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After receiving an unusual one-year license extension in April, the owner of a Contemporary Christian Idaho AM is surrendering its license for cancelation.

KPCQ-AM in Chubbock, Idaho, owned by Ted Austin-owned Snake River Radio, had been under investigation by the Media Bureau for potentially being silent for more than the legally allowed twelve consecutive months.

Following KPCQ’s initial acquisition by Snake River, the lease for its tower site lapsed. Subsequent construction activity at the site led to the destruction of antennas used for broadcasting, leaving the station mostly unable to broadcast. The FCC typically considers site-related issues to be within the licensee’s control, yet, in this case, Administrative Law Judge Jane Hinckley Halprin ruled that the station’s license had not been automatically canceled since it was not off the air for more than the allowed twelve months.

However, Halprin also found that KPCQ did not meet other renewal standards. Consequently, instead of the standard eight-year renewal, KPCQ was granted a one-year license renewal, highlighting the station’s unique circumstances and challenges.

The Enforcement Bureau filed exceptions to this decision, challenging the ALJ’s findings. However, following Snake River’s decision to cease operations and cancel its license, these proceedings have become irrelevant. The FCC, exercising its delegated authority, has vacated the initial decision, dismissed the renewal application and related exceptions, and terminated the proceeding. The Media Bureau is directed to take the necessary steps to cancel KPCQ’s license and call sign.

— By Cameron Coats, for Radio Ink

 

Read the Radio + Television Business Report’s coverage on how Ted Austin was able to continue operating KPCQ-AM by clicking here.

Sample image from the NRSC guidelines. Typical streaming audio system metadata format flow.

A new publication from the National Radio Systems Committee provides metadata guidelines for streaming audio.

Steve Shultis of New York Public Radio chairs the Data Services and Metadata Subcommittee. He told Radio World that the 116-page “NRSC-G304: Metadata for Streaming Audio Handbook” is the most extensive publication of the DSM subcommittee to date.

“In today’s highly visual world of streaming audio, metadata, its implementation, execution and management is a crucial aspect now within the wheelhouse of today’s broadcast engineer,” he said.

“We went into this project to provide a guideline to help engineers provide the best metadata possible to their streaming products to support the radio industry’s need, in general, to maintain the competitive advantage that radio has inherent in its audio programming in this media landscape.

[Read Radio World’s profile of Steve Shultis, recipient of our Excellence in Engineering Award.]

“This highly talented working group of experts executed not only that goal, but added to the scope along the way to include deep-dives into related technical aspects such as signal flow, control and encoding as well as a rich and exhaustive compendium of terms and definitions that, together as a handbook, will serve the industry well as a useful reference for years to come.”

Consultant David Bialik, chair of the Metadata and Streaming Working Group, added: “Metadata isn’t only ‘now-playing’ information.”

[Read articles by Radio World contributor David Bialik.]

The drafting group consisted of Bialik, Jeff Detweiler, John Kean, Frank Klekner, Scott Norcross, Greg Ogonowski, Robert Orban and Shultis. Also contributing were Donna Detweiler, John Passmore, Dean Mitchell, Sam Sousa and Conrad Trautmann. Ogonowski and Orban developed the major portion of the text.

The group pointed out in the handbook’s introduction that thanks to ubiquitous mobile broadband and smartphones, consumers can access a cornucopia of audio programming.

“Many radio broadcasters provide audio streaming versions of over-the-air radio station content and pure-play streams. Text and image metadata have become an important part of a radio station’s OTA and streaming offerings,” they wrote.

The guideline provides best practices for radio broadcasters and netcasters using metadata with audio streams.

“It focuses on the HTTP live streaming (HLS) and Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (MPEG-DASH) methods of audio streaming because these are modern, reliable, efficient and standards-based. Correctly implementing these modern segmented streaming formats requires a completely different workflow than previous legacy ICY methods (SHOUTcast and Icecast), but pays off with much higher reliability and richer, on-time metadata. There are many additional benefits … to switching from ICY to HLS or MPEG-DASH streaming.”

The authors wrote that the subcommittee hopes the document will be useful to streamers and broadcasters who want to exploit current technology and that it will be a valuable reference to the terminology, acronyms and jargon associated with streaming.

They added that while much of it will be useful to non-specialists, a knowledge of computer file structures and text encoding is needed to understand some of the examples.

The document is available on the NRSC website.

The NRSC is a joint initiative of the Consumer Technology Association and the National Association of Broadcasters.

[Read the free ebook “The Ecosystem of Streaming.”]

The post NRSC Publishes Metadata Guidelines for Streaming Audio appeared first on Radio World.

Connectivity is right in the name of Josh Bohn’s growing company. He’s president and CEO of The MaxxKonnect Group, a broadcast technical firm. One of its products is MaxxKonnect Wireless, a prioritized, high-speed LTE internet service for broadcast applications. Bohn has also worked as an engineer for companies like Radio One, Main Line Broadcasting, Cumulus and what was then Clear Channel.

This interview is from the ebook “STL in the 21st Century.”

Radio World: What jumps into your mind when I ask about the state of STL? 

Josh Bohn: The proliferation of IP as an STL has become the de facto standard. We’ve sold maybe three point-to-point 950 MHz STLs, analog or digital, in the last two years. That’s it. And fixing Marti and Moseley point-to point STLs used to be the majority of our business, but in the last year, we might have done eight where we used to do five or six a month.

Josh Bohn

We plan to launch an analog 950 STL after NAB. It’s got composite mono natively, but you can do stereo left/right through it or AES. It will have a Web interface on both ends with SNMP and browser-based interactions — to change frequency, change the power, turn it on and off. The SNMP will let you marry it to your remote control, so you can monitor what your receiver’s doing. Legacy analog products didn’t have that.

Major and large markets might not be using 950 STLs anymore but go into smaller markets and they’re still running legacy 950 STLs. There’s a need for something that can be monitored with IP, something they can plug their composite cable into, hook the antenna up, plug it in and it’s on frequency. Then they can go back to running “Swap Shop” and the funeral report, because that’s where they make their money.

RW: Do you have STL words of wisdom?

Bohn: I’m a huge advocate of backups. I got a call an hour ago from a station in Tennessee, a community college that’s talking to us about moving to a tower about 10 miles away. I asked what they use now for STL, and he said it’s point-to-point 950 microwave, analog composite. But the electric co-op that’s building the new tower is putting in fiber in so they’re going to go on that. 

But what are they going to do when the North American Fiber-Seeking Backhoe comes and takes them off the air for two days? If you’re going to do fiber with point-to-point IP, even over the internet, your codec will have the ability to fail over. So whether we put a MaxxKonnect cellular modem or point-to-point IP radios, or if we can get a 950 shot we can relicense their current STL and just put in a composite switch, you’ve got to have a backup. 

People hear “fiber” and think all their problems are solved. Yes, fiber is super reliable — until it’s not. If it’s buried, you have to worry about “backhoe fade,” though that’s maybe the only major thing. But if it’s aerial fiber? A drunk driver, an ice storm, a windstorm, almost anything external can destroy it. If a pole falls, it’s going to shred whatever’s connected to it, which includes your fiber. And that’s a significant amount of downtime. 

We have a client site with MaxxKonnect. They had fiber running into their building. But a housing development is going up across the road, and a plumbing crew came in. They didn’t call 811 first, and they cut through the entire bundle. That station had a T1 backup, but the fiber and the T1 run through the same conduit. So in one scoop, all connectivity for that site went down. They were off the air, in a big market in Ohio. 

But their chief was smart, he also had Comrex BRIC-Links hanging on MaxxKonnect. So they were only down for the amount of time it took him to drive out, unplug the audio out of the out of the T1 codec, move it over and plug it into the output of those BRIC-Links, and boom, they were back up. 

They ran on that for four days and ultimately ended up ditching the T1 and just switching over and using MaxxKonnect and BRIC-Links as their backup.

So figure out two ways to get program audio there. I don’t care if you string a piece of wire a quarter mile down the road (though if you do that, put transformers on each end). 

If you’re doing IP, consider your studio too. You may have three backup connections at the tower site, you may have an LTE modem, DSL and an internet fiber connection, but you have only 10 Gig fiber at the studio. Why is fiber at the studio good enough while fiber at the transmitter needs backups? People get a false sense of security because the studios are in a town and they think the infrastructure is more stable there. But there’s just as much of a chance for your IP delivery system to get knocked out in an urbanized area than out the transmitter.

Josh Bohn preaches redundancy. This graphic is an example of a modern connected site using MaxxKonnect prioritized LTE service and LEO satellite internet. Other options might include 950 MHz point-to-point or a wireline service.

RW: Who does the fiber work, and can you share tips for working with them?

Bohn: It’s from a carrier-level provider, whether it’s AT&T or a company like C Spire out of Mississippi, or Lumen or Verizon. 

Bigger groups like iHeart have moved completely to IP STLs. When iHeart goes in and rebuilds their markets with those four-studio models, where everything’s multipurpose, there is no RF in or out of those buildings anymore, not even satellite dishes. They’re delivering all their network content via IP, and that’s where everything is going. 

Again, you’ve got to have multiple ways of delivering the audio, otherwise you run the risk of being off the air. There are so many external factors. All of this is riding the public internet at some point. You’re using public infrastructure, not a transmit dish and receive dish with a path 400 feet in the air. You’re going through God knows how many switches and LATAs, crossing between providers, from this mux to that mux. The points of failure have gone from two to as many as 50, most of which you have zero control over.

So the only way you really have control over your broadcast is to have another way to deliver it.

Some people want to use our service as a primary STL. That’s great, but get two different carriers — and point their antennas at different towers. You might think “Hey, I’ve got three carriers on my tower,” so you’re not worried about it; but if all three carriers are on your tower, they’re riding the same fiber bundle. You can take your primary off there, the signal is going to be great; but for your secondary, get a directional antenna and point it at a tower three miles down the road. Then if yours goes down, it will pick that one up, and you won’t have a hard off. 

Of course, everything is subjective. If you’ve got a station that makes $5,000 a month in the middle of nowhere in Mississippi and another station in a major metro that’s making $60,000 a month, which one gets the backup? The one in Mississippi is three hours way. But the one here in the market is making all the money, so the other one is just going to have to be off the air until we can get there.

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RW: Is Starlink satellite part of this discussion?

Bohn: I know people that have used it. There’s a use case for LEO satellite. But it seems that it’s very location-dependent. And also time-dependent. 

The Starlink system, from what I understand, is set up as a mesh, and it’s very locked down. You can connect from a downlink terminal out to a public static address on a terrestrial service, whether it’s LTE or wireline; but you can’t connect into a Starlink service, because they don’t offer public IP addresses. I believe everything is IPv6, which is why they don’t offer public addresses. Most routing equipment still can’t handle that. 

We’re trying to get together a Ka band MaxxKonnect product that you could use as an STL, to go into transmitter sites where cellular may not be a good option or where cellular is the only option but you want something more robust that isn’t metered that can run full-time. But for what broadcasters need, Ka isn’t there yet; the infrastructure in the U.S. isn’t built out. I can get you Ku band service but it’s atrociously expensive. 

Still, satellite is becoming more of an option. And when you say satellite internet, people think Hughes; but the average subscriber ratio for HughesNet and the commercial services is 300:1. The latency for an uplink is almost unusable. For downlink it’ll work fine, and there are people who use Hughes as an STL downlink. As long as you’re running a low-bitrate stream, it’ll work pretty well; but don’t go out there and try to browse on it.

So LEO is great, but access is a problem because you can’t use the Starlink portal to get back into your site through IP addresses. I mean, you could put a jump-box type computer in there, and get into it with ScreenConnect or LogMeIn, and then browse to your stuff at the site. But if you want to be able to directly manage your devices — if you need to connect to your Burk or your transmitter without having to jump into another computer, you’ve got to have an actual IP address; and that’s where the Starlink system currently falls short.

RW: Are broadband and radio STLs the most common types?

Bohn: Anything else is still an outlier. What we’re doing with LTE has become a lot more common, but it’s still in a distant third place to fixed wireline broadband — fiber, cable or whatever — while point-to-point radio STLs are still king because they give you full control over your link. 

RW: Using IP technology on either end? 

Bohn: In some cases, yes. I would lump point-to-point IP and analog into the same category, because you’re accomplishing the same thing. It’s just a difference in hardware and frequency. IP has become more prevalent in larger markets. Point-to-point links, whether licensed or unlicensed, are more common in larger markets than the analogs. But I still walk into small-market stations that are still using TFTs STLs. That’s why we’re building one ourselves; because there are lots of them out there pushing 40 years old. And when they die, they die hard.

RW: What else do you see coming?

Bohn: The overall concept will never change; it’s getting program content from one point to another. There will always be innovations and delivery options — 5G, 6G, 9G, whatever they come up with. But ultimately, we’ve moved into delivery over the public internet, and that’s where we’re going to stay for quite a while, until there’s a fundamental shift in how the internet operates. 

Ten years ago, did anybody ever think that you’d be able to carry composite audio over IP? No, but Hans van Zutphen figured out how to do it in a low-bitrate package with uMPX, and it sounds phenomenal. So, will there be advances and things that are really cool? Absolutely. 

[Check Out More of Radio World’s Tech Tips]

The post Josh Bohn Preaches the Religion of Backups appeared first on Radio World.

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After the event suffered a four-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students at a local college radio station in Ohio are kicking off the holidays by raising funds to help those facing food insecurity.

This December, a charity concert dubbed the “Blizzard Bash” will be put on by John Carroll University — based in University Heights, Ohio — in conjunction with college station WJCU(FM) 88.7 to support the area’s largest emergency food distribution center: the Hunger Network.

Blizzard Bash will be hosted by a group of John Carroll University students from WJCU and will feature local bands and DJs.

Student jockeys from the station’s show’s “808s & Mixtapes,” a hip-hop and R&B show, and “NEO Rocks,” the station’s local band program, and will be live starting at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 1. The live event will take place at the Beachland Tavern in Cleveland, Ohio.

For every $25 donated to this year’s radio event, the Hunger Network will be able to provide approximately 100 meals to those in need.

“The opportunity to use my platform to benefit those in and around my community is extremely heartwarming,” said Zachary Sinutko, the executive producer/creator of 808s & Mixtapes and WJCU’s director of promotions. 

Tickets for the live event can be purchased here.

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The post Ohio College Radio Is Lending a Helping Hand This Holiday Season appeared first on Radio World.

This story appeared in the Radio World ebook “Great New RF Installs.”

Faced with the approaching end of life for the tower serving its TV station and radio station, the University of Missouri began plans to erect a fresh one a few hundred yards away. 

The tower project, new antennas and new transmitters would ensure that KBIA(FM) and KOMU(TV) would continue to be “a staple of mid-Missouri for decades to come.” But the school didn’t expect the project to take five years.

KBIA is a Class C1 noncom educational with 100 kW effective radiated power serving Columbia on 91.3. Its analog and HD1 channels carry news and information, while classical music is heard on the HD2 and adult contemporary on HD3. 

KBIA’s signal radius is about 60 miles. (It also has an FM signal in Mexico, Mo., and feeds a sister station in Kirksville that’s licensed to another university.)

“The station is the area’s largest provider of arts programming,” its website states, “serving more than 30,000 listeners and members each week, and is today one of the few remaining providers of local news.” It has been an NPR member station since going on the air in 1972; it also carries programming from Public Radio International, American Public Media and other national and local sources. 

Mizzou claims the title as home to the world’s first school of journalism, which was founded in 1908. Training journalists is part of the radio station’s mission. 

The university provided project management support for the overall project, but each media outlet was on its own for funding. KOMU was the primary funder while KBIA created a capital campaign for its portion and is essentially a tenant on the tower, though it was involved in all planning details.

Thanks, Beef Farm!

According to KBIA Chief Engineer Mark Johnson, the KOMU TV newsroom was about 12 feet from the base of the old tower. Even though its roof had been reinforced, the staff occasionally would have to move cars or leave the building for fear of falling ice. And the push for a new tower gained impetus from the 2018 collapse of a tower elsewhere in the state in which a person died.

Chris Swisher is chief engineer of KOMU; he and Johnson worked closely on planning this project. Cavell Mertz & Associates was the technical consultant, with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP as the legal representative.

Mark Johnson in the completed transmitter room.

The old FM antenna was a 12-bay ERI fed by a unique HD Radio implementation designed by former chief Roger Karwoski. It employed two Harris Z7.5 transmitters plus a Harris Z16 providing the last 10% of analog plus the digital power. 

For the new 780-foot tower, the university chose a Stainless model from FDH Infrastructure Services, with two 24-foot-long buildings for the TV and radio transmission gear at its base, provided from Concrete Modular Systems.

Having room to grow was important. “We felt that this could be the last TV or radio tower that we see for a long period of time, so we didn’t want to be in a situation of not having enough space if either station needed additional equipment later.” 

A view of the new antenna taken by a Cavell Mertz drone.

The tower is on land managed by the university’s Beef Research and Teaching Farm. 

“That was a good collaborative effort because the farm didn’t have fiber and they wanted to upgrade their networking and internet for research projects. They were willing to provide us space in the field as long as we also got them hooked up with fiber.” (This arrangement had a little extra benefit because it turned out that the farm’s managers were willing to loan their equipment for moving heavy objects.)

KBIA now has an eight-bay ERI Rototiller fed via MACX rigid line from a Rohde & Schwarz THR9 transmitter; the latter was installed by Johnson and Fred Francis of Xenirad Broadcast Engineering.

The towers are seen before the older one, at left, was taken down.

A pair of five-ton Bard air conditioning units cool each transmitter building, but they don’t have to work too hard given that the TV and radio operations both went with liquid-cooled transmitters. 

“We have one heat exchanger outside,” Johnson said, “while the TV has seven for their transmitter and dummy load, plus a big old generator. So we definitely feel like the little brother on the tower!” 

MACX rigid transmission line from ERI awaits installation.

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Wait, then hurry up

COVID of course played havoc with many projects over the past four years. Like many engineers, Johnson and Swisher encountered frustrating supply chain delays, particularly for electrical components, which were being prioritized for health care.

MACX rigid transmission line from ERI awaits installation.

For instance, their generator supplier quoted a delivery time of one year. (The engineers eventually switched to a Gillette model.) Then a 400-amp electrical panel was backordered, as were two circuit breaker panels. 

“They told us they couldn’t guarantee three months, so they said six. But then six months rolled by, but we couldn’t get any more information,” Johnson said.

“Eventually our Gillette generator came in, then our 400 master panel came in, so we had those ready to go. But we were still waiting on these two subs. KOMU couldn’t operate without that rack power — we needed both subs before we could be energized, but with MDP3 we could at least do our electrical rough-in and setup. 

“We kept waiting and checking in each month. We finally were told that our panel hadn’t even gone to engineering yet.”

Johnson said he could understand why electrical supplier Square D didn’t want to make a commitment that it couldn’t keep. “But we couldn’t do any planning. It was a series of ‘hurry up and waits.’”

Finally, KBIA’s electrical contractor suggested using fuse disconnect switches rather than breaker panels. 

“And they got them, and then ‘bam, bam,’ they had their electricians out right after Christmas, and they did a bang-up job. They were awesome, everyone was ready to roll,” Johnson said.

“And then a week later my panel came in out of the blue.”

Johnson knows Murphy’s Law can kick in at any time in projects work, but he confesses that he found himself muttering at the panel, “I was waiting for you almost a year, and now you show up and you’re just a lump on the floor.” 

In the end the university found another use for that panel. “It didn’t go to waste.”

But time stretched out on all aspects of this project.

Forward power is established.

KBIA had ordered its transmitter early, anticipating the impact of U.S. tariffs on equipment from Europe. “I bought the Rohde & Schwarz in 2020 and stored it in a climate-controlled area. But because the pad and building weren’t ready, it was still in its box when its original one-year warranty went up.” The ERI antenna and line also were ordered early. 

In the end, according to its website, the station saved at least $50,000 because it avoided subsequent price increases that swept through the economy.

Also, Johnson had been attempting since early 2019 to attend an NAB Show to gather information for this and other projects and to work on an SBE certification. He could only roll his eyes when he finally was getting ready to attend the 2022 show, only to be informed that the FM antenna from ERI would be delivered and installed smack in the middle of that convention week. 

Thankfully his assistant Tim Raymer was able to cover for him during that installation.

But then the planned antenna height needed to be adjusted by about 20 feet because of a complexity caused by a guy wire configuration issue. At another point, the crew hanging the antenna thought it had only half of the necessary spring hangers, so Johnson asked the factory to ship 35 more, only to find out that there had been a communication error and that the crew didn’t need the extra crate of components after all.

The radio and TV stations are on the air with their new facilities, and the old tower is now disassembled.

Although the various issues caused stress, Johnson said the university staff and its contractors dealt with them well. “No one pointed fingers. Everybody said, ‘Yep, this is a slog, but we’ll get it done.’”

All part of working on a job like this, right? 

“I don’t know that anybody would have expected the project management to take five years for this,” Johnson said with a laugh. “In fact my family has added two children since the project began.”

[Read more stories about notable RF installations.]

The post Mizzou Builds a New Tower for Its FM and TV appeared first on Radio World.

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]

The post CEntrance Ships Portable Channel Strip appeared first on Radio World.

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]

The post TechSmith Expands AI Toolset in Audiate appeared first on Radio World.

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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