Industry News

U.S. radio audiences continue to grow back toward where they were when the pandemic took off.

Nielsen Audio announced this morning, “The May 2021 PPM survey saw yet another month of gains in radio listening across the aggregate of markets as America continues to reopen and consumers return to pre-pandemic routines.”

The research company said radio’s weekly reach is at its highest levels since March 2020 and has been growing for the past four months.

“In May 2021, radio’s weekly reach surpassed 122 million weekly listeners, within 2 million of where it was before the lockdown precautions took effect last year.”

Average Quarter-Hour (AQH) audience in May also saw its highest levels since March 2020, though again not quite back to where it was.

“AQH audience levels have increased 11 percent since January as vaccinations have rolled out, leading to a gradual return to pre-pandemic routines including dining out, traveling and more normal commutes.”

The company says that from a weekly reach perspective, “the radio audience in May 2021 is 8% larger than the same month from one year ago, while for AQH the audience is now 20% larger than May of 2020.” May listening gains were spread across dayparts.

As for trends within formats, Nielsen Audio said it sees familiar seasonal listening patterns “corresponding with the shift towards summer.” Formats on the upside include classic hits, Hot AC and all-sports.

The post Nielsen Has Good News in May Numbers appeared first on Radio World.

Speaker Specialist KRK has announced the addition of two monitors to its Classic line.

Classic 7 and Classic 8 (pictured) join smaller sibling Classic 5.

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The two new monitors match the Classic 5 in most features — biamplified with A/B amplifiers, one-inch soft dome tweeters, bass boost, high- and low-frequency controls, passive front-firing bass port, XLR, 1/4-inch and RCA connections.

The nominal difference between the two is the 7- and 8-inch KRK yellow glass aramid fiber woofers, respectively. The Classic 7 uses a 48W woofer amplifier and a 25W tweeter amp while the Classic 8 uses a 75W bass amp with the 25W tweeter amplifier.

Info: www.krkmusic.com

The post KRK Adds to Speaker Line appeared first on Radio World.

NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association, has announced the hiring of Kathy Stieler as the director of Safety, Health & Compliance.

It is a new position and she starts immediately.

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Stieler has been in similar positions in a variety of related industries over many decades, including, most recently, director, ERI Installations and Safety since 2012.

According to a release, “Stieler will be tasked with directing, developing and overseeing the general health and safety policies and procedures of the association to ensure its safety materials and best practices documents are in compliance with OSHA and other applicable state and local regulations and standards.”

In addition, she “will also be available to provide technical subject matter expertise to the association’s member companies, as well as helping these businesses navigate the oftentimes onerous compliance onboarding process.”

NATE Chairman Jimmy Miller said, “Through the establishment of this director of Safety, Health & Compliance position, NATE is doubling down on safety and investing directly into our growing membership of companies. Kathy will be a tremendous asset and I encourage member companies to leverage her expertise to enhance their respective safety cultures.”

Send news of engineering and executive personnel changes to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Kathy Stieler Joins NATE appeared first on Radio World.

Nielsen has just released its PPM Audio Software Encoder for FM stations, allowing more broadcasters to move away from a hardware-based audio watermarking process.

“The release of the PPM Audio Software Encoder for FM stations follows the successful completion of a live field evaluation in the March and April measurement periods,” the company wrote in a note to clients.

It had already released the Audio Software encoder for AM stations earlier.

It says the software encoder allows a station to perform its PPM encoding in products from audio processor manufacturers, “enabling opportunities for cloud-based broadcast operations, reduction of rack space in your facilities and simplification of your station’s workflows.”

The company has published a list of certified vendors that includes Orban, Telos/Omnia and Wheatstone products.

In a recent commentary in Radio World, Nielsen Audio Director of Product Management Nick Mannion, wrote: “We took the PPM encoding algorithm (Enhanced CBET) out of the hardware that it lives in today and made it available in the form of a software development kit (SDK). This SDK is then made available to industry participants enabling them to integrate PPM encoding into their products.”

Once an integration is complete, he continued, Nielsen works with the manufacturer of the product to perform a certification process. “This … ensures that the PPM encoding generated by the manufacturer’s product meets all of Nielsen’s encoding quality standards.”

Nielsen plans to expand its PPM Audio Software Encoding to include digital streams later this year.

The post Nielsen Releases PPM Software Encoder for FMs appeared first on Radio World.

On Dec. 23, 2020, iHeartMedia shares finished the day at $11.99. It was a good finish, as IHRT in early July was trading in the mid-$6 range.

With Wednesday’s Closing Bell on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market, investors who have had IHRT for the past year will certainly be celebrating.

Why? They’ve more than quadrupled their dollars.

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A low-powered TV station offering Azteca América programming to Nevada’s second-largest market is being sold.

It marks an 11-year end of ownership by a group that grabbed the facility from the bankrupt Equity Media Holdings in 2009.

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SANTA MONICA, CALIF. — An entertainment industry legal veteran who has been the associate general counsel at Amazon Studios until today has returned to Davis Wright Tremaine LLP after more than 20 years.

It’s a return for an individual who was a DWT associate in the late 1990s.

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An “expansive collaborative effort” is now underway to launch NEXTGEN TV service in the Nation’s Capital, and it is calling on the academic resources and tech team of Howard University‘s public broadcasting TV station in Washington, D.C., to get the ball rolling.

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From atop Red Mountain in Birmingham, a 130-watt FM translator blankets the metropolitan area of Alabama’s biggest city with Alternative music and the Premiere Networks’ syndicated offering The Woody Show in morning drive.

This microstation has been on the air since 2017. Soon, it will disappear. In its place: Christian Contemporary music.

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Digigram introduced the Iqoya X/Link-MPX codec, intended for delivery of an FM MPX composite signal to one or several transmitter sites.

“Currently, most of the studio-to-transmitter links for FM transmissions rely on the transport of the baseband audio signal over IP networks,” the company noted in its release. “This requires the FM composite MPX signal to be generated at each transmitter site with devices such as sound processors and RDS encoders.”

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It cited growing demand for the transport of the MPX signal to be generated at the studio, “since it will help reduce the number of required equipment at the transmitter sites, optimize the global power consumption and maintenance costs.”

The Digigram X/Link-MPX supports analog MPX and digital MPX AES192, allowing analog-to-analog, analog-to-digital, digital-to-analog and digital-to-digital distribution of the MPX signal.

Optional µMPX compression is available to reduce the cost of transportation by using inexpensive network links.

Features include Forward Error Correction and redundant dual streaming with time diversity in PCM to ensure reliable transportation of IP streams. The codec uses the same hardware platform as the Iqoya X/Link range, and features internal redundant power supply units.

Info: www.digigram.com

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

The post Digigram Launches Codec for MPX Over IP appeared first on Radio World.