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FCC modernizes its rules by adopting a Report and Order approving the electronic delivery of certain written MVPD notices to broadcast television stations

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The author is membership program director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. NFCB commentaries are featured regularly at www.radioworld.com.

One of my favorite memories as a student was discovering John Coltrane. Like generations before mine, I was dazzled by his virtuoso stylings on “My Favorite Things.” Tales of his all-night jam sessions and one-of-a-kind life were bits of music history likely to never be repeated. Just as his jazz contemporaries blazed bold trails, so Coltrane too proved to be a standard bearer. He, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and others undoubtedly have introduced many people to the timeless sound of jazz.

However, every classic song comes to a close. And there is more than a little indication that jazz’s days on radio are numbered.

Jazz has seen such a turn of events since it ruled commercial radio in the 1940s into the 1950s. But by the mid-1950s, popular music tastes changed. Even with the rise of The Beatles, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, though, jazz enjoyed a sizable audience. Offshoots such as New Age music and smooth jazz kept the genre in the public consciousness just a few years ago. However, with its core audience aging and longtime jazz radio pioneers exploring other avenues, one has to openly ask how much longer noncommercial media will continue to lift up the genre.

[Read: Community Broadcaster: Plant a Seed]

Although the news is not pointing to mass extinction just yet, indications are jazz on the tower is facing some challenges. Recently, Current highlighted the situation at veteran jazz outlet WUMR, which will be departing its 40-year history of jazz radio in favor of a mixed format. In 2018, three jazz stations — KUVO in Denver and Historically Black College and University licensees KPVU and WNSB — were approved to continue the urban alternative effort supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The new format gives stations at chance to connect with new audiences with R&B and hip-hop, though ostensibly their traditional jazz offerings will be (or are being) impacted, now and into the future.

While jazz education groups will tell you there is a growing younger demographic very interested in jazz, I can’t find anyone who says the public perception is one in which jazz is a young person’s primary musical choice. With pressures to increase listenership and grow the donor base, managers at public and community stations are thus going to find little traction with boards of directors or other stakeholders in favor of making jazz a centerpiece of programming. Without champions to expose new listeners to jazz, it is hard to say what jazz will be to broadcast in 20 years. The future does not look promising.

This is not to criticize the value of jazz to the nation, nor does this commentary impinge on any music genre largely vanished from commercial and noncommercial radio. Change is not anyone’s fault. If anything, the gradual disappearing of jazz radio may be the clarion call for its most ardent supporters to think creatively about community engagement and jazz education writ large.

WNCU is one of several jazz stations involved in educating students about jazz and the importance of these stations to their communities and to music history. KDHX is famed for its Folk School, where musical lessons introduce new generations to appreciate folk and bluegrass. Indubitably, a station could do the same with jazz.

Then, of course, there are the dozens of community radio jazz shows that bring you old and new music in the genre. These endeavors are wonderful. Whether that will be enough to save jazz from radio silence may be left to history.

The post Community Broadcaster: The End of Jazz appeared first on Radio World.

Insinuating a connection between Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, National Public Radio wants to see an end to low-power television Channel 6 stations using analog FM radio services and has asked the FCC to refuse future authorization of such use of what it calls “Franken FM” stations.

NPR filed its comments in response to the FCC Media Bureau’s request for feedback on whether analog LPTV stations should be able to continue to program an analog radio service—available on the FM dial (87.7)—after the final digital television conversion deadline.

NPR says that LPTVs’ use of radio airwaves can occupy 30x the spectrum a traditional FM station would use and would cause problems if permitted to continue to operate on analog.

“Franken FMs pose an ongoing threat of harmful interference to public radio stations operating in the immediately adjacent FM band reserved for noncommercial educational broadcast stations,” NPR’s comments to the FCC read. “Moreover, the grossly inefficient use of spectrum adjacent to the NCE reserved FM band ultimate prevents public radio stations from expanding their signal coverage or otherwise offering a multiplicity of additional public service programming for the American public.”

[Background: Media Bureau Continues FM6 Update Inquiry]

LPTVs believe that these concerns are exaggerated.

“There [are] currently over 20 LPTV stations transmitting analog audio carriers available on 87.7 FM, yet the LPTV-C is not aware of any outstanding (not resolved to satisfaction of the listener) complaints about actual interference between the audio signal transmitted by these analog LPTV stations and nearby FM stations on Channels 201 or 202,” the group told the FCC. “However, if the commission chooses to be overly cautious, it can adopt both contour overlap restrictions and prohibitions on actual interference that would eliminate any theoretical risk of interference between 87.7 FM audio carrier and nearby NCE FM stations. In everyday, real-world operating conditions, the current or proposed expanded 87.7 FM services will not cause impermissible interference to other broadcast licensees in their markets.”

LPTVs also have argued that their stations benefit unserved or under-served audiences, though NPR counters that these stations typically offer country, contemporary, Spanish language, religious and sports programming, areas that it says are well served by FM radio stations.

This can all be traced back to the digital conversion of 2009. At that time, full power stations were required to go all digital, but the FCC allowed LPTVs to continue to broadcast in analog until 12 months after the completion of the post-incentive auction repack. The auction is currently scheduled to be completed on July 3, 2020, giving LPTVs until July 3, 2021, to switch completely to digital.

[Is There an Afterlife for Franken FMs?]

NPR, in its argument, says that its position of ending operation of Franken FMs is supported by the Communications Act, FCC regulations and federal communications and spectrum policy. If LPTVs were allowed to continue Franken FM operations, “[the FCC] would have to develop additional rules to govern these Franken FM services to avoid interference to adjacent reserved band NCE FM stations and to assure reception of the LPTV’s primary video service by DTV receivers.”

NPR concludes the commission would better serve the public by reaffirming the DTV conversion deadline.

The post NPR Says LPTV Stations Are ‘Misusing’ FM Radio Services appeared first on Radio World.

NAB’s PILOT wants to help broadcasters help students forward their careers in radio and television engineering this summer via its technology internship grant program, announcing that it is now accepting applications to help create paid internships.

The summer 2020 technology internship grant program is open to NAB member radio and television stations. Accepted stations will be assisted in establishing paid engineering or media-technology internships for undergraduate students at stations that do not have such resources, particularly in smaller markets.

The program also provides resources for the selected stations in identifying and supporting interns. This includes travel assistance for selected interns to attend the 2020 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

The deadline for NAB members to submit applications for the grants is Feb. 21. Selected stations will be notified in March 2020.

For more information, visit www.nabpilot.org/techinterns.

The post PILOT’s Tech Internship Grants Open To Interested Stations appeared first on Radio World.

Recriminations and speculation are two words of the day as we in the radio trades, as well as the nation’s media at large, get our minds around the scale of iHeartMedia’s “transformation” this month.

Cleveland.com has a lengthy article that captures many of the gut-wrenched reactions that people in radio have had. The iHeart announcement “felt different” to industry observers, “like a seismic shift, raising an alarm that perhaps, this time, radio as we know has passed the point of no return,” it reported.

The author of that article believes the number of layoffs was about 1,500; other estimates have been around 1,000. There’s been no confirmed total reported by the company; various counts make it clear there have been at least many hundred people put out of work. (Many reported cuts have been on the programming side; among the unanswered questions are how many engineers and technical positions were affected.)

Cleveland.com lists the familiar challenges to radio including the popularity of streaming and the habits of younger listeners, but also comments on radio’s resiliency over time and its ongoing large overall number of listeners. It notes that Sen. Sherrod Brown has written to iHeart questioning the layoffs in the face of large compensation packages to company executives.

[Read about the technology strategy underpinning iHeart’s “transformation”]

The article summarizes fears that iHeart will use automation and artificial intelligence to run its operations as “a radio station in a closet.” This is a longtime worry of supporters of localism who saw elimination of the main studio rule as removing a regulatory bulwark, allowing operation by “only a few people on the ground and a room full of hard drives,” or even just a tiny sales office with a sign on the door in a community. Cleveland.com quotes longtime radio observer and industry critic Jerry Del Colliano speculating: “You go into a Cleveland radio station, there won’t be any studios. They could be at a WeWork location.”

The company pushed back in a statement to Cleveland.com: “The most important responsibility we have is to the communities we serve. We will continue to serve every local community in which we operate just as we always have.”

But that article ends with speculation that where iHeart goes, others will follow. Del Colliano gloomily said, “This is the end of local radio as we know it.”

A NECESSARY PIVOT?

The Washington Post followed with a writeup of its own with a headline that iHeart “said its mass ‘employee dislocation’ was necessary as it pivoted to AI. But others say it’s the company’s human leaders who deserve the blame.”

This article focused in part on the human impact but summarizes the business rationale this way: “The dominant player in U.S. radio, which owns the online music service iHeartRadio and more than 850 local stations across the United States, has called AI the muscle it needs to fend off rivals, recapture listeners and emerge from bankruptcy. The company, which now uses software to schedule music, analyze research and mix songs, plans to consolidate offices around what executives call ‘AI-enabled Centers of Excellence,” the Post reported. “The company’s shift seems in line with a corporate America that is increasingly embracing automation, using technological advances to take over tasks once done by people, boosting profits and cutting costs. The workplace transformation is typically reduced to a symbol: a robot stealing a human’s job.”

The Post quoted iHeartRadio spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg saying the cuts showed how iHeartMedia was shifting “jobs to the future from the past,” adding data analysts, podcast staff and other digital teams to help transform the company into a “multiplatform” creator and “America’s #1 audio company.” She told the Post: “We do not intend to be one of those companies that stayed in the past, and the world passed it by. Change is painful and change is hard — but consciously choosing not to change is not an option for a company that is going to continue to grow and compete.”

Radio World has renewed its request to iHeartMedia for interviews with company executives about its announcement and will report any outcomes. The company declined to comment to RW earlier.

Also worthy of a fresh read is this 2018 interview with iHeart’s Chris Williams, which touched on the themes of artificial intelligence and what iHeart was planning to do with it.

The post iHeart Defends Painful Change appeared first on Radio World.

WHERE’S THE DIGITAL?

 

Good article about a good radio (“C. Crane Offers Up a Premium Portable,” Dec. 18, 2019 issue). But why doesn’t the new CCRadio-EP receive HD channels? The good journalists at Radio World should have at least asked “Why not HD?”

I realize station managers and sales reps see no profit in HD Radio, but that is the same thing they said about FM in the 1950s. Some even tried to kill FM because they didn’t think people would buy it. Smart stations persisted in marketing FM. Those that stuck with FM eventually had the last word.

It is a “chicken or egg” thing with HD Radio and receivers. People aren’t interested in HD because stations don’t promote it and receivers are not available. I would have been a lot more excited about this new radio if it was future-proofed and promoted HD Radio.

Kevin Ruppert
Madison, Wis.

 

CORRECTING A DISTORTION

I found Mark Persons’ article “Find Your Modulation Sweet Spot” (RW, Oct. 9, 2019 issue) very informative and helpful. Distortion is a turn-off. And I had never considered the distortion inherent in the garden-variety AM envelope detector in the home receiver. Shame on me. Hopefully, this will lead to better-sounding AM.

One nit to pick: The peak power for a 100% modulated AM signal is four times carrier power, not 1.5 times as stated in the article.

James K. Thorusen
Chief Engineer
Central Coast Electronics
Lincoln City, Ore.

Mark Persons replies: Average power is what I was thinking of when writing the article. Mr. Thorusen is correct in saying that peak power is four times unmodulated power.

 

EAS HOSTAGE?

Once again we have a great example of how unreliably the EAS system is implemented. At least one major supplier of equipment recently sent out emails requiring all stations to upgrade software within a week or be unable to run the system. On top of that, in what feels like an extortion scheme, they required each station, including LPFMs and small markets that are barely getting by, to just find $350 from somewhere.

The units cost a considerable amount, and I think it is obscene to hold the users of this product hostage for software upgrades, I thought that was the reason it cost so much to buy.

I still maintain that if we want a truly functional emergency system we need to revisit the entire system in light of technology developments over the past years since the EAS was designed, and replace EAS with a more robust system that has hardware and software supplied and managed by the FCC.

This kind of haphazard process amplifies the obvious failings of EAS, it is unworkable, and cannot be made workable.

Michael Baldauf

 

LONG LIVE RADIO

I respectfully disagree with the person who wrote that radio is dead.

Having spent much of my career in electronic media, I fully understand how radio, TV, satellites, the internet, etc. all fit together to give us a remarkably flexible means of disseminating information.

Sitting here in my home office at my computer, I can “dial up” radio stations from all over the country (and the world). For example, I can listen to a station 900 miles away in my hometown. Five or ten minutes listening on my computer gets me up to speed on the late-breaking news from “back” home. If there is something really interesting, I can pick up the telephone on my desk and “connect” with someone involved in the story. If I am away from home, I can do the same thing on my laptop.

If the story is really “hot” I can pick up my cellphone and get connected to a real live human being who is involved in the story, regardless of where I am.

Long live radio! The “sound” medium.

Lewis D. Collins
Peabody, Mass.

The post Reader Letters on C. Crane, Modulation, EAS Costs appeared first on Radio World.

In what areas are virtualization affecting radio as we move into 2020? How might these trends change the future infrastructure model for radio in the U.S. and elsewhere?

The newest Radio World ebook explores the topic. In this ebook, brought to you by Wheatstone, ENCO and RCS, veteran engineer Doug Irwin asks technology suppliers and others about virtualization in audio management, production and playout, processing and more, with an emphasis on developments of the past 12-18 months.

To what extent is a cloud-based infrastructure the model of the future for radio media companies? Does the elimination of the main studio rule mean that studios will go away?

What are the technical issues and concerns that are raised by the idea of cloud-based infrastructure? Can the cloud approach be “extended” to a location of the broadcasters’ choosing? What else should broadcasters know today about where these technologies are headed, to be prepared?

Read the new ebook here.

The post Trends in Virtualization & the Cloud appeared first on Radio World.

Among the technical tools apparently being used by iHeartMedia in its dramatic organizational restructure is a music-mixing A.I. system built by Super Hi-Fi.

It’s being reported on today by the Washington Post and was described in some detail in an earlier Radio World interview with iHeart’s chief product officer. It’s not clear the extent to which Super Hi-Fi is at the core of iHeart’s AI, given that company officials are declining to talk about such specifics, but it seems likely to be a central component given that Super Hi-Fi was being tried out in its streaming platform.

The Post reports: “The system can transition in real time between songs by layering in music, sound effects, voice-over snippets and ads, delivering the style of smooth, seamless playback that has long been the human DJ’s trade. The Los Angeles-based Super Hi-Fi, whose clients also include the streaming fitness service Peloton, says its ‘computational music presentation’ AI can help erase the seconds-long gaps between songs that can lead to ‘a loss of energy, lack of continuity and disquieting sterility’.”

The Post described patents that it says “reduce the art of mixing music to a diagram of algorithmic tasks,” including a system called MagicStitch that assesses songs’ technical characteristics, blends songs and interjects other elements. The reporter describes a demo given by the company and points out a comment by iHeart’s chief product officer, Chris Williams, in an interview by Radio World that “virtual DJs” that could seamlessly interweave chatter, music and ads were “absolutely” coming, and “something we are always thinking about.”

“PERFECT TRANSITIONS”

This caused us to take a fresh look at that 2018 Radio World interview.

Super Hi-Fi describes itself as a company “dedicated to the creation of powerful artificial intelligence tools to help digital music services deliver amazing listening experiences.” In the earlier story, Williams described how Super Hi-Fi would add “perfect transitions,” “sonic leveling” and “gapless playback.”

Williams described the technology at the time as applied to iHeartRadio streams rather than over-the-air broadcasts, but the conversation presaged the impact on the latter.

[Read the 2018 interview with Chris Williams.]

“We’re eliminating the periods of silence that users currently experience within streaming music to create an experience that mimics the polished production of live radio,” Williams told RW at the time. “We’ve audited the user experience across all the major services and the average gap is 4-6 seconds between the end of one song and the start of another.”

He said the perception of the gap can be even longer across songs with really long, quiet fades or silence at the end. “This new A.I. takes all this into consideration to create the perfect song transitions just as a seasoned radio programmer or DJ would do.”

The technology also levels the volume across songs from different decades, he said at the time.

“This is important because music plays a role in setting a mood and amplifying an experience. Silence between every song and jarring changes in volume breaks the spell and takes a user out of the flow of their experience. It’s an unwelcome disruption that we can eliminate so that the music does what we intend it to do — enhance the moment.”

Williams said in the 2018 interview that these are not cross fade or segue tones, traditional methods the industry uses to solve a transition problem. “Our solution considers every transition discretely, analyzing the song ending as well as the song playing next,” he told RW. “The transition point for a single song is going to vary depending on what track is following, it is dynamic for each unique transition. Our transitions factor in energy, tempo, instrumentation, vocals, processing, volume, production values and hundreds of other attributes for one transition on the fly.

[Related: “Is Artificial Intelligence Friend or Foe to Radio?” Sept. 2018]

“Each time a new song is ingested, the A.I. learns the characteristics of that track and how to best transition it with every other song in the library, similar to the masterful capabilities of our on-air programmers.”

Williams said there are two parts of programming that affect the user experience and have to be considered: curation and presentation. “The curation, or song selection, is still based on our custom algorithm, which is influenced by the curation expertise of our world-class radio programmers. The presentation, or how the songs are stitched together, is what’s being enhanced using the Super Hi-Fi A.I.”

But asked how “artificial intelligence” could be used in a radio operation, he replied: “For a streaming music service, it allows us to scale this concept across millions of songs and billions of unique transitions in a way that isn’t possible if it had to be done by hand,” Williams said. For radio, “We would have to resort to one of the static solutions versus the dynamic approach that we have adopted.”

Notably, Radio World asked Williams, “Do you envision a day when iHeartRadio streams will have virtual DJs, complete with Casey Kasem/Gary Owens voices delivering chatter, tidbits about the song/artist or even local weather before the song plays?”

He answered, “Absolutely. Being able to add in personality, branding, artist messages and weave them all together with the music in a way that is seamless and respects the music is something we are always thinking about.”

CENTERS OF EXCELLENCE

This week’s Washington Post article quotes the co-founder of Super Hi-Fi, Zack Zalon, saying its system won’t trigger massive job cuts and could lead to new opportunities, but also said he expects that, in a few years, computer-generated voices could read off news, serve interviews and introduce songs.

We note, too, that Super Hi-Fi was not mentioned by name in the recent iHeart announcement, which described “technology- and AI-enabled Centers of Excellence” that consolidate functional areas of expertise “in specific locations to deliver the highest quality products and services.” It did mention “the hundreds of millions of dollars in investment [iHeart] has made in building out the company’s core infrastructure, in addition to strategic technology and platform acquisitions like Jelli, RadioJar and Stuff Media.”

Meanwhile, iHeart spokeswoman Wendy Goldberg was quoted by the Post this week saying that its technical solutions allow the company to free up programming people for more creative pursuits, “embedding our radio stations into the communities and lives of our listeners better and deeper than they have been before.”

The post iHeart’s Tech Strategy Puts Spotlight on “Super Hi-Fi” appeared first on Radio World.

AudioScience Iyo Dante

Audio interface developer AudioScience has announced that its Iyo Dante line of interfaces now supports the Livewire+ AES67 audio over IP protocol.

Most Livewire+ AES67 devices can stream audio to and from an Iyo Dante interface including Axia Livewire+-enabled consoles and mix engines using the Livewire low-latency streaming format.

Because it supports the Livewire+ AES67 discovery and routing protocols the Iyo Dante and its Livewire+ AES67-compatible streams can be discovered and connected using Telos Pathfinder Core Pro VM/appliance or the legacy PathfinderPro software.

[What is AES67? Andreas Hillebrand explains.]

AudioScience President Richard Gross said, “The Iyo Dante Livewire+ endpoints have been developed as a direct response to increased Axia compatibility requests from AudioScience’s long-standing radio station audio card user base. The combination of the Telos/Axia open architecture platform with AudioScience’s technical expertise has helped us provide both a cost-effective and superior density solution in a 1RU.”

AudioScience has prepared instructions for making the best of the new feature.

Info: www.audioscience.com

The post AudioScience Adds Livewire+ AES67 to Iyo Dante appeared first on Radio World.

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Pilot, NAB’s technology innovation initiative, announced the winners of its fourth annual Pilot Innovation Challenge. The program will provide support to the winners to develop an AI prototype for Pilot in order to enhance broadcasters’ audience engagement.

Individuals, teams, companies, academic institutions and nonprofit organizations submitted concepts to address the challenge prompt to “build an AI character that can have conversations with individual viewers, listeners or consumers.”

This year’s winners are:

• DeepTalk: A Conversational Agent for Broadcasters — Michigan State University: NextGen Media Innovation Lab, College of Communication Arts and Sciences; i-PRoBe Lab, Department of Computer Science and Engineering; WKAR Public Media. DeepTalk is a conversational agent, like Siri, that can be trained through deep learning to deliver news in the voice of a local broadcaster.
• Jukebot — University of Minnesota: Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Jukebot is a chatbot API capable of answering simple questions and getting feedback from users for music stations.

Pilot is allocating a total of $150,000 between the two winners. Winners will also receive relevant mentorship, feedback during development and a trip to the 2020 NAB Show to demonstrate their prototype.

Innovation Challenge finalists included:

• AI-Driven Interactive News on Mobile Devices — Embody Digital
• Leveraging Conversational AI to Grow Audience, Deepen Engagement and Shape Content Strategy — University of Georgia: Department of Statistics, Institute for Artificial Intelligence; Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication New Media Institute
• Kuralt.AI: 3D Broadcast Avatar — University of North Carolina: Reese News Lab, Hussman School of Journalism and Media

Pilot Executive Director John Clark said NAB looks forward to working with the winners to develop their prototypes and ultimately provide broadcasters the ability to better serve their communities through AI.

 

The post Pilot Announces Winners of the 2020 Innovation Challenge appeared first on Radio World.

Dear Editor,

Scott Dorsey writes, “It is time for some weeding out, so that stations that can take advantage of the actual advantages of AM are able to do so.”

Dave Kolesar sees digital transmission as the salvation of the AM band (Dec. 4, 2019 issue), but AM problems are more social than technical. There are perhaps 20 times as many AM stations as there were in the 1950s, but far fewer listeners. Receivers haven’t improved; in fact on the whole they have got worse. Much of the problem is sheer overcrowding.

The one major benefit of AM, where AM shines over all other possible delivery methods, is long-distance reception over skip and the ability to deal with severe multipath on rugged terrain. Any digital system for AM broadcast that cannot contend with skip reception or degrades reception in mountainous areas is destroying the one advantage that AM has.

Yes, it’s possible that IBOC MA3 is a great improvement over MA1, in that MA1 not only was inaudible over skip but made adjacent-channel stations unlistenable. MA3 is much less likely to destroy reception of distant stations, but the digital carrier is still destroyed by Faraday rotation.

If your station is not audible on skip, and you’re not in a mountainous area where FM is problematic, you probably shouldn’t be on the AM band. I know a lot of AM stations realize this and would like to move to the FM band but cannot. The FM band is too crowded too.

But we need to sit down and face the real truth that there are too many stations on the AM band broadcasting junk programming that people are not actively listening to. It is time for some weeding out, so that stations that can take advantage of the actual advantages of AM are able to do so.

The NAB doesn’t want to talk about this. The FCC doesn’t want to talk about this. All anybody wants to do is promote technical solutions to the wrong problem.

I would be strongly in favor of digital systems that were able to cope with skip transmission, such as DRM. But there’s an easy way to dramatically improve listenability of the band, it’s just that nobody wants to talk about it.

Scott Dorsey
Kludge Audio
Williamsburg, Va.

The post AM in Digital? It’s a Tech Solution to the Wrong Problem appeared first on Radio World.