Industry News

With confirmation that TEGNA is being acquired by a partnership led by Standard General that sees Apollo Global Management taking a non-voting stake in the broadcast television company, CEO Dave Lougee will depart.

Who is his replacement? A familiar face for Soohyung Kim, the new TEGNA board chairman once closing occurs.

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The company was founded during the Velvet Revolution, some 11 months before the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Today, this globally renowned entity founded by five engineers from the Scientific Research Institute of Television and Broadcasting in Praha is celebrating 30 years as a Prague-based company with customers and offices around the world.

With automotive brand Skoda its office mates in the Veleslavínská neighborhood on the west side of Prague, AVECO will be showcasing its three decades of achievement along with its current products of interest to broadcast professionals at the 2022 NAB Show in Las Vegas.

It’s selected Booth N1421 at the Las Vegas Convention Center for its return to the event, the NAB’s first in three years.

AVECO deployments range from multi-channel, multi-site operations – such as India’s ETV Bharat’s automation and media asset management system, supporting 5,000 reporters, 24 news studios and 24 full time news channels in 13 languages – to small standalone systems. Complete end-to-end production and playout facilities to individual products are also tied to AVECO.

“Since our humble beginnings with our motto ‘Let’s try!’ we’ve seen incredible changes in industry and technology,” said Pavel Potuzak, CEO of Aveco. “Today, our project with Televisa in Mexico would have been unthinkable when Aveco was formed. Think about it … fully redundant master control with frame-by-frame disaster recovery for 80 TV channels located on-prem and in the cloud.”

He continued, “From tape to servers to the cloud, our motto has changed with the industry as well to ‘Let’s Talk Automation!’ to better reflect our focus. With our vision of ‘Create – Manage – Deliver’, we provide media companies worldwide with our news/studio production automation, media asset management and playout solutions – on-prem, in the cloud and in hybrid architectures. We graciously thank our more than 300 customers worldwide that have helped us grow from a small group of friends in the Czech Republic to an international company with ten offices worldwide.”

A new networking series focused on innovation is in the works for the 2022 NAB Show, the National Association of Broadcasters’ first since 2019.

According to the NAB, each “NABiQ challenge” will relate to NAB Show’s new content pillars.

NABiQ is a series of 90-minute daily facilitated workshops that are intended to harness the power of teamwork “to ideate, innovate and create prototypes for nine real-world challenges.” Each workshop will accommodate up to five teams of six participants each who will compete for the winning solution.

NABiQ

Innovation consultant, coach and design sprint master Maria Duloquin will facilitate nine 90-minute competition-style events encouraging attendees to collaborate in devising solutions to common challenges facing the industry.

Registrants will be placed in five teams of six members per challenge to develop innovative solutions and prototypes that address central themes.

“Our community craves engaged and invigorating networking opportunities, beyond traditional happy hours and conversations,” said Chris Brown, the NAB’s EVP and Managing Director of Global Connections and Events. “This dynamic ‘hackathon’ format allows attendees to collaborate and draw on their collective experiences to create the next great out-of-the-box solution for our industry.”

Duloquin added, “Building on diverse knowledge under a tight deadline is a sure-fire way to foster innovation. Teams listen to each other, prioritize ideas, and define the most powerful solutions in an intense but incredibly rewarding experience.”

NABiQ is supported by Cynopsis for Capitalize and ProVideoCoalition for Create. The complete list of challenges is available here. Each competition will be followed by informal networking, with winning solutions shared with the entire NAB Show community and via NAB Amplify.

To RSVP, attendees should create a show planner and add the challenge(s) of interest to their calendar.

The XXIV Olympic Winter Games have concluded, and among those that can look back in pride are the leaders of a Oregon-based company that’s emerged as a global leader in visualization technology.

Planar emerged as the company NBC Sports contracted to provide fine pitch LED video wall display technology for its production of Beijing 2022.

In particular, NBC Sports’ Beijing set showcased a Planar TVF Series LED video wall, with a 1.8mm pixel pitch that powered broadcast coverage from Studio A, with over 200 LED displays delivering more than 15 million pixels of resolution. NBC Sports used the video wall to achieve popular resolutions and deliver clear, crisp images from every angle and viewing distance.

Planar has been in use in prior Olympic Games.

“It’s a tremendous honor to partner with NBC Sports to return as its display technology
provider for this event,” Planar EVP Adam Schmidt said. “We’re excited to help enhance NBC Sports’ broadcast coverage for viewers.”

When it came time to produce the XXIV Olympic Winter Games in Beijing, which just wrapped up in the People’s Republic of China, NBC Sports turned to a privately held company with operations in California and Massachusetts to receive media capture, automated media processing, closed captioning, and test and measurement equipment.

Providing the needs: Telestream.

NBC Sports used both the Telestream Vantage Media Processing Platform and the Cinnafilm Tachyon processing library extensively across its coverage of the Beijing 2022 event, providing top-quality frame rate conversions.

NBC Sports also put to use Telestream’s Lightspeed Live Capture and Vantage to deliver a unique, mixed HDR/SDR conversion workflow for NBC Sports’ content produced in HDR. The NBC Sports Advanced Technology group worked with Telestream to develop custom color LUTs (Look Up Tables) that are used within Vantage to ensure the most accurate color processing pipeline throughout the production and postproduction process.

Additionally, NBC Sports used Telestream’s caption authoring and editing product in conjunction with Telestream Cloud’s Timed Text Speech service — an AI-powered transcription service; and Telestream 4K/8K HDR Waveform Monitors that support easy alignment and confidence monitoring with both local and remote operation.

On Monday, January 31, the island nation known for reggae music and jerk chicken propelled its television broadcasting well into the 21st Century, as Television Jamaica Ltd. joined the U.S. and South Korea as the only three nations in the world to offer viewers NEXTGEN TV broadcasts.

The ATSC 3.0 standard is now in use at TVJ, which airs everything from newscasts to daytime animated series, and select second-run syndicated programming.

Leading the switching on ceremony for TVJ: A new Jamaican Minister with responsibility for Information, Hon. Robert Morgan. The ATSC 3.0 signal went live just after 6:30pm local time.

How many Jamaican TV viewers watched is the key question, as access to new ATSC 3.0-compatible televisions at a cost Jamaicans can afford will prove to be the key test to NEXTGEN TV’s rollout in the island nation.

That said, TVJ put NEXTGEN TV into action in order to abide by the Jamaican government’s decision to enforce a ATSC 3.0 transition no later than January 2022.

TVJ in December 2021 became an official member of ATSC Inc., and it has commenced consultations with U.S. and South Korean experts, as well as with local television set retailers, advertisers and other stakeholders on the next steps. Up to 20 similar transmission sites are being commissioned into service, bringing 95% coverage of Jamaica that is targeted for NEXTGEN TV.

TVJ is a member of the RJRGLEANER Communications Group, parent of 12 media brands.

“What TVJ and the RJRGLEANER group have done is not only invested in its own business, but it has invested in the digital future of Jamaica…I am impressed with the commitment shown to making government policy a reality”, Minister Morgan said.

The ATSC 3.0 installation was conducted by an all-Jamaican engineering team.

RJRGLEANER CEO Gary Allen notes that some $12 million USD was invested in the transition, with half of the funds tied to the first transmitter, now in operation in the Jamaican capital of Kingston.

 

Given all of the chatter about OTT, SVOD, AVOD and Fast Channels, the future of cable TV as it has existed for four decades is being questioned by many across the television industry. To some, a MVPD is all about broadband, with TV service greatly diminished.

But, is that an exaggeration? Who still pays for cable TV and why?

CableTV.com surveyed Americans who still subscribe to traditional cable to understand why they keep the service.

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This week, Radio World is providing coverage of the EBU Digital Radio Summit.

If broadcasters want to attract young listeners, they need to offer content that focuses on human connections and shared experiences, more than Top 40 hits.

That’s the message radio futurologist and Podnews editor James Cridland delivered during his keynote address to the European Broadcast Union’s (EBU) Digital Radio Summit. The summit was held online February 16, 2022.

“Ten great songs in a row is absolutely fine and a great radio programming technique, but it isn’t something that radio can do by itself anymore,” Cridland declared. “Spotify can do that very well.”

Radio’s decline amidst record listening
James Cridland began his address by noting how well radio appears to be doing these days.

“Radio is still tremendously popular,” he said. “Whether you are in the UK or New Zealand or Finland or the U.S., nine  out of 10 people are listening to the radio every single week.”

The trouble begins when one starts to dig deeper into the audience numbers. For instance, EBU data cited by Cridland showed “about a 3% decline in the last five years in terms of total audience, and a 6% decline in terms of younger audiences as well.” Meanwhile, total audience listening is “down by 7% in the last five years,” said Cridland, and “when you have a look at younger audiences, then you can see that nearly one out of five [listening] hours has gone away in the last five years.”

So why are U.K. radio audiences looking so strong in the research? “It’s only the fact that there are more old people in the U.K. that is keeping the figures up as high as it is,” he said.

Meanwhile, young listeners who aren’t tuning into radio now, won’t suddenly do so as they age. “You don’t grow into listening to more radio,” quipped Cridland. “So, we are not going to see a lot of people suddenly starting to listen to tons more radio because they happen to hit 30.”

The way back for radio
When it comes to reaching younger listeners, Cridland wants to target them where they are.

This isn’t on smart speakers, where 72% of the content consumed is radio, he said. Rather, it is on their smartphone-connected headphones.

RAJAR figures showing the disparity in radio listening among younger and older listeners.

“When you ask people, ‘what are you listening to on your headphones?’, podcasts and audio books are the No. 1 choice,” said Cridland. “Live radio is the least most popular in terms of 11%.”

The big takeaway: The 13–34 audience is listening to in-depth, meaningful spoken-word content when they listen to podcasts and audiobooks — the kind of content commercial radio rejected decades ago when it went Top 40.

This spoken-word content tends to focus on human connections and shared experiences, and it’s a model that radio must seize upon if it is to become relevant to younger listeners again. “That’s why people turned to radio in the middle of the pandemic because they wanted other human voices,” Cridland said. “They wanted that shared experience, [contact with] the other person who was out there dealing with the same things that they were dealing with as well.”

As for “live and local” being radio’s edge? “I would argue that live actually isn’t important at all … [and] that local is just another way of saying relevant,” he said. “Relevant content for people could be local, [it ] could be talking about what’s going on in their town in their city, [or it] could be talking about very, very other things as well … So real and relevant are very key parts of the content strategy that we should have in terms of radio.”

Cridland also advised radio broadcasters to stop defining themselves in terms of their delivery mechanisms (i.e., AM, FM, and DAB), and start thinking of themselves as content providers first.

As well, being live is less important in an online age where on demand content is so popular. He made his point by citing some Australian audio content that is recorded and then served out on radio and on demand, to maximize reach and penetration.

“I’m talking about making stuff, particularly in terms of great pieces of audio, that you can pre-produce and make sound absolutely fantastic as well,” he said.

Quoting from a U.S. patent application to underscore his point, Cridland said, “’traditional broadcast radio spends billions of dollars creating millions of hours of creative audio content that is only used once.’ And it’s [only] when you see that written down in black and white, then you suddenly realize, ‘oh, we could be doing so much more with the great content that we are making by packaging it up so that we can reuse it on the air, so that we can give that to other audiences.’”

In closing, Cridland said radio has a future, and “it’s focused less on music and more on speech. These days it’s producing audio for on-demand first, rather than live, which helps get the most value out of the audio. And I believe that the future is less about broadcasting and more about reaching audiences across multiple platforms, however they want to consume it.”

The post Human Connection Draws in Younger Listeners appeared first on Radio World.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has approved a grant that will fuel the funds necessary to continue the “Editor Corps” of the Public Media Journalists Association.

In particular, the dollars will fund the program for one more year as PMJA develops a financial sustainability initiative.

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On Monday (2/28), TEGNA will release its fourth quarter 2021 earnings and host an earnings call including such C-Suite leaders as Lynn Beall, Victoria Harker and CEO Dave Lougee.

Will the company formerly known as Gannett have bigger news to share on that day, if not this week? Bloomberg says so, reiterating a recent report that majority control in the company is about to go to a partnership involving Soohyung Kim and the majority shareholder in Cox Media Group. 

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