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David Layer of the National Association of Broadcasters recently gave a presentation to Denver SBE Chapter 48. I had the opportunity to interact with him in some detail about the topic du jour, which was metadata. 

David introduced the concept of the “Radio Dashboard Audit” to us. He described the process and shared the results of several audits he had done.

To do an audit, David would fly into a city or market, rent a car with a connected dashboard and then drive to a parking lot where he could sit and play with the car’s entertainment system for a while. He would observe what he saw on the screen. 

Some stations would show up only as a frequency on the entertainment system’s display. Others would show up with callsign or station name. And still others displayed their station logo prominently. 

Obviously, the stations with logo would be the most attractive to a listener tapping his or her way through the channels, with the others relegated to also-ran status. 

All that is just the first phase of the dashboard audit. The next looks at the metadata. Is the station sending its slogan? Is it providing title/artist information (and is it correct/timely)? How about album art or Artist Experience? 

David put all of those factors into a spreadsheet, and depending on the outcome, assigned a color code. Green is for full functionality of the system audited (RDS or HD Radio). Yellow is for under-utilization, indicating it is using some but not all the available features. Orange is for wrong/bad execution, meaning that the station is using functions improperly. And finally, red indicates no functionality — the station isn’t using any functions.

The idea of the audit is to provide an idea of how well a station is represented on the dashboard of a vehicle with a connected entertainment system. Radio World’s Paul McLane wrote about this NAB effort in his column in the March 1 issue.

Putting it into practice

After the presentation and discussion with David, I spent some time thinking through how our stations at Crawford Broadcasting would likely do in such an audit.

Other than our two analog-only AMs, I was pleased to note that none would have scored red or orange. We transmit title/artist metadata and station slogan on all our HD and RDS stations, and we do Artist Experience on a couple of stations (and are looking at adding to that number). 

I got to thinking about those stations displaying their logos on car radio screens. How did those get there? They are not, to my knowledge, transmitted with station metadata. David cleared that up for me: They are transmitted over the internet using DTS AutoStage or another connected car platform.

Shortly after that presentation, I signed us up for DTS AutoStage and linked all our station logos, so those with AutoStage-equipped vehicles should be seeing our logos. We may also join up with RadioDNS at some point, which would provide an improved dashboard presence on still more vehicles.

For most of my life, there was no such thing as metadata on radio. The title and artist were provided by the DJ in the intro or back-sell, and if you missed it, you’d have to wait for the next time that song came up and listen for it again. 

A portion of our DTS Autostage dashboard where we provide station information and logos.

But over the past couple of decades, RDS has become common, almost ubiquitous, and it’s no big chore for a broadcaster to export song title and artist or even advertiser information over the RDS.

The problem with RDS is that there appears to be no industry standard for the way that automobile radio displays use the data. 

There are basically two fields available to broadcasters for metadata: Radio Text (RT) and Dynamic Program Service (DPS). Radio Text is apparently the field designed to display title/artist information, but some radios display the DPS field instead of or in addition to the RT field. My Ford Explorer displays RT in one place and DPS in another. In talking with David, I concluded that the only safe thing to do is to stuff both fields with metadata, and that’s what we are doing across the company.

The engineer’s responsibility

So, is metadata important? I don’t think so — I know so. 

Listeners, myself included, have become accustomed to seeing metadata displayed on their radio screens, and when it is absent, frozen or wrong, it is at best an irritation and at worst a tune-out factor. 

By way of example, there are two classic rock format stations in the Denver market, both owned by big groups whose names you would recognize. Chief Engineer Amanda Hopp and I often listen to one or the other when in the car together. For a good while, the metadata of one of the stations was not working.

In my unconnected car’s entertainment system display, RT is displayed in the center. DPS info is displayed at the top right above the frequency and it scrolls, and it is also displayed on an aux screen in the instrument cluster.

The default, which amounted to the station slogan, was scrolling continually. We both found that to be a tune-out factor. The other classic rock station’s metadata was working. 

If that was our reaction to bad or missing metadata, my assumption is that others would react the same way.

The point is that we have got to make sure our metadata is being transmitted and that it is correct. This applies to FM/RDS and both AM and FM PSD for our digital stations. 

How do we know it’s being transmitted and that it’s right? That’s our engineers’ job. Sure, we would expect program directors, hosts, managers, AEs and other staffers to speak up if they see something wrong; but it’s primarily the job of the engineers to spot check the metadata daily if not more often.

Going forward, we may well develop commercial uses for Crawford metadata, and when that happens there will be revenue tied to metadata, so it will be even more important to monitor it closely.

This article appeared in the Local Oscillator, the corporate engineering newsletter of Crawford Media Group. Find past issues at https://crawfordmediagroup.net/crawford-engineering/.

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Broadcasting solutions provider ENCO and captioning company VITAC, a Verbit company, announced an alliance to expand broadcasters’ options for hardware encoders and cloud captioning.

According to the companies, the alliance combines VITAC’s experience with captioning solutions, ENCO’s encoder technologies, and Verbit’s expertise in AI-driven speech-recognition solutions to provide innovative solutions for caption encoding and delivery.

“We are excited to join forces with VITAC in this strategic partnership,” stated ENCO President Ken Frommert. “By leveraging our respective strengths, we aim to offer broadcasters a broader range of options for caption encoding and delivery, ultimately enhancing their ability to deliver accessible content to viewers.”

Doug Karlovits, VITAC general manager, noted that the alliance will allow for the integration of Verbit Captivate automated speech recognition technology into ENCO’s suite of encoder solutions to improve their captioning workflow.

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House Energy & Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers. To her left is Ranking Member Frank Pallone. (Photo courtesy House Energy & Commerce Committee)

The House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee is hearing about AM radio on April 30. Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) announced that the Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, & Commerce will hold a legislative hearing that day titled “Draft Legislation to Preserve Americans’ Access to AM Radio.”

The hearing will focus on draft legislative language for the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2024.

“Communities across the country, especially rural communities, rely on AM radio service for critical information. It plays an essential role during public emergencies when other alert systems that rely on the electric grid and cellphone networks don’t work, which is why it’s so alarming that some auto manufacturers are considering not installing AM radios in new cars,” stated Rodgers and Pallone in the announcement. “We look forward to working together to preserve Americans’ access to this vital source of information.”

NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt welcomed the announcement and thanked the lawmakers for their leadership in protecting access to AM radio.

“With 82 million monthly listeners, AM radio is the backbone of the Emergency Alert System and serves as a trusted source of factual news and diverse programming in communities across the country,” stated LeGeyt. “Local broadcasters look forward to continue working with Chairwoman McMorris Rodgers, Ranking Member Pallone and all committee members to ensure this critical communications medium remains accessible to listeners across the country.”

The draft language largely mirrors the language of the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act of 2023 (S. 1669/H.R. 3413), which passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee last year. In December 2023, an attempt to pass the bill through unanimous consent failed in the Senate. That bill currently has 48 cosponsors in the Senate and 245 in the House of Representatives.

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Orban will offer APTmpX in its line of FM processors including the Optimod 5950, 5750 and Trio-FM products. 

The codec technology is licensed from WorldCast Systems, which made the announcement.

“WorldCast has rolled out the APTmpX technology on their APT Codec range and also incorporated the algorithm directly on a decoder built into their award-winning Ecreso FM AiO Series Transmitter range,” WorldCast noted.

It said APTmpX is used in hundreds of MPX STL links. It cites the “absolute transparent nature of the codec, being rooted in ADPCM as opposed to a psychoacoustic code base.

“This gives the immediate benefit of maintaining perfect sonic fidelity and precise peak control of the high-end processor from which the MPX signal has been derived.”

WorldCast Systems highlights the performance of the APTmpX reduced-bandwidth codec.

WorldCast said that APTmpX will not degrade Nielsen’s PPM watermarking technology used in the United States. 

The announcement about Orban was made by Hartmut Foerster, product manager at WorldCast Systems, and David Day, president of Orban Labs. 

Day called APTmpX “the only reduced bandwidth codec technology for distributing analog FM composite today that doesn’t negatively impact watermark encoding.” He said Orban will offer APTmpX as an option in all Orban FM processors starting later this year.

NAB Show Booths: Orban W3443 and WorldCast Systems W3449.

[For More News on the NAB Show See Our NAB Show News Page]

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The SPECai ad service will be available to vCreative customers.

ENCO Systems, Benztown, Compass Media Networks and vCreative announced a partnership, integrating SPECai into vCreative’s workflow platforms. 

“For stations affiliated with both vCreative and SPECai, the integration will streamline the process of requesting a spec spot, as well as save time,” they said in their announcement.

“Account executives can prepare for client meetings ahead of time, or be ready to create on the spot, by utilizing the integration to select the SPECai option from within the vPPO or vProMedia order form to create compelling spec spots to present to their clients.”

SPECai lets sales reps create spec commercials in moments using AI as they sit with clients. It blends AI scripts and AI voices with Benztown music beds to create produced spec commercials.

The creation of spec spots is an area of radio business operations where AI is finding quick uptake.

ENCO President Ken Frommert said in the announcement, “AI development has accelerated at a swift pace since we first previewed SPECai late last year.”

The user, typically the account executive, answers a few questions to determine spot length, writing style (casual, humorous, uplifting), and sponsor details, using a web browser or mobile device. SPECai generates three scripts to choose from, which the users can edit or re-generate through phonetics to perfect the copy. 

The user then selects a preferred sound of the AI voice and music bed before downloading the final audio file. 

NAB Show Booth: W1743

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Audacy’s use of tools from Super Hi-Fi is taking a higher profile at the NAB Show.

The two companies announced an enhanced partnership that they say will “drive operational innovation and efficiency across Audacy’s digital ecosystem” by streamlining Audacy’s programming, production and broadcasting of digital content. The announcement was made by Sarah Foss, CTO of Audacy, and John Bolton, CBO of Super Hi-Fi.

Highlighting this, Audacy this week is using a local HD2 channel to air “Audacy Innovation Radio: Live From NAB.” It’s on KMXB-HD2 and is using Super Hi-Fi tools to program rotating formats.

Dayparts are hosted by Audacy talent using Super Hi-Fi’s Voicetrack Fusion tool, which was just introduced. The playout is cloud-based and delivered to the transmitter via Orban’s Optimod 5950: Super Hi-Fi Edition, which also is new at the convention.

The companies also announced that Audacy now is using the Super Hi-Fi Program Director Radio Operating System on five HD-2 channels of FM stations in Boston, Buffalo, Houston, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore.

in Boston, WLKK-HD2 in Buffalo, KILT-HD2 in Houston, KROQ-HD2 in Los Angeles and KNRK-HD2 in Portland, Ore.

Audacy recently adopted Super Hi-Fi’s HLS+ streaming technology on approximately 700 online stations.

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LAS VEGAS — The NAB on Tuesday announced the 10 winners of the 37th annual NAB Crystal Radio Awards.

The 2024 NAB Crystal Radio Award recipients listed below were chosen from 50 previously announced finalists.

Finalists were honored and winners were announced during the We Are Broadcasters celebration today at the  2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

The winners were chosen by a panel of judges representing the broadcast industry, community service organizations and public relations firms.

KFI-AM Los Angeles, Calif
KKBQ-FM Houston, Texas
KMVP-FM Phoenix, Ariz.
KNDE-FM College Station, Texas
KSL-FM Salt Lake City, Utah
WBZZ-FM Pittsburgh, Pa.
WHPT-FM Tampa Bay, Fla.
WJJY-FM Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn.
WLBC-FM Muncie, Ind.
WNRP-AM Pensacola, Fla.

The NAB also presented Hubbard Broadcasting’s KSTP-FM in Minneapolis-St. Paul with the esteemed Crystal Heritage Award during the ceremony. The Heritage Award recognizes radio stations that have won a total of five Crystal Radio Awards for exceptional year-round community service efforts. Only 11 other stations have received this honor.

Since 1987, the NAB Crystal Radio Awards have recognized radio stations for their exceptional year-round commitment to community service.

LAS VEGAS — With the NAB’s efforts to preserve AM radio access in every U.S. vehicle getting strong applause on Tuesday during association head Curtis LeGeyt‘s welcome remarks at the 2024 NAB Show, there’s a strong sense that Congress is oh-so-close to passing the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act.

On Wednesday, the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its Democratic Ranking Member shared plans for an April 30 legislative hearing that could push the effort forward in a big way.

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The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation (AWMF) will honor legendary actress and comedienne Carol Burnett with its Lifetime Achievement Award at the 49th Annual Gracie Awards Gala.

The event is scheduled for May 21 at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, Calif.

The honor recognizes a woman whose work in media honors the legacy of Gracie Allen, a pioneering force in the industry and the award’s namesake.

Additionally, recording artist Rachel Platten, known for “Fight Song,” will perform at the gala.

AWMF President Becky Brooks commented, “Carol Burnett is a true icon of television and entertainment, whose impact spans decades and resonates with audiences of all ages. Her groundbreaking work on ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ set a standard for excellence in comedy and storytelling, earning her countless awards and accolades. We are truly privileged to recognize her outstanding contributions to the industry.”

As a highly acclaimed actress, she has been honored with Emmys, Golden Globes, People’s
Choice Awards, the Horatio Alger Award, an ACE Award, the Peabody, and a Grammy. A
Kennedy Center Honoree, the recipient of the Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for Humor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom; was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Currently, Burnett is in “Palm Royal,” a new series for Apple TV that premiered March 20.

As a non-profit organization, AWMF is committed to developing educational programs,
charitable activities, and scholarship initiatives that directly benefit women in the media.
Through these investments, AWMF remains steadfast in its mission to cultivate growth,
empowerment, and leadership opportunities for women throughout the industry. Henry Dry Goods confirmed to create custom Gracies Gift Bag with included gifts.

Even as discussions around LGBTQIA+ visibility remain politically divisive, new data from Horowitz Research underscore that LGBTQIA+ representation in TV content drives viewing among not just American LGBTQIA+ audiences, but among Adults 18-34 overall.

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LAS VEGAS — The largest captioning company in the U.S. has approved a strategic partnership with ENCO that’s designed to provide broadcasters with greater choices for hardware encoders and cloud captioning.

The partnership with VITAC, a Verbit company, is designed to bring broadcasters a comprehensive suite of captioning tools and services, tailored to meet their specific needs and requirements. “The combination of VITAC’s decades-long experience in serving media clients with captioning solutions at the highest standards, ENCO’s cutting-edge encoder technology, and Verbit’s expertise in AI-driven speech recognition solutions will enable broadcasters to achieve unparalleled levels of accuracy, reliability, efficiency, and innovative solutions in caption encoding and delivery,” the companies said in a joint release distributed Monday. “This unique collaboration represents a significant advancement in addressing the evolving needs of broadcasters seeking versatile and efficient captioning solutions and reaffirms the companies’ shared dedication to driving innovation and excellence in captioning technology.”

ENCO President Ken Frommert commented, “We are excited to join forces with VITAC in this strategic partnership. By leveraging our respective strengths, we aim to offer broadcasters a broader range of options for caption encoding and delivery, ultimately enhancing their ability to deliver accessible content to viewers.”

S&P Global Ratings, on the second day of the 2024 NAB Show in Las Vegas, moved ahead with several rating actions on U.S. local TV broadcasters in 2024.

The news is not good, as the actions include two downgrades, a negative outlook revision, and just one rating affirmation.

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LAS VEGAS — Head to the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and those stopping at booth No. 4429 will be able to see for the first time at an NAB Show how a company focused on bringing advanced capabilities to traditional cloud networking environments is reinventing cloud networking through a multicasting product for broadcasters.

IEX Group Inc.’s swXtch.io will have its first presence at the National Association of Broadcasters’ annual conference and expo, and the message they are sending to the industry is that the time is ripe for broadcasters to move their live production, content delivery and playout, and media monitoring and transport workflows to the cloud.

This will see swXtch.io showcase new enhancements to its cloudSwXtch product and demonstrate how broadcasters can realize the adaptability, reliability and agility benefits of the cloud.

Specifically, live production in the cloud is a capability, as swXtch.io now supports JPEG-XS compression flows. This allows customers to move visually lossless video at very low latency into and through the cloud. As swXtch.io explains, JPEG-XS compression addresses the challenge of managing the heavy bandwidth and high costs of uncompressed video in the cloud while retaining premium broadcast-quality pictures.

The company’s cloudSwXtch also offers support for uncompressed ST-2110, providing customers with more options to manage their entire live production workflows in the cloud.

Content delivery and playout are also values that swXtch.io will demonstrate at the NAB Show, in particular how lossless UDP provides additional protection for media streams across dynamic bridging (ground-to-cloud) and multi-cloud networking applications. Lossless UDP optimizes packet delivery for high-bandwidth streams with minimal latency. cloudSwXtch also offers stream protection through SMPTE ST-2022-7 hitless merge, offering network path redundancy as parallel streams move through the cloud or across multi-cloud networks.

Lastly, swXtch.io will demonstrate Network Media Open Specifications (NMOS) workflows in cloudSwXtch networks, streamlining the management and orchestration of media workflows in the cloud and ensuring they align with on-prem systems. And, swXtch.io will also highlight how its partnership with Cinnafilm makes live, broadcast-quality standards conversions and Hollywood format conversions in the cloud a reality.

Company CEO Brent Yates said, “Broadcasters can bring missing cloud features like JPEG-XS, Precision Time Protocol (PTP) and multicast in alignment with on-prem infrastructure and create a broadcast network that is deployable, monitorable, and functional across clouds, allowing them to achieve true multi-cloud diversity. Visitors to our booth will finally see seamless cloud broadcasting for real.”

cloudSwXtch is available on all major public cloud network providers (AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud Marketplaces).

The NAB Show 2024 concludes on Wednesday, April 17, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

LAS VEGAS — It’s an all-in-one Linux or Windows-based product that is designed to improve speed and accuracy for captions and translations on-prem or in the cloud. And, it saw its marketplace debut at the 2024 NAB Show, courtesy of ENCO.

Introducing enCaption Sierra, the next generation of ENCO’s line of products focused on automated conversion and delivery of captions in broadcast and AV environments.

“For the first time, enCaption Sierra brings ENCO’s market-leading automated captioning technology together with an SDI captioning encoder to create an all-in-one solution for on-prem environments and containerized deployment options for cloud,” ENCO notes, adding that the enCaption Sierra can be delivered on Windows or Linux operating systems and is managed and monitored from a web browser.

Furthermore, enCaption Sierra’s GUI features a simple calendar scheduler and various configuration settings, including custom dictionaries, word models, filtering, and bilingual language options.

ENCO adds that enCaption Sierra’s ability to produce and deliver faster and more accurate captions “correlates directly with new parallel processing capabilities powered through a GPU,” as the GPU architecture “delivers unprecedented computational power to ENCO’s AI-based speech-to-text engine.”

The same improvements are present in Sierra’s integrated enTranslate module, which uses machine translation and grammatical structure analysis to deliver captions for up to 37 languages simultaneously. ENCO also adds new languages to enTranslate’s engine on a consistent basis, with three new languages added in time for Sierra’s public debut at NAB Show 2024, including a bilingual language model for Spanish-English content.

ENCO has also sharpened the listenability and responsiveness of the system with the Sierra release, improving performance in challenging audio environments. enCaption Sierra also leverages GPU processing for improved speaker change detection and the ability to recognize music, laughter, applause, and crowd noise. Sierra is an excellent listener and reliably computes fast speech, strong accents and problematic audio quality to consistently deliver clean captions.

“ENCO continues to lead the charge for captioning innovation as it pertains to helping broadcasters and MVPDs produce clean closed captions for their broadcast content with greater efficiency,” ENCO President Ken Frommert said. “The same philosophy applies to open captioning needs in AV environments to help audiences improve comprehension. Sierra also addresses the need for flexible deployment options, offering complete on-prem and cloud options that align with each broadcaster’s operational model with significant performance and cost-reducing benefits. We are excited to unleash the powerful new capabilities of Sierra to those familiar and new to the enCaption universe.”

 

ENCO will demonstrate enCaption Sierra at Booth W1743 in the West Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center through Wednesday, April 17.

LAS VEGAS — There are so many ways to consume content. How had this impacted the business of multiplatform sports?

Gray Television President and co-CEO Pat LaPlatney joined Skyview Networks President of Network Partnerships and Chief Revenue Officer Jeanne-Marie Condo; Beasley Media Group Boston VP/GM Mary Menna; and Audacy VP/Digital Business Operations Carlson Mozdiez for a meaningful conversation on the subject at an Alliance for Women in Media breakfast, held Monday morning during the 2024 NAB Show.

 

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Kathy Verseman and Sandy Biddinger were given the opportunity to acquire the license for an FM radio station serving Greensburg, Ind., in 2018. A plan to continue the Christian music found on the FM was forged, with the Salem radio Network signed on to provide programming.

Now, a potentially big change looms for listeners, and it is thanks to the purchase of this station by a local school district.

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LAS VEGAS — Super Hi-Fi and Audacy on Tuesday announced an enhanced partnership “to drive operational innovation and efficiency” across Audacy’s digital ecosystem.

The agreement will “streamline” Audacy’s digital content programming, production, and broadcasting processes while creating what the companies call “stickier listener environments” — and more opportunities for advertisers to engage with them.

The enhanced partnership launched Sunday (4/14) with a live on-air radio station branded “Audacy Innovation Radio: Live From NAB.”

The station is a temporary NAB Show offering, airing on KMXB-94.1’s HD2 signal in Las Vegas. It uses Super Hi-Fi’s suite of tools to program rotating formats across the day.

Dayparts will be hosted by some of Audacy’s best-known national talent;  all talent will use Super Hi-Fi’s just-announced Voicetrack Fusion to deliver enhanced quality and efficiency to the station.

The playout will be cloud-based, delivered directly to the transmitter via Orban’s Optimod 5950: Super Hi-Fi Edition, a technology that Super Hi-Fi debuted at NAB.

Concurrently, five Audacy HD Radio stations are transitioning to Super Hi-Fi’s Program Director Radio Operating System. This, says Audacy, enables its programmers and staff to spend less time on production and more time on building differentiating content.

The HD stations include WWBX-HD2 in Boston, WLKK-HD2 in Buffalo, KILT-HD2 in Houston, KROQ-HD2 in Los Angeles and KNRK-HD2 in Portland, Ore.

These announcements follow the recent news that all of Audacy’s 700 digital Exclusive Stations recently upgraded to support Super Hi-Fi’s HLS+ streaming technology.

— With reporting by Adam Jacobson at the Las Vegas Convention Center

As readers of the RBR+TVBR Spring 2024 Special Report have learned, Seattle-headquartered ZTransform is gaining national attention for its construction and build-out of radio and television studio and office space.

With the NAB Show in full swing, ZTransform is on the convention flow showing off its capabilities. And, it is welcoming a new SVP of Solutions and Development to help grow its business.

Taking the post is market strategist Mark Brown.

With more than 30 years’ experience in media production industries, Brown has worked on video streaming, television broadcast, and adjacent video technology projects for such companies as Warner Brothers Discovery, Yankee Entertainment & Sports Network, Madison Square Garden, DirecTV, ESPN, Viacom, Verizon, Spark Sports, Staples Arena, ABC, Disney, Sony Pictures, Hulu, Microsoft, and “major television broadcast groups.”

Brown is tasked with working closely with the senior leadership team to strategically identify and respond to new business opportunities in new sectors and regions. as well as manage pre-sales engineering, and proposal development. His responsibilities will also extend to cultivating and managing strategic partnerships with key stakeholders, vendors, and other external entities to enhance business growth potential and ensure that proposed solutions meet the evolving and dynamic needs of Ztransform customers.

Prior to joining ZTransform, Brown was Director & Principal Solutions Architect at Warner Brothers Discovery. There, he was responsible for aligning clients’ video streaming business objectives with technology solutions; designing and integrating video streaming technology solutions for high profile clientele for major entertainment and sports brands.

“Mark has built a reputation for delivering highly successful, ‘hands-on’ client-focused technology solutions to some of the world’s most high-profile M&E brands” said Ben Wolk, managing partner at ZTransform. “His knowledge spans the entire digital video media ecosystem and his ambition to fulfill customers’ commercial and creative aspirations matches ours. Mark will undoubtedly strengthen our capacity to deliver innovative systems and workflows that focus on the client experience and end user productivity. We’re privileged to have him on our team.”

Brown started off as a systems engineer at SAIC in 1986 and worked his way up the career ladder at companies such as Tektronics and Sony Systems Integration Center (SIC), and later became CTO & Executive Vice President of SignaSys, Inc. More recently, Brown secured executive leadership roles, including Director & Corporate Principal at Ascent Media, Director of Solutions Architecture & Professional Services at Verizon Digital Media Services and as Chief Strategy Officer of Technology & Business development at MPS Broadband.

“ZTransform has an unwavering commitment to its customers; resolving challenges and presenting opportunities with incredibly well-thought-out technology,” said Brown. “The company’s positive attitude, team spirit and its personable people are what’s making the business thrive. I’m looking forward to helping develop strategies and providing tactical market guidance to roll out new initiatives that will continue its momentum into untapped sectors and regions.”

 

LAS VEGAS — Two companies considered to be innovators in real-time broadcast monitoring and control solutions providers have merged, forming what they believe will be a formidable and strategic alliance that makes it debut at the 2024 NAB Show.

Introducing Leeward Software, formed from the merger of MNC Software and SuiteLife Systems. It can be found in the Las Vegas Convention Center’s West Hall, in booth #W2367.

The company’s product line includes Axess, Mosaic, and Tessera software and GPX Pro hardware.

The merger is described as “a natural succession to a long-standing partnership,” as the two companies have successfully collaborated on numerous projects since 2022. “Leeward Software is the culmination of a shared vision and a powerhouse poised to transform how broadcasters, telecommunication network providers, production facilities, studios, and media technology companies monitor and control the functional health of their complex networks, infrastructure, buildings, and systems.”

By harnessing the combined expertise and resources of MNC Software and SuiteLife
Systems, the company says it can offer a more comprehensive suite of network management, monitoring, and control solutions that address a wider range of needs and applications. “This merger unlocks synergies that will bring greater value to customers, employees, and partners,” the company says. “Whether organizations require system monitoring in extreme and remote locations, a broadcast studio environment, or cloud and cloud-hybrid distribution, customers can now access a broader range of solutions and services to address monitoring and control challenges and optimize their workflows.”

 

Mentoring and Inspiring Women in Radio Inc., the 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of female leadership in radio broadcasting, has revealed who has been select as the recipient of its inaugural “Impact Award.”

The honor goes to the retiring President/CEO of the Radio Advertising Bureau.

The “prestigious new accolade” is going in 2024 to Erica Farber, who is being saluted for being a woman “who has effected positive change on multiple fronts.”

MIW calls the Impact Award winner a “true champion of service, this individual actively engages with impactful organizations, generously contributing their time, wisdom, network, and resources. They are deeply involved, consistently doing the work necessary to drive meaningful change.”

Farber has led the RAB for 12 years. Before that, she spent 15 years at the former trade publication Radio & Records, serving in the roles of President, Publisher and CEO. Earlier in her career, EVP/Radio Development Director at Interep. She also held executive-level roles at RKO Radio stations, and was VP/GM of WXLO “99X” in New York at a time when Jay Thomas was its morning host, in the mid-1970s.

Farber in 2021 was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame, and is a founding member of the MIWs.

With the Impact Award going to Farber in 2024, all subsequent honorees will be bestowed with “The Erica Farber Impact Award.”

MIW Board President Ruth Presslaff commented, “What more can be said about Erica that hasn’t yet been said? She is a strategic thinker and true trendsetter who gives generously of her time and wisdom. MIW is a better organization because of her. The industry has been enriched in countless ways because of her. What an impact this woman has made!”

Farber said, “Being recognized by such influential women in the industry is incredibly meaningful and humbling to me. I owe immense gratitude to the mentors and inspirational women who have supported and uplifted me along the way. They are the foundation of my success. My heartfelt thanks go to Ruth and the MIW Board, and to all of you who share my passion for radio and the impactful work we are privileged to do every day.”