Industry News

When it comes to its tactics for bringing those responsible for some of the music heard across the radio dial, there’s perhaps no rights organization more brash than the Irving Azoff-founded Global Music Rights (GMR).

GMR has been a thorn in the side of the Radio industry for years, with ongoing litigation with the Radio Music Licensing Committee (RMLC) a top story in 2019 and 2020.

Now, the powerful artists and publishers’ rights organization that’s tangled with the RMLC for five years is taking a page straight out of the Mafia film Goodfellas by handing Radio a “pay up, or else” approach to its new licensing agreements set to commence April 1.

As first reported by Streamline Publishing’s Radio Ink, GMR — which represents a wide swath of writers and publishers ranging from Billy Joel and Bob Seger to current pop stars Ava Max and Drake — has issued communication to radio stations that air music in its library that their current licensing agreements expire on March 31.

The new deal is straight out of Mission: Impossible, if not reminiscent of the Goodfellas character Henry Hill’s description of how his mafiosos go about collecting payments from those who owe money. On April 1, a nine-month interim licensing agreement would start. But, a 20% royalty increase comes with the signing of a new deal.

The timing couldn’t be worse for the Radio industry, which has seen sequential improvements in its quarterly earnings since the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic some 11 months ago. Still, most publicly traded radio broadcasting companies have carefully balanced cash on hand and their debt leverage by moving forward with a reduction in force. At iHeartMedia, the industry’s largest audio media company, job losses came after an infamous January 2021 employee reduction effort — one that was never reported by iHeartMedia-owned trade publication Inside Radio.

The hardball tactics GMR is taking came without any input or negotiation from the RMLC, Radio Ink reports.

And, GMR’s unilateral royalty rise comes as its court battle with RMLC has been delayed due to the pandemic, creating a legal back log. The discovery process in the groups’ case is not set to conclude until the end of 2021.

A PRE-COVID GUNSLINGER

On February 17, 2020, one month before the novel coronavirus sent most of the U.S. into a pandemic-fueled lockdown, GMR and RMLC engaged in a war of words over who was in the wrong with respect to the litigation and where the court was heading.

In GMR’s view, Judge Terry Hatter Jr. of the Central District of California “dealt a significant defeat” to the alliance of radio broadcasting companies known as the RMLC, “denying its attempts” to dismiss the lawsuit.

However, what GMR’s public relations veteran Larry Solters didn’t mention is that, should RMLC be able to prove the facts it is alleging, then GMR is the entity that is “an illegal cartel,” RMLC said at the time.

Meanwhile, the fight between GMR and the RMLC won the support of the Trump-era Justice Department. In late December 2019, DOJ urged a federal court to reject attempts by the Nashville-based RMLC “to misconstrue the laws that prohibit its illegal, price-fixing, cartel behavior.”

That statement came after GMR in October 2019 sued Entravision Communications for non-payment of royalties for music played — according to GMR — on English-language Rocker KFRQ-FM in Harlingen, Tex.; Classic Rocker KOFX-FM in El Paso; Hot AC KVLY-FM “107.9 MIX FM” in McAllen-Brownsville; and Los Angeles stations KDLD-FM “Súper Estrella Clásica” and simulcast KLYY-FM/KSSE-FM “José” from January 2017.

The GMR letter to Radio became known on the same day SoundCloud introduced what it is calling “fan-powered royalties — a fairer and more transparent way for artists to earn money on SoundCloud.”

It is designed to assist independent artists whose livelihoods were greatly crippled by COVID-19, with a lack of live performances eating into earnings in a major way.

“With fan-powered royalties, money made from listeners goes directly to the artists they listen to,” SoundCloud explained. “This equitable payout model is what independent artists across the industry have been asking for, and as an artist-first platform, we’re excited to be the first music company to roll it out.”

The fan-powered royalties go into effect April 1 for “Pro Unlimited” subscribers in the Premier monetization program and Repost by SoundCloud artists, including those in Repost Select.

How does it work? “The more fans listen on SoundCloud, and listen to your music, the more you get paid,” it explains.

Under the old model, money from dedicated fans went into a giant pool paid out to artists based on their share of total streams — a model, SoundCloud says, “mostly benefits mega stars.”

We all do it. In fact, our editor is doing it right now.

Music, and spoken word content such as a news report, is more than ever being consumed by U.S. consumers over a smartphone.

New data from Edison Research only confirms the trend.

Listening on a mobile device now accounts for 30% of all time spent listening to audio by those age 13+ in the U.S.

That’s an impressive 67% increase from 2014, the latest Share of Ear report from Edison Research finds.

As Edison notes, the gap between listening on a traditional radio receiver and a mobile device among those ages 13 and higher has narrowed remarkably quickly since 2014. In fact, 31 percentage points separated the two in 2014 and only five percentage points separate the two today, it says.

Nevertheless, the traditional AM/FM radio receiver — largely in the automobile — still accounts for the largest share of audio consumed.

Of course, that percentage has decreased the most since the survey began, and now accounts for a mere 35% of all audio consumption, compared to 49% in 2014. 
 
Mobile devices have already surpassed traditional radio receivers in the younger age groups.

Among those age 13-34, 46% of total daily audio consumption is done on a mobile device; 20% is done on a traditional AM/FM radio receiver, possibly because younger drivers tend to have older automobiles without today’s connected car accessories such as Bluetooth and USB connectors.  
 
Edison stresses that these statistics speak to device only, and not the audio product that is delivered by the device.

Mobile devices can deliver a wide range of audio products, including radio station programming. 
 
“Mobile devices, particularly of course the phone, have been gaining on the traditional radio receiver as the primary listening device for as long as we have been measuring Share of Ear, but with the disruptions of the last year the gap has narrowed dramatically,” said Edison Research President Larry Rosin. “As fewer people have a standard radio receiver in their homes these days, naturally more listening comes through digital devices.”  
 
COVID-19 disruptions meant Americans spent more time consuming audio at home in 2020 and less time consuming audio in-car, the prime location for listening to a traditional AM/FM receiver. This, Rosin added, could explain some of the change in the past year.

“Further data analysis in the coming year will be needed to see if these audio habits remain post-quarantine,” he said.

How the Share of Ear® study is conducted: Edison Research conducts a nationally representative study of Americans ages 13 and older to measure their time spent listening to audio sources. Respondents complete a 24-hour diary of their audio listening on an assigned day. Diaries are completed both online and by-mail using a paper diary. Diaries are offered in both English and Spanish. The Share of Ear study is released quarterly and is available on a subscription basis.

Justin McClure owns Jam Broadcasting, licensee of four stations located about an hour’s drive northwest of San Antonio.  He recently tuned into one of his stations only to hear the dreaded sound of a quiet carrier.

He went to the site and as he unlocked the door he sniffed for that dreaded burnt electronics scent, but smelled nothing out of the ordinary.

Looking over the equipment rack, he noticed that his Optimod 8200 was flashing like a disco light.

Justin diagnosed that his 15 VDC linear supply was working as it should, but the +12, –12and +5 VDC supplies were having issues.

He was just about to order a replacement supply when he thought of doing an internet search. It led him to a tip by broadcast engineer Gary Morgan in a 2013 Workbench article!

“I love that people take the time to post these simple fixes,” he told us. “I sat down and followed Gary’s instructions, and it works like a charm.”

The ATX replacement supply that Justin chose did not have the color-coded wires described in Gary’s submission, so he had to use the ATX pinout to identify the correct voltages. No problem, because he had all the instruments on his workbench, as shown in Fig. 1.

A couple of hours later, he wired the ATX supply wires to the Molex plug (shown in Fig. 2) and the processor was back up and sounding good.

The completed modification is shown in Fig. 3.

To retrieve the original pictures, Justin turned to the Internet Archive to find a screenshot of the Radio World website. Bookmark it: https://web.archive.org/. More than 500 billion web pages reside at the site, which is also known as the Way Back Internet Machine.

Justin says the site has saved him a handful of times when he needed specific information. It also contains older versions of software, should you need them.

Thanks to Gary Morgan for the original submission and to Justin for the update.

I received word from several engineers regarding the Feb. 17 Workbench tip from Dan Gunter, principal of Alabama Broadcast Services LLC. Dan wrote about using a FLIR smartphone plugin to view overheated components.

Readers will recall Dan had intended to check a possible heating issue with a capacitor in a backup transmitter harmonic trap, but that he got sidetracked when he found a defective fan in an adjacent transmitter that was on the air.

Dan’s tip outlined how he replaced the fan, but there was no mention of the original issue: the suspected overheating capacitor in the backup transmitter.

Dan writes that like so many contract guys, he has been buried with work. By the time he got back to the aux, the transmitter wouldn’t even make 100W.

Since this was a shunt capacitor in the third harmonic trap, there was nowhere near enough current at 100W to attempt to heat up that capacitor. Dan replaced it, and the rig was running fine.

At another site, Dan used his FLIR to identify a bad breaker or questionable wire connection feeding a TWR tower lighting system. What was amazing was that the increased temperature was noted through the cover of the breaker panel!

Closer inspection seems to indicate a weak breaker, as it has started tripping after every power outage at the site, possibly because it cannot handle the surge current when everything in the building restarts simultaneously.

Dan is not ruling out problems with the bonding of the wires to the breaker terminals, so he will be taking IR images before replacing the breaker, and also making sure the breaker wires are clean, secure, and treated with Noalox brand anti-oxidant conductive grease before taking “after” pictures.

Noalox is manufactured by Ideal. A 4-ounce bottle is under $10 at Home Depot or Amazon.

As Dan makes repairs, he will keep readers informed.

New England contract engineer Stephanie Donnell enjoyed the generator maintenance tips that David Morgan of Sinclair TeleCable offered. She adds an additional tip that may save you a trip to a remote transmitter site.

If you have a generator that’s new enough to have a digital controller but does not include some means of remotely monitoring the various status and fault conditions, there is usually no remote means to reset the faults via remote control.

One way around this problem is to add a simple way to reset a fault, so the generator will start. A solution is to install a relay with the N.C. (Normally Closed) contacts wired in-line with the 12 VDC that operates the controller board. When the relay is actuated by a command from your Burk or other type of site controller, the relay will momentarily interrupt the 12 VDC that operates the controller board and clear the fault.

Keep in mind, this is not a perfect solution; the interruption will also clear the run time counter, and you will have no way of knowing what the particular fault condition was.

But as long as the fault was not a continuing “fatal” level fault, this modification will buy you a little time, and the generator should restart. It will keep things on the air and allow you to schedule time to safely get to the site and investigate the situation further.

Just as Gary’s tip helped Justin, your submission to Workbench helps your fellow engineers. Join us in helping Workbench readers solve problems by sending your tips to johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Workbench: Archived Tip Saves Time and Money appeared first on Radio World.

The migration to digital radio is going swiftly in Switzerland.

OFCOM, the Swiss Federal Office of Communication, says DAB+ is now the most widely used radio reception method in the country, and that only one in eight people say they still tune in exclusively to FM radio.

“In autumn 2020, radio listeners received an average of 73 out of 100 radio minutes per day via digital means. Digital radio usage has thus increased by 24 percentage points over the last five years,” it said, citing a report from the Digital Migration working group at the Swiss Broadcasting Corp. GfK Annual Meeting.

“At 41 percent, DAB+ is the most widely used reception mode in all parts of the country and in all age groups. Usage via the other two digital reception channels, internet radio and digital TV, has remained virtually constant, levelling off at 32 percent, while FM use has fallen by 24 percentage points over the past five years, and now stands at 27 per cent. Only 12 out of 100 people stated that they still listen to FM radio.”

Switzerland’s radio industry will switch entirely from FM to digital broadcasting via DAB+ in 2022 and 2023.

The SRG will switch off its FM transmitters in August 2022, and private radio stations will do so by January 2023.

The post Swiss Listeners Take Up Digital Radio appeared first on Radio World.

Broadcast software developer NeoGroupe has released a suite of tools for the remote screening of phone calls for radio talk shows.

According to the company, the offerings are headed by the NeoScreenerSmart mobile application (for iOS and Android, available from the stores). Supporting the app is the VPN compatibility of the company’s NeoScreener Windows application software, for both audio and control of phone lines and a cloud-hosted common shared database. The system does not require specified brands of telephone sets: The call screener can operate the phone lines from his/her home using a simple USB headset and microphone;

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

The company describes a case study using a studio base in New York City that has a Telos VOIP phone system. It explains that call screeners can be at home in New Jersey and another in Connecticut, securely using the NeoScreener application while the host uses the NeoScreener application in Florida and sees the cued calls. He is able to air them in NYC. A co-host uses the iOS application on an iPad in Georgia to see the same calls that the host sees. He also has the same abilities to air calls, hold or drop them from the mobile application.

This framework allows the continuing remote operation of the show in the same way that it operated when in the studio, side-stepping COVID the travel restrictions. The usual workflow remains totally unchanged.

NeoScreener has also modules to handle prizes, winners, texting for callback and website interfaces. It is available in 10 languages. And finally, NeoGroupe recently added support for AEQ Systel VOIP Systems and the AVT THipPro line of phone systems, so that NeoScreener offers compatibility with the major phone systems available on the market.

Info: www.neogroupe.com

The post NeoGroupe Releases Call Screening Tools appeared first on Radio World.

Entercom named Tim Clarke as the senior vice president and market manager of its six-station Boston operation, which includes WBGB(FM), WMJX(FM), WWBX(FM), WEEI (AM/FM) and WVEI(AM).

Clarke was VP of content and audience for Cox Media Group and, before that, senior director of digital audience for CMG’s radio stations. He succeeds Mark Hannon, whose role recently expanded as regional president of 13 markets.

And Entercom also named Claudia Menegus as market manager for Miami. She is already regional president of Entercom Gainesville, Memphis, Miami and Orlando, where she also has market manager responsibilities; she took those roles last August. She succeeds Keriann Worley, who has left the company.

Menegus began her career with Infinity Broadcasting, which later merged with CBS Radio. She spent 18 years there including various roles in its Baltimore market and later as director of integrated marketing for CBS Radio Corporate, overseeing the Events and Experiences Division in 15 markets.

Send your people news to radioworld@futurenet.com

The post Tim Clarke to Head Entercom Boston appeared first on Radio World.

Entravision Communications Corp., which owns radio and TV stations superserving U.S. Hispanic consumers, has determined when it will share its final fourth quarter and full-year 2020 financial results.

The announcement came on a highly active day for the company’s stock.

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The Reciva internet radio aggregation platform, which provides the tuning systems for some internet/WiFi radios made by manufacturers such as C. Crane, Grace Digital and Tangent, is to shut down by April 30, 2021.

Radio World has been unable to find any reason for the shutdown issued by Qualcomm, which owns the Reciva platform.

Originally the shutdown was supposed to occur on Jan. 31, 2021, but that deadline was extended in mid-January.

A headlined message “Notice: With effect from 30th April 2021 this website will be withdrawn” appears on the radios.reciva.com website. It has led to despairing posts from many internet radio fans.

“When Qualcomm pulls the plug, it’s gone,” wrote Solo2, administrator of the Internet Radio Forum.

“In the meantime — and I suppose it goes without saying — do not buy a new or used WiFi radio that relies on Reciva as it will not function properly without the Reciva aggregator service,” said www.swling.com.

Coincident with Reciva’s imminent demise, C. Crane has been preparing to release the CC WiFi-3 internet radio. Unlike the earlier CC WiFi radio that ran on Reciva, the CC WiFi-3 uses the Skytune platform.

C. Crane posted this message on its own website: “We were happy to be one of first companies to offer ad-free Internet radio because it allowed anyone to listen to the world without a fee. Fifteen years ago, Ben [Terrell], the founder of Reciva, had a small staff to create the software and volunteers around the world to help manage the station streams. We are sorry, but Reciva’s software will soon not work anymore.”

To assist stranded CC WiFi owners, C. Crane is offering a number of replacement offers, including a half-price sale (US$60 plus shipping, until June 1) for CC WiFi owners whose sets are out of warranty. C. Crane has a post about the Reciva situation here.

Meanwhile Grace Digital is helping owners of its older WiFi radios (manufactured 2007 to 2017) that rely on Reciva.

“If you have a legacy internet radio, to help with the transition, Grace Digital will offer special one-time discounts to effected customers,” states the company’s Upgrade page. It adds that, “based on the current information provided to Grace Digital the presets will continue to function for basic internet radio stations … However, please note this strategy will only work with standard radio stations.”

Finally, Tangent has cross-posted a list of internet radios affected by the Reciva platform shutdown. Referring to its now-discontinued Tangent QUATTRO internet radio, “We as radio manufacturer do not have the possibility of offering an alternative software as the module and software is made by RECIVA,” said Tangent-Audio.com.

The post Reciva Internet Radio Platform Shutting Down appeared first on Radio World.

The desert landscape surrounding Palm Springs, Calif., has gotten a big boost in recent years from The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, which due to COVID-19 is cancelled for 2021. The region is also a big LGBTQ haven.

Now, the Coachella Valley has emerged as an investment opportunity for one Louie Comella. He’s the head of a media company that’s buying radio properties in the market due east of L.A.

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Central Virginia’s Classic Rock station, a Class C3 FM with a signal covering the Lynchburg half of the Roanoke market, has been owned by regional licensee Todd P. Robinson‘s WVJT LLC since August 2012.

Now, Robinson is selling the station to a nationally known operator that’s also locally based.

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