Radio World

ENCO WebDAD Presenter Arrays

ENCO’s business started with computer-based process control for critical industrial applications in the early 1980s, but it soon focused that technical expertise on broadcasting. In 1991 its first digital audio delivery system, DAD, replaced manual cart systems commonly used to sequence and play audio content.

Bill Bennett is media solutions account manager. This is excerpted from a recent ebook.

Bill Bennett

Radio World: How has the pandemic experience changed workflows for your clients?

Bill Bennett: Historically, most radio production has been done in the studio, with someone directly iterating with their DAD system at the station. And over the course of a day, that could be perhaps 10 different people needing access to a production or on-air system at different times.

Then suddenly, all these people are working from their homes, but the station can’t have eight or 10 separate DAD physical installations located at each of their homes. That’s one of the examples where WebDAD shines, as it’s a browser-based remote control client, allowing those remote users to connect via VPN back to the main DAD systems at the studio, and keep focused on churning out their content, whether they have a PC or Mac.

RW: Are there new capabilities that have come to the fore?

This article is excerpted from the ebook “Automation: The Next Phase.” Click the cover to read it.

Bennett: ENCO users are finding new ways to work while remote or mobile, with our HTML-5 based mobile automation solution called WebDAD, which allows for native remote control of our DAD automation system over the public Internet via VPN connection. It’s also a great resource when using part-time talent who need only limited access to some systems or only at certain times.

WebDAD allows users to access to the most popular DAD features remotely via Web browser, whether down the hall or across the country, making it a key component for today’s decentralized radio workforce.

It gives them native connectivity and remote control of their DAD system, where they can do things like library and playlist maintenance, change up their content live with array panels, perform voicetracking, upload audio files, edit heads and tails, and more.

RW: What have manufacturers learned that might affect future designs?

Bennett: The customer more than ever is ready to trust the cloud for storage, playout, automation, and for the sharing of audio and video assets, as well as collaborate on shared documents, notes and rundowns.

Pre-COVID, a lot of radio stations still used a more simplified methodology, not wanting or needing to adopt a Cloud or Internet-based solutions. But the pandemic changed everything and they instantly required it.

Many manufacturers, including ENCO, have been saying, “We have been building out this elegant, flexible way to gain native remote access to your playout over a IP network from a simple web browser” And people were already becoming familiar with Web-based editing of documents collaboratively via products by Google, Microsoft Office and so on, so that’s been helpful to grease the skids in radio production workflows.

The customer is learning there’re many different ways to produce a show, both live and tracked from different locations, literally without skipping a beat now.

RW: What is the role of virtualization?

Bennett: Virtualization is a term used a lot these days. With ENCO’s products, it means a powerful path forward, allowing customers to do things such as build fault-tolerant radio automation solutions that are dynamically scalable, more immune to security threats, and are easier to maintain with lower cost of ownership. Same with our WebDAD product – that virtualizes a DAD playout & automation environment allowing radio talent to build and track their productions from locations far away from the physical DAD installation, securely. It really opens up a whole new set of flexible options for the production folks.

If a broadcaster has to change playout sources from physical studios to a cloud-based instance, perhaps for disaster recovery, if they have a cloud-based playout system in-sync with that — for example, ENCO has our DAD DR solution — that cloud-based system is controlling what’s on the air and feeding the transmitter and streaming end points or streaming CDNs.

And now with Zoom, Skype and the rest, it’s possible to have a fairly high-fidelity audio interview with people all over the world at the same time, where they can see each other’s reactions – then you’ve built a kind of virtual studio at that point, which is super flexible.

RW: Will automation and related software systems move fully to the cloud?

Bennett: Enthusiastically, yes. I am certain we are going to see a mix of hybrid solutions as well as fully cloud-based solutions.

The best for most broadcasters probably is a hybrid solution. But one of the coolest things about the cloud is that you can access your playout securely from anywhere on the web; and your systems are also automatically being backed up for you at the data center, so you’ve got some redundancy built into your cloud system that you may not be able to have at the station (or may lose, if a terrible disaster happens at the station).

RW: Are there special configurations that people are asking for?

Bennett: Yes for sure – for one, they want their remote workers to have access to their on-air systems, and WebDAD brings that to the table. Their staff keeps connected with a familiar interface, from the comfort of their Web browser at home. Also, for those who are at the station but need to keep physically distanced, WebDAD can be installed on computers throughout the station, allowing production staff to access DAD to manage playlists and so forth, without having to go in and out of studios where others have been.

Another is ENCO’s automated speech-to-text captioning product called enCaption. It makes live voice interviews accessible to the hard of hearing and deaf communities by creating real-time captions of what’s spoken on the air, which can then be delivered to the radio broadcaster’s Website in real time.

RW: Are there customers doing particularly interesting or notable things right now?

Bennett: We have a customer in California that has a full DAD solution in the cloud, running six concurrent radio stations, all hosted on Amazon Web Services and using WebDAD to control it.

There are zero physical facilities, it’s all cloud playout. That’s six live concurrent stations that access the playout system from anywhere on the internet. They just need a WebDAD client on the browser and the login back to the main system in the cloud and they can control what’s on the air.

And we’ve got a customer, again on the West Coast, using our video playback platform ClipFire to generate dynamic graphics for news, weather bugs and icons and to squeeze the video in and out of the frame or enlarge and shrink the video to make the graphic sit better. It’s an automated way to help a broadcaster put more contemporaneous texts, news data and crawls into their linear broadcast channel. It’s neat for radio because of the evolving space around visual radio.

The post Radio Automation Goes Mobile appeared first on Radio World.

Taking advantage of the burgeoning remote/work-from-home market, Studio Technologies has designed the Model 209 talent console.

The 209 is a creature of the Ethernet/IP audio world, operating PoE. It has 48 V phantom power, a headphones output along with a level control plus a talkback/cough button.

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

The Model 209 is compatible with AES67 and Dante audio-over-Ethernet technology as well as compatible with Audinate’s Dante Domain Manager. Additional compatibility is with Yellowtec m!ka microphone mounts and booms and Studio Technologies STcontroller app for Windows and Mac. STcontroller controls functions such as mic level, phantom power and tally controls.

Studio Technologies  President Gordon Kapes said, “While originally designed for podcasters, the Model 209 is truly an ‘all-Dante’ solution that can deliver excellent audio in many modern broadcast applications.”

Send your new equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.

Info: https://studio-tech.com/

 

The post Remote Talent Console From Studio Technologies appeared first on Radio World.

If you had registered to attend the 2021 NAB Show that was supposed to take place this October, you can expect to receive a notice that your registration has rolled over to the spring show automatically.

The rollover is for the same attendance package or value.

A spokesperson for the association said that if attendees prefer a refund, they can obtain one by request through March 22.

The 2021 NAB Show had been set for October but was cancelled on Sept. 15 because of the ongoing pandemic. The 2022 convention is scheduled for April 23 to 27.

Meanwhile the AES Show, which had planned to colocate with NAB, now will be done online; program details have been posted.

The post NAB Show Registrations Roll Over appeared first on Radio World.

Joan Warner, the CEO of Commercial Radio Australia, will step down early next year.

“The search for a replacement CEO will commence immediately with the aim of a new CEO taking up the position during the first quarter of 2022,” the organization stated in an announcement.

It said she originally intended to leave at the end of December but will stay another three months to allow a more comprehensive search.

“There are also major projects with which the board has asked I continue to assist in the early implementation stages and to ensure a smooth and seamless handover to the incoming CEO.”

This past July was her 20th anniversary in the CEO position. CRA represents the interests of commercial radio broadcasters in the country. Known as the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters when Warner started, it changed its name to Commercial Radio Australia Limited in 2002.

The announcement was made by CRA Chair Grant Blackley, who said Warner has had “a substantial and meaningful impact on CRA and the industry over the past two decades and has worked tirelessly to advance the strategic imperatives for a healthy and vibrant radio industry.

“The radio industry has recovered well from the COVID impact and is gaining further momentum with a renewed commercial approach at industry level to drive increased share of advertising to radio,” Blackley said.

He noted that CRA recently announced an important change in radio measurement. “The Australian metropolitan radio ratings will undergo a major revolution in response to the rapid digitization of audio consumption in Australia, with live streaming data to be integrated into a new multimillion dollar hybrid measurement system.

“There is an extensive amount of work already underway across industry integration with smart speakers and connected cars, an improved and comprehensive all-of-industry automated trading platform to be implemented in 2022, and the continued maturity and acceleration of both podcasting and audio streaming platforms.”

The website The Industry Obsesrver wrote, “During her tenure, Warner was responsible for the planning, rollout and implementation of DAB+ digital radio in the five metro capitals, covering up to 60% of the natation population, and the subsequent push into regional Australia … Her relationship with creatives, rightsholders and the state-funded triple j network was, at times, frosty.”

[Related: Read Radio World’s interview with Warner about DAB+ in Australia in our recent free ebook.]

 

 

 

 

The post Warner to Step Down at Commercial Radio Australia appeared first on Radio World.

Rash Mustapha

A Swiss company that specializes in small-scale DAB has created a U.K. business to apply for multiplex licenses there.

Digris Switzerland said it incorporated digris Limited in partnership with Rash Mustapha, a former senior technologist at British communications regulator Ofcom. It says Mustapha is credited with developing small-scale DAB in the U.K.

In addition to applying for licenses, the new entity will offer managed services for radio stations and other network operators.

“Digris Switzerland is also not altogether unknown, being developers of the software-based distribution platform of Opendigitalradio, which enables smaller radio stations to broadcast digitally,” Digris stated in an email.

“This distribution concept, known as small-scale DAB, has now established itself throughout Europe. The company’s cost-oriented approach is favorable to media diversity and an open information society. Digris is also a network operator and operates small-scale DAB+ networks as both single-frequency and multifrequency networks in Switzerland and France since 2014.”

Mustapha was named chief technology officer and will lead digris Limited in the UK.

He was quoted in the announcement: “The opportunity now being presented is a step-change from what has been tested in the trials. We’re expecting to see lots of single-frequency networks and there simply isn’t enough experienced technical resource out there to build so many, and then support them adequately at scale. I’m obviously very keen for small-scale DAB to be a success and I know, with digris, it can be.”

Digris says it broadcasts 60% of the DAB+ radio services in Switzerland and France.

Small-scale DAB is described as a low-cost route for local commercial, community and specialist music services to broadcast on terrestrial digital radio to a relatively small area. According to Ofcom, a number of small-scale DAB multiplexes have been running on a trial basis over the past five years, but the regulator is now advertising non-trial small-scale radio multiplex licenses.

 

The post Digris Sets Up Shop in the U.K. appeared first on Radio World.

Magic THipPro telephone hybrid

Codec, hybrid and headend manufacturer AVT has announced the coming availability of a Ravenna module for select products, notably in its Magic family.

The company explains, “The Magic Ravenna module is initially available for the most powerful VoIP telephone hybrid system, Magic THipPro. In the coming months the integration for the Quad DAB+ encoder, Magic AE4, and the DAB ensemble multiplexer, Magic DABMUX plus, will follow.”

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

AVT adds that AES67 and SMPTE ST 2110-30/31 standards are supported, for easing compatibility with other systems plus steam redundancy via ST 2022-7 standards.

AVT Sales and Marketing Manager Annemarie Hübner said, “We are pleased that the module supports the NMOS specifications for Discovery & Registration as well as Device Connection Management, so that integration into large AoIP networks can be significantly simplified.”

AVT has had Dante-compatibility in select products for a few years.

Send your new equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.

Info: www.avt-nbg.de

The post AVT Adds Ravenna appeared first on Radio World.

The author is chairman of the Digital Radio Mondiale Consortium.

It was very interesting to read the article researched and penned by James Careless “Shortwave Radios Keep Up With Tech” in Radio World.

It was also high time to address the issue of SW transmissions, just when the death of radio and of shortwave, and even medium-wave, is being ventilated again, while the progress of streaming and podcasting is hugely hyped, again trumping global realities.

Maybe stressing the actual huge size of SW listening would have benefitted the article.

BBC World Service alone has an estimated weekly audience of 269 million, with radio delivering around 150 million. This top international broadcaster has 200 transmitter sites, of which four are high-power AM, with 12 others hired. Content is distributed to 800 locations globally (often using SW) for direct broadcast or inclusion in partner broadcasts. And AM services reach many tens of millions across Africa and Middle East, the future potential audience of DRM shortwave as well.

The Radio World piece was clearly aimed mainly at the enthusiasts, as indicated by the receiver prices mentioned. The average non-enthusiast listener who has a laptop with connectivity would probably just listen to radio via the internet.

There is definitely merit in portable SDRs, which (depending on price) will likely keep some of the audiences and make it easy for them to pick up analog shortwave but also DRM. India, China, Russia, U.K., even Brazil, Pakistan and other countries are testing, broadcasting or seriously considering shortwave DRM at the moment.

The natural and only son of analog SW, DRM, with its huge spectrum, energy and audio quality advantages, does not get a mention in the article, though. This is definitely a missed opportunity, as some of the big public broadcasters mentioned — BBC, All India Radio, Radio Romania etc. — are already in this space and report excellent reception and increasing listenership.

Most of the new DRM receiver solutions cater for both the analog and digital versions of shortwave reception. Work is afoot to deliver more affordable receivers aimed precisely at the huge and less affluent shortwave markets of Africa and Asia.

The post Letter: DRM Is a Real Presence on Shortwave appeared first on Radio World.

Marketron on Wednesday continued to work toward a resolution of the apparent ransomware attack that took down most of its systems over the weekend.

It told clients that “significant progress has been made toward restoring service for Marketron Traffic and Visual Traffic customers” and that it expected to begin a rollout of restored services Wednesday evening.

“With assistance from our third-party remediation and restoration specialists and forensic investigators, we have prepared an entirely new environment to begin safely and securely restoring services and data,” it said in an email Wednesday afternoon.

“Customers will have services restored on a rolling basis in phases as we work to move to this environment. Once moved to this location, all users from your market location/database will be restored simultaneously.”

It expected this process to take several days.

Marketron told users that they’d receive an email when it was time for account service to be restored, with instructions.

“In addition to restoration of services, your data will also be restored,” with information current only to Saturday morning Sept. 18. “You will need to take steps to reconcile log information between Sept. 18 and the time your account is restored. Recommendations for the reconciliation process are on the status page.”

The attack reportedly was made by the Russian criminal entity BlackMatter.

As of midday Wednesday, the services that remained down were Marketron Traffic, Visual Traffic, Marketron Electronic Services for all traffic clients; Advertiser Portal; Traffic Portal; Insight; RepPak; Marketron NXT; and Marketron Learning Center.

The company serves approximately 6,000 media organizations.

The post Marketron Plans Re-Rollout After Ransomware Attack appeared first on Radio World.

The FCC has more technical feedback to sift through on how a system that allows FM radio stations to geo-target signals works in the real world.

Field testing of the ZoneCasting system from GeoBroadcast Solutions shows the transition areas between zones “can be designed and programmed to take up a miniscule portion of a station’s service area and be infrequent, transitory, unobjectionable, and in most cases unobservable to the listener,” according to Covington & Burling LLP.

The report details the performance and end-user experience from the deployment of ZoneCasting at KSJO(FM) in San Jose, Calif., during field testing conducted by Roberson and Associates. The report concludes the geo-targeting technology works with both analog and HD Radio systems and does not affect the performance of EAS system, the proponents say.

[Read: EMF Deploys MaxxCasting in Chicago]

Geo-targeting broadcast technology, according to GBS, creates local zones out of an FM and FM+HD broadcast coverage area to enable unique, targeted programming and advertising for listeners in the zone during short periods but is designed that the zones do not adversely impact the listener experience. ZoneCasting creates geo-targeted zones by using specifically located booster transmitters and appropriately designed antennas to overlay a stronger, geographically localized signal in the targeted region.

GBS says geo-targeted programming and advertising in a zone would occur for only short periods, typically about three minutes per hour, in order to place zone targeted advertising, according to the report.

The new report’s findings summarize tests results from 31 hours of audio recorded from over 60 drives at various speeds over multiple weeks this summer. KSJO operates two transmitters, according to the report, the main transmitter covering the region from an elevated site south of San Jose and a low-power booster that covers the northern section of the station’s listening area.

The radio station’s two coverage areas are separated by a largely unpopulated mountain range, according to the report, with “testing conducted in the zone transition area.”

The field test found the FM signal was stable inside the transition zones but some limited audio quality issues were identified during zone transition.

“Our data and analysis indicate that a properly designed zone transition can deliver a highly compact region — a tiny portion of KSJO’s service area — over which any degraded analog FM audio will be experienced,” according to the report’s authors.

The measured results in the report indicate a zone transition length of 50.2 meters, which Roberson and Associates deemed as “insignificant” when compared to the total length of roads within the zone.

Data collectors acknowledge there were differences when listening to zone transitions in FM and HD1 mode during testing. “The overall zone transition listening experience for HD1 was very good, with almost instantaneous transitions without noticeable audio degradation,” they wrote.

[Read: Geo-Targeting Proposal Hits Headwinds]

Meanwhile, the HD2 transition zone experience revealed short audio dropouts, which was expected due to the current use of unsynchronized HD exporters, according to the analysis. They said efforts are underway to develop means to synchronize HD exporters that should reduce the duration of HD2 signal loss.

The report also found the zone transitions caused no display variations of metadata on car receivers. And EAS operation was successful within the ZoneCasting test location after operations of the KSJO EAS geo-targeting override was tried in two different locations. “The simultaneous reception of identical EAS tones at these two locations confirms geo-targeted broadcasting will not affect performance of the EAS system,” the report from Roberson and Associates states.

The geo-targeting report concludes: “Having made numerous careful measurements and having assessed the results of these measurements in considerable depth, it is our conclusion that the geo-targeted broadcast system provides both a practical and highly beneficial capability. It is therefore our studied opinion that there is no technical reason that the geo-position zone broadcasting petition before the FCC should not be approved.”

The FCC adopted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in Nov. 2020 to review the GBS technology and found opponents of the geo-targeted proposal expressed fear that the new technology could create interference and cause listeners to tune out. Broadcast groups, including Cumulus Media, Entercom Communications, and iHeartMedia, have said at the time more vetting of the technology was needed. The National Association of Broadcasters also told the FCC the GBS proposal could undermine radio’s business model by depressing advertising rates as advertisers replace market-wide ads with less expensive ones on the zoned boosters.

The geo-targeted technology has been in development by GBS since 2011 and has been through previous field tests.

The post FCC Receives New ZoneCasting Data appeared first on Radio World.

A Rhode Island broadcaster faces a $7,000 fine because for almost three years it operated an FM translator on an expired license without realizing it.

The FCC Media Bureau issued a notice of apparent liability to Diponti Communications, whose translator at 103.1 in Westerly, R.I., is associated with AM station WBLQ (slogan: “We serve Southwestern Rhode Island and Southeastern Connecticut with local news, talk, sports and great music”).

The eight-year license renewal deadline for most stations in Rhode Island isn’t until this December. But not for this particular translator, which until early 2017 belonged to Harvest Broadcasting Association and was licensed to a community in Vermont.

In late 2016, Harvest had signed a consent decree with the commission that included a conditional one-year short-term renewal for the translator. Shortly afterwards, Diponti acquired the translator and, with the FCC’s approval, moved it to Rhode Island.

The FCC said Diponti should have filed for renewal by July 1, 2017. But Diponti said it didn’t realize until 2020, “during a routine database check,” that an application was long overdue. It finally filed one in September of last year and asked for special temporary authority to operate without the license until the situation was resolved.

The Media Bureau now has determined that Diponti apparently violated the rules by failing to file for renewal on time and by operating without a license.

It cited a previous FCC ruling that states, “‘Inadvertence’ … is at best ignorance of the law, which the commission does not consider a mitigating circumstance.” It also said Diponti should have known about the Harvest consent decree and the short-term renewal deadline through due diligence when it acquired the translator.

However, the FCC staff also recognized that this case is not comparable to one involving a “pirate” radio operation, which would have been subject to higher penalties. And the FCC said it sees no reason not to renew this translator’s license once this NAL is resolved.

Diponti has 30 days to pay the fine or to reply explaining why it thinks it shouldn’t have to.

The post FCC Paperwork Confusion May Cost R.I. Broadcaster appeared first on Radio World.

IBC2021 convention organizers are welcoming the latest announcement from the Dutch government relaxing COVID-19 social distancing measures and removing quarantine rules for vaccinated travelers.

The convention is scheduled for Dec. 3–6, having been pushed back earlier from its original calendar slot this month.

“From Sept. 22, fully vaccinated international visitors from very high-risk areas will no longer have to quarantine on arrival in The Netherlands,” the organization wrote in an email to its show community.

“From Sept. 25, The Netherlands will no longer enforce social distancing rules of 1.5 meters apart or mandate mask wearing in inside areas. To this end IBC has updated the exhibition protocols on its website to reflect the latest rulings and to uphold its commitment to being the gold standard in live event safety.”

The unpredictable behavior of the pandemic has made it hard for many event planners to promote their events with certainty. For instance in July the Dutch prime minister had apologized for relaxing restrictions too soon.

With the latest changes, IBC notes that the country will make wider use of coronavirus access passes. It posted more details on its website, which also states that face masks will no longer be compulsory.

The organization also updated its safety guidelines for exhibitors.

“Seventy percent of IBC’s audience already have easy access to the event, being part of the EU COVID travel block,” IBC wrote in its email. “The removal of the international travel quarantine rules means that IBC will now be accessible to almost 100% of its usual audience.”

The unpredictable behavior of the pandemic has made it hard for many event planners to promote their events with certainty. For instance in July the Dutch prime minister had apologized for relaxing national restrictions too soon.

Pandemic conditions in the United States led the NAB to cancel its previously postponed 2021 NAB Show for Las Vegas.

The post IBC Show Welcomes Easing of Pandemic Measures appeared first on Radio World.

Excellent article in Radio World by Mark Persons (“Analog veterans in the digital world,” May 12 issue).

Count me among those who started out in the analog world but quickly became “digitally native.” I would be hard-pressed to recommend a new analog buildout these days, even for smaller stations. It just makes so much sense and is so much easier to make changes after the fact.

The biggest drawback is that unfortunately, digital equipment does tend to have a shorter lifespan than analog, simply because of the rapid pace of technology improvements, and often quicker part obsolescence.

Lifespans of 10 to 20 years for some equipment have now become more like five to 10, or three to five, not because it has failed but because technology has improved.

That said, in some cases the labor saved in maintenance and ongoing changes can often offset some of this cost. It’s just something that needs to be budgeted for, much like upgrades to desktop computing technology.

The letter writer is senior broadcast engineer at Educational Media Foundation.

The post Letter: Equipment Lifespans appeared first on Radio World.

Wireless microphone system maker Shure has issued a firmware update for the recently released ADX5D wireless receiver.

Now available in the dual-channel portable receiver is a party dial feature that enables users to enables users to

Construct a custom group of frequencies, for instance open channels at a venue, and rapidly move between them.

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

In addition, the menu structure has been “optimized” to make frequently used features closer to each other and shortcuts are dedicated to most popular items.

Send your new equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.

Info: www.shure.com

The post Shure Updates ADX5D Firmware appeared first on Radio World.

The Copyright Royalty Board judges on Monday issued the public version of their final determination for webcasting royalty rates and terms.

Those are the royalty rates for webcasters that stream sound recordings from 2021 through 2025. This is one of the final steps in the process of implementing rates that we told you about earlier.

The document released by the judges is a deep dive into a legalistic discussion over how rates for entities like Spotify, AM/FM broadcasters, colleges and other streamers are calculated. The public version of their document is available here. Some confidential information has been redacted.

The document includes an extensive discussion of why the judges rejected the NAB’s idea that simulcasters should pay lower rates. They ruled that simulcasters and other commercial
webcasters “compete in the same submarket and should be subject to the same rate.
Granting simulcasters differential royalty treatment would distort competition in this submarket,
promoting one business model at the expense of others.” (That discussion starts on page 218 of the document.)

The rate for commercial subscription services in 2021 is $0.0026 per performance. The
rate for commercial nonsubscription services in 2021 is $0.0021 per performance. Subsequent rates will change based on a Consumer Price Index.

Noncommercial webcasters that don’t exceed a certain total number of tuning hours per month have a flat rate of $1,000 annually for each station or channel.

Public broadcasters and certain educational webcasters previously reached their own separate rate settlements for the five-year period with SoundExchange; the CRB approved those last year.

The post CRB Judges Release Their Rationale for New Rates appeared first on Radio World.

The DRM Consortium is characterizing its own data from recent FM-band trials in India as “extremely positive and very encouraging.”

Digital Radio Mondiale is one of two digital systems being considered by AIR (All India Radio) for local and regional services on the country’s FM band. HD Radio is the other platform in the running.

AIR is expected to make a recommendation to the country’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Tests and trials of DRM were done in February and March.

The AIR R&D organization did its own measurements but the DRM Consortium says it took measurements too. “While the final official recommendation of the AIR Committee is still awaited, the DRM Consortium has gathered and visualized the data and measurements it recorded in parallel with AIR in New Delhi and Jaipur,” the consortium said in an announcement Monday.

“The measurements clearly demonstrate that DRM as the global all-bands digital radio standard can deliver an unmatched number of digital audio services in the given spectrum (up to three audio plus one multimedia service per DRM signal block), while allowing for maximum utilization of the FM band spectrum (with every DRM signal occupying only 96 kHz spectrum bandwidth, half the bandwidth analog FM requires for a single audio service).”

It said that the trial confirmed that DRM transmissions would not interfere with ongoing analog FM services. “Also, DRM as a pure-digital radio standard proved its ability to efficiently broadcast multiple DRM signals side by side from a single transmitter (multi-DRM transmitter configuration), and for operating in flexible configurations alongside an analog FM signal from the same transmitter (simulcast transmitter configuration).”

Further, it said DRM could deliver Journaline advanced text service in multiple languages, “to be ready for delivering Emergency Warning Functionality (EWF with CAP interface), and to efficiently enable traffic, travel and online teaching services over broadcast, without requiring internet connectivity.”

DRM said reception in the FM band was demonstrated on various receivers of various types including car receivers and mobile phones. “It was proven that existing receiver models, already supporting DRM in the AM bands as adopted by India, can support DRM in all bands by a simple firmware upgrade without hardware modifications.”

The consortium has posted its overview of these findings (PDF).

The post DRM Says India Trials Make Its Case appeared first on Radio World.

Getty Images/Yurichino China

All Marketron services were offline as of Monday morning due to a “cyber event.”

Whether this was the result of an attack or another kind of issue is unclear, though the company is using a cybersecurity firm to resolve it. It wrote overnight on its website that it had invested heavily in recent years “to prevent a situation like this.”

This is a significant outage, given that the company serves approximately 6,000 media organizations and, according to its website, manages $5 billion in annual U.S. advertising revenue.

The company’s products include sales and traffic management software tools used by broadcast and media organizations.

“Marketron is experiencing a cyber event, which is impacting certain business operations,” the company wrote in a tech update on its website.

“Currently, all Marketron customers may experience an interruption in services as a result.”

As of 9:30 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, all Marketron services were offline.

Marketron Traffic, Visual Traffic Cloud, Exchange and Advertiser Portal were all affected. The company said it decided to take down RadioTraffic and RepPak as well “out of an abundance of caution.” Its Pitch platform was not affected.

The company wrote that it had been unable so far to confirm the root cause of the problem and that it was working to identify the scope of the event and whether there was any threat to customer data.

“Marketron and an industry leading third-party cybersecurity firm are working around the clock to restore service. Our only priority as a business is to get your business up and running. We hope to have a better sense of timelines on Monday morning.

“We understand that any impact to your business is unacceptable.”

 

The post Marketron and Its Users Slammed by “Cyber Event” appeared first on Radio World.

Supply Side is a series of occasional interviews with industry manufacturers and service providers,

Ben Barber is president/CEO of Inovonics Inc.

Radio World: What’s the most significant technology trend for radio stations in your part of the business?
Ben Barber: Monitoring of their stations. That is the biggest growth sector in equipment that we see. Engineers are spread thin, and they need to know what is happening at their remote stations.

RW: How is the company approaching that?
Barber: Inovonics has two new HD Radio Modulation Monitors. Model 551 is a 3U box with lots of meters and diagnostics on the front panel. The Model 552 is a 1U box that is more for the remote site where you use it to log in remotely to obtain all the pertinent data you need.

RW: How are these different from what’s on the market?
Barber: Both models, 551 and 552, have web interfaces so they are accessible from any web-enabled device and not from a PC application. This makes them much easier to monitor and remotely operate. Second is SNMP functions for everything in the box, both monitoring and control.

As I mentioned, monitoring your station’s modulation and overall signal health has become a larger part of our sales over the past year or two. I think the reasons are twofold.

Engineers are stretched more thinly and the ability to know what is going on at stations they can’t easily monitor is essential. Secondly, more and more networks are centralizing their operations and they want to know what is going on in remote markets. So, for the single engineer monitoring a number of local stations or the large network wanting to monitor all of their stations, the needs are very similar.

For years, engineers have approached us to come out with an HD modulation monitor with a number of key features that have been missing from current offerings.

1. The ability to check your FM/HD modulation from any web-enabled device, and from anywhere. Having a PC application is fine but what about when you’re using your tablet or smartphone and you need to check modulation levels, Artist Experience or other transmission metrics? A comprehensive web GUI can’t be beat.
2. SNMP. This is a huge piece of the pie that has been missing. More and more remote controls are using SNMP to aggregate alarm data and then feed that information to engineers. Networks that have NOCs (network operation centers) need to be able to poll all of their sites to get up to date information on their health. SNMP is the way to do this.
3. Monitor multiple HD Channels simultaneously. Both of our new HD modulation monitors can monitor 4 x HDs simultaneously in real time and supply metrics and audio back to the engineering team.
4. Meter History. Our monitors can show the past 24 hours of RF metrics, audio metrics and alignment measurements. This is very useful in seeing trends and finding problems in the field.

Model 551 is a 3 RU monitor; a 1 RU version is intended for remote sites.

RW: How has the pandemic affected Inovonics’ business?
Barber: Sales were where you would expect them for such a year. The shutdowns of 2020 were hard on us, though we all came through with our jobs intact! The good news is that we were able to focus on product development.

The post Inovonics Highlights New HD Mod Monitors appeared first on Radio World.

David Honig is a civil rights lawyer practicing before the Federal Communications Commission and federal appeals courts. David co-founded the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council (MMTC). He currently serves as MMTC’s President Emeritus and Senior Advisor, focusing on broadband adoption, literacy, redlining, and employment and ownership diversity.

He was interviewed by Suzanne Gougherty, director of MMTC Media and Telecom Brokers at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council. Answers were edited for clarity and brevity by Veronica Devries, MMTC Earle K. Moore Law Fellow. MMTC commentaries appear regularly in Radio World, which welcomes other points of view on industry issues.

Suzanne Gougherty: Decades ago, the minority tax certificate program was an economic incentive provided to broadcast companies to sell their stations to potential minority buyers — was it successful? 
David Honig: It was very successful. It quintupled the number of minority-owned broadcast stations in the 17 years the program was in effect.

Gougherty: Please explain how the tax certificate program worked for broadcast companies.
Honig: If you sold a radio/television station or a local cable system to a minority-controlled entity, you would be given, by the FCC, a certificate which states if you had a capital gain on the sale you can defer payment of the tax on the capital gain if you reinvest in comparable property. It was a way of incentivizing sales to minorities.

The history of it is interesting. In 1970 the FCC was requiring companies that exceeded the station ownership caps (the number of stations you can own in a local market) and other local ownership rules to divest in order to comply with these standards. Because these were compulsory divestitures, to make it go down somewhat easier, the commission said capital gains taxes could be deferred on these compulsory sales.

[Read: Building the Public Interface of the Black Information Network]

Subsequently, this tax certificate was extended to voluntary divestitures. In 1977, then FCC Chairman Dick Wiley convened a Federal Advisory Committee to examine whether there were more aggressive steps that could be taken to diversify broadcast ownership. He did this because there were very few minority-owned stations at the time (one television station and 60 radio stations in 1978 when the program was announced). I helped staff that committee. In 1978 the tax certificate program was extended to sales to minority-owned companies. In that way it built on existing framework that the industry was familiar with. The economic impact was spread widely, and it was certainly an incentive to sell to minorities. The program was announced in 1978 and continued until 1995.

Gougherty: Did broadcast companies use the program to increase their ownership portfolio into larger markets or stations?
Honig: Yes, there are examples of it being used by incumbent minority broadcasters to expand the size of their portfolio or the markets they were able to be in so that they could leapfrog up from medium markets to large markets. That was a common use of the economic incentive.

Gougherty: Why was the program stopped?
Honig: Suffice it to say that there was a misinformation campaign.

For 26 years, we have been trying to get the program back. This seems to be the year that has the greatest chance so far of having it come back in some form.

Gougherty: There is a proposal pending in Congress by Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), Sen. Gary Horsford (D-Nev.), Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) to bring back the Tax Certificate program. Is it basically the same program; if not, what’s different about this current proposal?
Honig: It is no longer a race-conscious program. It focuses on the eligible companies, that is who can be a buyer, as being socially disadvantaged individuals. There’s extensive case law that points out how an agency must justify a finding that people of color or women are socially and economically disadvantaged and it tracks those standards very closely. It also provides for reports to Congress, to assure that the program won’t be abused. I looked at more than 200 tax certificate deals at the time and there was only one deal where there was fraud, and the FCC did punish that company eventually.

There is also a new provision in the Senate version of the bill that would allow a station owner to receive a tax credit equal to the value of the station, if he or she donates the station to a training institution such as an HBCU. A tax credit is a very valuable thing:  it’s tax you don’t pay. This is a way to help small broadcasters especially, and we are hoping this provision will make it to the final version of the bill after both houses of Congress come together.

Gougherty: What will be the process to ensure fraud does not occur with the certificates — such as the involvement of a nonminority entity using a “front” person, who does not have any activity with the organization at all?
Honig: There’s very high visibility with a program like this. It’s a small industry in terms of the number of companies. Everyone would be watching them to make sure that no one is playing games with the program or trying to create a fraudulent buyer. The commission has been very aggressive in cracking down on frauds in other contexts. It would be very stupid for anyone to think they can try and outsmart the FCC Enforcement Bureau.

Gougherty: Is there any opposition to the bill?
Honig: First, the NAB has been wonderful helping to organize support on this issue. All 50 state broadcasting associations wrote a letter to the members of Congress endorsing the return of the tax certificate policy. That has never happened before. No one has come out in opposition. That doesn’t mean there won’t be opposition, but no one has chosen to go public and oppose it. We hope that its value will be recognized in a bipartisan way. We note, for example, that nine former FCC chairs voiced their bipartisan support. There was a voice vote on the House version in the House Commerce Committee that passed with no dissents. So, all the Democratic and Republican members were at peace with how the legislation was presented in the House a few months ago.

 

The post Pushing Broadcast Ownership Diversity appeared first on Radio World.

Debbie Kribell and Johnny Schad

Smarts Broadcast Systems grew out of a radio station in Emmetsburg, Iowa, and introduced its first software in 1983. In an interview for our recent ebook about trends in automation, we spoke with software developer Johnny Schad and the company’s manager Debbie Kribell.

Radio World: What do you see as the most important trends or capabilities readers should know about in automation?

Debbie Kribell: Working remotely.

John Schad: Yes. Remote control of systems, remotely contributing content, remote management of content, being able to distribute data throughout multiple systems.

Another big item is security. Our systems are Linux-based, so that puts us a little ahead of the game versus Windows-based systems, which are much more susceptible to viruses, such as CryptoLocker-style viruses.

We can still get hit with them though. We have a couple of [products] we’re about to release that will help safeguard data as much as possible. And because we’re Linux-based, we have the network monitoring tools to investigate people trying to attack our systems. We can see them trying from all over the world.

So far we’ve had a pretty good track record of data recovery and blocking the attackers, but we see this as a big issue, especially as we work towards more distributed system, where you’re constantly interconnecting with other machines.

RW: With that in mind, any particular advice for users?

Schad: If you’ve got a system dedicated to, say, production, in your automation system, or any Windows system, be very, very cautious about Trojan Horse emails — somebody emails you saying, “Hey, you’ve won a contest, click here.”

Kribell: Or free music.

Schad: A warranty. Some of them look very deceptive.

Kribell: They’re getting pretty good at it.

Schad: “There was a problem with your bank statement, click here to figure it out.” And in short order, a system can be compromised

Stations adopt virtual private networks, where they put their entire organization essentially behind one LAN that’s spread out over the internet. This is great for functionality, but it also introduces a whole different side of security.

Laptops are most commonly a problem, they’ll get infected and then log into your VPN, bypassing the firewall, and they can contaminate your entire empire if you’re not careful. So really scrupulous use of internet tools.

Kribell: And backup. You can’t have too many.

Schad: There’s no CryptoLocker virus in the world that can stand up against an offsite backup that you’ve safely put in a bank vault somewhere.

Our normal systems have at least two or three automated backups; and we have a product called “Super Paranoid Backup” that allows customers to cycle through USB drives, put those on the server and take them offsite.

RW: Will automation eventually all be in the cloud?

Schad: Sure. Although one has to remember what the cloud means. All the cloud is, is somebody else’s computer. Stations should make use of cloud services; but when it comes to 24/7 automation, and maybe it’s just a control freak in me, but I would rather have the computer that’s running my station under my own roof.

A lot of our customers are located at their transmitter facilities, in rural locations with iffy internet connections. Failure in an internet connection really compromises your ability to get to the cloud.

Kribell: I deal a lot with the traffic, and it’s so important to have control of that data. As Johnny said, the cloud is just somebody else’s computer. If you have a backup on a flash drive, you can pull that out of your purse, because every day you take it home with a new backup on it. It’s much easier and faster than trying to figure out who has it, did we pay for it, trying to find your password. That all takes time; and you’re not in control.

Schad: That said, the cloud will be extremely useful for convenience. We have services now — you could call them in the cloud, although they predated that term — for internet transfer of audio files and storage. But to your question of entire automation being cloud-based, I don’t know that I would recommend that at this stage.

RW: One engineer told me, “Ninety-nine percent of problems I’ve had are caused by Microsoft messing around with the operating system.” You probably have a unique take on that.

Schad: There’s a reason we didn’t choose Windows. And it was not an easy decision. All of our competitors were and are in Windows.

But in the DOS days when we were trying to make the leap from Microsoft DOS to one of the many versions of Windows, we weren’t happy with the result. Windows was meant to have a person sitting in front of it, interacting.

A system could be brought to a screeching halt with a modal dialogue box, where some kind of an error where the whole system comes to a halt or makes a big “dunk” sound on the air.

With Windows you don’t have the control over the sound system the way you do over a system like Linux, which we were able to customize.

That was a big learning curve for us, but we really appreciate what Linux has done for us, because we have complete control over the hardware and software in the operating system. We don’t have to worry about software updates, we control what gets updated and when.

RW: If your users have a need for technical support, what’s in place to help them quickly?

Schad: In some ways I see tech support as our product. It’s almost consultation-level interactions with our customers. Often we are the number they call when they just don’t know what else to do; and often a problem has nothing to do with us, we just happen to know.

I just had a call from a customer a 4 o’clock Sunday morning. He had no audio over the air. We troubleshot everything with the Skylla system and found audio on the program channel but no audio on the external air monitors. I sent him after his STL link.

We don’t just say, “It’s not our problem, call us back when you fix it.” We want to get to know the customer. And when you get to know the customer, you don’t leave them hanging.

Kribell: Our normal support is 8 to 5 Central time, but we do emergencies 24/7. They are not just a number, they’re a person to us, almost like family.

[Related: “With Automation, You’re Buying More Than a Product”]

RW: Do people have a contract for a monthly fee, or is it a one-time thing?

Kribell: You get free support for six months when you buy the system, then you can pay it monthly, quarterly or annually. It’s very reasonably priced. We’re like a way cheaper employee.

RW: On the traffic and billing side, what are the important trends?

Kribell: Being able to access your data remotely. EDI, the Electronic Data Interchange, has been a big one with agencies, we’ve been doing that for quite a few years, though I still get people who have never used it.

Traffic is still at the basics — getting that order in, getting it on the air, then billing it, doing your affidavits to verify that it ran. That’s not really changing.

RW: How do you feel about the health of the U.S. radio industry and the customer base that you rely on, the people who are your clients and our readers, this whole ecosystem that we work in?

Kribell: I feel good. It depends on how you’re doing it. If you are taking care of your local market, doing the ballgames and the remotes and the home shows, you’re present, you’re not just music on the air. You are involved in the community, fundraisers, the parade downtown in the summer.

When they are involved in the community, I see them continuing to grow.

Now, the pandemic has absolutely kicked every one of us. This hurt, none of us were expecting this. But those stations that turned around to help, they’re staying alive.

We had stations giving away advertising to keep their clients alive on the air. When they’re doing local, they’re not only helping themselves, but they’re helping that community.

Schad: I grew up in radio and I have been hearing predictions of radio’s demise since I was a kid. MTV — video is going to kill the radio star, that kind of thing.

The industry is amazingly flexible and resilient, and it has found a new home online. It’s feeling out what it can do there, but everybody has hit on the idea of content provision as being key to its survival and relevancy.

The people we market to most are small- and middle-market stations. That’s definitely our strength. These are the most resilient people, they come up with all kinds of crazy ways to keep their stations relevant in the community. We love being a part of that.

RW: You mentioned a pending new security offering.

Schad: We’re calling it Portcullis, like the gates at the castle that close down. We think that it’s going to help secure our stations against certain kinds of attacks. Nothing is 100%, but we sure want to cut down on vulnerability.

It’s going to be distributed in stages, the basic version first. Later updates will be free.

RW: What else should readers know?

Schad: The industry is losing a lot of its engineering talent, and as engineers retire, it’s getting harder to find willing people to step in. The IT world is a seductive one. Your average IT person isn’t going to be standing on a metal transmitter floor below a thousand-foot lightning rod in the middle of a thunderstorm trying to get a transmitter back on the air.

It’s a difficult job and it’s getting harder and harder to find engineers. That’s something the industry has to contend with.

Kribell: Also, sometimes people can get in — for lack of a better way to say it — a rut. If you’re still doing certain things manually —your weather, or countdowns or health shows manually — we have ways to automate that.

Schad: Sometimes, users already have features that they didn’t know they have.

The post Smarts Sees Resilience in Smaller Markets appeared first on Radio World.

AKG has unveiled the Ara, a two-pattern USB condenser microphone that should find use with content creators and musicians.

Ara captures 24-bit/96 kHz audio, offering two pickup patterns that allow users to either focus on a single source or everyone in the room. As the mic is largely intended for podcasters, bloggers, gamers, videoconferencing and for recording voice and instruments at home, the directional front (cardioid) pattern captures sound directly in front of the mic while rejecting sound from other sides. Meanwhile, the Front + Back (omnidirectional) pattern picks up sound evenly from all sides, enabling the recording of interviews with multiple speakers.

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

Ara’s essential functions, including pattern selection, mic mute and a headphone volume knob, are located on the front of the mic for easy access; a 3.5 mm-1/8-inch headphone jack allows latency-free monitoring.

Ara’s compact footprint and mounting options aid its use in both desktop and studio scenarios, allowing users to set it on a desktop using the included yoke and base stand, or attach to a boom or standard mic stand. They can also record on the go with a mobile device and optional adapter.

Included accessories include a two-meter USB-C to USB-A cable, a 3/8-inch to 5/8-inch threaded mic stand adapter and a free registration card for Ableton Live 11 Lite recording software. Ara works with all major live-streaming, video conferencing and music-recording applications. Price: $99.

Send your new equipment news to radioworld@futurenet.com.

Info: www.akg.com

 

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