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There will be nearly 2 billion active subscriptions to on-demand video services in 2025.

That’s the key finding of a new report by U.K.-based research and analytical services firm Juniper Research — and good news for broadcast TV station owners.

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The Media Bureau has said yes to a media company’s Petition for Declaratory Ruling seeking FCC approval to exceed the foreign ownership benchmark.

It’s a victory for a Burbank, Calif.-based entity focused on Hispanic consumers reborn one year ago, when it exited bankruptcy, changed its name, and said goodbye to its founders.

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Tom Hartnett is the technical director for Comrex.

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

Despite being around for decades, FM broadcasting remains the most popular audio media around. A lot of the reason FM thrives, despite the attempts to create a “better” digital alternative, is technical. FM was defined with technical standards that deliver a low noise signal that allows for easy reception in most environments. But more than that, FM was defined as having deviation standards that allow for an audio bandwidth that covers the majority of the hearing spectrum. Sure, modern audio media bests FM in frequency response and signal-to-noise, but the fidelity of FM remains “good enough” for the vast majority of listeners. So much more than features like stereo imaging and dynamic range optimization, it’s the fidelity of FM that keeps listeners engaged. The ability to hear the funky bass line along with the high-hat cymbal, or the ability to derive the emotional nuances of a speaker’s voice is what makes FM radio shine.

But any broadcast airchain is only as strong as its weakest link. With digital recording and production, it’s relatively easy to make a great-sounding in-studio product. But generating live, remote audio has always come with its own set of challenges and costs. Too many times, broadcasters have been willing to compromise on the fidelity of remote feeds for the sake of cost and convenience, airing live audio from telephones. Telephone systems, by design, convey only the fraction of audio spectrum required for intelligibility. They filter out lows to avoid noise pickup, and they filter out highs for reasons having to do with the dated economics of 20th century digital telephony.

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

Comrex has built a company, and I’ve built a career, finding alternatives to live telephone audio for radio broadcasters. It doesn’t take any scientific studies or high-priced consultants to know that telephone audio is grungy, thin, and fatiguing to listen to at length. If the competitive challenge is to avoid listeners hitting the “next station” button, then maintaining listenable audio throughout your programming should be the primary goal. At the same time, it’s incredibly important that stations engage in their community (and monetize their brand) with remote broadcasting. Technology has helped combine these goals.

I’ll spare the reader a detailed history of this science, but a list of recent technology is helpful. Dedicated loops (when telephone tariffs reigned supreme), RPU radios, frequency extenders (maturing to multiphone line models), ISDN and POTS codecs each saw their era of popularity and utility wax, and each waned for their own reasons. Something new was always available that was more cost-effective or easier to procure. But the main objective — fidelity — was always either equaled or improved.

We all use IP pretty much exclusively for live out-of-studio audio these days, due to ubiquity and cost. And luckily, IP makes carrying higher fidelity audio feeds easy. Audio coding science has come a long way and implementations are now cheaper and lower power. Wireless IP has made the remote broadcaster’s dream a reality. It’s now possible to carry a handheld, battery powered device into the field, and generate programs that rival the sound of in-studio sources.

So game over, right? What could possibly come next? Problems remain to be solved. We still air telephone audio from listeners. Setting up a remote broadcast can still be a challenge for the nontechnical. And specialized audio encoding gear has significant cost.

Meanwhile, nonbroadcast industries have discovered that offering “toll quality” audio for communication isn’t good enough. Like broadcast, a competitive edge can be had by offering an experience with higher audio fidelity. The recent boom in video chat apps proves this point.

While audio challenges exist in that world with regard to echo cancellation and delay, fidelity has never been an issue. Developers saw early on that high-quality audio needs to be part of any system from the ground up. Facetime, Skype, Zoom, Teams, Messenger and Duo all use high-fidelity audio encoders.

Voice-over-IP systems, now common in office environments, aren’t constrained by the legacy telephone system within their borders. They can by default deliver high-fidelity audio encoders when talking exclusively over their LANs. Even on a relatively poor audio system like a telephone handset the difference between an in-office call and out-of-office call can be startling.

This is because calls outside the LAN must convert the fidelity of the audio to the “lowest common denominator,” which is the legacy phone system.

Mobile phone audio quality is a long-time frustration for broadcast. For programming with listener call-ins, there’s been a routine need to disconnect callers who are unintelligible. This makes programs suffer and wastes valuable airtime. But even here, we see that the industry has realized there’s not always a need to stick with legacy low-fidelity audio.

As mobile phones and networks mature, it’s becoming increasingly common to experience high-fidelity “HD Voice” calls between mobile callers. Modern audio encoders like G.722, AMR-WB and EVS are integrated into late model phones, and the voice-over-LTE networks that support this traffic are quickly replacing the legacy networks. Several carriers are able to cross-connect high-fidelity calls between them, expanding the number of users who experience HD Voice on calls.

On VoIP and mobile networks the existing challenge is the same: there’s no easy way to “bridge the gap” and bring this high-fidelity audio into a broadcast studio reliably. So even when calls originate from these advanced networks, the caller audio is converted into the thin fatiguing sound we all know, in order to be compatible with legacy “bridging” systems.

So the next step in the evolution of high-fidelity remote audio for broadcast clearly involves finding a way to leverage existing systems into the studio. While that work is underway, there’s already one existing tool that can be used today to improve telephone audio: WebRTC.

When I first introduced this concept to broadcasters several years ago, it was a hard sell as it was difficult to describe in a concise sentence. But don’t be afraid of the scary technical-sounding name. WebRTC is essentially a video chat app that’s built into virtually every web browser, whether desktop or mobile. It’s an open standard and allows anyone to create a video chat service without requiring any software installation on the participant’s system. That’s because the critical pieces are already in the browser, waiting to be “woken up.”

Like other video conferencing apps, WebRTC uses a high-fidelity audio encoder by default. This encoder is called Opus, and it’s becoming the de facto standard for live web conferencing.

Because WebRTC doesn’t require the video part of a call, every web browser, both desktop and mobile, can now be considered a high-fidelity audio encoder using Opus.

Using WebRTC can be as simple as subscribing to an audio-only service provider like ipDTL, Cleanfeed, or SourceConnect Now. This will require a pro-grade audio-ready computer at each end of the link. The Comrex Opal provides a pro-grade hardware solution that handles all the complexity within its server box.

Either way, by using WebRTC you’re leveraging the power of developments that were never intended to be used for broadcast. This is the way things have been done for decades — from POTS codecs, ISDN to IP, broadcast always finds a way to leverage new developments for their unique requirements.

We’ll continue to do that as existing “HD Voice” networks converge and interoperate. Maybe someday soon the goal of banishing telephones from the radio will come to pass.

The post As Remote Audio Evolves, Fidelity Reigns appeared first on Radio World.

Audio equipment maker TASCAM has added to its USB audio interface line with the US-HR series. These are high-resolution audio versions, 24-bit/192 kHz sample rate compared to the 24-bit/96 kHz of the current US line of USB audio interfaces.

The new kids match also out with the US line in its I/O complement with the US-1x2HR, US-2x2HR and US-4x4HR.

[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]

The core of the US-HR line is the Ultra-HDDA mic preamplifiers with +48V phantom power. Naturally, the line is compatible with Mac and Windows systems.

The US-1x2HR has XLR and 1/4-inch inputs; the US-2x2HR and US-4x4HR offers XLR-1/4-inch combo inputs along with MIDI I/O.

TASCAM says that bundled free software includes Steinberg Cubase LE/Cubasis LE 3, IK Multimedia SampleTank 4 SE, and a free, three-month subscription to Auto-Tune Unlimited.

The maker also points to the physical build of the line: “[the] aluminum honeycomb structure on the side panels with [has] a slight upward tilt. This design not only provides a sleek, eye catching design, it also provides just the right amount of weight so the interface won’t move when cables are connected or disconnected. Equally important, the upward tilt provides the ergonomic benefit of being angled in such a way as to make these interfaces easy to work with.”

Info: www.tascam.com

 

The post TASCAM Adds to USB Interface Offerings appeared first on Radio World.

I’d like to kick this column off with a heartfelt thank you to all of the Workbench readers and friends who sent congratulatory words on reaching the 30-year Workbench milestone. It’s been great reconnecting with you, and I am truly blessed by each of you. Thanks for your support as we start year 31!

Not all wipes are created equal

One of those messages came from Pennsylvania’s Tim Portzline.

Fig. 1: Cleaning wipes may be conductive, posing a risk to electronic parts.

Tim has been reading the column since it first appeared, and he included his first submission with his latest note! He is now an engineer with the Pennsylvania House of Representatives while also doing contract work for several radio stations.

Tim notes that sanitizing wipes are a popular way to clean desks, countertops, doorknobs, etc., especially when trying to stop the spread of COVID-19. However, don’t forget that not all sanitizing wipes are safe for electronics.

He recently got a call from a radio clients about a PR&E BMX console that had failed after being cleaned with wipes that were not intended for use around electronics.

In fairness to the staffer involved, the product labeling didn’t mention anything about sensitive devices. But the liquid in the wipes apparently leaked between the modules and ran down the printed circuit boards below the console’s surface. Channels began turning on and off on their own, and the problem made operating the board impossible for a short time.

By the time Tim arrived at the studio, most of the solution had evaporated so the board was beginning to return to normal. But as a precaution, Tim removed the modules and cleaned them with isopropyl alcohol to eliminate any possible residue that remained.

Fig. 2: Note the resistance of a towel soaked in isopropyl alcohol.

After he finished working on the board, Tim got curious about whether the fluid in the wipes had any measurable resistance.

Ideally, the resistance should have been infinite. However, Tim measured as little as 28K-ohms across a small area with a digital multi-meter, as shown in Fig. 1.

The resistance was certainly low enough to interfere with normal circuit operation of the board, akin to dropping hundreds of stray resistors across the traces of the printed circuit board.

Taking the experiment a step further, Tim tested a paper towel saturated with 91% isopropyl alcohol, shown in Fig. 2.

Here the resistance was infinite, or at least greater than the 2M-ohm maximum resistance of the DMM, making it high enough not to interfere with most low voltage circuits.

So, Tim’s tip: Don’t assume that cleaning wipes are non-conductive! Check them first.

[Related: “Radio Equipment Pandemic Cleaning 101”]

Down the drain

ELWA Ministries Association is a U.S.-based nonprofit, nondenominational Christian ministry providing spiritual and physical aid to the West African country of Liberia.

In addition to a hospital and dental clinic, the organization runs ELWA Radio (Eternal Love Winning Africa), and we welcome their readership.

ELWA engineer Alan Shea writes about condensate drains, which we discussed in Workbench in October. Alan’s tip originates with his dad, who was also a broadcast engineer and was Alan’s first mentor.

To keep the drains clear, especially the trap where water can sit, take a piece of bare #12 solid copper wire and snake it through into the trap where it can sit. The copper leaches out into the trap water and helps kill algae by binding to it, which damages the algae cells, causing them to leak and die.

Another point while we’re on the subject of drains: If you have multiple air handlers, make sure that the condensate drain for each is plumbed individually outdoors, or to a larger drain.

Sometimes, to save time and installation cost, drains are tied together in a manifold-type arrangement. When the tech blows out one drain with compressed air, any algae plugs are simply blown into another A/C unit because of the manifold. Separate drains make more sense.

Alan also had an interesting experience with washing equipment. He encountered a piece of gear with a primary power supply toroid transformer that was a single piece of coiled-up steel. It was running hot, and constantly blowing the input fuse.

Alan realized that the steel laminations had too much eddy currents running through them.

He soaked it in a saltwater solution for an hour, then allowed it to air dry for a day. This created enough rust “insulation” between the laminations to cut down the eddy currents so that the toroid ran cool and no longer blew the input fuse.

Sometimes rust can be a good thing!

Down at the Shack

Any engineers with a little gray on the sides of their heads will remember the ubiquity of RadioShack. I and hundreds of other engineers used their parts more than once, in emergencies, to keep a critical function working.

RadioShack is a shadow of its former self. As a recent AP Business story put it, the company “was unable to capitalize on the PC boom that began in the mid-eighties … it also found itself largely on the outside of the portable device revolution of the aughts and drifting toward irrelevancy. It booked its last profit in 2011.” The brand has been through two bankruptcies in recent years.

Longtime Workbench contributor Dan Slentz dropped us a neat note about an online revival of RadioShack. According to business news reports, the new majority owner Retail Commerce Ventures is a retail acquisition group whose strategy is to buy well-known brands that can benefit from its e-commerce expertise. They previously bought Modell’s Sporting Goods and Pier 1 Imports out of bankruptcy.

The new RadioShack will be online, selling from its own website and via an Amazon storefront. Let us know of any experiences you have with it.

The existing 400 or so brick-and-mortar RadioShacks operate independently and remain open.

What’s hard to believe is that the brand will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2021.

E-commerce sites

Speaking of the internet, Frank Hertel, a consultant with Newman-Kees and another longtime Workbench contributor, was intrigued by the online store Ali Express, which is part of the Alibaba Group based in China that you may have read about. The site is www.aliexpress.com. It offers a most varied selection of “things” — wall-mounted stands, brackets, cables and even gaming accessories.

Have you had experiences good or bad with that e-commerce site or any other alternatives to Amazon, in shopping for things to help you in your engineering work? Drop us a note and let us hear about them.

John Bisset has spent over 50 years in the broadcasting industry. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance. He holds CPBE certification with the Society of Broadcast Engineers and is a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award. Workbench submissions are encouraged, qualify for SBE recertification and can be emailed to johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Workbench: Germicidals May Kill Your Electronics appeared first on Radio World.

Younger listeners play music and shows online and from digital personal collections. My research finds that this music is distributed almost entirely in its original, unprocessed form (Getty Images/JGI/Jamie Grill)

The author is senior engineer with Cavell Mertz & Associates Inc.

Audio processing has reached a level of performance where audio content can have high loudness without the traditional artifacts of audible clipping, pumping, intermodulation distortion, etc.

Of course, audio processing in a broadcast medium is justifiable for over-modulation protection and combatting noisy listening environments.

Due to freedom from distortion in processors and loudness wars, however, much of radio has reached a state of hyper-compression, where already-compressed popular music is fed to multiband compressors and limiters that aggressively reprocess the audio.

This situation is hard to reverse in broadcast, where competitive loudness remains a concern, but I believe minimal processing may be the right direction for online radio media.

I hate to be nostalgic, but FM was once considered a “high fidelity” medium (I’m old enough to remember!).

Consumers used to buy exquisite, expensive tuners to get the best FM sound for their living room systems. Today a number of my non-technical friends don’t even hook up the antenna on their multimedia receivers.

What happened to that reputation, and is it connected to FM’s gradual loss of listeners to online media?

A look at the General Electric transmitter two-page ad in a 1940s issue of Broadcasting Magazine says a lot about FM’s change. (You can see it in detail by clicking the image.)

Click to enlarge.

The signal-to-noise ratio of the new FM system promised to deliver “double the Dynamic Range” of AM and remove “the unreality of artificially controlled sound levels that compress a fortissimo.”

Using an ingenious size comparison between AM and FM (using a photo of an all-woman orchestra during World War II) GE touted the “contrasts of sound intensities … in all its glorious realism.”

Along the way, years ago, FM radio got the idea that dynamic range had no value, and louder was better.

The development of stronger and stronger FM audio processors began. That seemed to work for FM for many years — after all, it was a portable and in-car medium with lower noise and wider frequency response than AM, as well as stereo.

However, the 2000s brought a newer medium: online digital audio that could be delivered to smart phones as well as home computers.

Is less more?

While FM’s decline of listeners may be due to a combination of causes, online audio (streams, podcasts and on-demand playout) have flourished.

Online audio is a 16-bit digital system having a dynamic range greater than 90 decibels, regardless of the bit rate, and lossy compression codecs have continued to improve in sound quality.

Younger listeners play music and shows online and from digital personal collections. My research finds that this music is distributed almost entirely in its original, unprocessed form.

This is true of major on-demand music services, and some are now are offering high-fidelity channels with higher bit rates and even “lossless” coding. The tracks are simply normalized (gain offset) to a common loudness target, without touching the dynamic range of the content.

In a recent project for a major radio group, I found that some online distributors of live station audio are using substantially less processing than their on-air broadcasts. Perhaps some are learning that “artificially controlled sound levels” are not preferred by listeners.

Similarly, podcasts — the fastest growing segment of online audio — are produced and delivered with little or no audio processing.

The target loudness of the online industry is changing to a lower value to permit greater dynamic range.

Rethinking the target

I have the privilege of chairing a drafting committee at the Audio Engineering Society, which is writing a new technical document for online audio parameters.

These interim specifications will evolve to a profile with even wider dynamic range to match audio-for-video standards — and we know how much dynamic range video services deliver!

Broadcasters are now faced with another choice if they adopt “hybrid radio,” which provides a streaming alternative to radio reception as listeners drive outside the broadcast coverage.

FM stations could choose to match the audio processing of their stream to the (hyper-compressed) broadcast audio, to avoid changes as the dashboard receiver switches between off-air and stream.

Or should they? Perhaps radio should reconsider what it broadcasts and move with the audio industry and away from heavy compression.

When hyper-compressed audio is normalized to the same integrated loudness as lightly-processed audio, a heavily-compressed stream sounds weak and flat by comparison. Compressing a stream to sound like air can’t compete with natural, dynamic sound.

Considering this, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the FM stations, too, returned their own air audio to a high-fidelity condition, as FM promised 75 years ago?

A free Radio World ebook explores trends in processing for radio, including the management of over-the-air and streamed signals. Find it at radioworld.com/ebooks.

The post Is It Time for Radio to Restore Dynamic Range? appeared first on Radio World.

Minnesota broadcaster Greg Borgen died in December. He was 64.

According to his obituary, he died unexpectedly on Dec. 21.

He was owner and president of Borgen Broadcasting, licensee of Twin City-area stations WDGY(AM) and WREY(AM) and several associated FM translators; and he has been a member of the board of the Minnesota Broadcasters Association.

“Greg was a second-generation radio broadcaster who was known, loved and admired throughout Minnesota, western Wisconsin and beyond,” the obituary read. “He was a true family man, who did everything and more for his family that he loved so dearly.”

 

The post Greg Borgen Dies, Age 64 appeared first on Radio World.

Jon Laing has been promoted to vice president and market manager for Cumulus Cincinnati, succeeding Dave Crowl, who is retiring.

Laing has been VP of sales for the five-station cluster for the past five years; before that he has held sales management positions for Cumulus and Clear Channel/iHeartMedia.

The announcement was made by Dave Milner, executive VP of operations for Cumulus Media, who was quoted in the announcement saying that Laing “has his finger on the pulse of Cincinnati.”

The stations in the cluster are classic rocker WOFX(FM), country station WNNF(FM), rock outlet WFTK(FM), adult contemporary WRRM(FM) and classic hits WGRR(FM).

Send information for People News to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Cumulus Promotes Laing in Cincy appeared first on Radio World.

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Broadcast Applications

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Media Bureau grants Estrella Broadcasting's Petition for Declaratory Ruling to exceed the foreign ownership benchmark under Act.

Broadcast Actions

In morning trading on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market, Nexstar Media Group shares were trading above the $110 mark.

Should NXST finish at that price, it will conclude a healthy recovery effort for the broadcast media company’s stock that began in mid-April, just days after Nexstar shares fell to their lowest levels since October 2016.

On March 18, a $56.29 closing price was seen for Nexstar, as the company — like many in the media sector — faced much economic uncertainty as the novel coronavirus rampaged across the U.S.

A small rally fizzled, with a $58.80 closing price seen on April 15.

Since then, Nexstar has been a solid performer, replicating its small dips following a big gain as seen across the last seven years.

By June 3, a $93.67 close was seen. By September 9, a $98.72 finish brought Nexstar ever closer to the $100 mark — last seen in mid-February.

On November 16, Nexstar finally pushed back the $100 mark, reaching $111.37 by December 7.

Since then, just once did shares slip below the $100 level.

Now, Nexstar’s next goal is to reach a 1-year target price of $128.30.

Across 2018, one of the most exciting — yet least-talked-about — tech developments for the radio industry gained RBR+TVBR‘s attention by pure happenstance.

RBR+TVBR first learned of the product, the SOUNDOT AF1 headset for iPhones and iPads using the Lightning interface, in April 2018— ahead of that year’s NAB Show in Las Vegas. Later, at the 2018 Radio Show in Orlando, a demo yielded what so many in the radio broadcasting world wanted — in addition to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai: Data-free audio from local radio, on a device everyone seemingly owns, a smartphone.

RBR+TVBR has now learned that the Soundot app is no longer being supported by Apple.

On Dec. 31, with the Soundot app offloaded due to lack of use, RBR+TVBR attempted to access it. It wouldn’t open. A message appeared, noting that the app was no longer supported. As such, the access button for the app was deleted.

Thus ends the second attempt to bring Apple’s iPhone and iPad users FM radio without paying for data usage.

A visit to Amazon.com, a key retailer at the time of the product’s launch, lists the product as unavailable.

An attempt to visit Soundot parent Blackloud‘s website, however, shows the product is still available for purchase, with Apple iTunes as the lone partner it is working with.

Clearly, this is outdated; Blackloud is based in the Los Angeles area and could not be reached prior to RBR+TVBR‘s holiday deadline.

ANOTHER STRUGGLE FOR ‘FREE’ AUDIO

Working with audio design partners Tempo Semiconductor Inc. (TSI) and Silicon Labs (SLAB), Walnut, Calif.-based tech company Blackloud formally brought the SOUNDOT AF1 to market on Sept. 18, 2018. It featured an iOS app and “premium lossless sound quality” for listening to music, watching videos, answering calls, and activating Siri.

But here was the plus for radio broadcasting executives: The SOUNDOT headset also let users directly access compression-free FM radio anywhere in the world via the FM chip embedded in its control box, without requiring internet connectivity or an activated FM chip in the iOS device itself.

At the 2018 Radio Show in Orlando, executives from Blackloud were on hand to promote SOUNDOT; attendees could have received a 10% discount for what was available for $79.89 on Amazon.

RBR+TVBR received a SOUNDOT AF1 for reviewing purposes. Was this radio’s solution for bringing over-the-air radio to the iPhone user? Yes, to a point. No HD Radio reception was available, and audio appeared to be mono. But, the corded antenna pulled in radio signals within a 35-mile radius while in Orlando, and at RBR+TVBR’s Palm Beach County, Fla., headquarters. Use of the device between New York City and Washington, D.C., on an Amtrak Acela train in November 2019 proved useful, with reception of stations easily obtainable within the 60 dBU contour for each FM signal.

There were drawbacks, however, for the Soundot in an era where smart speakers and ear buds dominate audio consumption. Few, if anyone, use corded headphones. And, perhaps Apple saw it as a product that would take away from its own wireless ear bud sales.

Then, there was the lack of promotion of Soundot, and its nearly exclusive sale via the Blackloud website and via Amazon.com. Given its potential in emergency situations such as earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires and the 2020 derecho that impacted eastern Iowa and Illinois, retailers such as Jewel/Osco, Kroger, Publix, Winn-Dixie, Vons/Albertsons, and CVS/Pharmacy and Walgreens would have been valuable to Soundout distribution and awareness.

The arrival of the Soundot at the 2018 Radio Show came one month before the most ambitious effort to bring data-free FM radio to a smartphone was abandoned, something Emmis Communications founder and CEO Jeff Smulyan today remains disappointed over.

With the release of Emmis’ fiscal Q2 2019 financial results, Smulyan revealed that TagStation LLC, and its NextRadio subsidiary, were each coming to an end.

Jeff Smulyan, appearing at NAB 2017 in Las Vegas

NextRadio — developed as an App that would turn any smartphone into a data-free FM tuner by unlocking a chip inside an individual headset — was a much-heralded advancement that won the support of the FCC.

Smartphones powered by the Android operating system supported the app.

But, Apple wouldn’t. That ultimately led to its demise.

“The effort to form a consortium for NextRadio and TagStation has not been successful,” Smulyan said in October 2018. It had been rumored that several radio broadcasting companies were looking to acquire NextRadio and/or TagStation, turning it into a shared platform for all FM radio station owners to benefit from.

That effort failed.

Meanwhile, the iHeartRadio app has only grown, as has Entercom’s heavily promoted Radio.com — a major revenue generator for the company. Further, unlimited data plans are more common, and affordable, than ever before.

Smulyan said, “The major learning we had was that, to make this business really what it needed to be, it needed to do data attribution. To do that, we needed much deeper involvement. We tried. We couldn’t get the industry to come together. Everybody unanimously said, ‘We have to have this.’”

But, when it came time to pitch in financially, the response was tepid or nonexistent.

“We just couldn’t get enough support,” Smulyan said.

Of what use, then, are the Blackloud headphones that mirror wired iPhone headphones, but were specifically created for the now-deceased Soundot AF1?

They can be used just like regular headphones, with access to all audio.

Only, the audio available without data use is simply what’s been downloaded to Spotify or iTunes.

One of Cumulus Media‘s strongest markets is Cincinnati, where it has such radio brands as Warm 98, 92.5 The Fox, 96 Rock and top-rated WGRR.

Now, its VP of Sales has taken the top leadership role for the company’s five FM cluster in the Ohio metropolis, as Dave Crowl is retiring.

Rising to VP/Market Manager for Cumulus Media in Cincinnati is Jon Laing.

He had been VP/Sales for the stations, comprised of WOFX-FM, WFTK-FM, WRRM-FM, WGRR-FM and WNNF “94.1 Cat Country” since 2015.

But, he’s a veteran of Cumulus Media and has been in Cincinnati since taking on the role of Sales Manager for rocker WOFX and WFTK.

Before that, he was Sales Manager for Cumulus in nearby Lexington, Ky., following more
than 11 years as a Sales Manager and Integrated Media Solutions Provider for iHeartMedia and predecessor Clear Channel Communications.

The Kettering, Ohio, native was LSM for Clear Channel in Cincinnati, overseeing WEBN, WKFS and (under Clear Channel ownership) WOFX from May 2007 through the end of 2011.

From February 2006-May 2007 Laing was an Account Executive for CBS Radio in Denver.

Cumulus EVP Dave Milner says Laing “has his finger on the pulse of Cincinnati, with deep experience and relationships in the market. Importantly, he knows how to leverage the power of great local radio across traditional and digital distribution channels, positioning our customers and stations for success in 2021 and beyond. Jon’s dynamic leadership and expertise make him a tremendous asset to Cumulus Cincinnati and to the community
we serve.”

Laing added, “Right now is an incredible time to be in radio/audio, and I am thrilled about the opportunity to lead the Cumulus Cincinnati team. These five stations have a strong tradition of serving the community, entertaining our large listener universe while providing extensive audio and digital marketing solutions for our advertising partners. It is an honor and privilege to have this responsibility. A sincere thanks to Mary Berner and Dave Milner for their support and leadership.”

According to Jacobs Media President Fred Jacobs, radio has a “youth problem.”

While Jacobs is likely not alone in making this proclamation, he’s been quite vociferous in exposing the industry’s weaknesses — despite its continued reach story that can’t quite overcome the digital media juggernaut and marketer prejudice.

On Wednesday (12/30), he took another close look at the “Kids in America,” to reference a big hot hit from this week in 1981. It appears the radio industry is too focused on music from 1981 and the listeners who remember them as hot hits, rather than as classic tracks to enjoy alongside today’s “best music.”

In a blog post, Jacobs notes that “like so many other industries, there are questions revolving around the shape radio will be in when a [COVID-19] vaccine is finally developed, tested, and distributed.”

He discusses changes brought forth by the pandemic, now in its ninth month, and how they are likely permanent — working from home, and its impact on commercial real estate; e-commerce, and its impact on advertising clients.

“But what will become of radio?” he asks. “In what condition will COVID leave the industry — both in terms of listening levels, digital usage, and of course, appeal among advertisers, locally and nationally?”

His early assessment: “We have years of trending in front of us, so it will be fascinating to see how the pandemic will alter media habits. Of course, no one knows whether all the ways in which media usage patterns are morphing will be permanent.”

Yet, Jacobs believes there is one certainty. “[It] has nothing to do with pandemics, vaccines, or music tastes. If the radio broadcasting industry doesn’t start researching and programming to younger generations, it will most certainly be out of business.”

If the radio broadcasting industry doesn’t start researching and programming to younger generations, it will most certainly be out of business. — Fred Jacobs

 

NO ‘GLOOM & DOOM’

Jacobs cautions that his words come from an individual “always looking to find a great story about radio’s resilience, relevance, and continued role in the media landscape.’

But, he points to demographic trends, and how they could imperil radio if it doesn’t engage in a thoughtful and meaningful response.

The trends Jacobs has reviewed extensively were released June 30 by The Brookings Institution. That said, it is no different than what the Pew Research Center has been saying for years in its own reviews of Census data: America is getting younger, and browner.

Now, more than half of Americans are millennials or younger.

The data show that the combined millennial, Gen Z, and younger generations numbered 166 million as of July 2019, or 50.7% of the nation’s population—larger than 162 million Americans associated with the combined Gen X, baby boomer, and older cohorts, Brookings Senior Fellow William H. Frey, who works in its Metropolitan Policy Program, notes.

To illustrate the youth population surge, Brookings put a chart together.

“Combining Gen Xers, Boomers and older groups now account for 4 million fewer people than these younger cohorts,” Jacobs notes.

Census estimates show the oldest Millennials are now 39 years of age.

As Jacobs points out, this generation makes up roughly half of the 25-54 year-old “sweet spot” the radio industry “has been relentlessly chasing for decades.”

That leaves roughly 30% of the population under the age of 24.

Is the radio industry fully engaging with this potential audience, and future growth engine?

As Jacobs see it, “radio refuses to seriously acknowledge” this audience segment is even there.

He opines, “A look at any radio market – from Omaha to Oklahoma City to Orlando – reveals the vast majority of radio stations are geared to appeal to that familiar, sales-friendly 30 year age span, while typically only a handful are actually targeted to younger consumers. Yet, the Census and all objective demographers would agree that broadcast radio’s approach falls somewhere between myopic and suicidal.”

The opposing view is that older radio listeners are predispositioned to tune to a radio station, as they grew up with the medium. And, older listeners largely enjoy higher disposable incomes, compared to 30-year-olds saddled with debt tied to higher education tuition loans, housing costs, and perhaps dollars tied to starting a family.

Still, radio, in Jacobs’ view, is stuck in the 1980s.

“The long-held optimistic radio theory promised that once young people got out of school, joined the workforce, and started commuting to and from work, they’d discover the appeal of broadcast radio – at least an FM station or two,” he says. “But that theory was dependent on a deluge of commuters and car radio dashboards resembling those ACDelco radio systems from the ’70s and ’80s that were limited to AM, FM, a cassette deck or CD player, and a half dozen or so preset buttons — and a workforce driving to and from work without fail.”

With more people working from home, many permanently, and in-vehicle audio entertainment systems now making Sirius XM Satellite Radio and Spotify easy to find, “Young consumers who’ve been attached to Spotify for their music (and their podcasts) aren’t likely to simply discover [WHTZ] Z100, KROQ, or Rush Limbaugh when they land that first job,” Jacobs believes.

BEYOND ‘THE UNITED COLORS OF BENETTON’

Compounding matters for radio and its “youth problem” is the ceaseless population growth of non-Caucasian children, teens and young adults.

Then, there is the surge in Latino, Asian-American (comprised of those of Chinese, Vietnamese, Laotian, Cambodian, Thai, Japanese, Korean and Malaysian heritage) and African American populations.

For Jacobs, “The biggest change on the horizon will be the sweeping impact of demography – and not the next pandemic.  It will have a sweeping impact on every corner of radio as we know it today, including commercial music, talk, and sports formats, as well as public and Christian music radio.”

The biggest change on the horizon will be the sweeping impact of demography – and not the next pandemic.  It will have a sweeping impact on every corner of radio as we know it today, including commercial music, talk, and sports formats, as well as public and Christian music radio. — Fred Jacobs

 

Jacobs continues, “Radio may be an art form, but the science in this case is indisputable.  How will broadcasters survive in a world where upwards of 60% of the population have little to nothing to do with the medium?  How will today’s array of formats attract the millions of young people who are already finding their entertainment and information elsewhere?”

In his view, it has to start “with a serious dose of proactivity – a willingness to retrench, research, redesign, and reimagine the medium to better fit American tastes and sensibilities.  Perhaps it starts with an industry task force at the highest levels – the NAB, RAB, and the medium’s largest companies and organizations. And let’s make sure it’s not made up of ‘OK Boomer’ types, but instead is populated (or at least consulted) by the best and brightest Gen Zs and Millennials working in the medium today.  It would also be smart if they were representative of the gender/ethnicity mix broadcast radio will need to attract in order to stay relevant — and profitable.”

While radio is far from “a dire, tragic ending” for some broadcasters, Jacobs concludes that “a continued fixation with ‘doing it the way we’ve always done it’ is a sure-fire non-strategy virtually certain to leave broadcasters wishing they had taken action while they still could. There’s no vaccine or miracle cure for this.  It’s not under control.  And It won’t just go away. How we address this wave of inevitable change in the next five years will tell the tale. It’s on us. Whoa.”

 

“A Road Map to Tech Jobs.”

That’s what to be offered on January 15 in a virtual Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment (ACDDE) summit from the FCC group that will see the involvement, among others, of the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC).

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The following was excerpted from “Maintaining Audio Quality in the Broadcast and Netcast Facility.” In this segment, the authors deal with the many-faceted and often misunderstood subject of quality in digital audio chains.

In digital signal processing devices, the lowest number of bits per word necessary to achieve professional quality is 24 bits. There are several reasons for this.

Digital audio workstations need headroom to accommodate gain adjustments and mixing of several sources. Moreover, there are a number of common DSP operations (like infinite-impulse-response filtering) that substantially increase the digital noise floor, and 24 bits allows enough headroom to accommodate this without audibly losing quality. (This assumes that the designer is sophisticated enough to use appropriate measures to control noise when particularly difficult filters are used.) If floating-point arithmetic is used, the lowest acceptable word length for professional quality is 32 bits (24-bit mantissa and 8-bit exponent; sometimes called “single-precision”).

In digital distribution systems, 20-bit words (120 dB dynamic range) are usually adequate to represent the signal accurately. Twenty bits can retain the full quality of a 16-bit source even after as much as 24 dB attenuation by a mixer. There are almost no A/D converters that can achieve more than 20 bits of real accuracy, and many “24-bit” converters have accuracy considerably below the 20-bit level. “Marketing bits” in A/D converters are outrageously abused to deceive customers, and, if these A/D converters were consumer products, these bogus claims would be actionable by the Federal Trade Commission.

Sample rate controversy

There is considerable disagreement about the audible benefits (if any) of raising the sample rate above 44.1 kHz.

An extensive double-blind test using 554 trials showed that inserting a CD-quality A/D/A loop into the output of a high-resolution (SACD) player was undetectable at normal-to-loud listening levels by any of the subjects, on any of four playback systems. The noise of the CD-quality loop was audible only at very elevated levels.

This is at KTBI(AM) 810 in Ephrata, Wash., one of three AM stations owned by American Christian Network. Running 50 kW daytime, it covers Spokane over 100 miles away.

Moreover, there has been at least one rigorous test comparing 48 kHz and 96 kHz sample rates. This test concluded that there is no audible difference between these two sample rates if the 48 kHz rate’s anti-aliasing filter is designed appropriately.

However, in 2016, a controversial “meta-analysis” of existing tests comparing high-resolution and CD-quality audio was published in the AES Journal.

According to the author, “Eighteen published experiments for which sufficient data could be obtained were included, providing a meta-analysis that combined over 400 participants in more than 12,500 trials.

“Results showed a small but statistically significant ability of test subjects to discriminate high resolution content, and this effect increased dramatically when test subjects received extensive training. This result was verified by a sensitivity analysis exploring different choices for the chosen studies and different analysis approaches.

“Potential biases in studies, effect of test methodology, experimental design, and choice of stimuli were also investigated. The overall conclusion is that the perceived fidelity of an audio recording and playback chain can be affected by operating beyond conventional resolution.”

Assuming perfect hardware, it can be shown that this debate comes down entirely to the audibility of a given anti-aliasing filter design, as is discussed below.

Far before the publication of the 2016 meta-analysis, in a marketing-driven push the record industry attempted to change the consumer standard from 44.1 kHz to a higher sampling frequency via DVD-A and SACD, neither of which succeeded in the mass marketplace. The industry is trying again with Blu-ray audio, and it remains to be seen if they will be more successful than they were with DVD-A or SACD.

FM stereo

Regardless of whether scientifically accurate testing eventually proves that this is audibly beneficial, sampling rates higher than 44.1 kHz have no benefit in FM stereo because the effective sampling rate of FM stereo is 38 kHz, so the signal must eventually be lowpass-filtered to 17 kHz or less to prevent aliasing. It is beneficial in DAB, which typically has 20 kHz audio bandwidth, but offers no benefit at all in AM, whose bandwidth is no greater than 10 kHz in any country and is often 4.5 kHz.

Some A/D converters have built-in soft clippers that start to act when the input signal is 3–6 dB below full scale. While these can be useful in mastering work, they have no place in transferring previously mastered recordings (like commercial CDs). If the soft clipper in an A/D converter cannot be defeated, that A/D should not be used for transfer work.

Dither

Dither is random noise that is added to the signal at approximately the level of the least significant bit. It should be added to the analog signal before the A/D converter, and to any digital signal before its word length is shortened. Its purpose is to linearize the digital system by changing what is, in essence, “crossover distortion” into audibly innocuous random noise.

Without dither, any signal falling below the level of the least significant bit will disappear altogether. Dither will randomly move this signal through the threshold of the LSB, rendering it audible (though noisy). Whenever any DSP operation is performed on the signal (particularly decreasing gain), the resulting signal must be re-dithered before the word length is truncated back to the length of the input words.

Ordinarily, correct dither is added in the A/D stage of any competent commercial product performing the conversion. However, some products allow the user to turn the dither on or off when truncating the length of a word in the digital domain. If the user chooses to omit adding dither, this should be because the signal in question already contained enough dither noise to make it unnecessary to add more.

Many computer software volume controls do not add dither when they attenuate the signal, thereby introducing low-level truncation distortion. It is wise to bypass computer volume controls wherever possible, and if this is not possible, to maintain unity gain through the volume control. Microsoft Windows Media Player and Adobe Flash Players should be operated at 100% (0 dBFS) at all times, and level control should be done either at the amplifier volume control or console fader.

In the absence of “noise shaping,” the spectrum of the usual “triangular-probability-function (TPF)” dither is white (that is, each arithmetic frequency increment contains the same energy). However, noise shaping can change this noise spectrum to concentrate most of the dither energy into the frequency range where the ear is least sensitive. In practice, this means reducing the energy around 4 kHz and raising it above 9 kHz. Doing this can increase the effective resolution of a 16-bit system to almost 19 bits in the crucial midrange area, and is standard in CD mastering. There are many proprietary curves used by various manufacturers for noise shaping, and each has a slightly different sound.

It has been shown that passing noise shaped dither through most classes of signal processing and/or a D/A converter with non-monotonic behavior will destroy the advantages of the noise shaping by “filling in” the frequency areas where the original noise-shaped signal had little energy. The result is usually poorer than if no noise shaping had been used.

For this reason, Orban has adopted a conservative approach to noise shaping, recommending so-called “first-order highpass” noise shaping and implementing this in Orban products that allow dither to be added to their digital output streams. First-order highpass noise shaping provides a substantial improvement in resolution over simple white TPF dither, but its total noise power is only 3 dB higher than white TPF dither. Therefore, if it is passed through additional signal processing and/or an imperfect D/A converter, there will be little noise penalty by comparison to more aggressive noise shaping schemes.

One of the great benefits of the digitization of the signal path in broadcasting is this: Once in digital form, the signal is far less subject to subtle degradation than it would be if it were in analog form, although in fixed point form it is still subject to clipping. Short of being clipped or becoming entirely un-decodable, the worst that can happen to the signal is deterioration of noise-shaped dither, and/or added jitter.

Jitter

Jitter is a time-base error. The only jitter than cannot be removed from the signal is jitter that was added in the original analog-to-digital conversion process. All subsequent jitter can be completely removed in a sort of “time-base correction” operation, accurately recovering the original signal. The only limitation is the performance of the “time-base correction” circuitry, which requires sophisticated design to reduce added jitter below audibility. This “time-base correction” usually occurs in the digital input receiver, although further stages can be used downstream.

Sample rate converters can introduce jitter in the digital domain because they resample the signal, much like A/D converters. Maintaining lowest jitter in a system requires synchronizing all devices in the audio chain to a common word clock or AES11 signal. This eliminates the need to perform cascaded sample rate conversions on the signals flowing through the facility. Good word clock generators have very low jitter (also known as “phase noise”) and allow the cascaded devices to perform at their best.

Busting the myths

There are several pervasive myths regarding digital audio.

One myth is that long reconstruction filters smear the transient response of digital audio, and that there is thus an advantage to using a reconstruction filter with a short impulse response, even if this means rolling off frequencies above 10 kHz. Several commercial high-end D-to-A converters operate on exactly this mistaken assumption. This is one area of digital audio where intuition is particularly deceptive.

The sole purpose of a reconstruction filter is to fill in the missing pieces between the digital samples. These days, symmetrical finite-impulse-response filters are typically used for this task because they have no phase distortion. The output of such a filter is a weighted sum of the digital samples symmetrically surrounding the point being reconstructed. The more samples that are used, the better and more accurate the result, even if this means that the filter is very long.

It’s easiest to justify this assertion in the frequency domain. Provided that the frequencies in the passband and the transition region of the original anti-aliasing filter are entirely within the passband of the reconstruction filter, then the reconstruction filter will act only as a delay line and will pass the audio without distortion. Of course, all practical reconstruction filters have slight frequency response ripples in their passbands, and these can affect the sound by making the amplitude response (but not the phase response) of the “delay line” slightly imperfect. But typically, these ripples are in the order of a few thousandths of a dB in high-quality equipment and are very unlikely to be audible.

The authors have proved this experimentally by simulating such a system and subtracting the output of the reconstruction filter from its input to determine what errors the reconstruction filter introduces. Of course, you have to add a time delay to the input to compensate for the reconstruction filter’s delay. The source signal was random noise, applied to a very sharp filter that band-limited the white noise so that its energy was entirely within the passband of the reconstruction filter. We used a very high-quality linear-phase FIR reconstruction filter and ran the simulation in double-precision floating-point arithmetic. The resulting error signal was a minimum of 125 dB below full scale on a sample-by-sample basis, which was comparable to the stopband depth in the experimental reconstruction filter.

We therefore have the paradoxical result that, in a properly designed digital audio system, the frequency response of the system and its sound is determined by the anti-aliasing filter and not by the reconstruction filter. Provided that they are realized with high-precision arithmetic, longer reconstruction filters are always better.

This means that a rigorous way to test the assumption that high sample rates sound better than low sample rates is to set up a high-sample rate system. Then, without changing any other variable, introduce a filter in the digital domain with the same frequency response as a high-quality anti-aliasing filter that would be required for the lower sample rate. If you cannot detect the presence of this filter in a double-blind test, then you have just proved that the higher sample rate has no intrinsic audible advantage, because you can always make the reconstruction filter audibly transparent.

KTWO(AM) 1030 in Casper, Wyo., a Townsquare Media station. With 50 kW daytime omnidirectional and 50 kW directional night, it covers 75% of the state of Wyoming.

Another myth is that digital audio cannot resolve time differences smaller than one sample period and therefore damages the stereo image. People who believe this like to imagine an analog step moving in time between two sample points. They argue that there will be no change in the output of the A/D converter until the step crosses one sample point and therefore the time resolution is limited to one sample.

The problem with this argument is that there is no such thing as an infinite-risetime step function in the digital domain. To be properly represented, such a function has to first be applied to an anti-aliasing filter. This filter turns the step into an exponential ramp, which typically has equal pre-and post-ringing. This ramp can be moved far less than one sample period in time and still cause the sample points to change value.

In fact, assuming no jitter and correct dithering, the time resolution of a digital system is the same as an analog system having the same bandwidth and noise floor. Ultimately, the time resolution is determined by the sampling frequency and by the noise floor of the system. As you try to get finer and finer resolution, the measurements will become more and more uncertain due to dither noise. Finally, you will get to the point where noise obscures the signal and your measurement cannot get any finer. However, this point is orders of magnitude smaller in time than one sample period and is the same as in an analog system with the same bandwidth.

A final myth is that upsampling digital audio to a higher sample frequency will increase audio quality or resolution. In fact, the original recording at the original sample rate contains all of the information obtainable from that recording. The only thing that raising the sample frequency does is to add ultrasonic images of the original audio around the new sample frequency. In any correctly designed sample rate converter, these are reduced (but never entirely eliminated) by a filter following the upsampler. People who claim to hear differences between “upsampled” audio and the original are either imagining things or hearing coloration caused by the added image frequencies or the frequency response of the upsampler’s filter. They are not hearing a more accurate reproduction of the original recording.

This also applies to the sample rate conversion that often occurs in a digital facility. It is quite possible to create a sample rate converter whose filters are poor enough to make images audible. One should test any sample rate converter, hardware or software, intended for use in professional audio by converting the highest frequency sinewave in the bandpass of the audio being converted, which is typically about 0.45 times the sample frequency.

Observe the output of the SRC on a spectrum analyzer or with software containing an FFT analyzer (like Adobe Audition). In a professional-quality SRC, images will be at least 90 dB below the desired signal, and, in SRC’s designed to accommodate long word lengths (like 24 bit), images will often be –120 dB or lower, assuming a 24-bit path (which is capable of representing low-level energy down to –144 dBFS).Taking full advantage of high-performance sample rate conversion is another reason to use 24-bit audio for production and to reduce the bit depth (if necessary for applications like burning audio CDs) only as the final step, using appropriate dither.

A good reference on sample rate conversion performance can be found at http://src.infinitewave.ca/.

Less is more!

And finally, some truisms regarding loudness and quality: Every radio is equipped with a volume control, and every listener knows how to use it. If the listener has access to the volume control, he or she will adjust it to his or her preferred loudness. After said listener does this, the only thing left distinguishing the “sound” of the radio station is its texture, which will be either clean or degraded, depending on the source quality and the audio processing.

Any program director who boasts of his station’s $20,000 worth of “enhancement” equipment should be first taken to a physician who can clean the wax from his ears, then forced to swear that he is not under the influence of any suspicious substances, and finally placed gently but firmly in front of a high-quality monitor system for a demonstration of the degradation that $20,000 worth of “enhancement” causes! Always remember that less is more.

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