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David Bialik consults to stations on their streaming and audio processing. He is an AES Fellow and award-winning leader who has held technical positions with Entercom, CBS, Bloomberg, United Broadcasting, Bonneville International and the National Association of Broadcasters.

This interview originally appeared in the ebook “Trends in Audio Processing for Radio.”

Radio World: What would you say is the most notable trend in processing?

David Bialik: An important development in the use of processors is the awareness that streaming requires different processing than “over-the-air.” While broadcasters want to be the “legally” loudest, streaming does not have to be the loudest, but they can be the clearest; and with commercials originating from various locations, matching loudness levels is extremely important. 

The current recommendation from the AES’ recommendation for Streaming Loudness (currently being revised) is –17 LKFS.

Stations (and engineers) are now understanding that one size of processing does not fit all. You should not use the same processing for over-the-air that you do for streams. Use a loudness meter. Orban released a free one that is quite good!

As far as features: Many processors are good and have good features. Bob Orban and Frank Foti have often joked that they make the gun but you do not have to shoot it. Do not process so aggressively that you cannot identify the instruments. You should always be able to hear the cymbals! Ask yourself if the artist wants to hear their audio clipped or not.

RW: How will the cloud and virtualization affect the processing sector? 

Bialik: Stations are hoping this will cost less and take up less real estate. Hopefully the benefit of a cloud architecture will create redundancy and eliminate a point of failure. 

It also makes your internet connection more important and the need for backup more critical.

RW: With so many people working remotely, what are the implications for managing processing today?

Bialik: Security will be important, of course. Routing will be incredibly important since a station will have to set a “Quality of Service” to guarantee that the audio always has the bandwidth needed.

Stations will want remote facilities to sound the same as studios. Remote users will need good acoustics, and be able to produce high-quality audio — we do not want 1K telephone sound.

RW: Content comes at us from so many locations. What role do loudness and LRA (loudness range) play? 

Bialik: This will be more important, especially for streaming where Direct Ad Insertion is being used. You do not want to be listening to content (at –17 LKFS) and then have commercials and interstitials played much louder. I have heard this happen at 6 dB louder at times. You will be knocked off your chair. 

RW: Are listeners, especially younger ones, moving toward greater fidelity because of their use of on-demand services and personal downloads? 

Bialik: Stations with a good dynamic range will always sound more appealing to the listener.

RW: There are committees at the Audio Engineering Society working on recommendations and guidelines for online audio content. What would you like to see from this work?

Bialik: I am chairing much of this. Loudness issues invite the listener to constantly adjust the level. If they are adjusting one control it is as easy to turn the content off. How will that help the TLH?

RW: AES loudness metrics are moving to a lower target level for content, streams, podcasts and on-demand file transfer, like metrics established for online and over-the-top video. Given current practices, could radio see loss of potential audience due to listener fatigue?

Bialik: I believe the lack of dynamic range will cause listener fatigue. Hopefully the content will have good dynamic range and good loudness levels. The level of audio-only streams is being targeted at –17 LKFS while video is at –24 LKFS. Within the short term future, loudness could be controlled by metadata. Yes we are talking a 7 dB difference. The recording industry is also pushing for –24 LKFS. This allows for more headroom as well.

RW: With new “hybrid” radio platforms coming out, a listener might tune to an FM signal in a market but then drive out of it, with the receiver switching to the station’s online stream. What matching challenges does this present?

Bialik: Stations that have to cover ads and sports blackouts will sound worse. 

RW: What else should we know?

Bialik: If everyone say streaming is the future, why not invest in the future now and do the best audio you can?

Read other recent articles about processing for radio broadcast applications.

The post Streaming Has Its Own Processing Needs appeared first on Radio World.

News, in Spanish, credible news, has become essential to people’s lives.

How is CNN en Español meeting this challenge in the U.S. as a global news organization? SVP and Managing Director Cynthia Hudson shares all with RBR+TVBR Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson in this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Cynthia Hudson, CNN en Español” on Spreaker.

New growth from new solutions. A new culture, driven by a growth mindset. A compelling financial model. 

Those are the key highlights provided in a sleek earnings presentation put together by Nielsen, as it released its first-quarter 2021 results. How did it do? Revenue was up, but did Nielsen beat Wall Street estimates?

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Just in time for Mother’s Day is a report that suggests buying a smart speaker for Momma isn’t a good idea. Why? She’s likely already got one, and uses it a lot.

That’s the basis of data analysis of moms and smart speakers from the Edison Research/Triton Digital series The Infinite Dial that also takes info from Edison’s The Social Habit.

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Beasley Media Group is headquartered in Southwest Florida, and its stations serving the region stretching from Fort Myers south to Marco Island has just made a flurry of staff promotions.

This includes the naming of a new Program Director at “96 K-Rock,” the venerable personality-based station.

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As the Cinco de Mayo Closing Bell rang on Wall Street, Fox Corporation released its fiscal third quarter financial results.

With comparable data to fiscal Q3 2020 difficult, as Fox today isn’t the same company as it was at the start of last year, net income attributable to shareholders came in at $567 million ($0.96 per share). This is up from $78 million ($0.13 per share).

On an adjusted basis, net income dipped to $523 million ($0.88), from $568 million ($0.93), namely due to the absence of a Super Bowl telecast.

What was the contribution of the Fox Television Stations to the mix?

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U.S. broadband providers are carrying considerable momentum out of the pandemic despite increased competition and impending service maturity with penetrations nearing 90% of occupied households.

That’s according to the updated forecast from Kagan, the research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence staging the Kagan Media Summit on June 17 as a virtually delivered affair.

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The author is editor in chief of Radio World.

The consent decree announcements involving online political files keep rolling out from the Federal Communications Commission. Radio World has learned that more than 2,100 radio stations in the United States now are covered by these agreements, which require station owners to put compliance plans in place.

The latest examples include Major Broadcasting Corp. for WYGO(FM) in Madisonville, Tenn.; Custer County Community Broadcasting for KMTA(AM) and KYUS(FM) in Miles City, Mont.; and San Luis Valley Broadcasting for stations KSLV(FM) in Del Norte, Colo., and KYDN(FM) in Monte Vista, Colo.

But these broadcasters are in good company. Many similar announcements have been coming out since last July, as we’ve reported, and have involved radio licensees of all shapes and sizes.

I’ve been curious about this project from the start. I reached out to the FCC staff for an update this week.

To start with, a commission spokesperson tells me that to date, the Audio Division of the Media Bureau has adopted approximately 130 consent decrees that cover approximately 250 stations. The stations had their license renewal applications put on hold pending FCC investigations; those holds were later lifted under the consent agreements.

But this doesn’t don’t tell the whole tale, because those numbers exclude the “Big Six” broadcast groups that first entered into consent decree agreements with the FCC last year. Those agreements were brokered with the help of the National Association of Broadcasters, and the FCC’s announcement about them last summer put this overall effort into the public eye.

The six broadcasters — iHeart Media, Alpha Media, Beasley, Cumulus, Entercom Radio and Salem Broadcasting — entered into consent decrees that require compliance reporting for all of the stations they own.

So if we include them, the number of consent decrees is about 136 but the number of stations covered by them is 2,135, including some that had not yet filed their own renewal applications.

It’s hard to give an exact number because in some cases, other owners also entered agreements that included not only stations with pending license renewals but some that had not yet filed. But it’s evident that the program has touched many broadcasters.

The consent decrees generally are all similar. A broadcaster acknowledges failure to comply with the rules for maintaining online political files, and it commits to a compliance plan and to report back later. The broadcaster avoids a financial fine. The FCC ends its investigation and removes the “hold” on the license renewal; it also acknowledges that the pandemic created exceptional circumstances for many broadcasters. (The FCC is not aware of any stations that were denied renewal for other reasons after a hold was lifted.)

To my eye, this program should be considered a success for both the FCC Media Bureau and the National Association of Broadcasters.

The regulator effectively gets the message out that it is serious about enforcing this particular set of rules and laws, with the clear implication that at some point in the future, more costly outcomes can be expected. Broadcasters avoid financial penalties and agree to follow rules they were supposed to be following all along. Meanwhile the industry’s largest broadcast association helps its members (and non-members) come into compliance and avoid fines.

I strongly suspect that failure to maintain political files properly (“derelictions” in the FCC’s language) have been the norm for a long time. So if we accept the premise that the political file rules are justified in the first place (a separate discussion), this outcome is also a win for the folks who developed the FCC’s program to put files online — though I’m sure plenty of broadcasters may have preferred not to have the commission looking directly into their paperwork all the time!

And I’d say that, in our current political climate, anything that tends to make our nation’s political process more transparent is a good thing.

The commission adopted rules requiring broadcasters to maintain public files about requests for political ad time more than 80 years ago. Political file obligations have been part of Section 315(e) of the Telecom Act since 2002. A full-power station’s political file is part of its public inspection file.

[Read more on this topic, “The FCC Can See Your Public File”]

Radio licensees must maintain information about requests to buy broadcast time from or on behalf of candidates for public office, or by an issue advertiser whose ad communicates a message relating to “a political matter of national importance,” and it must make that information available for public inspection.

Stations must place info about requests into their political files “as soon as possible.” Stations must maintain and make available information about all requests for broadcast time made by or on behalf of candidates for public office. And stations must upload the information to their online political files “as soon as possible,” meaning “immediately absent unusual circumstances.”

The commission has written that “It is crucial that stations maintain political files that are complete and up to date because the information in them directly affects, among other things, the statutory rights of opposing candidates to request equal opportunities.”

The post FCC Political File Consent Decrees Proliferate appeared first on Radio World.

In Northwest Pennsylvania and along Florida’s Suncoast region, the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine has become known as a purveyor of commercial-free Oldies radio.

Now, it is bolstering up its on-air offerings in the Keystone State.

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Known to Radio World readers for his  broadcast engineering work at Greater Media and Burk Technology, and his presentations at numerous engineering conferences, Paul Shulins has struck out on his own.

Naturally he’s taking advantage of his past broadcast experience in this endeavor; and the result is Shulins Solutions, a broadcast technical consultancy.

Radio World: What is Shulins Solutions?

Paul Shulins: It has three pillars: the Stellar Eclipse platform which provides unique monitor, control and protection solutions for transmission sites; drone-based tower inspections; and a full range of consulting services based on years’ of practical experience on the ground building and operating broadcast facilities.

Stellar Eclipse broadcast site monitoring platform provides a systems approach to monitoring and protection of RF systems from simple to complex featuring exclusive VSWR Sentinel protection technology.

[Read: “Stellar Eclipse in Space City”]

sUAS Drone-based tower structure visual and infrared surveys provide an indispensable tool to diagnose the health of RF systems and tower structures without the risk of climbing the towers.

Broadcast Technology Consulting meets the demands of broadcasters, specializing in remote control solutions, studio design and construction, antenna protection systems and ratings metrics.

We pride ourselves on solving problems with an attention to detail that only comes from firsthand experience in the field. All of our products and services come from the point of view of the user, and are crafted with the passion of a lifelong broadcaster.

RW: I assume it’s mostly you doing the work. Do you contract out when you need others? Do you have employees?

Shulins: We were a virtual organization before working virtually was cool.

While I wear many hats, including having the technical vision and architecture for our offerings, I have a group of talented people who provide important skills like cloud-based software, hardware layout and fabrication, installations, marketing and so forth, all needed to bring world class products and services to market.

As a longtime licensed pilot and of course a career broadcast engineer I have a pretty unique skillset to fly our drones.

Even with the help I am typically the guy who answers the phone. I like being directly in touch with customers.

RW: Many readers will know you from your tenure at Greater Media and Burk, and your work and presentations at NAB conferences. What prompted you to become an entrepreneur?

Shulins: With the amazing support of longtime DOE Milford Smith of Greater Media, I was able to think outside the box, and provide exciting new technical solutions to problems that materialized due to the growing industry and technology.

Many of these solutions came in the form of digital playout systems, multi-site remote controls, and Part 101 studio-to-transmitter links before they were popular.

I decided that thinking in this way often led to solutions that others can benefit from too. My drive to share my passion for innovation presented the perfect opportunity to start this business.

RW: How do recent trends in how broadcast companies manage engineering affect the marketplace for the services you offer?

Shulins: For sure the market is changing. We are all balancing more projects at the same time, and resources are stretched thin.

During my long tenure at Greater Media, I was fortunate to have the time and flexibility to be able to creates a number of custom software systems that really helped improve the operating efficiency of the stations, and are the foundation of many of the products and services I offer today. That being said, many very capable broadcast engineers simply don’t have the time to be able to take on these types of projects themselves.

The solutions we offer can really help engineers manage their transmission sites, and provide a level of protections and monitoring that simplifies their operation. Our drone tower inspections using thermal imagery can help find issues quickly before they cause serious down time. We strive to provide tools that help engineers make the most of their time and help simplify with an approach that is based on my experience waking in their shoes for many years.

RW: How widely are drones being used now in broadcast inspection work?

Shulins: We see it growing more and more each day. I think the TV spectrum repack really put a lot of pressure on the tower climbing resources and brought focused, alternative ways to inspect towers beyond simply climbing them. While nothing can fully replace a physical inspection, sUAS inspections bring new technology and capabilities, allowing for inspections that can be made more frequently, less expensively, and in many cases with more detail than a physical inspection often finding problems not obvious from the ground.

RW: Give an example of a project you’re working on or recently did.

Shulins: I recently had the honor of working with some very talented engineers on a 10-station FM combiner system that had very complex switching and safety requirements. The type of software and hardware solutions I deploy happened to be a perfect fit for this operation. Features like automatic power reduction in the event of line pressure loss, and integrated mode switching using multiple motorized coaxial switches. It was a lot of fun to design and deploy.

I have also recently been able to pinpoint transmission line problems with the sUAS using thermal imagery when more conventional resources like spectrum analyzers and ground based TDRs were unable to localize the issue.

RW: What else should we know?

Shulins: My strength is my experience and my passion. The old cliche holds true that if you love what you do for work, then it really isn’t work. My entire career has been about innovation and technology, but the most important part is the people. I have had the good fortune of working with some of the very best in the world, and learning from all of them. I enjoy making people’s lives easier by providing exciting ideas and solutions to help them save money and compete effectively. I approach each day with excitement and can’t wait to see what opportunities are around the corner.

The post Shulins Opens Up His Own Shop appeared first on Radio World.