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CEntrance has begun shipping The English Channel. It’s a portable, analog channel strip for recording on the road. 

The company calls it a simple way for podcasters, musicians, journalists and YouTubers to improve the quality of field audio. It includes a mic pre with dynamics, a parametric EQ and an audio interface with online streaming capabilities, in “a small desktop cradle no larger than a book.”

The English Channel connects to laptops, phones and tablets. It has a 24-bit 48K SD card recorder and is powered by USB; a lightweight carrying case is included.

Its noise gate, compressor, de-esser and three-band “British” parametric EQ feature tactile controls. “The time-proven analog technology means no crashes, reboots or firmware updates,” CEntrance states.

“The English Channel allows the artist to use any XLR microphone, reduce background noise, add body and confidence to their sound, and go online from anywhere, all in broadcast quality.”

Centrance offers a choice of MixerFace or PortCaster as the recording interface in the package. The three devices in the English Channel can be used separately or together as part of the bundle.

The English Channel retails for $1599.99.

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

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Generative AI continues to find its way into audio workflows, even low-cost ones.

TechSmith Corp. has added generative AI scripting and voiceover features to its Audiate audio recorder and editor. That tool, sold for $199 for a one-year subscription, is aimed at podcasters, A/V editors, social media creators and marketers. The company says it lets the user “edit audio just like they would a document.”

Audiate currently does speech-to-text transcription and remove “ums” and “ahs.” Now TechSmith says the tool can also write or revise scripts; translate them into seven languages; and provide voiceovers in 14 languages, using generative AI. Users now can create “near-instant audio projects without a writer or voice actor.”

“The new Generate Script and Generate Audio features turn Audiate into a complete audio production house,” it said. 

“For example, when creating a voiceover intro for a podcast or narration for a ‘how-to’ video, full scripts can now be generated via intuitive prompts like desired length, content type and style from a variety of options. Users can then select from over 100 different AI-generated voice actors to read the script, offering flexibility to customize the speed and pitch of the delivery.”

Creators can also use Audiate to turn TechSmith’s Camtasia product into a text-based video editor.

A free trial version is available. A one-year subscription for Audiate costs $199. Bundled with Camtasia it costs around $380.  

The software interface is available in English; transcription and audio editing are supported in seven languages.

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

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TORONTO — It is a 30kw Class B FM licensed to Newmarket, to the north of Canada’s biggest city, and has a signal largely audible across greater Toronto. Recently, it has aired an Adult Contemporary format offering a softer take, musically, competing against Rogers Sports + Media’s biggest station in the nation — CHFI.

As of today at 9am, the Newmarket FM is now serving the Greater Toronto Area with a format heard only on suburban FMs to the east and west.

Introducing Hot Country 88.5, featuring a contemporary Country format that will abide by CanCon regulations, mixing Canadian artists with top international artists.

Tracy Lynn will host “Hot Country Mornings” for the Evanov Communications-owned CKDX-FM while “Katie & Company” will host the midday shift and Casey Clarke will helm a weekend countdown show.

“After assessing the market and its various needs we determined that there was a large unfulfilled demand for a local country music station in this part of the GTA,” said Paul Evanov, President and CEO of Evanov Communications that operates three other country music stations in Ontario, similarly branded CFWC-FM 93.9 in Brantford and CKHK-FM 107.7 in tiny Hawkesbury, Ont. “We believe the time is right to provide GTA country music listeners and advertisers with a much-needed country station and Hot Country 88.5 will do just that.”

The addition of Country to CKDX pits the station against twin “KX”-branded Country stations that have targeted Toronto for years: 100kw CHKX at 94.9 in the Hamilton and Burlington markets, and CJKX at 95.9, an Ajax, Ont.-station with a booster at Bay and King in downtown Toronto.

IN OTHER CANADIAN NEWS:

• Neeti Ray, the CEO of multicultural radio operator CINA Radio Group, is reportedly the buyer of CHAM-AM 820 & CKOC-AM 1150 in Hamilton and CKWW-AM 580 in Windsor, Ont., which can be heard in parts of Detroit. An unconfirmed sale price of $455,000 is in place, following Bell Media‘s June announcement that it would sell the AMs. No format change is immediately anticipated following the closing of the deal, CRTC documents indicate.

It’s being billed by a Los Angeles-based TV software maker as “a major software update” that gives advertisers some of the most advanced tools in what’s called “Performance TV,” just in time for the 2023 holiday shopping season.

Introducing MNTN Next Gen TV, which has updates including performance optimization, access to lower pricing, enhanced audience building, optimized creative and verified measurement.

“MNTN’s Next Gen TV is not just a software update; it’s a significant evolution of Performance TV,” says MNTN President/CEO Mark Douglas. “As we head into what will likely be the biggest Black Friday and Cyber Monday to date, advertisers are eager to see their dollars deliver and scale these results into next year. MNTN Next Gen TV is a necessity for any advertiser precisely at the moment when marketers need it the most.”

MNTN Next Gen TV updates include:

• Performance Optimization
  • Upgraded performance engine to deliver an unrivaled return on investment
    • Cost Per Acquisition has been reduced by 27%
    • Site Visit Rate has been improved by 38%
  • Deliver and measure app installs
    • Optimize your TV campaigns to deliver on mobile app downloads
    • Key integrations with AppsFlyer, Adjust, and Kochava to measure success in advertiser’s preferred source of truth.
• Access to pricing from one of the largest buyers of TV advertising in the US
  • More buying power, improved pricing, and better performance for MNTN customers.
  • As always with MNTN, TV ads only appear on blue-chip streaming TV networks, thanks to MNTN’s 150+ direct deals with Peacock, ESPN, CBS, Bravo, FOX, and other premium providers.
• Enhanced Audience Building
  • Build TV audiences with the same control, ease, and precision of paid social advertising.
  • Remodeled audience builder grants access to a brands first and third party data all in one place. With nearly endless combinations of inclusions, exclusions, and connective statements at your fingertips, honing in on an exact customer profile and delivering optimal performance have never been easier.
  • Tap into LiveRamp’s extensive database of third party audience segments. Access LiveRamp’s expansive list of third party segments to create audiences who are most likely to take action after seeing an ad. Thousands of LiveRamp segments are integrated directly into the MNTN platform, covering an extensive range of audience interests, purchasing histories, in-market signals, and more. This makes it easy to craft a precise customer profile, achieving more qualified reach and better performance, at scale.
  • Create and store specific geographic lists, CRM lists, and first -party audience segments for convenient reuse, ensuring campaign setup is always quick and seamless.
  • Radius Targeting: Focus your TV advertising on relevant customers within a radius of specific addresses or cities, which can improve your cost per visit (CPV), cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS).
  • These are in addition to the existing 85,000 integrated audiences available on MNTN.
• Optimized Creative
  • Creative-as-a-Subscription (CaaS) provides advertisers with a steady stream of professionally-produced creative at no additional cost.
  • Additional creative optimized for audience segments can deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars of net-new revenue.
    • Outdoor blanket company Rumpl used CaaS to generate an additional $526K in revenue over the course of a year, by their estimations.

• Verified Measurement
  • MNTN’s Verified Visits seamlessly integrates into preferred third party attribution platforms using our new macro-enabled visit tracking.
  • Full integration with GA4: MNTN is the only Performance TV platform that accurately integrates TV attribution data with GA4, enabling you to track your Verified Visits and conversions right alongside other marketing channels. MNTN has long been integrated with Google Analytics, and we invested significant engineering resources to ensure the integration remained strong during Google’s transition to GA4.

OpenX Technologies, an omnichannel supply-side platform provider, has launched what it calls “an ongoing initiative to unlock the full potential of Connected TV.” How so? OpenX seeks to combine the top aspects of linear and programmatic buying models into its new “TV+” offering.

In a first phase of TV+’s rollout, OpenX will eliminate all resellers from its Connected TV inventory pool, a move it says ensures buyers have more working media and reduced invalid traffic. “This move also ensures that publishers get their fair cut of transactions to power the development of high-quality content for consumers,” OpenX said.

Additionally, OpenX is removing all non-TV content, including fireplace apps, gaming, UGC, OTT, and mobile, from its Connected TV inventory. While OpenX will continue to monetize these types of inventory as online video rather than Connected TV, this phase of TV+ “properly classifies content, providing more premium advertising experiences, a clear value for inventory, and more accurate measurement,” it says.

“This first step in the TV+ mission to transform programmatic CTV into a high-quality marketing opportunity allows publishers to confidently place their premium inventory into biddable environments while giving brands and agencies full transparency into what they’re buying,” the Pasadena, Calif.-based company says. “With these innovations, TV+ delivers a fair and transparent value exchange between publishers, agencies, and DSPs.”

 

NEW YORK —  A Comcast Advertising company has partnered with Epsilon, a global advertising and marketing technology company, to introduce a new capability for enhancing audience-based, convergent television buying.

Epsilon is now able to tap into AudienceXpress’s reach, scale and expertise across the Connected TV sector. This partnership, Comcast says, “accelerates Epsilon’s clients’ ability to harness the power of their first-party data and Epsilon’s data with the insights from AudienceXpress to activate, execute and measure campaigns with a greater degree of accuracy.”

The Comcast Advertising shop adds, “This new partnership taps into synergistic strengths on both sides of the integration and allows marketers to enhance audience reach and drive scale across today’s fragmented, complex and dynamic TV ad landscape.”

“The TV ad marketplace continues to grow, evolve and shift constantly and dynamically, and so we recognized the need to provide a way for advertisers to find and connect with their audiences when, where and how they want to consume media,” said Katy Loria, CRO of AudienceXpress and FreeWheel, a global technology platform for the TV ad industry that is also part of Comcast Advertising. “This new partnership brings together some of the core strengths and assets of two key industry players to deliver a much needed way for advertisers to navigate and thrive in today’s TV ad ecosystem.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With an official Public Notice distributed Thursday, the FCC’s Media Bureau says all ATSC 3.0 multicast licensing rules adopted in the Third Next Gen TV Report and Order are now in effect. As such, the Bureau is now ready to accept NextGen TV license applications hat involve simulcast multicast streams and/or non-simulcast 1.0 multicast streams.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — A study from Katz Media Group recently used MRI-Simmons data to delve into the media habits of agricultural workers and, to little surprise, found a strong inclination of agricultural workers toward audio media.

And, as the National Association of Farm Broadcasters has been saying, both AM and FM radio have been found to be the farmer’s best friend, reinforcing the agricultural industry’s reliance on kHz-based signals in the most rural of America’s food-growing regions.

Approximately half of agricultural workers were categorized as heavy audio listeners, surpassing their engagement with other media forms such as the Internet and television, the Katz study shows.

This isn’t limited to time outside working, either. About half of agricultural workers were found to be light users of the Internet and TV, indicating that advertising campaigns focused solely on these mediums may not effectively reach this demographic. They are significantly more likely to listen to audio at work on weekdays and weekends compared to the average American adult.

With the AM For Every Vehicle Act among the key acts of legislation the NAB and radio broadcasters seek passage of before the end of the current Congress, AM/FM radio emerged as the most popular audio source among agricultural workers in the Katz study. In fact, 80% of agricultural workers tune into OTA radio, a preference that extends beyond streaming audio, podcasts, and satellite radio.

While approximately two-thirds of this group listen to streaming audio, including AM/FM streams and other services, more than half of these households subscribe to commercial-free services, emphasizing the importance of traditional radio, both over-the-air and station streams, for advertisers targeting this demographic.

In October, the Independent Beef Association of North Dakota, National Grange, the U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, Independent Cattlemen’s Association of Texas, Latino Farmers & Ranchers International, Livestock Marketing Association, National Farmers Union, North Dakota Farmers Union, and the Rural & Agriculture Council of America sent a joint letter to Congress urging the AM For Every Vehicle Act’s passage.

Then came this week’s 80th National Association of Farm Broadcasters (NAFB) convention in Kansas City, where the NAFB foundation raised $22,027 for student scholarships as attendees enjoyed insight from Joanna Guza on the benefits and opportunities of Trade Talk as a farm broadcaster.

— With reporting by Cameron Coats, in New York

For individuals and institutions that have held shares of iHeartMedia stock, which trades on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market under the “IHRT” symbol, long-term investment has delivered disappointing yields. In June 2021, shares were nearing $27 per share. Today, they’re trading just below $2.50.

On November 13, IHRT hit a post-bankruptcy low in its share price. That presented an opportunity for Bob Pittman.

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NEW YORK —The New York Festivals Television & Film Awards has unveiled the 2024 Grand Jury, and it includes award-winning executive producers, journalists, documentary filmmakers, directors, and screenwriters from two dozen countries.

Celebrated around the world for their innovative work, these individuals volunteer their time for the NYF selection process. “The 2024 jury panel embodies proven excellence in their diverse areas of expertise across all platforms ensuring each entry receives meticulous review and thorough evaluation,” New York Festivals shares.

“We are thrilled to welcome these globally recognized super-achievers to the 2024 Grand Jury,” said Rose Anderson, EVP and Executive Director for New York Festivals TV & Film Awards. “Their collective wealth of hands-on knowledge, their commitment to excellence, their passion, and their creativity across all genres underscores today’s fair and just peer review process.”

The 2024 Grand Jury includes the following U.S.-based executives:

• Ximena Cantuarias, SVP, Scripted Production, Telemundo Global Studios 
• Robert E. Frye, Managing Director, Whistling Communications 
• Brian M. Lockhart, Senior Vice President, ESPN+ Original Content and ESPN Films 
• Jodain Massad, Director, Development & Innovation, NFL Films
• Bill McCullough, Chief Content Officer/Executive Producer, XFL
• Juan Ponce, SVP & GM, Telemundo Streaming Studios 

View the 2024 TV & Film Awards Grand Jury HERE.

The deadline to enter the 2024 Television & Film Awards competition is December 31, 2023.

Grand Jury members view all entries during online judging panels to determine a score based on industry specific criteria. Juries determine Gold, Silver, and Bronze Trophy Winners. The top-scoring entries are honored with the prestigious Grand Trophy. Special Industry Awards honor Broadcaster of the Year, Production Company of the Year and Program Promotion Team of the Year.

Now in its third year, the WaterBear Award is bestowed to the highest scoring documentary across the Climate Change & Sustainability, Environment & Ecology, and Nature & Wildlife. This coveted award is a partnership between the free streaming platform dedicated to the future of our planet WaterBear Network and New York Festivals. The winner will be announced during the 2024 Storytellers Gala in April.

New York Festivals TV & Film Awards celebrates “groundbreaking storytelling and honors the rich diversity of content created by today’s visionary storytellers for global audiences across all viewing platforms.”

The awards date to 1957.

All Entries in the 2024 competition will be judged online and screened by the TV & Film Awards Grand Jury of 200+ producers, directors, writers, and other creative media professionals from around the globe. Award-winning entries will be showcased on the TV & Film Awards winners gallery. To view the 2023 TV & Film Awards winner’s showcase visit: winners.

To view entry details and competition rules and regulations visit HERE.
For a complete list of the Television & Film Awards 2024 categories, visit HERE.

No matter where you are on your journey as a public speaker, there’s room for improvement, says veteran public relations professional and public speaking coach Rosemary Ravinal. In this column, the Miami-based thought leader offers tips based on prior submissions on how to tackle public appearances across 2024.

 

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NEW YORK — For institutional investors such as Daniel Tisch-led Towerview LLC down to the single person who may hold a handful of sales, the rich dividends will continue for those with shares in the radio industry’s single most-successful publicly traded pure-play company.

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The Video Division, Media Bureau (Bureau), has before it a petition for rulemaking filed August 16, 2023, by Sinclair Media Licensee, LLC (Petitioner or Sinclair), the licensee of KECI-TV, channel 13, Missoula, Montana (Station or KECI-TV). As discussed below, the Station is currently operating on channel 13 and Sinclair successfully petitioned to have its channel changed from channel 13 to channel 20. The Petitioner now requests the substitution of channel 21 for channel 20 at Missoula, Montana (Missoula) in the Table of TV Allotments.

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Two unlikely compatriots are joining forces to ask the FCC to push back the deadline for radio broadcasters to have their EAS equipment compliant with latest mandated upgrades.

The FCC has said Dec. 12 is the date most U.S. radio stations must comply with a report and order adopted in 2022 to improve the clarity and accessibility of EAS messages.

Now, NAB and low-power FM advocate REC Networks — in a joint letter to the FCC — are asking for more time and pointing to an announcement by a major supplier of EAS equipment, who says not all of its customers will have time to install the firmware update by the compliance deadline. 

The manufacturer has a “significant market share of both low power and full-power FM radio stations, and also serves numerous television and multiple video programming distributor EAS Participants,” wrote NAB and REC in their letter to the FCC.

The groups continued: “REC and NAB understand from broadcast stations across the country that a considerable number of EAS participants will be unable to implement the firmware update by December 12 due to the delayed release of this manufacturer’s firmware update.” 

The joint letter doesn’t name Sage Alerting, but earlier this month the company said on its website it continues to work on the update for its Sage ENDEC EAS boxes. Sage, at the time, made the FCC aware that the update has taken longer to implement that anticipated. Sage told Radio World when asked for comment that the firmware is in final testing and is expected to be released soon.

As the year comes to a close, that delay means many entities will be unable to comply regardless of when the manufacturer releases the update, according to the joint filing. “Simply put, it is already too late for many EAS Participants to meet the current deadline,” NAB and REC said.

The advocacy groups remind the FCC it may grant an extension of a compliance deadline for good cause. 

“Therefore, REC and NAB respectfully request a 90-day extension of the December 12 deadline, until March 11, 2024,” they told the commission.

[Related: “Sage EAS Firmware Update Is Still Pending“]

The new EAS regulations require broadcasters to prioritize the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)-formatted version of an EAS message on occasion it receives both a legacy version and CAP-formatted version of the same alert. The FCC in its report and order said the new requirements will make radio and TV alerts “clearer and more accessible to the public, particularly [to] people with disabilities.”

EAS participants must also display the new text for the national alert originator code (PEP), the national test code (NPT) and the national emergency code (EAN) by the deadline. 

With the deadline looming, the NAB and REC expressed concern over the sheer number of radio and television stations — especially low-power and small, full-power stations that lack in-house technical personnel — that will be relying on contract engineers to implement the required updates during a very narrow window of opportunity. 

“This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of EAS Participants must update their firmware by the same deadline,” the groups told the FCC. “In addition, some radio and television groups have dozens or even hundreds of EAS boxes that must be updated.”

An FCC spokesperson confirmed by email that the commission has received the NAB/REC letter and is reviewing the filing. The correspondence has been posted in PS Docket No. 15-94 in the FCC’s online database.

Radio World notes the NAB and REC are unexpected partners in this effort to move the broadcaster compliance deadline back since the two often find themselves on opposite sides of regulatory issues coming before the FCC. NAB represents the interests of commercial radio in Washington, while REC is often at the forefront of issues facing community broadcasters in the U.S.

[Related: “EAS Manufacturers Still Working on Those FCC Updates”]

The post NAB and REC Seek More Time for Stations to Meet New EAS Requirement appeared first on Radio World.

He joins publicly traded audio content creation and distribution company Audacy Inc. after leading a new business sales team for an HR Tech company in the SAAS space and, before that, overseeing advertising sales teams for Spectrum Cable.

Introducing the next SVP/Market Manager for the company formerly known as Entercom’s audio brands in Milwaukee, where he takes duties held by its market head in Madison, Wisc.

Taking the role for a station group comprised of Top 40 WXSS “103.7 Kiss FM” and Hot Adult Contemporary WMYX “99.1 The Mix” in Milwaukee is Jason Bjorson. He will also oversee digital multicast brands “Hot 105.7,” on the HD2 signal of WXSS, and the LGBTQ-focused “Channel Q” offering on WXSS HD3.

Since September 2021, he has served as Director of Sales and Business Development for Circa, leading a team of six managers, 40 enterprise and mid-market account executives and 20 sales development reps in the “HR Tech” industry.

Before that, Bjorson spent four years at Spectrum Reach, serving as Director of Sales in St. Louis and, prior to that, as Local Sales Manager in Milwaukee.

For radio industry veterans, Bjorson is likely familiar for his former role as General Sales Manager of Journal Broadcast Group‘s two stations in Milwaukee, which were sold to The E.W. Scripps Co. and today flagship properties of Craig Karmazin’s Good Karma Brands.

He rose within Journal over a 14-year period, and was LSM in Milwaukee after serving as a Senior Account Manager in Knoxville for WWST-FM. Bjorson is a 2001 University of Tennessee graduate and was raised in Louisville.

“I am excited to welcome Jason to lead our Milwaukee cluster,” said Audacy Regional President Rachel Williamson. “His experience across radio, video and digital combined with his deep knowledge and relationships throughout the Milwaukee market brings an increased expertise to our cluster and clients.”

The Milwaukee radio stations have been overseen in recent times by Andrea Hansen, who is SVP/Market Manager for Audacy in Madison, Wisc., and has risen through the sales ranks for that station group.

“I’m thrilled to join the Audacy Milwaukee team, with some of Milwaukee’s most iconic brands and an innovative broadcaster,” said Bjorson, who has also worked for Cox Media Group in Jacksonville. “I’ve competed with this team and tried to recruit them for years, so I know how much talent is here. I’m looking forward to working with them to win big here in Milwaukee!”

The Audio Engineering Society says attendance to last month’s AES Show in New York grew 15% over the year before.

It reported about 8,100 registered attendees. Last year was the first physical show post-COVID.

Separately, NAB said the NAB Show New York, held concurrently with AES at the Javits Center, drew about 12,230, an increase of 28%.

The AES floor had 127 exhibitors while NAB had 270. The exhibit floors were separate but adjacent, with traffic moving between them via hallways.

A crowd shot at this year’s AES Show (courtesy of AES)

“Last year’s AES convention and NAB Show New York shared an exhibition hall,” AES said in its summary. “This year, AES’s 20+% growth in the exhibitor count, and the resulting bigger footprint, pushed each group back into their own halls.”

The next AES International Convention will be held in Madrid, Spain, in June of next year. The NAB New York and AES Shows will return to the Javits Center in New York next October.

[For News on This and Other Shows See Our Show News Page]

The post NAB NY + AES = 20,000 Attendees appeared first on Radio World.