Industry News

EUREKA, CALIF. — In May 2006, Cox Communications completed its sale of cable television systems serving customers in West Texas, a portion of North Carolina, various communities across the middle of the U.S., and the California markets of Bakersfield and Eureka-Arcata.

The buyer? Cebridge Connections, with majority investors Oaktree Capital Management and Goldman Sachs. Once the deal closed, Cebridge changed its name to Suddenlink.

Nearly 15 years later, ex-Cox customers in one of those DMAs could, ironically, soon lose access to broadcast TV stations owned by Cox Media Group.

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According to Atlanta-based CMG, today majority-owned by Apollo Global Management, SuddenLink may soon make what it calls “an anti-consumer decision” by dropping channels serving viewers in Tulsa, Memphis, Spokane, and the smaller markets of Greenville-Greenwood, Miss.; Alexandria, La.; and Eureka-Arcata, Calif.; in the absence of a new retransmission consent agreement.

Specifically, the stations potentially impacted by a retrans impasse between Suddenlink and CMG are FOX affiliates KAYU-28 in Spokane, WHBQ-13 in Memphis and KOKI-23 in Tulsa; ABC affiliate KLAX-31 in Alexandria; and the ABC, FOX, NBC and CBS stations serving Greenwood and Greenville, Miss.

However, it is the Humboldt County, Calif., stations that present an ironic twist for Cox. Fifteen years ago, it owned the MVPD. The stations it owns today, dominant NBC affiliate KIEM-3 in Eureka and CBS sibling KVIQ-LP 14, came to CMG in late 2019 after Brian Brady’s Northwest Broadcasting was sold to Apollo, ahead of its Cox deal. In 2005, KVIQ was a Clear Channel-owned property using Channel 6, picked up in 2002 from Ackerley Group. KIEM was owned by Pollack/Belz Broadcasting.

Is a “blackout” imminent, with the tiny Greenville-Greenwood, Miss., DMA imperiled yet again from receiving nearly every local network affiliate?

Perhaps. Alternatively, CMG is opting to strike first with a consumer warning, a move that could point fingers at Suddenlink before it can place blame on Cox for possibly short-changing customers of the MVPD, which is owned by Altice USA.

Paul Curran, CMG’s EVP of Television, said, “Our country continues to navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic and, during these uncertain times, it is more important than ever that our viewers know their trusted local stations are there for them, providing the news and information they need to make decisions for their families. CMG stations take pride in being trusted and vital resources for our communities, and we will fight to continue to fulfill this responsibility.”

As of mid-afternoon Wednesday (1/6), Suddenlink had not offered a public comment regarding the possible impasse with Cox Media Group.

— Reporting by Ethan Hunt. Additional reporting by Adam Jacobson, in Boca Raton, Fla.

 

The author worked at KWTX(AM/FM) in 1975–79 as an announcer, DJ and board operator. He is a personal collector and preservationist of Central Texas broadcasting memorabilia.

This is one in a series featuring radio station memories and early histories.

Once the home of the “Golden Sound of Beautiful Music,” KWTX-FM has now been entertaining Central Texas listeners in one form or another for 50 years.

Its inaugural broadcast was Dec. 7, 1970. The new Waco FM station at 97.5 MHz was owned and operated by KWTX Broadcasting Co., the licensee of KWTX-TV (Channel 10) and KWTX(AM) (1230 kHz). All local radio and TV programming originated from the company’s Broadcast Center at 4520 Bosque Blvd. in Waco.

The KWTX transmitter and tower were located along I-35 near Lorena, Texas, a few miles south of Waco. The station transmitted at an effective radiated power of 71 kW. Programming was sent from the Waco studio to the transmitter site by a microwave link licensed by the Federal Communications Commission as Auxiliary WAL 23.

Announcer Carla Smith circa 1980

Throughout the 1970s, the station aired easy-listening music in stereo with limited interruptions from 6 a.m. to midnight. Instrumental selections from albums by Percy Faith, Montovani, Ray Conniff, Ferrante and Teicher, Andre Kostelanetz, 101 Strings, plus many other similar musical artists were broadcast to listeners throughout Central Texas.

The station also carried national news on the hour from the Mutual Broadcasting System. The local FM announcers gave the time and temperature on the quarter-hour and a short headline news report and weather forecast every half-hour.

Dave South, former KWTX radio program director and Texas A&M play-by-play sportscaster, recently recalled a few of the obstacles faced before and after the first broadcast.

“We put the station on the air with a very limited music library,” South said. “I had gone to Dallas a number of times begging the record distributors for any help they could provide, which wasn’t much.”

RCA BC-7A stereo/dual channel consolette, Sennheiser MD 421-II cardioid dynamic microphone on an adjustable swivel arm, and ITC Model SP and Model 3D cartridge tape machines. Not shown were two Russco Cue-Master broadcast turntables. On-air announcer scripts to be read live can be seen above the console.

However, the station received programming help from an unexpected source. South received a letter from a man in Europe asking if the radio station played easy-listening music. The man’s father was an orchestra leader who had recorded 10 or 12 albums.

“He sent those albums to me,” South said. “We played just about every cut on each LP, and that increased our music library by 30 to 40 percent.”

South said station management would come into the control room occasionally and draw a line with a red grease pencil through album cuts they didn’t want to hear again.

“Lots of red circles became a part of our lives in FM,” South said.

Announcer Bill Castello in FM control circa 1979

On-air announcers also had to cope with working inside a small confined space, sometimes for up to six hours. The FM control room wasn’t much larger than a closet and crowded with equipment and storage shelves.

South said that it was often difficult to find someone willing to work long part-time hours for not much money — and who liked to listen to slow instrumental music.

“Our only full-time announcer was Clarence Garnes,” South said. “Clarence was a former radio guy and had a great voice. He was in his late 70s and smoked like a chimney. He didn’t make much money, but that was OK with him, because he was retired, and his wife had a good job at Baylor University.”

Many FM radio hosts brought “Beautiful Stereo Music” to Central Texas listeners for over a decade until the format changed in the early ’80s to personality DJs playing contemporary hits 24 hours a day.

A few noteworthy changes to KWTX-FM have occurred since. A new broadcast tower and transmitter facility was built near Moody, south of Waco, in 1979. FM power increased to 100 kW in 1986.

KWTX AM/FM/TV moved to a new facility at 6700 American Plaza in 1987. Both radio stations were sold to Gulfstar Communications in 1996, and are now owned by iHeartMedia.

Today, KWTX(AM) “NewsTalk 1230,”  KWTX-FM “97.5 FM #1 Hit Music,” and other Waco iHeartMedia stations are located at 314 West Highway 6.

 

The post Remembering the Early Days of KWTX-FM appeared first on Radio World.

In the 49th State, it is known as GCI. That’s the Liberty Broadband-owned MVPD that, as of Jan. 1, discontinued carriage of “FOX Alaska,” “ABC Alaska,” and “The CW Alaska” on a newly launched “skinny bundle” offering designed to discourage subscribers from fleeing to such services as Hulu and YouTube TV.

It is pointing fingers at the broadcast TV station owner providing the three signals. Naturally, the broadcaster feels otherwise.

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The NAB says the FCC did the right thing last summer when it eliminated the radio duplication rule for FM as well as AM stations. It is slamming opponents who want to overturn the decision, calling them cynical and retaliatory.

The story so far

In August, the Federal Communications Commission eliminated the rule that restricted duplication of programming on commonly owned stations that operate in the same service and geographic area. However, it unexpectedly did so for FM stations as well as AM, a late change that was criticized at the time by Democratic Commissioners Jessica Rosenworcel and Geoffrey Starks.

Subsequently, REC Networks, musicFIRST and Future of Music Coalition formally asked the FCC to overturn the decision in regards to FM stations. Among other things they basically accused the National Association of Broadcasters of pulling a fast one by seeking to change the terms of the issue at the last minute.

The opponents reminded the FCC that it had proposed and circulated a draft order applying only to AM stations and explicitly retaining the rule for FMs.

“In its Final Order, however, without warning or justification, the commission reversed course, eliminating the Radio Duplication Rule in its entirety,” they argued in November.

They said the elimination of the FM portion of the Radio Duplication Rule would “invite a reduction in diversity of programming, while encouraging corporate radio owners to hoard spectrum.” They believe the economic fallout of the pandemic should not be used as a justification because it is ultimately a temporary situation that could be dealt with through waiver requests, whereas the rule change will have lasting consequences.

And they said the FCC’s “sudden about-face” regarding FM violates federal law on administrative procedures. They said that on the day before the sunshine period, the general counsel of the NAB called senior aides to Republican Commissioners Pai and Carr to argue that the FM rule should be eliminated.

The effect of the timing, they said, “was to ensure that petitioners would not be able to speak to anyone at the commission about the matter on an ex parte basis prior to the commission’s vote. The timing of these actions is an affront to the stated purpose of the commission’s ex parte rules, namely to ‘ensure the fairness and integrity of its decisionmaking.’”

They laid out legal reasoning why a second round of public comments should have been held instead.

NAB replies

Now the NAB has replied formally to the commission.

The association says the critics’ arguments about competition “exhibit a complete misrepresentation of the business fundamentals of the radio industry and the intense competition radio faces, and a total lack of understanding of the market value of AM/FM radio spectrum.”

NAB slammed them as retaliatory: “Once again, we see musicFIRST and FMC file in commission proceedings concerning radio not because the companies and organizations those groups represent care about the proceedings at issue, but rather, to retaliate against broadcasters for those groups failing to convince Congress to enact a tax on radio stations when they play (promote) record labels’ music on terrestrial radio stations.”

The broadcast group also argued that the petition raises no new issues.

“The FCC correctly determined that, even absent the radio duplication rule, radio stations have no incentive to limit their appeal to listeners or advertising revenues by simulcasting the same content on multiple stations in the same market,” NAB wrote.

“To the contrary, the FCC explained that the best way for stations to reach the widest audience possible and maximize profits is to provide distinctive programming on their various stations, which is exactly the practice of broadcasters with multiple stations in the same market.” They said the opponents had not named one instance where a station has taken advantage of the repeal in the way the critics worry about.

NAB said these opponents also disregard the competitive incentives that broadcasters have to provide “diverse, distinctive content.” It said they “insist on demonstrating their consistent misunderstanding of what it takes for radio stations to survive in today’s hyper-competitive audio marketplace …  Both musicFIRST and FMC appeared blissfully unaware of how difficult it is for radio stations to endure in this environment, never mind serve the public interest effectively.”

It said the explosion in audio choices provides consumers with “nearly limitless content diversity.”

NAB also said eliminating the rule provides FMs the ability to “quickly repurpose programming on commonly owned stations,” especially when they need to share critical information during an emergency. There was no reason to retain the rule and force stations to incur the time and expense of pursuing a waiver. Eliminating the rule also could help stations to facilitate a format change on a sister station or more efficiently cover a specific issue of local interest, for a limited period of time.

“Finally,” NAB wrote in its conclusion, “the entire point of the FCC’s media regulation modernization initiative is to modify or eliminate regulations that no longer serve an important purpose. … [T]he rule is a perfect example of an unnecessary regulation that can needlessly hinder broadcasters’ ability to efficiently serve Americans, particularly during crises.”

The debate comes at a time of transition at the FCC, with an incoming Democratic presidential administration and the expectation of a new chairman soon. Chairman Pai will oversee his final FCC open meeting this month. Pai has said that regulatory transparency is one of the hallmarks of his tenure.

The deadline for comments on the opponents’ petition was Monday. Replies must be filed by Jan. 15.

The post NAB, Critics Duel Over Radio Duplication Rule appeared first on Radio World.

Not long ago, dissident TEGNA investor Soohyung Kim was thwarted in his attempt to gain a seat on the company’s board, place his own members on the board, and essentially assume control of a company he had little faith in.

Now, as 2021 unfolds, TEGNA’s C-Suite is taking stock of its COVID-era accomplishments. And, it’s CEO is pretty darn proud of them.

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Leo MacCourtney of Katz Television Group was elected chairman of the International Radio and Television Society Foundation.

He succeeds Debra O’Connell, president of networks at Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution.

IRTS is a charitable organization “dedicated to building the next generation of media leaders and increasing diversity.” Its academic programs include a Summer Fellowship Program, Multicultural Career Workshop, Broadcast Sales Associate Program and Faculty/Industry Seminar.

MacCourtney is president of Katz Television Group, a television advertising sales organization that is part of iHeartMedia. He has been involved with the IRTS board for 25 years in various roles.

He also has served as chairman of the Television Bureau of Advertising and is involved with the boards of the Emma Bowen Foundation and Washington Media Scholars Foundation. He is the treasurer for the Broadcasters Foundation of America.

In a press release, MacCourtney said, “IRTS provides young people across the nation with meaningful ways to work and connect with high-level executives and companies in the media industry.” I’m extremely proud to help lead IRTS in its mission to support and mentor the next generation of media leaders with diversity at the core.”

Joyce Tudryn is IRTS president and CEO.

 

The post MacCourtney Is Elected Chair of IRTS appeared first on Radio World.

Set your calendar reminder now for 9am on Monday, March 1, TEGNA investors and Wall Street observers. That’s when TEGNA will formally unveil its Q4 and full-year 2020 results.

What can shareholders expect from the broadcast media company? TEGNA shared its preliminary results on Wednesday (1/6) — along with a preview of what could very much be on the books for 2021.

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Below are the latest totals for the number of U.S. radio stations.

The Federal Communications Commission released its latest count of licensed stations as of Dec. 31, 2020.

We’ve added comparisons to one year ago and, out of interest in the longer-term trends, to 20 years ago.

Picking out a few data points, the total number of full-power stations is off slightly from last year but still well above where it was early in this millennium.

Also we see that the number of FM educational signals almost doubled in two decades. Meanwhile the number of FM translators and boosters far more than doubled in those 20 years (and grew by 238 just in the past year).

And the number of AM stations has continued to shrink, albeit slowly, a little bit each year.

 

AM, FM commercial and FM educational combined*

Dec. 2020: 15,445

Dec. 2019: 15,500

Late 2000: 12,717

*excludes LPFMs, boosters and translators, noted below.

 

AM only

Dec. 2020: 4,551

Dec. 2019: 4,593

Late 2000: 4,685

(In the 1990s, the number of AMs peaked at around 5,000)

 

FM commercial only

Dec. 2020: 6,699

Dec. 2019: 6,772

Late 2000: 5,892

 

FM educational only

Dec. 2020: 4,195

Dec. 2019: 4,135

Late 2000: 2,140

 

FM boosters and translators

Dec. 2020: 8,420

Dec. 2019: 8,182

Late 2000: 3,243

 

Low-power FM

Dec. 2020: 2,136

Dec. 2019: 2,169

Late 2000: n/a

(The LPFM services was created in 2000.)

The post FCC Releases Year-End Station Totals appeared first on Radio World.

Credit: iStock CinematicFilm

As heard in movies and on TV shows, the stereotypical computer-generated voice sounds awkward and unnatural. But thanks to artificial intelligence, today’s computer-generated voices can sound remarkably authentic and natural, especially if the voice has been generated after analyzing numerous samples of an actual person’s spoken words.

This is the approach being used by text-to-voice companies such as Descript. Billed as a tool to help podcasters edit and generate new speech simply by editing text transcripts, Descript starts out by having its clients read text samples into the company’s database, so that its AI-based text-to-voice engine has accurate sounds to work with.

“You can even create a range of delivery styles using samples of your voice,” said Jay LeBoeuf, Descript’s head of business development. “You could have one file labelled ‘Excited,’ a second labelled ‘Contemplative’ and so forth. Then when you input text that suits a particular style of read, you can tell our system which delivery style to use.”

The ability to create voice tracks from text, without actually stepping up to the microphone and speaking into it, has tremendous implications for the radio and voiceover industries.

In particular, the ability to create audio content from AI-generated “stock voices” (rather than cloned from individual human voices) could turn the market for human announcers upside down.

How good is text-to-voice?

This article was prompted by a Descript email received by Radio World with the subject line “Create Realistic, Synthetic Voiceovers Just by Typing.” It included a link to an audio file named “Descript Stock Voices.” It featured some of the 10 distinct AI-generated female and male voices that Descript offers to its text-to-voice clients for free. (A link to the audio file is at the end of this article.)

The file featured these non-human voices bantering back and forth, to illustrate how natural they sounded to the actual human ear. Again, their spoken words were generated directly from text.

In the subjective assessment of this writer, the AI-generated voices generally did sound authentic, although the need to leave distinct spaces between each of their words added a slight unnaturalness to the delivery.

Overall, the interplay between Descript’s AI-generated voices was impressive. In a short commercial or an on-air announcement consisting of two or three sentences, they would have been good enough to pass muster with most listeners.

Aimed at human announcers

Despite its mention of AI-generated voices, Descript says its services are aimed at human announcers/producers who want to make changes to their recorded content without having to go back to the studio.

“The most common use case for our Overdub voice cloning service is editorial corrections of human-delivered audio content,” said LeBoeuf. “It allows producers to make changes to this content as needed quickly and accurately.”

An image from a demo of Descript Pro Overdub.

Sam Sethi is a U.K.-based radio presenter heard on Marlow FM, BBC Berkshire and several other radio stations. He also podcasts and does voiceovers, and uses Descript Overdub as part of his production process.

“I read Descript’s prescribed text to train their system for 30 minutes, and then Descript created my unique Overdub voice,” said Sethi.

“In a blind listening test, my wife of 20 years couldn’t tell with 100% accuracy which was the synthesized voice and which was my own. I was genuinely amazed by that. Since then I have used my Overdub voice to make small edits or add additional audio quickly by using Overdub.”

Possibilities

As useful as Descript’s Overdub voice cloning is to human announcers and products, it’s the economical AI-generated voices that might get a cost-sensitive radio manager thinking.

Using a text-to-voice portfolio of AI-generated voices, a network could create individualized news, weather and sports casts for each market. The text would be generated by humans at a central location. Stories would be sorted and stored in online folders for each station, organized by playout order and then fed to a text-into-voice system that would generated market-specific audio broadcasts for each location. No announcers required.

In the same vein, station identifications and other branded content that are being created by human voiceover artists could be produced using text-to-voice. (To offset any cadence issues, the station could openly acknowledge that it is using a text-to-voice system: “Hi, I’m Bob, your friendly AI announcer.”)

Meanwhile, local ad campaigns could be changed constantly as required using text-to-voice, allowing stations to provide an unprecedented degree of custom messaging to sponsors.

Fans of human creativity in radio are shuddering right about now. But these scenarios certainly seem credible in an era when big media companies have been known to cut costs.

According to Rolfe Veldman, CEO of www.Voice123.com, an online marketplace for voiceovers, AI-generated voices are already turning up, mainly in advertising.

“There’s an increased trend towards short radio ads and more of them in a given campaign, which is ripe for AI in my opinion,” Veldman told Radio World.

“Meanwhile, the quality of AI-generated voiceovers is improving. Six months ago it was horrible and today it’s already more than okay. So you can only imagine how good it may be in a year from now as the AI-enabled text-to-voice systems continue to improve.”

Veldman says he isn’t concerned about AI-generated voices displacing human announcers in general. But he does worry that the low cost of AI voices will further depress rates for human talent.

“There are already more voice actors available today than there is available work,” Veldman said. “Adding AI to the market will only make things challenging.”

Limit to the technology?

Now that AI-generated voices are here, it seems unlikely that they will disappear. But can a voiceover generated by an AI software program ever match the very best work done by a human?

Gary Kline is a veteran engineering consultant and contributor to Radio World. He’s not convinced that AI can do the job.

“The AI voices are good enough to use for weather, sports, emergency alerting, giving the time of day, and other short-form informative material,” Kline said.

“But I do not think that they are ready to replace your AM or PM drive host. I don’t think they will be voicing commercials either, at least not yet. It remains to be seen if anyone will actually use the technology for true air-talent replacement and if they do, if listeners will accept it.”

Joan Baker is vice president of the Society of Voice Arts and Sciences, and she is similarly skeptical of AI-generated voiceovers.

Joan Baker

“I can see this technology being useful to producers who think they can’t afford the minimal cost for hiring skilled voice talent, and are working on projects where there is no real need to appeal to the emotions and needs of the intended listener,” said Baker.

“Selling to people, however, requires cutting through a very dense layer of cynicism and apprehension. This is why the ‘conversational, natural, non-announcery’ style of voice acting has become so popular.

“Beyond selling, it is also tough to communicate critical issues about public safety, health and many personal concerns over which consumers — the public — are looking for inspired solutions and advice,” Baker said.

“In these cases, only real people can tap into the nuances of emotions that are symbiotic in how people think and feel during one-to-one communications with each other. Can a robotic voice know the difference between saying ‘I love you’ at a time when a person feeling romantic toward his soulmate, and when he is being comforting a friend on their death bed?”

It is hard to imagine that an AI-generated voiceover could surmount the communications challenges outlined by Baker and Kline. That said, not so long ago it would seem unimaginable that AI-generated voices could pass for human. You can assess for yourself how close the Descript Stock Voices audio file gets.

The post “Create Synthetic VOs Just by Typing” appeared first on Radio World.

The MIW Radio Group is all about mentoring; and it has now opened the application window for its annual mentoring initiative.

The Mentoring & Inspiring Women in Radio Group chooses four candidates each year from within the radio sales, marketing, programming and digital disciplines, and matches the “mentees” up with experienced female leaders in radio.

The Mildred Carter Mentoring Program was established in 2002. It is sponsored this year by vCreative. Applications are open until Jan. 29.

Here’s how to apply.

Entercom Vice President National Partnerships Lindsay Adams chairs the mentoring program.

The program is named in the memory of Mildred Carter, who, with her husband Andrew “Skip” Carter, founded the first African American owned radio station in the U.S. in 1950 in Kansas City. She ran the Carter Broadcast Group for many years after the death of Skip Carter.

 

The post MIW Group Opens Mentoring Applications appeared first on Radio World.