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RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION

As the month of July 2021 came to an end, an important anniversary in the history of rock ‘n’ roll music was observed by at least one terrestrial radio station. It was also observed on the Sirius XM channel that’s home to three of the four personalities that helped make it an institution. Just past midnight on August 1, 1981, MTV officially signed on the air, available to a lucky few in New Jersey.

By February 1983, however, MTV was growing. It was Channel G on Manhattan Cable systems in New York City. And, it was shaping popular music for a new generation of radio listeners. Among those who perhaps looked to MTV to determine what local listeners wanted was the owner of a Mercedes 450 SL convertible getting attention for an unconventional morning “Zoo” at a radio station in Tampa owned by Gary Edens.

Twenty-four months and one day after MTV’s midnight splash, Scott Shannon signed WHTZ on the air from 333 Meadowlands Parkway in Secaucus, N.J.

Today, MTV is remembered for what it was. Shannon, and the station he built, are still going strong and very much part of today’s consumer choices.

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Thirteen months ago, iHeartMedia officially launched BIN: Black Information Network under the leadership of company veteran Tony Coles and Director of News Operations Tanita Myers. 

As of this week, KBLA-AM 1500 in Los Angeles has signed on the air under the ownership of Tavis Smiley. Its mission: to be a home for Black Lives Matter.

Now, Bloomberg Radio is responding to the thirst for African American-focused insight and information by launching “a daily look at the intersection of culture and commerce affecting Black American audiences.”

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August 5 will certainly be an active day for Wall Street analysts and investors who care about the financial results of publicly traded broadcast media companies.

No less than six earnings calls are on the calendar, with the latest addition to the slate of Q2 2021 releases just announcing their conference call time.

Their earnings call will be held opposite that of Gray Television.

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The Calrec Type R compact console at Athens, Greece’s Pepper 96.6 FM.

Pepper 96.6 FM in Greece’s capital city of Athens has chosen to install a Calrec Type R compact console.

Station Technical Director Anastasios Labropoulos cited the console’s compatibility and flexibility with IP technology as one of the deciding factors, along with “ease of utilization; ease of upgrading software; and last but not least, the number of I/Os and faders.” He singled out the onboard mic preamps as being of “great quality.”

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

The small six-fader mixer and screen fit the station’s requirements. “Since we are primarily a music station, we had no need for a larger console; the current configuration of the Type R with specific I/O and faders fully covers our needs,” Labropoulos explained.

Calrec’s Greek partner Bon Studio S.A. provided key services.

Submit announcements for Who’s Buying What to radioworld@futurenet.com.

 

The post Athens Station Selects Calrec Type R appeared first on Radio World.

Tanita Myers is the director of news operations for iHeartMedia’s Black Information Network. She discusses the inner workings and reason for the news and information source.

She was interviewed by Suzanne Gougherty, director of MMTC Media and Telecom Brokers at the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council. MMTC commentaries appear regularly in Radio World, which welcomes other points of view on industry issues.

Suzanne Gougherty: Soon to be BIN’s first anniversary, I imagine it has been a super exciting year – being part of historical launch of the FIRST Radio News outlet dedicated to serving the Black community, please tell us a few of your top highlights?
Tanita Myers: The Black Information Network’s first anniversary is such a wonderful milestone. In fact, it’s historic. It is such a privilege to be part of a network whose mission is to inform my community on issues that affect us every day and to have our stories told by people who look just like me.

The Black Information Network came along at just the right time as America and the world was dealing with a racial reckoning. It always seemed as if the mainstream media would only report the negativity within the Black community, therefore providing viewers with a slanted perspective on the experiences within the Black community.

At the Black Information Network we get to dive in deeper to expose the roots of some of the disparities that have plagued our community; but more importantly we also have the opportunity to highlight the incredible strides, accomplishments and sheer ingenuity of what makes Black people an incredible part of the world’s fabric.

[Read: Coles Takes a Bold Step]

There have been many highlights this past year including our coverage of the historic election of Vice President Kamala Harris, BIN’s live coverage of the Derek Chauvin trial and of course the opportunity to pay homage to civil rights leaders who have helped paved the way for true progress for the African-American community.

I’m also proud of how BIN has covered international stories such as the fighting in Tigray region of Ethiopia, lack of COVID resources in Haiti and the strife of Black people around the world who have also started their own Black Lives Matter movements.

I beam with joy every day to lead an award-winning team of journalist who brings these stories to life, from our perspective in our voice.

Gougherty: You not only produce news content, you’re a host, along with an array of other responsibilities, how to you juggle day-to-day operations? And what takes priority?
Myers: Juggling day-to-day operations is easy because of the extraordinary talented team that surrounds me. They are all personally invested in making sure BIN highlights the most important stories that educate and inform our listeners. Our priority lies in finding and researching the stories about Black experiences — whether police brutality, systemic racism, oppressive laws, voting rights, opportunities for Blacks to prosper, build thriving communities and more. The old adage that “knowledge is power” is something we subscribe to.

Gougherty: When and how does your day start and end? How do you relax?
Myers: My day begins at 2:30 a.m. ET which allows me to prep for our first editorial pitch meeting at 3 a.m. ET. I also use that time to catch up on overnight emails and news to make sure we are always accurate in our reporting. The 3 a.m. pitch meeting is just one of several during the course of the day. During pitch/editorial our anchors and I discuss what stories should take priority for that day’s reporting and what angles are most relevant to the Black community. The last editorial of the day is at 7 p.m.; after which I spend a couple of hours catching up on emails and checking various wires. Somedays the news cycle moves pretty fast, so I like to make sure we’ve tapped all resources such as social media to ensure we are giving untold stories the exposure needed to invoke change or inspire our community to greatness.

Gougherty: That sounds like a busy, work-dominated schedule. Do you have time to relax or break away?
Myers: Wow, relaxation? What a great question. I really enjoy my job, so sometimes it’s hard for me to relax in the “traditional” sense. There is always news going on! With that being said, I do love to cook and listen to music, usually both as the same time. I’m a pescatarian/vegan, if that’s a real thing, so I love trying out new recipes while listening to some good music of all genres and tempos.

Gougherty: What do you feel are some of the most important issues that impact the Black community? And how do you and your team determine what content is given priority 
Myers: The most important issues affecting the Black community are varied, but usually boil down to the same buckets. Systemic racism, police brutality, economic and health disparities, creating generational wealth and education. Each is a priority and we try our best to make sure we cover the it all.

Gougherty: What were the steps you took to prepare your team for the Chauvin trail? Who was the lead reporter? Tell us about BIN’s live coverage on the ground in St. Paul?
Myers: The Chauvin trial was this generation’s “trial of the century.” We launched the Black Information Network a month after George Floyd’s murder, so we began investigating and reporting all aspects of the case from Day One. When it came time to prepare for the trial we made sure to encompass all facts so we could accurately inform our listeners of how we got to this point in this horrific crime. The Chauvin trial was more than just seeking justice for George Floyd’s murder, the Black community also saw this trial as an opportunity to gain justice for all the other cases of police brutality that were never prosecuted. Because of the magnitude of the trial, for the first time the Black Information Network went live with a daily wrap up special of the day’s court proceedings with legal analysis and reactions from civil rights leaders from around the country. Vanessa Tyler helmed our coverage with contributions from the whole entire staff to make sure we covered every angle of this story.

Gougherty: BIN is on many stations coast to coast, how is local news, weather coordinated and communicated to all the various platforms — from the iHeartRadio apps, smart TV, smart speakers, etc. and over the airwaves?
Myers: The Black Information Network is growing daily and we are absolutely excited to bring local coverage to each of those communities. We have a team of reporters who are dedicated to researching and telling the stories that impact residents in their neighborhoods. When curating the local segments, the Black Information Network homes in on state, city, municipal politics and laws that effect their everyday lives. We also make sure we provide resources that residents can use to benefit their quality of life and empower them to strengthen their communities to generate positive outcomes. We have a wonderful partnership with Total Traffic and Weather Network (TTWN) and they have a stellar team of reporters who accurately deliver traffic and weather updates to our markets.

Gougherty: Do you have a news assignment desk?
Myers: We definitely have an assignment desk, but our anchors are the real drivers of sourcing news content. Once our daily editorial meeting is completed, stories are assigned based on block type. We cover news, entertainment, sports, and money. We are also fortunate to air commentaries from Roland S. Martin and Mo Kelley that focus on the liberal perspective. Additionally, since Black folks are not monolithic, we are also air conservative commentaries from Black talk show host James T. Harris.

Gougherty: Can you tell us about feature stories? Especially the good news stories that happen often in Black communities that are often overlooked in mainstream media.
Myers: There are so many “good news” stories that are overlooked and I’m so glad that we get the opportunity to showcase the Black community in such a positive light. My hope is that sharing these types of stories with our audience will inspire others to greatness and let them know that they too can succeed or become a positive leader in their communities. We also have a feature called “That’s A Fact” — where we applaud the accomplishments of Black people throughout history and those who are making history today. It’s important for our audience to know how wonderfully talented Black people are and the positive innovating things we have contributed to the world at large.

[See More Interviews With Suzanne Gougherty]

Gougherty: How do you assess the end of a news cycle day?
Myers: Ha! The news never ends. We are a 24/7 news network and the word operates on the same clock — news never sleeps.

Gougherty: What experience and understanding of the news industry did you have before joining BIN and how did it assist with the launch of BIN?
Myers: I’ve worked in traditional newsrooms before, but I think the most relevant experience of my career was the 16 years I spent with Tom Joyner. I’m originally from Phoenix, Ariz., and when growing up the Black population was below 10% so there weren’t very many opportunities to learn about our history — just the basics that was taught in school books.

I always tell people that my HBCU is Tom Joyner University. While there I learned so much about who we are as Black people, our history, and the importance of pride in all we do. He also taught me the importance of telling our stories and being unapologetically Black. Tom values education, civil rights, economic empowerment and closing the gap in our health disparities; these are the lessons I take with me every day into the BIN newsroom. I will be forever grateful for the life and broadcast “pearls of wisdom” I learned from The Fly Jock. Without the TJMS experience, I’m not too sure I would have been able to help guide this network into its true purpose of telling our stories, in our voice, from our perspective.

 

The post Getting a Look Inside the BIN appeared first on Radio World.

Microphone and headphone maker Audio-Technica has a new microphone for podcasters and others, the AT2040.

A release explains the aim is to “professional broadcast-quality sound to podcasters and other content creators at an accessible price.”

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

The AT2040 is a hypercardioid dynamic mic for a tight capture pattern in less-than-optimal situations. It includes an internal pop filter and an integrated shockmount. The housing is metal for durability.

A 5/8-inch-27 to 3/8-inch-16 threaded adapter/standmount is side-attached for optimizing arm/boom-mounting.

Audio-Technica’s Gary Boss said, “Audio-Technica microphones have been embraced by streamers, YouTubers and other content creators in recent years, but previously we didn’t offer a dynamic hypercardioid microphone so finely-tuned to the needs of podcasters. … the AT2040, with its smooth vocal reproduction and focused pickup that will help take your podcast to the next level.”

Price: $99

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

Info: www.audio-technica.com

 

The post A-T Releases Podcast Mic appeared first on Radio World.

Much of South Dakota looks like this stretch of I-90, visible straight all the way to the horizon. The author’s FM translator can’t be heard in cars beyond about 15 miles. Photo: Getty Images/Mike Kline

The author is a consulting engineer and station owner.

I’ve been in the broadcast engineering field since 1963, since the days of microphonic 6J7s in audio consoles thumping on the air to the announcers tapping the beat with his fingers, and changing coupling capacitors in ITC cart cue decoders three or four times in the same machines — you know, too long.

Well, in 1985, thanks to the Docket 8090 ruling, I happened to find an FM frequency that fell smack at my home in the woods on a mountaintop, in a community with no radio stations.

I had the frequency dropped in and applied, along with half of the East Coast. After four long years, I was awarded a CP, and my wife and I put on our very own station.

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In spite of my limited knowledge of actually operating a station with programming, money, sponsors, money, insurance, money and just plain money, the station was quite successful even though we were the new guys in a market of 40 stations.

It was a lot of fun until deregulation, when the money guys bought up all of the stations they could and went for the throat of the successful stations, of which we were one.

A mom-and-pop operation is hard-pressed to go head to head with guys who give away $1,000 a day to listeners and have a sales staff of 20 cutthroat sales people, while we had three who were “nice guys.”

So my wife and I opted out and sold the station for a lowball figure just to be able to pay off the bank and get away from it.

I remember sitting in a burger joint after the closing saying to my wife, “I will never ever own another radio station again.” So I kept on with contract engineering a bunch of other stations; and all was well.

Can’t Say No
Over the years, we relocated a few times, and I wound up in northern Iowa doing engineering for a smaller group, taking care of 23 stations.

Although it was a decent job with decent pay, I was pushing 70, and years of traveling a thousand mile a week got to me. So I partially retired, keeping only the stations within an hour or two ride from home.

Then it happened. A broker had a small AM station in a small town for sale. Wow, it was a standalone AM. I love AM for the engineering opportunities and as an avid ham. It was a directional AM, even more fun.

The whole thing without a studio was on 15 acres of farmland, great. And most of all, the price was slightly more than a Ford F-150.

Wow, how could I go wrong? “If it flops, I can sell the farmland, cut the towers down and sell off the scrap iron and the equipment, and get my money back. Not only that, but it has an FM translator! Best of all worlds. This will be fun.”

At least that’s what I told my wife, who pointed out, “You said you would never own another radio station.” Well, I couldn’t pass it up.

Now, after operating for a few months, let me say that I wish the FM translator never existed. Single-handedly it has been the thorn to our total success.

 

Perception Is Reality
Why, you may ask?

Here we are in the middle of South Dakota, where the earth is solid sodium. The dry ground is white, the drinking water has got 530 mg per liter of sodium in it, but the ground conductivity is 30, best in the entire U.S. of A.

So this little 500-watter can be heard easily on the worst car radio 100 miles in just about every direction. The 2 mV/m contour in the lobe goes into North Dakota, about 90 miles away.

Okay, so much for this little screamer, now the FM. It’s a 250-watter at the same location as the AM. No mountains in eastern South Dakota, so it’s sitting on the prairie.

Most automobile radios can hear it 15 miles — then it’s gone.

Big deal, you say, what did you expect?

Well, most of the business people in the small town want to attract business from the other small towns around. Everyone in this town already buys from them.

So the business owner drives out of town with his car radio on FM and loses the signal before he gets out of sight of the town water tower.

To which he says, “I won’t advertise on your station, I can’t even hear it at my house 15 miles away, your coverage map lies.”

He neglects to check AM and discover that at 20 miles the whip on his car is glowing cherry red from the AM RF. So we don’t get a buy.

In other words, I would rather take my chances with 25% of the people who listen to the FM going to the AM and carrying it for 100 miles than giving the FM listeners the idea we peter out at 15 miles and never try AM.

I know it’s a different story in places like Pennsylvania, New York, Wisconsin and the like, where you can put the FM on a mountaintop and the ground conductivity is 1, so you can have a 250-watt FM that blows a 5 kW AM out of the water. But it ain’t so here.

I think my AM revitalization will involve pulling the plug on the FM and not offering the choice.

I see a lot of small-town AMs that succeed. From the service we give the town we will, but it won’t be from the business people in our city of license, it will be the people 50 miles out who never knew about the FM.

Radio World invites industry-oriented commentaries and responses. Send to Radio World.

 

The post FM Translators for AMs Are a Double-Edged Sword appeared first on Radio World.

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Legacy Communications, LLC enters into consent decree to resolve political file investigation

Carter Broadcast Group, Inc. enters into consent decree to resolve political file investigation

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Hyundai has teamed with Univision as the new presenting sponsor of Sábado Futbolero — its “Saturday Soccer” program slate.

The campaign, #BecauseFútbol, features three new Spanish-language TV spots.

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The nation’s leading multimedia company superserving African American consumers has taken an important step toward bringing the second casino gaming resort it is connected with to fruition.

It involves a multimillion-dollar upfront payment to the City of Richmond.

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Travel east of Ames, Iowa, and you’ll reach Marshalltown. Here, a Class A digital television station is being sold.

The buyer? It’s the company that owns the CBS affiliate in Milwaukee, and the CW affiliate in Chicago — among many other enterprises, including the “MeTV” brand.

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The donation-based IP-fueled local TV service that the “Big Four” broadcast TV networks love to hate and the NAB despises has just entered its 36th DMA.

It happens to be the home of the National Basketball Association’s 2021 World Champions.

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Maxar and SiriusXM employees pose with SXM-8 ahead of encapsulation in the fairing or nose cone of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (Courtesy Maxar).

Another new satellite serving SiriusXM has completed orbital testing and has been handed over to the company, according to SiriusXM and manufacturer Maxar Technologies.

“SXM-8 will provide continuous, reliable delivery of SiriusXM’s audio entertainment and information services to consumers in the United States and will expand SiriusXM’s coverage area in Canada and the Caribbean,” according to an announcement.

It was launched from Florida in June. A similar new bird went up late last year.

The new satellites have expected service lives of 15 years; they replace XM-3 and XM-4 in the company’s total service constellation of six satellites.

[Related: “SiriusXM’s SXM-7 Satellite Is in Orbit”]

“SXM-8 is the ninth high-powered, digital, audio radio satellite built by Maxar for SiriusXM,” the companies announced.

“Built on Maxar’s 1300-class platform and designed to provide more than 15 years of service, SXM-8 is more than 27 feet tall and weighed nearly 7,000 kg at launch. SXM-8 has a large, mesh, unfurlable reflector almost 30 feet in diameter that will allow SiriusXM programming to reach its radios, including those in moving vehicles.”

The announcement was made by Maxar’s Senior Vice President of Space Programs Delivery Chris Johnsn and SiriusXM’s Senior Vice President of Satellite and Repeater Systems Engineering and Operations Bridget Neville.

The post SXM-8 Satellite Is Now Serving SiriusXM appeared first on Radio World.