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Santamaria Broadcasting, Inc. enters into Consent Decree to resolve political file investigation

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The Bureau enters into a Consent Decree with Caribbean Media Group, Inc

Sue Zizza will receive the Norman Corwin Award for Excellence in Audio Theatre for 2021.

The National Audio Theatre Festivals noted that Zizza has been “producing award-winning audio theater for radio, the web and commercial release for more than 40 years.” She has been a teacher of sound for radio, television and film starting at Hofstra University and continuing at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.

“Sue has worked in many ways as a promoter of the art of audio theatre, fostering connections between the radio drama world and the emerging arenas of audiobooks and podcasting,” NATF wrote. “Sound effects aficionada, director, teacher, producer, Sue’s wide-ranging talents have long qualified her for this distinction.

Zizza is also co-owner of Radio Waves Studios in New York. In 2019 she and her partner Dave Shinn produced a radio drama about Nikola Tesla in front of a live audience in the rooftop theater of a building where Tesla lived and conducted radio experiments more than a century earlier.

[Read: Watch Out! The “Phantom Power” Is Coming This Halloween Season]

NATF wrote in its email, “It is particularly meaningful to announce that this year’s award will go to someone who has contributed so much to this organization, as well as the industry itself.”

The award will be presented during the annual Hear Now Festival in June.

 

The post Zizza to Receive Corwin Award for Audio Theatre appeared first on Radio World.

Telestream, known for its file-based media workflow orchestration, media streaming and delivery technologies, has brought to market the latest version of its live production and streaming platform for Mac and Windows.

The new version of Wirecast adds native support for Apple Silicon (M1) hardware and includes new features that add enhance flexibility and further streamline production workflows.

In Wirecast Pro, users can now send their live outputs to a secondary display. The live program feed can be sent to a big screen or to an independent capture device without the need for specific hardware. When paired with a UVC HDMI capture device, users can capture live output for use in other applications like Zoom or Teams as an alternative to using a virtual camera/mic.

Shot Templates allow users to add a pre-configured shot layout to a document. Cameras and sources can now be assigned to Placeholders to quickly add a source to any number of shots. For example, an operator could assign a guest to a placeholder and once that guest arrives, they are automatically placed in all shots designated for them.

Additional new features and updates:

Lock Shot Icon – users can take a snapshot of a live shot and save it as an icon thumbnail. Example: PTZ cameras with multiple shots configured can display customized snapshots for each angle for quick identification during production

PTZ control for Sony X-Series IP cameras – adds direct support for Sony X-series cameras from within the Wirecast PTZ controller

Support for LinkedIn Live Auto-Captions – When streaming to LinkedIn Live, users can now enable Automatically Generated Captions in a broadcast, which will enable viewers to see captions in their player

Input Connection selector for Blackmagic devices – Adds an option to choose video/audio input connections (HDMI/SDI) for Blackmagic source devices directly from Wirecast

Clock enhancements – several updates to the clock overlay including:

• Option to automatically start the countdown clock when it gets pushed live
• Ability to display times in minutes greater than 60 minutes for sports and other applications
• Option to display day-of-the-week only
• Option to countdown to a specific date and time, for longer broadcasts and countdowns.

 

Wirecast 14.2 is available now and is a free update to all users with a Wirecast Access plan.

Television stations such as market-leading ABC affiliate WFTV-9 in Orlando and top-rated radio station including “96.9 The Eagle” in Jacksonville have just gained a collection of digital siblings.

It’s thanks to a deal that sees Apollo Global Management, which holds the purse strings for Cox Media Group, acquire what will soon no longer be known as Verizon Media.

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Gray Television and Meredith Corp. each enjoyed big days on Wall Street today, on word that the company buying Quincy Media, Inc., which acquired Raycom Media at the start of 2019, is purchasing Meredith Local Media’s 17 broadcast stations.

At the Closing Bell, GTN was up 9.1%, to $22.17, thanks to a $1.85 improvement on heavy volume of nearly 3 million shares.

For MDP, a 13.2% gain from Friday was seen, pushing the company’s shares to $35.21. Volume was 1.48 million shares against average trading of 467,160 shares.

For a complete look at Monday’s closing prices for media stocks, visit the Wall Street Report on the homepage of RBR.com.

 

It describes itself as “an innovative media company serving the greater good of the communities it serves.”

That would be TEGNA, the company formerly known as Gannett that owns broadcast TV stations across the U.S. On May 4, it is making its IAB NewFronts debut.

We’ve got an early look at what to expect.

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She rules evening radio — and has for decades — with her unique approach of uplifting the lives of listeners all across the country.

Now, she’s returning to where it all began … sort of.

Delilah is buying the Oregon radio station where she first took to the airwaves.

COMING IN THE MAY 10 ISSUE OF RADIO INK

MAKING RADIO MAGIC: MIW LEGEND DELILAH — Premiere Networks President Julie Talbott says it’s not a cliché to talk about Delilah as a companion and someone who brings comfort. “Reaching millions of listeners with a calm, inspiring voice not only provides an entertaining outlet, but also an uplifting and encouraging environment for this dedicated audience,” she notes. For more, click here.

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Roger Lanctot

The author of this commentary is a director in the Global Automotive Practice at Strategy Analytics.

Just a few years ago, Jacobs Media Strategies conducted a study for the National Association of Broadcasters identifying the critical shortcomings facing the broadcast industry in its management and delivery of metadata for its content and advertising.

Prior to the encroachment of the digital age and streaming, this didn’t seem like such a high priority.

To its credit, the NAB sought out Jacobs to conduct an audit of digital station content as rendered in automobiles to assess the varying levels of digitalization across the radio dial.

Conducted about four years ago, the Jacobs audit was carried out in three markets and found significant shortcomings in the availability and rendering of metadata in vehicle infotainment systems.

The mere fact that such a study would be conducted at all was clear validation and recognition of the primacy of in-vehicle radio listening.

Just as radios of all kinds — clock radios, boom boxes and Walkman-style portables — have all but vanished, automobiles have increasingly become a key focal point for consuming audio content, second only to smartphones.

Most estimates suggest that in-vehicle radio listening today accounts for 50 percent or more of all radio listening, at least in the U.S. This figure is generally seen as somewhat lower outside the U.S.

The NAB has long recognized the importance of car radio listening — especially after witnessing the rise of SiriusXM, which has built one of the world’s most successful and largest networks of subscribers almost entirely upon and through its relationship with auto makers. Rare is the automobile in the U.S. that doesn’t leave the factor or the dealer’s lot equipped with SiriusXM satellite radio.

The importance of the listening experience in the car is twofold. The listener in the car represents a captive audience — seatbelted in place and focused on the driving task. The infotainment system, previously known as the car radio, is the focal point for content consumption in an environment designed to mitigate distraction.

The big change that has thrust metadata to the forefront, though, is the reality that the “car radio” as we once knew it is gone. There is no radio dial. There is now an increasingly large digital display and a built-in wireless connection.

Now every infotainment system has become something of a “box of chocolates”, to borrow a line from Forrest Gump. No two infotainment systems are identical.

At the same time, Strategy Analytics research has shown that even though radio listening in the car is king, content consumption more broadly considered is increasingly fragmented. This experience is global and reflects the introduction of app-centric in-dash systems and smartphone mirroring.

The Jacobs Media audit highlighted the magnitude of the problem on the ground in cars on the road today.  Jacobs concluded:

• There is room for improvement.
• The display of radio station text and image information is generally inconsistent, creating a sub-optimal user experience.
• The radio industry needs a standardized approach.
• Dynamic vs. static information. Some stations provide a static environment for their content, while others use a dynamic approach and “scroll” or “chunk” information, creating a sub-optimal experience that can be harder to read.
• Album art for FM-band HD Radio stations. There is a lack of consistency in the use of display pictures and illustrations when music is playing.
• Case consistency. Some stations use all caps, while others blend in all caps for some items and title case for others.
• There is a lack of consistency during commercial breaks. There is no industry standard for showcasing advertisers during commercial breaks.
• Inconsistent use of available fields. (RDS systems have two available fields for content display. The Program Service (PS) field has both static and dynamic capabilities and is comprised of just eight characters. It typically resides at the top section of the dashboard display. The RadioText (RT) field is comprised of up to 64 characters and is typically on the lower portion of the dashboard display.)
• There are missed opportunities to showcase HD1 (main channel) stations, especially in the spoken word formats.
• HD multicast channels generally lack branding of any kind.
• Format designations need to be reviewed and expanded. Too often, the name of the format of the station is incorrect, or is simply listed as “Other.”

In its report, Jacobs Media highlighted these failures with images from in-dash displays.

Four years later a company, Quu, has emerged to directly engage with broadcasters to help overcome the overwhelming metadata shortfall that persists to this day.

This matters because in today’s in-dash systems the radio is no longer the default screen. Drivers and passengers have to search for the radio, and may not even recognize it when and if they find it.

Quu is directly taking on this challenge, as is Xperi.

The latter has emerged on the metadata scene — actually Xperi has been toiling for the past 15 years to stitch together the back-end infrastructure now capable of delivering what can only be described as radio-as-a-service, or RaaS.

Xperi’s Raas platform, DTS AutoStage, aggregates station, artist and genre information suitable for in-dash display clarifying the consistent appearance of what a connected radio should look like while simultaneously enabling non-linear listening with search and program guides along with the ability to integrate events and interactive advertising opportunities, from organizations such as Instreamatic.

[“Xperi Has Big Ambitions for DTS AutoStage”]

Xperi is perhaps best known as a digital radio advocate, with particular emphasis on HD Radio. But the scope of AutoStage is sufficiently transformative that it is enabling a redefinition of the concept of hybrid radio (a combination of streaming and broadcast) pioneered by Audi.

It’s true that each automaker has its own idea about what radio should and will look like in the car. At least with Xperi, automakers can start with a consistent look and feel applicable across the globe and capable of integrating analog and digital broadcast sources and rendering them in a familiar fashion in any car.

This Xperi value-add is essential in a market increasingly dominated by Android-based infotainment systems increasingly skewing toward app-based solutions, or smartphone mirroring solutions that exclude broadcast content sources. Xperi’s RaaS platform allows broadcasters to compete and allows auto makers to create differentiated systems, while preserving familiarity.

The weakest link — as demonstrated by Jacobs Media in its NAB audit and still in evidence today — are the broadcasters, many of which have yet to remedy the shortcomings in their metadata strategies.

As radio listening declines in automobiles — a phenomenon that Strategy Analytics has documented from consumer surveys conducted over the past 10 years across China, North America, and Europe — broadcasters will have no one to blame but themselves for that fading signal.

The message from the Jacobs Media study, from Quu, from Xperi and from Strategy Analytics surveys and customer clinics is clear: Fixing the management, delivery and rendering of metadata in dashboards is essential to the survival of broadcast radio.

The post Broadcasters Conspiring in Their Own Demise appeared first on Radio World.

Call it a “no-GO” for Educational Media Foundation. Sort of.

In mid-April, RBR+TVBR was first to report on the purchase by EMF of the former KZGO-FM 95.3, a Class A licensed to St. Paul, and the former KQGO-FM 96.3, a Class C3 licensed to Edina, Minn., from The Pohlad Companies. At the time, KZGO, given its market heritage as a religious station, was poised to see a return of the predecessor to “Go” —  Christian Adult Contemporary “Praise Live.”

This happened, along with the return of the KNOF call letters. As such, EMF, which specializes in its national CCM networks, is selling what is now KNOF-FM in St. Paul.

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Lawo has introduced a “second-generation” mc²36 audio production console based around a dual-fader operating bay featuring 48 faders in the same space as a 32-fader board. The update is seen as a move to broaden the console’s appeal for theater, houses of worship, corporate, live and broadcast audio applications.

According to the company, with DSP more than doubled from its predecessor, the new mc²36 with built-in A__UHD Core functionality, so that all developments in the future will happen on a single, unified platform, and Lawo continues to provide production file compatibility between all mc² consoles.

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

With the A__UHD Core, the new console offers 256 processing channels, available at both 48 and 96 kHz, and natively supports ST2110, AES67, Ravenna, and Ember+. It provides an I/O capacity of 864 channels, with local connections that include three redundant IP network interfaces, 16 Lawo-grade mic/line inputs, 16 line outputs, eight AES3 inputs and outputs, eight GPIO connections, and an SFP MADI port.

Operating and visualizing features include Button-Glow and touch-sensitive rotary controls, color TFT fader-strip displays, LiveView video thumbnails, and 21.5-inch full HD touchscreen controls. Its built-in full loudness control is compliant with the ITU 1770 (EBU/R128 or ATSC/A85) standard, featuring peak and loudness metering which can measure individual channels as well as summing buses. The new mc²36 offers integration with a variety of third-party solutions including Waves SuperRack SoundGrid without the need for additional screens or control devices required.

The new mc²36 makes use of Lawo’s IP Easy functionality, which in turn is based around the company’s proprietary Home management platform for IP-based media infrastructures. With IP Easy, the console automatically detects new devices and makes them available at the touch of a button. It also manages IP addresses, multicast ranges and VLANs, and includes security features like access control and quarantining of unknown devices to protect a network.

Info: www.lawo.com

 

The post Lawo Launches 48-Fader mc²36 Console appeared first on Radio World.

The company’s Q1 2021 earnings call is still on for Thursday (5/6). However, with Monday’s blockbuster announcement that it is acquiring all of Meredith Corporation‘s local media assets for $2.7 billion, Gray Television moved forward with the release on Monday of its first quarter financial results.

How did the company led by Hilton Howell Jr. and former Raycom Media head Pat LaPlatney perform in the first three months of 2021?

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Communications infrastructure association NATE is calling attention to a “mandatory stop use” warning for certain models of Honeywell tower climbing harness.

“NATE Member Gravitec Systems Inc. just shared a Stop Use Alert on the Miller/Honeywell Harness 850KQC/S/MBK,” the association wrote in an email to members last week. “All companies are encouraged to check their inventory.”

Read the original notice, which was posted in November.

Honeywell Personal Protective Equipment reported that its Harness 850KQC/S/MBK failed an arc flash test. “This test failure also impacts the use of other 850K models, as well as models in the 650K, 060076, 080007 product lines. While there have been no reported incidents due to this nonconformity, continued use of the product for arc flash protection could result in serious injury or death.”

So Honeywell issued an “immediate stop use” of the Honeywell Miller Heavy Duty Harness 650K, 850K, 060076, and 080007 Kevlar series “only when used for arc flash protection.”

 

The post NATE Shares Warning About a Honeywell Harness appeared first on Radio World.

RBR+TVBR OBSERVATION

As I pen this column, there’s an AARP Member who is presently driving north on I-95 from South Florida to the Empire State. Like other “snowbirds,” Bubbe from Boca has packed her car, put the cute little puppy in his belted-in canine crib, and has made her way to New York State.

Two days. Eighteen hours of driving. How much time will she spend listening to the radio?

Zero.

There are many directions we can turn in commenting on this reality. Today, we wish to discuss the No. 1 value of Radio, and how efforts to hyperlocalize the medium may be counter-productive to its greatest asset: Reach.

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International Datacasting Corp. says that it has provided its next-generation MAP Pro Audio satellite receivers and a NetManager network management subsystem to radio broadcaster Southern Cross Austereo for live content delivery to SCA’s affiliates in Australia.

According to a release, the MAP Pro Audio downlink receivers are “the first in the new generation of the modular architecture platform (MAP) products for radio, video, and data distribution via satellite and/or internet. It is designed to be both backward and forward compatible and easy to expand and upgrade with modular features as technology evolves.” It added that “NetManager provides in-band management and control enabling easy remote configuration control and over-the-air updates.”

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

SCA Lead Systems Engineer Phil Elzerman said, “Our existing platform that service SCA’s own sites are excellent, but has some limits — it provided good functionality but comes at a significant cost and is dependent on WAN connectivity for control. We went with IDC for our expansion because the MAP solution utilizes ‘in-band’ control, and also because we appreciate their willingness to meet the challenge of building a platform that would integrate seamlessly into our existing infrastructure.”

President and CEO Harris Liontas of IDC’s owner, Novra Group, said, “We designed the modular architecture platform of the MAP specifically to make sure it would be extremely flexible and adaptable to the changing requirements of broadcasters.”

Lumina Broadcast Systems Australia was the contractor.

Send news for Who’s Buying What to radioworld@futurenet.com.

 

The post IDC Provides Receivers to Austereo appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Broadcasters opened its nomination window for the 2021 NAB Marconi Radio Awards.

The program recognizes excellence and performance in a range of categories including Best Radio Podcast, Legendary Station of the Year, Radio Station of the Year in various market sizes and formats, Personality of the Year by Market Size, and others.

Finalists will be announced in July and winners will be saluted at the Radio Show in Las Vegas in October.

Nominations must be submitted through the NAB member portal. Rules are posted posted online.

The post Marconi Awards Nominations Are Open appeared first on Radio World.