet. Joe Farrington, chief engineer of Saga subsidiary Des Moines Radio Group, believes lowering the antenna position and dropping from 10 to eight bays will improve penetration within city limits.
“Downtown Des Moines has always been a challenge,” Farrington told the manufacturer. “There is a very low spot in the center downtown with a surrounding ridge. We believe the DCR-C is properly designed and positioned to actually strengthen our signal through Des Moines instead of somewhat skipping over it.”
Farrington said the tower was erected under old guidelines that didn’t consider icing and windload. “We have lightened the tower load considerably, both with the antenna weight and LED tower lights. Dielectric added radomes to the antenna design, which will protect it from future icing. We expect that the antenna and tower will each last its lifetime without incident.”
Dielectric’s broadband DCR-C antennas can be end-fed or center-fed, offer a power rating of 10kW per bay, and are available in stacked arrays up to 12 bays with an input rating to 40 kW.
Info: https://www.dielectric.com/antenna/dcr-c-hdr-c/
The post KOEZ(FM) De-Ices, Optimizes With Dielectric appeared first on Radio World.
NY-ATL-LA- Remote- Job Details:: Podcast Audio/Video Editor
TheGrio
(n) grī/ō, ‘grīō: Journalist. Historian. Praise Singer. Poet. Musician. Curator. Storyteller.
TheGrio, is a digital, video-centric news community devoted to giving voice to trusted figures on the front line who inspire us every day, and to fresh perspectives who buck convention because there’s more than one way to be Black. We believe a well-informed community best determines its own interests. And so, TheGrio’s editorial mandate is to focus on news and events which have a pronounced impact on a Black global audience. We unabashedly explore culture and entertainment, health and lifestyle, politics and policy, business and empowerment, science and climate, tech and innovation, and everything in between that matters to us. From Kampala to Atlanta TheGrio is Black culture amplified.
TheGrio is strongly building its editorial staff. It is an investment in the business’s core competencies. These jobs will primarily be based in NY and Atlanta. Some of the positions will be opportunities to work from other cities or fully remote. Byron Allen, CEO of Allen Media Group, says, “TheGrio is the leader of fearless journalism and inspirational storytelling about Black people. No other Black news outlet has our cumulative audience reach or impact. This is a natural growth of our brand sponsorships, and editorial partnerships for TheGrio’s content on digital, mobile, streaming, podcasts, and social media.”
Job Description:
TheGrio is seeking a Podcast Audio/Video Editor to work on our slate of new podcasts. The ideal candidate will have professional experience in podcasts, audio and video production, as well as both studio and field recording. The ideal candidate will be able to edit together compelling stories from interviews, audio clips, and commentary, and serve as a full-on collaborator with podcast hosts and producers.
Candidates should have a minimum two years of audio or digital platform experience, proficiency in audio production tools (ProTools, Audition, or Audacity) and work on deadline.
Responsibilities:
Executing assignments with a strong understanding of TheGrio’s voice, brand and mission.
Excellent audio editing, special effects, and creative sound design.
Working with podcast producers to shape and execute an ambitious narrative work.
Shaping the edit around the episode concepts and providing editorial input.
Working as a team player capable of clearly communicating with key stakeholders.
Collaborating with hosts and media teams to meet their vision and clarify storyline when editing interviews into episodes, but also comfortable working autonomously.
Willingness to collaborate across platforms, products and businesses.
Ensuring each show meets the highest audio quality standards.
Editing 6-10 show episodes each week on deadline.
Cooperatively collaborates on production and post-production.
Diligently keeping up with schedules, and workflows for all podcasts.
Ensuring the accurate and timely management of an audio library, archives, and music.
Managing time so that podcast episodes and special features meet regular production schedules.
Sourcing audio material for each episode.
Ensuring the highest quality sound and video products.
Guiding and supporting junior staff on edits.
Managing episode uploads and publication, and organizing files in a storage system.
Maintaining standards and practices guidelines.
Proactively supporting a healthy newsroom culture with high performance and quality commitments.
Helping the teamwork through technical issues and anticipate technical needs.
Stays up to date on news and current affairs pertaining to Black America and the diaspora.
Education/Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience in communications, journalism, Web production or related subject preferred.
Minimum 3 years experience producing digital content at a major news network or online news publication.
Have a firm understanding of rights and clearances, and thoroughly track sources of material for licensing.
Must have expert-level experience with all aspects of digital video production.
Proven knowledge of online production and multimedia storytelling, online publishing systems and technologies.
Proven ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects simultaneously.
Demonstrated organizational and time management skills and works well under deadline pressure.
Story-driven editing and producing experience.
Strong knowledge of current events.
Passionate about amplifying the news and culture of Black people.
About Us:
We are the #1 Black-owned, digital video-centric news platform devoted to providing Black America with compelling stories and perspectives.
Established in 2009, TheGrio is a trusted voice in the Black community. In 2021, we’re continuing to reshape media narratives, uplift Black voices, and report from the front lines of our communities.
TO APPLY FOLLOW THE LINK: http://careers.weathergroup.com/
NY-ATL-LA- Remote- Job Details:: Audio Producer and Writer
TheGrio
(n) grī/ō, ‘grīō: Journalist. Historian. Praise Singer. Poet. Musician. Curator. Storyteller.
TheGrio, is a digital, video-centric news community devoted to giving voice to trusted figures on the front line who inspire us every day, and to fresh perspectives who buck convention because there’s more than one way to be Black. We believe a well-informed community best determines its own interests. And so, TheGrio’s editorial mandate is to focus on news and events which have a pronounced impact on a Black global audience. We unabashedly explore culture and entertainment, health and lifestyle, politics and policy, business and empowerment, science and climate, tech and innovation, and everything in between that matters to us. From Kampala to Atlanta TheGrio is Black culture amplified.
TheGrio is strongly building its editorial staff. It is an investment in the business’s core competencies. These jobs will primarily be based in NY and Atlanta. Some of the positions will be opportunities to work from other cities or fully remote. Byron Allen, CEO of Allen Media Group, says, “TheGrio is the leader of fearless journalism and inspirational storytelling about Black people. No other Black news outlet has our cumulative audience reach or impact. This is a natural growth of our brand sponsorships, and editorial partnerships for TheGrio’s content on digital, mobile, streaming, podcasts, and social media.”
JOB OVERVIEW
TheGrio is looking for Audio Producers and Writers for its Podcast Network. The ideal candidates will help write and produce episodes for multiple podcasts per week. This job is located in New York, NY.
Responsibilities:
Assist the Managing Editor of Podcasts in all aspects of content creation.
Producing and developing episode content and show ideas that fit with specific Grio podcast themes – covering all aspects of the Black experience – including news, entertainment, politics, social justice, education, etc.
Research current events, trends, topics that keep theGrio’s brand relevant, fresh and impactful to Black audiences.
Writing scripts for multiple podcasts.
Collaborating with hosts and media teams to meet their vision and clarify storyline when editing interviews into episodes, but also comfortable working autonomously.
Ensuring each show meets the highest audio and video quality standards.
Cooperatively collaborates on production and post-production.
Diligently maintains schedules and workflows for all podcasts.
Ensures the accurate and timely management of an audio library, archives, and music.
Sourcing audio material for each episode.
Managing files in a storage system.
Proactively supporting a healthy newsroom culture with high performance and quality commitments.
Consistently thoroughly track sources of material for licensing.
Stays up to date on news and current affairs pertaining to Black America and the diaspora.
REQUIREMENTS
A Bachelor’s degree is required.
Deep knowledge and awareness of Black America.
Strong knowledge of narrative storytelling.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Excellent organizational and time management skills.
Demonstrated organizational and time management skills.
Works well under deadline pressure with multiple projects in production at one time.
Ability to work independently, be proactive, and take initiative.
3 years’ experience producing/writing in audio industry, podcasts.
Maintains ethical journalism standards.
Works as a team player capable of clearly communicating with key stakeholders.
Have a firm understanding of rights and clearances.
Must have expert level experience with all aspects of audio production.
Proven knowledge of online production and multimedia storytelling, online publishing systems and technologies.
Story-driven producing experience.
About Us:
We are the #1 Black-owned, digital video-centric news platform devoted to providing Black America with compelling stories and perspectives.
Established in 2009, TheGrio is a trusted voice in the Black community. In 2021, we’re continuing to reshape media narratives, uplift Black voices, and report from the front lines of our communities.
TO APPLY FOLLOW THE LINK: http://careers.weathergroup.com/
NY-ATL-LA- Remote- Job Details:: Managing Editor and Producer, Podcast
TheGrio
(n) grī/ō, ‘grīō: Journalist. Historian. Praise Singer. Poet. Musician. Curator. Storyteller.
TheGrio, is a digital, video-centric news community devoted to giving voice to trusted figures on the front line who inspire us every day, and to fresh perspectives who buck convention because there’s more than one way to be Black. We believe a well-informed community best determines its own interests. And so, TheGrio’s editorial mandate is to focus on news and events which have a pronounced impact on a Black global audience. We unabashedly explore culture and entertainment, health and lifestyle, politics and policy, business and empowerment, science and climate, tech and innovation, and everything in between that matters to us. From Kampala to Atlanta TheGrio is Black culture amplified.
TheGrio is strongly building its editorial staff. It is an investment in the business’s core competencies. These jobs will primarily be based in NY and Atlanta. Some of the positions will be opportunities to work from other cities or fully remote. Byron Allen, CEO of Allen Media Group, says, “TheGrio is the leader of fearless journalism and inspirational storytelling about Black people. No other Black news outlet has our cumulative audience reach or impact. This is a natural growth of our brand sponsorships, and editorial partnerships for TheGrio’s content on digital, mobile, streaming, podcasts, and social media.”
Job Description:
TheGrio is seeking a Managing Editor Director and Producer to build TheGrio’s podcast network, create content and manage our podcast team. We’re looking for big thinkers with a passion for the Black community and demonstrated excellence in storytelling. This leader will be responsible for the development and business operations of our podcast network, which includes managing an original slate of podcast offerings from TheGrio and managing the podcast network as a platform for unlimited podcasts about the Black experience in America and globally. The ideal candidate is an expert in storytelling, podcast production, technical requirements, distribution models, advanced analytics, project management, as well as managing a team of hosts, producers, and editors.
The Managing Editor Director and Producer will work closely with theGrio’s editorial team to amplify and cross-promote original content on the website, as well as promote larger editorial goals and themes throughout our podcasts.
This leader should be highly organized, self-motivated, creative, collaborative, and familiar with the news and cultural issues important to Black America.
Responsibilities:
Building TheGrio’s Podcast Network as a destination for subscribers interested in podcasts by Black creators or about Black culture.
Manage a team of in-house hosts, producers, and podcast editors.
Working closely with Editorial, the Creative Director and various other departments, including businesses across Entertainment Studios, Ad Sales, Affiliates, Marketing, PR, Legal, Finance, etc., to create a powerhouse podcast network with its own community of engaged listeners.O
Overseeing production and post-production schedules, and workflows for all podcasts.
Ensuring each show meets the highest audio quality standards.
Maintaining the highest legal, ethical and journalism standards for audio publication.
Charting and leading the podcast team with an overall strategy, with corresponding calendars and milestones.
Operating as a chief audio storyteller— coaching and training your team on writing and producing episodes that are download-worthy and relevant to the audience.
Producing original content yourself.
Ensuring the accurate and timely management of an audio library, archives, and music.
Monitoring and managing licensing agreements.
Applying a deep understanding of audience analytics to all shows to organize and optimize content, assess trends, and develop innovative, dynamic content and products, and present reports regularly to leadership teams,
Monitoring metrics, analysis of the broader marketplace, including user behavior and feedback.
Helping the team work through technical issues and anticipate technical needs.
Stay up to date on news and current affairs pertaining to Black America and the diaspora.
Education/Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree (communications or journalism preferred).
4-5 years minimum experience in Podcast management, production.
Adept at relationship building and managing talent.
Ability to operate strategically and tactically as the situation demands.
A results-oriented and mission-driven leader who leans on building workflows and data-driven strategies.
Ability to work in a fast-paced, high-pressure environment without sacrificing accuracy and attention to detail.
Desire to achieve, flexibility and willingness to work the hours necessary to get the job done in a 24×7 environment.
Able to manage the repurposing and/or reversioning of various content.
Excellent collaborative skills and ability to work well on teams.
Experience using newsroom management systems and content management systems.
Strong interpersonal skills.
Knowledgeable in developing and producing rich content and a range of programming formats for multiple platforms aimed at broadening and developing audience loyalty.
Story-driven writing and producing experience.
Strong knowledge of current events.
Passionate about amplifying the news and culture of Black people.
About Us:
We are the #1 Black-owned, digital video-centric news platform devoted to providing Black America with compelling stories and perspectives.
Established in 2009, TheGrio is a trusted voice in the Black community. In 2021, we’re continuing to reshape media narratives, uplift Black voices, and report from the front lines of our communities.
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Jeff Welton is Nautel’s regional sales manager for the central U.S., but that job title doesn’t capture his better-known role as “go-to” guy for technical tips, problem-solving and entertaining public presentations.
The industry has caught on. In 2018 he received the Society of Broadcast Engineers James C. Wulliman Educator of the Year Award. In 2019 the Association of Public Radio Engineers handed him the APRE Engineering Achievement Award. And in 2020 he received the NAB Radio Engineering Achievement Award.
This conversation is from the Radio World ebook “Mission-Critical: Maintaining Your Transmitter Site.”
RW: When we’re talking about maintaining a site for broadcast radio operators, you have a philosophy.
Welton: I’m a guy who works for a transmitter company, but it’s a good philosophy for almost any electronic installation. The three principle tenets are: Keep it cool, keep it clean and keep it well grounded.
RW: There are hundreds of things we could talk about to meet those goals. Where do you start?
Welton: My wife likes to say that I can spot a butterfly half a mile away and go chasing it off into the wilderness, totally losing my train of thought. It’s easier for me to pick a specific task and approach that first.
A FLIR infrared camera attachment lets Jeff take quick visual temperature readings.I might walk into a facility and look at airflow direction and check to make sure that the air is going to the actual intake so the equipment that needs to be cooled. Or I might go in with a temperature meter — a Fluke infrared temperature sensor, or I’ve got one of the FLIR infrared camera attachments for my cellphone, it’s a wonderful tool — and do temperature readings to spot checks throughout the facility to see if there are any hotspots that may need additional air flow.
I may do another trip and just do a look-around and open a panel or two. If you’re seeing piles of dirt building up in your equipment, that’s a hint and a half that something needs to be done with air pressure and filtering. You look for the clues as you go. Obviously lightning protection and grounding are easiest. Stuff’s blowing up? You need to do more of it.
RW: Have you found that having fewer engineers coming into the business and fewer people who understand RF has made this a lot harder?
Welton: It does make it a little more challenging. With younger folks being so oriented toward IT and IP addresses, management [may forget] there’s still a big, heavy piece of equipment out there that generates heat and needs a lot of cooling and some maintenance.
We’ve been doing Tuesday webinars on maintenance and mentoring; you can find the archives on the Nautel website.
In addition to newer engineers who aren’t so intimately familiar with the big, heavy, glowing stuff, a lot of managers are working with lower budgets. When you’re running low on time and money, you’re not going to put as many resources towards maintenance — the oil changes, if you will.
Keep spares of any “mission critical” components. Managers, ask your engineer what they could not do without in an emergency.But most people wouldn’t think of going 80,000 miles without changing the oil on their car, so why would you let the transmitter, which generates all the revenue or underwriting for your station, go for a full year without any maintenance whatsoever?
Especially in the year of COVID, where every day became a series of remote broadcasts as on-air hosts and DJs got moved to their living rooms, engineering gets stretched really thin, going from a couple of remote broadcasts a week to half a dozen a day. The resources for site maintenance and transmitter maintenance get stretched even thinner.
But you can’t leave the air filters in the transmitter until they’re covered with a half-inch of crud.
RW: Is that the most common problem you’re hearing about?
Welton: It’s a bunch of things. High winds get into ventilation systems because exhaust fans failed and weren’t putting the air out, so the wind blew the rain back into the transmitter.
I’ve had one that got snowed on. Several leaky roofs, several lightning-damaged systems as a result of lack of maintenance on the grounding system.
It’s more from a lack of attention or personal presence at the site to catch these things before they become an issue. Some of it may be purely financial. A new transmitter at a low-power level costs a couple of thousand dollars, an engineer costs tens of thousands, so do the math; it’s cheaper to replace the transmitter every so often. It’s a conscious decision in some cases. In other cases, “We got busy and forgot.”
RW: What is the recommended frequency of visiting a remote site for general inspection?
Welton: If I’ve got a site in a cornfield in Iowa, where I’m dealing with windblown dust on a regular basis, it needs to be visited once a month, especially in the summer. If I’ve got a sealed air-conditioned facility and a company was contracted to come in to clean the heat exchanger coils, I may visit that once a year.
Inspect towers by night, and by day, checking paint as well as lights. Know whom to notify if lights are out.I’ve done Mississippi in cottonwood season; if you’re running a forced air system, you’re going to be down there every couple of weeks in July and August.
It will depend on your sites; but there needs to be a schedule and you can’t vary from it too much.
RW: Let’s imagine getting ready to go to a site for a monthly inspection. What’s in your kit?
Welton: The number one tool is the two-foot bolt cutters! I call it the skeleton key — for when a power company guy changed locks around my lock at a multi-access site.
Then my infrared camera, which I can attach to my cellphone. I can power it up as I walk in the building, and point it at the power panels and run it over the coax, looking for any hotspots before I’ve even unpacked my gear.
A caveat is that you need to have a non-reflective surface. Especially with laser-guided infrared cameras, reflective paint can skew the readings. (I’m Canadian so I like hockey tape, a cloth-based tape with matte finish that sticks really well; you can stick that on your electrical panel.)
After the temperature sensor, a small kit of hand tools with a knuckle-buster — a crescent wrench or adjustable wrench.
With stuff coming in from overseas, I’m going to want a combination of metric and Imperial tools.
A Leatherman or Gerber [multi-tool], at your preference, so you’ve got Phillips and flathead screwdrivers.
If I knew I’d be looking at air filters, I’d want a full set of air filters and belts for the blowers already at the transmitter site, or in my toolkit.
I carry a first aid kit, rather than putting electrical tape, an old paper towel or shop rag on our finger when we cut it. I am known for sticking my fingers in places I probably shouldn’t have stuck them.
RW: Ideally you would bring someone with you for safety reasons, but that’s probably not practical for a lot of stations.
Welton: The person doesn’t have to be RF-trained. Have somebody there, show them where the circuit breaker is in case you get connected across something you shouldn’t be connected across.
They need to be able to call 911, whether it’s a landline or a cell phone, depending on the service area. A lot of sites tend to be above cell coverage. But have a way to reach emergency services.
Beyond that, they’re there to make sure you don’t do anything foolish. Ideally somebody who doesn’t distract you from what you’re doing.
A lot of engineers take their significant other. Or grab the general manager. It’s good to have the GM go. I still run into GMs who don’t know where their site is.
RW: If time is limited and you’re doing a regular visit rather than responding to a specific problem, what are you checking?
Welton: Anything that handled air — whether it’s a filtered air intake, an open-air intake transmitter, air filters, heat exchanger coils on an air conditioning system. Check the cooling system, whatever it happened to be.
While reliable cooling is important, remember that an air conditioner that is oversized for your space may cause condensation and mold.Listen for blower belts that might be starting to squeak or getting a little persnickety.
If it’s a generator site, I’d run the generator to make sure it started. On a regular basis, you also need to do a full load test and switch the whole site over to generator.
Check the foliage. Look for carcasses like snakes or other kind of vermin in and out of the building.
If it’s an AM, I’m glancing at the base insulator and taking a quick check on guy wire anchors. Just do a physical once-over. Walk around.
RW: You’ve probably seen things that made you shake your head.
Welton: A few. I walked into one site where I was convinced, by the end of the visit, that the engineer was trying to find a way to commit suicide. It was the scariest thing I’d ever seen. Open panels, bypassed interlocks, the tuning unit had overgrown to the point you were running a risk of tripping or falling just going into the antenna enclosure.
He had been unwell and somebody had been covering; but it was a collection of “This is not really good.”
For the most part, people take pride in their facilities. But there are times when you’ll see pieces of Schedule 90 conduit lying on the floor waiting for somebody to step on them, go for a ride, bang their head on a cabinet and lay there unconscious until somebody finds them.
The safety thing is critical. I don’t go into any site where I’m going to be touching electrical stuff without safety shoes on. It’s just a given. They’re a cheap investment and good insurance.
But if you look at the number of engineers found at transmitter sites, most of the time it wasn’t electricity that killed them. It was a trip and a fall and bang your head on something, or a heart attack, or an intruder.
We get too busy doing things. You put in a full day at the studio or in meetings, and then a transmitter goes down, and you spend the next 12 hours at the transmitter site. Sometimes you need to know when it’s time to pull the plug and say, “I’m too tired to do this coherently, and I’m a danger to myself and my equipment.”
RW: You’re not doing the station any good if you get yourself killed —
Welton: Right.
RW: Or yourself.
Welton: Well —
RW: Go ahead.
Welton: Somebody used to say, “Nobody ever died from a lack of rock ’n’ roll.”
RW: Are there common questions or service issues that come up?
Welton: I get a lot of questions on grounding. If you’re laying on a new site and want a good resource to get started, I refer people to the grounding for transmitter stations paper in the Resources tab of our website. Or Google the Motorola R56 standard. It goes into massive detail. If you follow that, you’re probably going to have the best grounded facility you can have.
Stock your site with emergency supplies like drinking water, paper towers, cleaning wipes and first aid kit, and if the site is remote, consider a survival kit. For ideas, see fivegallonideas.com/emergency-kit. (Getty Images)One of the biggest questions I get is when somebody is putting a new piece of equipment into a facility that they’ve owned for decades and that has seen several transmitters, several engineers, and things have been laid on top of other things. Sometimes you need to assess whether it’s best to rip it all out and start again or whether you can add without creating loops and more challenges. Just take the time to sit down and assess where you are before you start.
The bulk of what we see in emergency situations? You’re not going to stop an “out-of-a-blue 200,000 amp lightning strike,” but the vast majority of [problems] could have been prevented by scheduled site visits and replacement cycles.
Everybody’s like, “Oh, the transmitter guy’s saying buy a new transmitter.” Well, I’m not saying buy a new transmitter this week. But when you have a piece of gear that’s 40 years old, you probably should be starting to think about the time to get a new one. And the best time is not when it’s got smoke coming out the top of it.
RW: We’ve all heard stories about an engineer finding a bullet hole in a pressurized line. That makes me think about the question of personal safety. Are a lot of clients going up there with a sidearm?
Welton: I’m a Canadian, which is an unarmed American with health insurance. I’m not really qualified to answer that. But I grew up in a farm country with guns, and when we went back in the woods, typically we had a weapon with us of some sort, whether it was for vermin control or because we had bears back there.
The Alaskan folks, you better have a sidearm going up there because running into a Kodiak bear is going to make for a bad day.
Sometimes it’s not the rural sites. Some of the urban locations I’ve been to — I was at a site in Houston where they had double razor wire fencing, and you had to go in through the outer gate, and the inner gate wouldn’t open until the outer gate was closed.
Again, it’s situational. I’ve got sites in Wyoming where I wouldn’t think anything of driving in there at one o’clock in the morning. You might see a bighorn sheep.
If you’re coming to a facility, you’re not familiar with, do it during the day until you get a feel for the area.
RW: There’s so much we could talk about — documentation or stocking the facility with emergency supplies.
Welton: Oh my goodness. Documentation. You said that and my eyes lit up.
So often, things are done with no hint of a note as to what was done or why. Document everything.
The older I get, the less inclined I am to remember why I did whatever I did 20 years ago. Also, for the value of the station — at some point somebody is going to look at this going, “What was he thinking?”
Welton suggests you label everything with serial numbers, service dates, what plugs go where, transmitter TPO etc. Shown is a Sanford RHINO 5200 Label Printer kit.[At one time] you walked into a site, the first thing you did was sign into the logbook; and before you left, you filled in notes on everything you did. We need to get back to that.
With tools like Evernote, you can do audio transcription or attach photos, put in handwritten notes and have character recognition — tools like that on a cellphone are huge.
Now, doing a full spreadsheet, a list of every wire in the facility, starting from scratch, that’s going to take some time; but it takes a lot less to update it as you go than it does five years from now to have to create it from nothing.
So, document, document, document.
RW: Is there a section of the Nautel website you want people to be aware of?
Welton: When you go to the support page, there are links to “how-to” videos. If the service guys get regular calls on something they’ll create a short how-to video for our YouTube channel.
And there’s the latest software. Things we used to do with bags of resistors, capacitors and a sheet of instructions are done with software updates now, so you can find the latest software, read through the release notes to see if it applies to your situation. And my “Tips and Tricks” articles, the quarterly Waves newsletter that we put out.
RW: Final thoughts, Jeff.
Welton: The laptop is less a luxury item than a necessary tool. Obviously we pioneered this with the AUI back in the early 2000s, but more and more equipment will have features that you can access over an IP connection that you won’t necessarily have access to from the front panel.
For a contract engineer, you almost can’t do your job properly without a station or personal laptop or a tablet anymore. Some sort of electronic device that you can plug into an RJ-45 connection.
A Few More TipsHere’s a further sampling from Welton’s “Tips and Tricks” presentations:
The post Keep Your RF Plant Cool, Clean and Well-Grounded appeared first on Radio World.
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