In the words of veteran Boston-area radio programming and marketing pro Clark Smidt, “Speakers become smart when they say the right words or play the best music.
Who’s at the controls? This very question could make the difference between having a consumer call up a personality-free playlist on a streaming audio service, or your radio station’s easily accessible audio stream.
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In May, RBR+TVBR correctly predicted that Allen Media Group would end up purchasing an ABC affiliate that Meredith Local Media had agreed to divest in order for it to complete its $2.825 billion sale to Gray Television.
On Thursday (9/23), the group led by Byron Allen closed on its acquisition of that Meredith property — a move that suggests Gray’s closing on the Meredith properties is on track for a Q4 closing.
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ENCO’s business started with computer-based process control for critical industrial applications in the early 1980s, but it soon focused that technical expertise on broadcasting. In 1991 its first digital audio delivery system, DAD, replaced manual cart systems commonly used to sequence and play audio content.
Bill Bennett is media solutions account manager. This is excerpted from a recent ebook.
Bill BennettRadio World: How has the pandemic experience changed workflows for your clients?
Bill Bennett: Historically, most radio production has been done in the studio, with someone directly iterating with their DAD system at the station. And over the course of a day, that could be perhaps 10 different people needing access to a production or on-air system at different times.
Then suddenly, all these people are working from their homes, but the station can’t have eight or 10 separate DAD physical installations located at each of their homes. That’s one of the examples where WebDAD shines, as it’s a browser-based remote control client, allowing those remote users to connect via VPN back to the main DAD systems at the studio, and keep focused on churning out their content, whether they have a PC or Mac.
RW: Are there new capabilities that have come to the fore?
This article is excerpted from the ebook “Automation: The Next Phase.” Click the cover to read it.Bennett: ENCO users are finding new ways to work while remote or mobile, with our HTML-5 based mobile automation solution called WebDAD, which allows for native remote control of our DAD automation system over the public Internet via VPN connection. It’s also a great resource when using part-time talent who need only limited access to some systems or only at certain times.
WebDAD allows users to access to the most popular DAD features remotely via Web browser, whether down the hall or across the country, making it a key component for today’s decentralized radio workforce.
It gives them native connectivity and remote control of their DAD system, where they can do things like library and playlist maintenance, change up their content live with array panels, perform voicetracking, upload audio files, edit heads and tails, and more.
RW: What have manufacturers learned that might affect future designs?
Bennett: The customer more than ever is ready to trust the cloud for storage, playout, automation, and for the sharing of audio and video assets, as well as collaborate on shared documents, notes and rundowns.
Pre-COVID, a lot of radio stations still used a more simplified methodology, not wanting or needing to adopt a Cloud or Internet-based solutions. But the pandemic changed everything and they instantly required it.
Many manufacturers, including ENCO, have been saying, “We have been building out this elegant, flexible way to gain native remote access to your playout over a IP network from a simple web browser” And people were already becoming familiar with Web-based editing of documents collaboratively via products by Google, Microsoft Office and so on, so that’s been helpful to grease the skids in radio production workflows.
The customer is learning there’re many different ways to produce a show, both live and tracked from different locations, literally without skipping a beat now.
RW: What is the role of virtualization?
Bennett: Virtualization is a term used a lot these days. With ENCO’s products, it means a powerful path forward, allowing customers to do things such as build fault-tolerant radio automation solutions that are dynamically scalable, more immune to security threats, and are easier to maintain with lower cost of ownership. Same with our WebDAD product – that virtualizes a DAD playout & automation environment allowing radio talent to build and track their productions from locations far away from the physical DAD installation, securely. It really opens up a whole new set of flexible options for the production folks.
If a broadcaster has to change playout sources from physical studios to a cloud-based instance, perhaps for disaster recovery, if they have a cloud-based playout system in-sync with that — for example, ENCO has our DAD DR solution — that cloud-based system is controlling what’s on the air and feeding the transmitter and streaming end points or streaming CDNs.
And now with Zoom, Skype and the rest, it’s possible to have a fairly high-fidelity audio interview with people all over the world at the same time, where they can see each other’s reactions – then you’ve built a kind of virtual studio at that point, which is super flexible.
RW: Will automation and related software systems move fully to the cloud?
Bennett: Enthusiastically, yes. I am certain we are going to see a mix of hybrid solutions as well as fully cloud-based solutions.
The best for most broadcasters probably is a hybrid solution. But one of the coolest things about the cloud is that you can access your playout securely from anywhere on the web; and your systems are also automatically being backed up for you at the data center, so you’ve got some redundancy built into your cloud system that you may not be able to have at the station (or may lose, if a terrible disaster happens at the station).
RW: Are there special configurations that people are asking for?
Bennett: Yes for sure – for one, they want their remote workers to have access to their on-air systems, and WebDAD brings that to the table. Their staff keeps connected with a familiar interface, from the comfort of their Web browser at home. Also, for those who are at the station but need to keep physically distanced, WebDAD can be installed on computers throughout the station, allowing production staff to access DAD to manage playlists and so forth, without having to go in and out of studios where others have been.
Another is ENCO’s automated speech-to-text captioning product called enCaption. It makes live voice interviews accessible to the hard of hearing and deaf communities by creating real-time captions of what’s spoken on the air, which can then be delivered to the radio broadcaster’s Website in real time.
RW: Are there customers doing particularly interesting or notable things right now?
Bennett: We have a customer in California that has a full DAD solution in the cloud, running six concurrent radio stations, all hosted on Amazon Web Services and using WebDAD to control it.
There are zero physical facilities, it’s all cloud playout. That’s six live concurrent stations that access the playout system from anywhere on the internet. They just need a WebDAD client on the browser and the login back to the main system in the cloud and they can control what’s on the air.
And we’ve got a customer, again on the West Coast, using our video playback platform ClipFire to generate dynamic graphics for news, weather bugs and icons and to squeeze the video in and out of the frame or enlarge and shrink the video to make the graphic sit better. It’s an automated way to help a broadcaster put more contemporaneous texts, news data and crawls into their linear broadcast channel. It’s neat for radio because of the evolving space around visual radio.
The post Radio Automation Goes Mobile appeared first on Radio World.
On September 8, its shares, traded on NYSE, reached a record high of $303.62. Today, with shares slightly lower, American Tower Corp. is among the best performers on Wall Street in the broader telecommuncations sector.
Now, the Boston-based company founded by the late Steve Dodge has priced its registered public offering of senior unsecured notes due 2026, 2031 and 2051.
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Taking advantage of the burgeoning remote/work-from-home market, Studio Technologies has designed the Model 209 talent console.
The 209 is a creature of the Ethernet/IP audio world, operating PoE. It has 48 V phantom power, a headphones output along with a level control plus a talkback/cough button.
[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]
The Model 209 is compatible with AES67 and Dante audio-over-Ethernet technology as well as compatible with Audinate’s Dante Domain Manager. Additional compatibility is with Yellowtec m!ka microphone mounts and booms and Studio Technologies STcontroller app for Windows and Mac. STcontroller controls functions such as mic level, phantom power and tally controls.
Studio Technologies President Gordon Kapes said, “While originally designed for podcasters, the Model 209 is truly an ‘all-Dante’ solution that can deliver excellent audio in many modern broadcast applications.”
Send your new equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.
Info: https://studio-tech.com/
The post Remote Talent Console From Studio Technologies appeared first on Radio World.
With a new administration, one would assume that by now, the White House would have nominated its choice for Chairman of the FCC.
It hasn’t happened, and it is nothing less than “a really weird situation,” says Fletcher Heald & Hildreth partner Francisco Montero.
How weird is it? At the Hispanic Radio Conference in Miami on Thursday, Montero suggested that, if the Biden Administration does nothing, the FCC could end up with a Republican majority again.
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On September 21, RBR+TVBR reported that after 33 years in creative and leadership roles at Disney, Gary Marsh will be stepping down as President and Chief Creative Officer of Disney Branded Television at the end of 2021 to launch his own production company.
Two days later, Marsh’s successor as President was revealed by Disney General Entertainment Chairman Peter Rice.
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MIAMI — The endless commercial break. It’s so bad that Radio Ink Editor Ed Ryan’s daughter, 24, won’t even listen to the radio. Is the stopset slog a problem for Hispanic radio? Ryan probed four of the industry’s top executives as the moderator of the Hispanic Radio Executive Leadership Roundtable on Wednesday afternoon at the Hispanic Radio Conference in Miami.
First to tackle the sensitive topic: Otto Padron, President/CEO of Meruelo Media.
Noting that radio is often prone to the “drip and drop” of spots across every commercial break, Padron noted that the key challenge was to try to balance spots with every other way a radio station is able to make money. And, there is always a conflict in try to achieve that balance.
That’s why Padron doesn’t look at advertisements as commercials, but rather as disruptions.
Is there the right balance? No, he admits. At the same time, he holds the belief that radio is not just a music platform. “There is something that the DSPs are not going to be able to provide,” Padron says of digital pure-play audio sources.
Meanwhile, some dayparts will need to balance others, as commercial-free hours take away spots that are, in a way, made up for at other points in a day.
When it came time for Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS) COO Albert Rodriguez to offer his thoughts on the topic, he struck a very reverent tone, one that practically proselytized Radio and its untapped power. That said, it was very clear that having too many commercials isn’t a bad thing.
“We are in a beautiful business when we are completely oversold,” Rodriguez says. “It’s the time to call our clients and tell them we need more! When you tell your clients they can’t have something, they want it more.”
Ryan proved to be a strong moderator, pushing the topic further as Univision Radio President Jesus Lara offered his biggest challenge: attribution. With respect to the spot loads, “it depends on the daypart and on seasonality,” Lara says.
Norsan Media Chairman/CEO Norberto Sanchez, whose stations can be found across the Southeast, noted that at his regional Mexican properties, sales are at 120% of capacity. Could he raise the rates to get that down to 100%? “That’s kind of tough,” Sanchez admits.
The conversation then wound back to Rodriguez, who again waxed poetically about the wonders of Radio and how Hispanic audio, in particular, has a window of opportunity to grow. His words prompted Ryan to remark, “It sounds like an investor phone call for you,” resulting in laughter from the capacity in-person audience at the Intercontinental in Doral.
Ryan further pushed the question by asking the panelists if it is fair for the No. 7 advertiser in a spotload with 10 commercials to pay the same rates as the first or second advertiser. Padron noted that there is some “pod exclusivity,” but this reflects categories and not the total number of commercials. Furthermore, Padron says, there’s a wholesaler picking up inventory and that creates traffic headaches for Meruelo’s stations.
Lara adds that Univision Radio has “a couple of volume deals” with a couple of third-party players.
Speaking from the audience, noted multicultural media sales strategist Sherman Kizart shared that he’d just spent the last two hours on the phone with Publicis, as its “Once and For All” coalition, comprised of 21 clients and audio activation teams, were “trying to figure out how to spend more money with everybody in the room.”
HispanicAd.com publisher Gene Bryan sparred with Kizart, disputing just how much investment companies other than Procter & Gamble Co. are investing in Hispanic media.
The conversation ended with a question from Dana Cortez, the syndicated radio host. She asked the panel what Radio can do to rebrand itself? The answer from SBS’s Rodriguez? “Don’t be afraid to embrace audio because it enhanced Radio,” he says.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The President and CEO of a family-owned broadcast media company headquartered in Oklahoma has been named to the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Television Board of Directors by Television Board Chair Perry Sook in accordance with NAB by-laws.
The appointment is effective immediately.
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The MSNBC weekend anchor and co-host of the Latina-To-Latina podcast participated via Zoom in an engaging Hispanic Radio Conference interview conducted by SBS EVP/Programming Jesus Salas.
The focus: the power of podcasting targeting Hispanics, and just how personal it can be for those listening to what Alicia Menendez has to say.
Menendez told attendees from New York that she’s been on TV for years, on streaming platforms and even had a radio show on SiriusXM. But, she’s never had the intimacy with the audience than she has with her podcast.
“They give me feedback about their lives, they give me feedback about the show,” she noted. “That’s the reason we do this show. It’s a labor of love. We’re building a community.”
Menendez added that there wasn’t much celebrating when the show was went over 1 million downloads. She said her sights were set on two million downloads, and added, “because that’s how you build an empire.”
Menendez believes she, along with co-host Juleyka Lantigua, who was present in Miami on September 22, have planted the flag as the premiere Latina podcast but also admitted there’s still so much room to grow. Mendendez noed, “Forty four percent of the United States Latina population has never listened to a podcast. There’s a huge opportunity there.”
When Menendez was asked about monetization, she said unfortunately she still has to explain that Latinos are mainstream to some advertisers. “Advertisers do not need a separate marketing budget for our audience.”
The Latina To Latina podcast launched in 2018. Menendez said she learned quickly about the importance of delivering the show consistently and building up a volume of episodes that her audience can go back and listen to.
— With reports from Podcast Business Journal
MIAMI — When it comes to early-morning sessions at a business conference, there’s nothing more enticing than “a riveting dive into some delightful technical details of broadcast regulation” … right?
Based on the strong attendance at the Hispanic Radio Conference in Doral, home to Univision, NBCUniversal’s Telemundo and some of the top Hispanic marketing and advertising leaders in the U.S. today, there could have perhaps been no stronger topic to begin a full day of sessions with.
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Add St. Louis to the market roster of locales where ATSC 3.0-powered NEXTGEN TV is now available to those who have a television set capable of receiving the next-generation broadcast TV signals.
The September 23 launch includes Sinclair Broadcast Group, Meredith Local Media, TEGNA and two Nexstar Media Group stations.
The launch in St. Louis follows a decade of development and months of planning and preparation by the local stations in the market, with Nexstar-owned KPLR-11 serving as the “lighthouse” for sibling KTVI-2, the FOX affiliate; Sinclair’s ABC affiliated KDNL-30, Meredith’s KMOV-4 and TEGNA’s NBC-affiliated KSDK-5.
NEW YORK — Hearst Television has officially turned on the lights at Hearst Audience Marketplace, described as “a data-driven audience-targeting feature enabling marketers to use connected TV (CTV), over-the-top (OTT) and programmatic display/video platforms more easily to reach the most specific category of consumer down to zip-code level.”
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NEW YORK — The Video Advertising Bureau (VAB) has released an in-depth custom analysis of the marketing and media investment strategies of some of the fastest-growing DTC brands.
VAB analyzed the following 30 brands, which the groups says “are each embracing a total audience marketing strategy to successfully fuel business outcomes.”
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In March, Gray Television announced that it was leading a $40 million investment round for Envy Gaming, an eSports and entertainment company based in Dallas. It was noteworthy, as the broadcast TV station owner became the first company among its peers to follow the radio industry’s lead by investing in the growing gaming industry.
Now, The E.W. Scripps Co. is following Gray’s lead by dropping its dollars into a Boca Raton, Fla.-based gaming group.
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NEW YORK — The independent TV measurement and analytics firm known as 605 has expanded its partnership with data and technology provider PlaceIQ, a relationship that brings “always on” planning, measurement and attribution to the television marketplace.
How so?
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If you had registered to attend the 2021 NAB Show that was supposed to take place this October, you can expect to receive a notice that your registration has rolled over to the spring show automatically.
The rollover is for the same attendance package or value.
A spokesperson for the association said that if attendees prefer a refund, they can obtain one by request through March 22.
The 2021 NAB Show had been set for October but was cancelled on Sept. 15 because of the ongoing pandemic. The 2022 convention is scheduled for April 23 to 27.
Meanwhile the AES Show, which had planned to colocate with NAB, now will be done online; program details have been posted.
The post NAB Show Registrations Roll Over appeared first on Radio World.
A Class B FM serving the capital city of Ohio with rock ‘n’ roll programming, along with its “Jack FM” Class A sibling and “Easy” AM with a FM translator, are getting a little bit of an ownership twist.
Not to worry, listeners: North American Broadcasting Company isn’t making any changes to the station’s programming.
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Joan Warner, the CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, will step down early next year.
“The search for a replacement CEO will commence immediately with the aim of a new CEO taking up the position during the first quarter of 2022,” the organization stated in an announcement.
It said she originally intended to leave at the end of December but will stay another three months to allow a more comprehensive search.
“There are also major projects with which the board has asked I continue to assist in the early implementation stages and to ensure a smooth and seamless handover to the incoming CEO.”
This past July was her 20th anniversary in the CEO position. CRA represents the interests of commercial radio broadcasters in the country. Known as the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters when Warner started, it changed its name to Commercial Radio Australia Limited in 2002.
The announcement was made by CRA Chair Grant Blackley, who said Warner has had “a substantial and meaningful impact on CRA and the industry over the past two decades and has worked tirelessly to advance the strategic imperatives for a healthy and vibrant radio industry.
“The radio industry has recovered well from the COVID impact and is gaining further momentum with a renewed commercial approach at industry level to drive increased share of advertising to radio,” Blackley said.
He noted that CRA recently announced an important change in radio measurement. “The Australian metropolitan radio ratings will undergo a major revolution in response to the rapid digitization of audio consumption in Australia, with live streaming data to be integrated into a new multimillion dollar hybrid measurement system.
“There is an extensive amount of work already underway across industry integration with smart speakers and connected cars, an improved and comprehensive all-of-industry automated trading platform to be implemented in 2022, and the continued maturity and acceleration of both podcasting and audio streaming platforms.”
The website The Industry Obsesrver wrote, “During her tenure, Warner was responsible for the planning, rollout and implementation of DAB+ digital radio in the five metro capitals, covering up to 60% of the natation population, and the subsequent push into regional Australia … Her relationship with creatives, rightsholders and the state-funded triple j network was, at times, frosty.”
[Related: Read Radio World’s interview with Warner about DAB+ in Australia in our recent free ebook.]
The post Warner to Step Down at Commercial Radio Australia appeared first on Radio World.
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