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About one quarter of the U.S. population — 60 million adults 18 and older — now own a smart speaker. That’s according to the winter 2019 edition of The Smart Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research, released this month.

Consumers also appear to be doubling down on the technology, quite literally: as of December 2019, there are more than 157 million smart speakers in the U.S., representing a 135% increase from last year’s accounting and more than double the number found just two years prior. U.S. households now average more than two of these devices. 

As the devices proliferate, smart speakers are more entrenched in daily life. Smart speaker owners 13 years old and up now say they choose smart speakers for a lot of their listening. Mobile devices remain the most popular (31%), followed by traditional radio receivers (19%), with smart speakers closely on their heels (17%). Smart speaker owners also tend to be power users, deploying it multiple times daily. 

Voice commands are also becoming a common activity. More than half of U.S. adults have told their devices to do something (how many have succeeded may be another matter), and 24% say they use voice commands on a daily basis.  

CONTENT SOURCES AND CHOICES

And when consumers choose smart speakers for their audio, streaming audio dominates nearly half of listening time. It’s worth noting that Amazon accounts for 15% of the audio sourcing — likely due to its association with the Alexa smart device. On the other hand, Google’s own audio offerings don’t track with the popularity of its Google Home. 

However, AM/FM radio is also actually the most popular audio source for smart speakers at 24%. It’s chosen at more than twice the rate consumers play Pandora, Spotify or owned music. That’s also up significantly from the prior year, when AM/FM only clocked in 18% of listening on smart speakers.

Podcasts remain a minority in this space, but spoken word content generally is on the upswing for smart speaker listeners. It’s up 20% since 2014, while music listening has dropped by 5% during the same period. (It’s unclear whether the report separated podcasts played via Spotify, a popular platform for that content, or if it double-counted it.)

The post Smart Speakers Continue Home Invasion appeared first on Radio World.

The authors are production directors at Broadcasting Experts.

RALEIGH, N.C. — Broadcasting Experts is a production house. We work with financial advisors, lawyers and other professionals who are interested in sharing their knowledge over the radio. We produce their programming and guide them through the process of recording and creating their shows. Most of our clients are not professional broadcasters, so it’s up to us to help them understand the equipment and the steps to making great-sounding radio.

Our programming is “flash frozen,” as we like to say. Our clients connect with us from wherever they’re located and we record live; then we edit after the fact. We had been using Comrex BRIC-Link units for this, because they’re ubiquitous at radio stations, and many of our clients could go to those locations to do their shows. We had also developed a BRIC-Link kit that we sent out to clients; they would set it up at their location and broadcast from there. But we’re working with folks who are often on Wi-Fi, or who are in conference rooms in hotels, so it can get fairly complicated.

Then we learned about Opal. It is an IP audio gateway that enables guests to connect to the studio by simply clicking a link. It provides HD-quality audio from consumer-grade equipment, like a cellphone or a computer with a microphone. It’s effectively a phone interface that uses an Opus codec through a web browser, as opposed to a traditional phone line.

We switched to Opal for ease of use. It’s amazing that now, when we work with guys who aren’t tech-savvy, they can just plug a USB headset into their computer, go to a website and click connect. It’s much easier than teaching them how to check the gain on their mixing board, or check mix minuses, etc. It makes that side much simpler.

We usually record a dozen shows per week, and we use Opal for 10 of them. In the past, we sometimes had to patch interviews into our system over the phone, but Opal has eliminated that. That terrible phone quality is a thing we no longer have to deal with. If our client is using a good microphone and the room is set up correctly, it really can sound like you’re sitting next to them.

Opal also helps our clients feel more comfortable. Because they’re not radio professionals, if there’s a minor technical glitch or if there’s some complication that needs to be ironed out, it can fluster them, and affect the ultimate product. Now, when we actually go to record the program, they’re not thinking about the technical elements — they can just focus on recording. They’re much more secure going into the show, and they perform better as a result.

Opal has resulted in several customers referring colleagues to us. We’ve picked up several new clients who choose our production house because it’s so easy for them to connect.

For information, contact Chris Crump at Comrex in Massachusetts at 1-978-784-1776 or visit www.comrex.com.

The post User Report: Broadcasting Experts Connect to Clients With Opal appeared first on Radio World.

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Where might 5G lead for radio? Radio World shared this week’s feature story with Michael LeClair, chief engineer of Boston’s WBUR and former tech editor of Radio World Engineering Extra, who has watched 5G’s development with interest, from a distance, and invited him to comment.

Getty Images/Alexsl

There are so many questions raised by 5G that it’s almost impossible to know where this will lead. We don’t yet have a clear direction defined for what 5G is and isn’t.

From what I’m reading, there are multiple implementations of 5G. What was initially promoted was the concept of using SHF band licensed channels (3 to 30 GHz) where they could fit them in. Those of us using licensed microwave links in broadcasting are familiar with 6, 11 or 23 GHz. These are allocated in bands of 10 to 20 MHz (you can combine adjacent bands for more bandwidth if you need it), which are like communication channel building blocks. Based on the distance you need and what can be done without interfering with other licensed users, you can build out links capable of doing 100 Mbps or greater. At the higher speeds, dynamic QAM is used to achieve very high modulation rates; but the tradeoff is the number of errors that will occur due to signal strength, weather conditions and the size of dishes.

But the promise was 1 Gbps for 5G. Bidirectional. And mobile.

The simplest way to increase the data rate is to increase the channel size. For example, to get 1 Gbps data with a very robust QPSK modulation scheme similar to what we already use in 4G, you would need channels 500 MHz wide. This one channel would utilize more spectrum than the entire radio and TV broadcast bands combined (plus the unlicensed 2.4 GHz band to boot!). It’s more than all the spectrum currently licensed for all wireless carriers combined.

The only place where this kind of spectrum is still available is in spectrum above 30 GHz, or EHF. Lots of spectrum for sale up there. There has been discussion of displacing satellite communications operating in the 4-6 GHz range with mobile data services. If they absorb those frequencies there would be four channels of 500 MHz bandwidth in every city of the U.S., enough to handle the largest cell carriers today (Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T and Sprint).

But that spectrum is already largely in use. That is causing Ph.D.s and engineers to look at what can be done with transmissions at EHF (30-300 GHz). EHF attenuates in atmosphere very rapidly. The usable transmission distance might be 100 feet or so. To build cell service across one square mile would require 2,500 transmitters per square mile. Even a smaller city would require tens of thousands of transmitters, each with a dark fiber connection to some kind of central (or networked) router. Initial trials of this kind of 5G have taken place in Boston and have been found to only work on street corners at the moment. Once you move inside a building or any physical structure they fail.

Imagine how this would affect a product like the Comrex Access. I’ll stick with 4G.

ANOTHER APPROACH

There is a second approach to building 5G with lower frequency channels that are not as susceptible to attenuation in atmosphere. Cell carriers settled on channels in the 600–900 MHz range as being the optimal tradeoff between available bandwidth and data rates for 4G. To do so they have basically “taken” spectrum that was being used by UHF TV, essentially by eminent domain at the federal level. Auctions were used to determine the value of the spectrum.

At lower frequencies, by combining several more “blocks” of bandwidth together it becomes possible to get both a robust transmission system and higher data rates. For example, if I can put together enough blocks of 20 MHz (say five), I can get 800 Mbps using 256 QAM, which is somewhat robust for fixed location connections. Not quite 1 Gbps but still pretty impressive. Data compression would allow the capacity to go well over 1 Gbps but at the cost of overhead processing that may partially nullify the speed boost. This is the second form of 5G. I believe T-Mobile/Sprint is working on this method.

Again, the four major carriers, if they simply consolidate their spectrum efficiently could each acquire 100 MHz in every major city of the country (there is substantial spectrum around 1 GHz owned by various companies already).

If these services can be made reliable, I see home or small business Internet access as being much easier to build out wirelessly. Remote studios and broadcasts would no longer need to contract for wired data connections, especially in urban areas.

Remote transmitter sites would be able to use STLs based on wireless data services. Some technology would have to be added to these to protect them from congestion and interference reducing reliability.

What I don’t see with the SHF/EHF 5G is much disruption to radio beyond the cache streaming services already out there. The reception distance is too short for even someone walking down a city street.

However with lower frequency blocks, audio program providers could build a somewhat better real-time mousetrap than they currently have. With some consolidation of older services and multiple carrier entities, it might be possible to allocate enough spectrum in all the major markets that could come close to replicating the near-instant tuning of radio over distances that would be limited only by tower buildouts (highways would likely be good candidates for full service in rural areas, extending that mobile coverage in ways that radio can’t).

FUTURE OF CODECS

Any of these services at such high speeds begin to raise the question of whether super high efficiency audio codecs are really needed any longer.

Right now the most popular live streaming speed is 48 kbps mono. Millions of listeners use this on a daily basis for their “radio” feeds. The main reason is cost. As the number of streams multiplies, the amount of data at current rates becomes very expensive to support. It’s also robust enough for mobile services in real time. Cache services like Spotify or YouTube use cached file transfers instead of streaming to cut their costs (it allows demand to be managed more effectively than building streams in real time and the use of TCP to minimize errors). If the cost of data goes down due to the greater capacity of 5G, it might support standard higher streaming rates like 128 kbps and make the need for cache services less important (hard to believe YouTube won’t still need to cache files given the much higher data rate required for video).

To be competitive, businesses and IS’s will likely move their benchmark best delivery rates up to 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps over optical paths. Can copper lines still be competitive at those data rates? Office wiring systems are now deploying with 10 Gbps capacities over copper and 100 Gbps backbones over optical are a reality already.

MARKETING ADVANTAGE?

In brief: The limitations I’ve described, which have been confirmed in initial Boston testing, are so significant it’s hard to see how the wireless carriers could be marketing this service unless they’ve got some serious cards up their sleeves.

There may exist some new concepts for this technology that haven’t been shared yet, such as a localized burst mode with the highest speeds that trims down to “enhanced 4G” for everyone else. Unfortunately, most of the blue-sky thinking has been based on the deployment of nothing less than perfection. It’s why I have my doubts about how it will all work out.

In fairness, “I don’t know what I don’t know.” It’s possible there are other ideas floating around that work better than trying to build something in the 20 GHz range of experimental spectrum.

At the same time, I remember the days when live streaming was supposed to completely displace radio “any day now” (this was in the late 1990s). Those who proselytized this technology takeover have been proven wrong time and again.

Someone back then who bothered to calculated the approximate data resources for point-to-point streaming to replicate even one major-market radio station in the top 10 found that streaming in that era couldn’t possibly hope to displace radio broadcasting; it had only a tiny fraction of the capacity necessary to replace one broadcast station. Similarly, bitcoin, if mined at the rate it is today, would in 2025 or so consume 120% of all the electricity on the planet in server farms; it can’t possibly work as a transactional technology for a global financial system. These are ridiculous claims that either entirely ignore, or intentionally distort, the laws of physics for a marketing advantage.

Count me skeptical on 5G for similar reasons.

What do you think about 5G and its possible impact on radio? We invite your opinion. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject line.

The post 5G? So Many Questions, But Count Me Skeptical appeared first on Radio World.

STRONSAY, Orkney Islands, Scotland — BBC Research & Development extensively tested live radio broadcasts over a purpose-designed 5G network to assess the capability of the technology to successfully reach people living in rural areas.

The landscape of Stronsay, Orkney Islands. All photos courtesy of BBC R&D.

These areas often suffer from inadequate radio coverage as well as low and unstable bandwidth on both fixed and mobile data connections.

IP FUTURE

The trial took place in Stronsay, a remote island in Orkney, Scotland, off the northern coast of mainland United Kingdom. Before the trial, islanders complained that it could take up to 10 minutes to download an email.

Andrew Murphy, BBD R&D lead engineer, during his speech at the IBC2019 session on digital radio.

“We chose Stronsay because of its very limited existing coverage overall,” said Andrew Murphy, lead engineer for BBC R&D. “There is almost no mobile phone coverage, no DAB coverage and even the FM is not strong. It was definitely a good place to run a test.”

BBC R&D worked closely with the local council and authority. The test in the far reaches of Scotland is part of the “5G RuralFirst” (www.5gruralfirst.org), a government-funded initiative deployed at multiple locations across the U.K. to experiment with new approaches to connectivity in rural areas.

“We were interested in radio,” Murphy explained. “We wanted to assess whether people living in remote areas (where there is a lack of traditional AM/FM or digital radio reception) could access the medium through 4G and 5G and were able to listen to BBC radio programming live.”

Screenshots from the radio app the BBC developed for the 5G broadcast radio trial.

Looking toward an IP future for media, BBC is aware that consumers are increasingly using smartphones to access content over mobile networks. The broadcaster is also active in EBU and 3GPP standardization committees.

“BBC needs to be able to test and understand the forthcoming technologies so that we can work on them and see how we can improve them where appropriate,” Murphy added.

BROADCAST MODE

BBC had some concerns about the capacity and coverage (BBC needs universal availability) mobile networks can effectively ensure. It questioned whether 4G and 5G technologies could potentially help broadcasters overcome these challenges.

Murphy said they decided to assess the delivery of radio through 4G and 5G broadcast technology because radio is a naturally mobile medium, and people enjoy listening to the radio on the move. At the same time, smartphones are increasingly not fitted with broadcast receivers.

Since no commercial 5G system was available, BBC decided to design and build its own base station, which Murphy’s team deployed in the center of the island at Stronsay Junior High School.

The base station (4G technology but designed to emulate 5G) was designed to give BBC engineers total control over transmission parameters, such as modulation and coding settings, and to alter them to assess performance in different situations. The trial used 2×10 MHz bandwidth in the 700 MHz band.

A crowd-sourced coverage map built on data coming from the BBC app installed on trial receivers.

The trial featured the broadcast-mode delivery of radio over 4G (eMBMS with MPEG-DASH), enriched by mobile broadband to give listeners access to live (broadcast) and catch-up (unicast) content, as well as internet access, using a mixed mode in 3GPP Rel-12, providing both broadcast and unicast.

DETAILED TELEMETRY

The broadcast mode can reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to air the involved content since in this approach the base station is only sending one transmission rather than multiple versions (one to each different user).

This means that when many users request the same live program at the same time, broadcasting it over 5G helps reduce congestion on the rest of the network.

“We incorporated 13 live radio services, including BBC Radio Orkney.” Murphy explained “We recruited 20 people to use broadcast-capable handsets featuring 4G technology but designed to emulate some features we hope to see in the forthcoming 5G standards.”

The specifically designed handsets allowed the tests to achieve greater results than currently possible with equipment commercially available today. The handsets included Rel-16, LTE-based 5G terrestrial broadcast, SIM-free reception as well as transport-only mode with AAC+ audio over RTP/UDP/IP.

Shona Croy is strategic advisor for Renewables and Connectivity at the Orkney Council.

A dedicated app, built on standard BBC app components, powered the receiving device and comprised detailed telemetry data of reception quality as people listened to the radio services.

“This enabled us to build-up an anonymized, crowd-sourced coverage map across the whole island and to assess the performance of different transmission parameters on the quality of service,” said Murphy.

ALMOST SATISFIED

The BBC R&D is working on 5G technology to provide broadcasters with better connectivity options.

The distributed availability of the monitoring probes built into the receiving devices allowed BBC engineers to run an analysis over a much longer time period and over a wider area than drive testing alone would allow.

In addition, since the data came from real-life handsets, a more accurate picture of how the technology works in practice was depicted.

Across the 16 active handsets over the first five weeks of the trial, average broadcast listening measured at just over two hours per day, which would be the equivalent of around 1.5 GB of data over a month in the conventional unicast scenario.

“This a very significant proportion of the average monthly mobile data per active connection in the U.K. of around 1.9 GB per month and would leave little allowance for other uses,” he added.

The trial demonstrated that people liked the convenience of having radio readily available on a smartphone, and almost all (9 in 10) were satisfied with trial internet service. They often used the handsets as mobile hotspots, giving them access to faster download speeds for films and music.

BETTER OPTIONS

Anecdotal evidence from teachers at the island’s junior high school — backed up by data from the devices — suggests that teenagers in Stronsay have become big fans of the music played on the BBC’s Asian Network, one of the 13 BBC stations they could access as part of the trial.

In a BBC video illustrating its 5G project, Shona Croy, strategic advisor for Renewables and Connectivity at the Orkney Council said: “We were really keen to do something that overcomes this barrier of rural areas being last to get a service, or not getting it at all. But the economic case for coming here is poor, so are there other ways we can look at delivering services?”

5G as a technology is still being developed and deployed, and it has a completely different level of maturity with respect to, for example, DAB digital radio.

“The BBC will continue working in this space together with the European Broadcasting Union to try to influence current and future standards that provide broadcasters with better options for these purposes,” Murphy concluded.

The post BBC Assesses 5G’s Broadcast Capability appeared first on Radio World.

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FCC denies application for review of the dismissal of a petition for reconsideration of decisions relating to the grant of an application for assignment of KAXT-CD and the grant of license renewal of KAXT-CD

FCC dismisses application for review of a grant of the applications for consent to assign of KAXT-CD and KTLN-TV from OTA Broadcasting, LLC to TV-49, Inc., and of a denial to the informal objection to the applications

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Radio World is providing an ongoing sampler of comments of what people are telling the FCC about its proposal to allow U.S. stations on the AM band to switch voluntarily to all-digital transmission. Here are more in the series:

Kirk Mazurek told the FCC that he is an avid AM listener who has “invested time and money in equipment towards my hobby as many others have. If this proposal goes through it will make the millions of receivers obsolete requiring the purchase of new equipment. This is needless, there are a lot of people who have vintage radios and a lot of them have been restored. This proposal would make them useless. I urge you not to ratify this proposal.”

Mark Wells raised concern about interference from digital to analog signals on the same channel. “This is especially applicable at night when one is listening to distant stations in out-of-state markets, he wrote. “For example, clear channel stations WBT in Charlotte and KFAB in Omaha are both on both on 1110 kHz. Let’s say one switches to digital, and one does not. As it is they both may fade in and out as the atmosphere does its nightly tricks, but the signals remain mostly useable. But, if one is digital and the other analog would it not ‘blank out’ the analog station?”

[Read: “Allow DRM for Digitizing the AM Band”]

Wells also noted that existing analog AM receivers would become obsolete. “Adding a digital to analog converter as they did when switching to HDTV would perhaps not be a very practical solution, as it would require a not so easy installation.” And he reminded the FCC of AM’s role during disasters. “Analog AM receivers are among the most simple of devices to build. In a major disaster a person with the knowledge of how to do so, can build a receiver literally out of debris, and remain in contact with the outside world. This capability cannot be overstated — to say that a voice coming in on a dark, dark fright-filled night is a comforting cannot be denied, as well as the value of receiving emergency information.” He said one solution would be to limit all-digital stations to Class C local operations in the 1610–1700 kHz range “and leave the rest of the AM band as it is now.”

[Read: “WLOH Would Have a Compelling Reason to Promote Its Signal Again”]

Amateur radio operator Edward Thierbach, AB80J, worries about the distribution of emergency information to the general population. “I suggest that the proposed rules be amended to require the following types of AM stations to retain analog AM broadcast capability for a period of 10–15 years: Clear-channel stations; Emergency Advisory Radio Stations; Other stations officially designated as emergency information stations, whether the official designation is made locally or nationally,” Thierbach wrote.

He said few if any emergency radios (typically hand-cranked or solar-charged) can receive HD Radio, and that relatively few people have portable radios of any type with digital AM capability. Not enough receivers in vehicles have digital AM capability either, he argued, and predicted that proliferation of digital AM radio would likely take much longer than digital TV, “due to less consumer incentive.” He thinks it would take 10 to 15 years before emergency information can be widely and reliably disseminated via digital AM.

And David Bowers takes pleasure in the fact that in radio’s 100th anniversary year, antique radios can still be used to listen to modern AM broadcasts. But he predicted that the dawn of digital AM transmission “would require the design, build and distribution of millions of converters, as was done with DTV in 2009.” He also looked further down the road, saying, “Keep in mind the consequences of this proposal. I know it starts as voluntary, but wheels of progress suggest it could evolve to universal.”

Register to watch a free February webcast about all-digital on AM.

 

The post “It Will Make Millions of Receivers Obsolete … This Is Needless” appeared first on Radio World.

An Audi marketing photo shows a dashboard C-V2X display.

Here’s an interesting spectrum project for those watching the connected car space.

It’s called C-V2X, for “Cellular Vehicle to Everything,” and a notable deployment was announced Wednesday by Audi, Qualcomm and the Virginia Department of Transportation. The deployment will include warnings to automatically alert cars to work zones ahead as well as signal phase and timing, or SPaT, which enables cars to receive a countdown from a red to a green light.

The FCC is among those watching with interest. Chairman Ajit Pai put out statement noting that the deployment was made possible through an experimental license. He used the opportunity to voice support for the idea of redesignating spectrum in the 5.9 GHz band.

[Read: A Peek at Tomorrow’s Car Radios]

“The cars and trucks of the future will use wireless spectrum and advanced technologies to keep us safer on the road,” Pai said. “Cellular Vehicle to Everything, or C-V2X, is a new and promising technology that is gaining momentum in the automotive industry as it enables communications between cars, infrastructure, cyclists, pedestrians and road workers.”

He said rules governing the 5.9 GHz band need to be updated because they are tied up by Dedicated Short-Range Communications, a technology he said was “authorized by the FCC more than 20 years ago that has never been widely deployed.”

The commission recently voted to take “a fresh and comprehensive look” at the 5.9 GHz band and to designate at least 20 megahertz for deployment of C-V2X, calling it an emerging standard for transportation applications.

“If this proposal is adopted, it would be a significant step forward for automotive safety, since there is currently no spectrum designated for C-V2X. Americans on the move would be the beneficiaries — but only if the FCC takes action and leaves the failed status quo behind,” Pai said.

The FCC also has proposed to designate 45 megahertz of that band for unlicensed uses like Wi-Fi. “This 45 megahertz sub-band can be combined with existing unlicensed spectrum to provide cutting-edge high-throughput broadband applications on channels up to 160 megahertz wide,” it wrote in December.

You can read the Audi announcement about the deployment in Virginia here.

 

The post Pai Renews Call for Spectrum for C-V2X appeared first on Radio World.

Please no 504….

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FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly has reached out to some major music companies to ask what they are doing to protect against payola, the exchange of something of value for broadcast airplay. The radio broadcast industry has had some scandalous episodes of payola in the past.

O’Rielly also noted that current restrictions don’t apply to streaming or internet radio.

Last September, O’Rielly contacted the Recording Industry Association of America to ask about reports that possible violations of federal antipayola laws and regulations, but was told the he needed to reach out to the companies individually.

[Read: O’Rielly Tells MBA “We Are Playing a Long Game” Against Pirate Operators]

He has now done so.

In letters to the heads of Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group O’Rielly said that “even the most cursory review of consumer complaints and assertions provides cause for concern regarding the persistence of payola.”

O’Rielly, who is not fan of government overregulation, said he was not saying payola restrictions were perfect, including that they applied to radio but not to streaming, internet radio or podcasts.

He said that “asymmetry” clearly impacts the radio industry’s financial well-being and perhaps even “long-term sustainability.”

He also said that compliance is tough given that radio companies deliver content “via multiple platforms and methods.”

 

The post O’Rielly Seeks Payola Info From Music Companies appeared first on Radio World.