XPost: alt.radio.broadcasting

Radio World

///////////////////////////////////////////
TRT Staff Train on Nautel Transmitters

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 02:16 PM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/global/trt-staff-train-on-nautel-transmitters


Personnel from Turkish Radio-Television Corp. recently attended a training session to learn details of operation, maintenance and capabilities of the
42 — that’s forty-two — Nautel 5 kW NV5LT FM transmitters now deployed in the country. 


“Over the last 15 years, more than 250 Nautel transmitters, both AM and FM, have been installed by TRT,” according to the manufacturer.

“The transmitters are utilized in TRT’s delivery of five regional and six national radio services as well as six AM broadcasts. TRT’s Voice of Turkey provides shortwave programming in 32 languages; TRT radio is also available
on internet, satellite and cable.”

The training was held in Turkey.


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

[Related: “Nautel Supplies 30 FM Transmitters to TRT”]

The post TRT Staff Train on Nautel Transmitters appeared first on Radio
World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
Sometimes Its Best to Roll Your Own

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 02:06 PM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/from-the-editor/sometimes-its-best-to-roll-your-own


In my continuous search for material for this publication, I run across all kinds of interesting people and ideas. There are some really creative folks
out there, people who think outside the box and come up with innovative solutions. The history of broadcast engineering has quite the cast of such people.

Way back when (here he goes again!), on-air phone systems were non-existent
and usually consisted of a modified speakerphone … that is until a guy
named Steve Church came up with an idea for hybrid interface to the then-ubiquitous 1A2 phone system. That’s one of the best examples of smart people in broadcast engineering coming up with an innovative solution that
I can think of, although there are many more.

In the decades since, a good number of niche broadcast equipment
manufacturers have come out with an array of purpose-specific products. Companies like Broadcast Tools, Inovonics, Radio Design Labs, Henry
Engineering and Angry Audio come to mind, although that’s nowhere near
being an inclusive list.

But prior to the availability of ready-built gizmos that perform special functions, quite often we built our own; and many broadcast engineers still
do that sort of thing.

In my earliest days in radio, I remember watching the chief engineer at the AM/FM combo in his shop, huddled over a smoking soldering iron and building
up a gadget to do … something or other. 
Time tones

It wasn’t long after I moved into the technical end of things that I
started doing that kind of thing myself, and with it came the deep
satisfaction of creating from a pile of parts a gizmo or gadget to make someone’s life easier in the radio station. 

One of the most interesting (read: weird) gizmos that I was called upon to create was a time-tone generator. 

The Dallas top-40 FM where I was CE in the very early 1980s hired a
programming consultant to get those extra few tenths of a point in the
ratings, and in one of his first visits to the station, he told me that we
had to have a tone that would come over the air at the exact top of every
hour. Evidently that was somehow of critical importance to listeners. 

With raised eyebrow, I nodded my understanding and I set to work building
up a device that generated three distinct tones of specified frequencies
that someone’s research had determined were the best attention-getters.

I used an ESE precision clock to gate the three tones into the audio mix
for one second at the top of every hour, and it worked like a hose. The tone-trio blasted through the music like a train horn, and the consultant
was happy. 

We ran that thing for the better part of a year. I don’t recall if it
helped or hurt the ratings, but I can speculate that it didn’t help. It was obnoxious!

The point is, even in today’s broadcast technical environment where we have many options and sources for every kind of gadget under the sun, once in a while, you’re going to run into a need for something that you can’t buy off the shelf. And that’s where we get to do some real engineering and show our stuff. 

[Read More Tech Tips Here]
Affordable fix

Sometimes this kind of thing takes the form of finding innovative ways of
using off-the-shelf equipment to perform tasks for which it was not really intended. 

In one of Crawford Broadcasting’s Midwest facilities, our engineering staff employed GPIO logic in the AoIP system to provide remote control of
facility security features, such as the electric gate providing parking lot access, all without running a single wire through the ceiling.
This home-brew optical tower light status/alarm coupler is built on a PC
board designed to host either a transmitter or receiver. Just populate it
with the parts for the desired function.

Other times, perhaps a purpose-built device is available but there’s no budget for that item. In those cases, we may be called on to build up a
gizmo ourselves. Nothing wrong with that. 

A decade ago, as we started converting to LED lighting systems on our AM towers, we needed a way to get alarm and status contacts across the tower
base insulator so that they could be monitored remotely. 

There were purpose-built fiber-optic devices available, but they were expensive, and we were talking about a lot of towers. So I went on www.mouser.com/ and found fiber-optic transmitter and receiver modules, I
had some PC boards printed using one of the services featured in these
pages in months past, and with a handful of resistors, capacitors, LEDs and opto-isolators, we rolled our own. 

They too work like a hose, and all for about $20 per tower. Those devices
are still in use all over my company. 
In this issue

The latest issue of RW Engineering Extra is out.

My longtime friend and colleague Buc Fitch is an old-school home-brewer. He loves to design and build gadgets, and in this issue, he will share with
you his design/build project of a thermal sensor and temperature alarm.
This is a great example of what broadcast engineers do on a routine basis,
and we hope that the circuit is something you can use… and modify to fit
your specific application. 

We’re also going to start a new educational series in this issue. Dennis Sloatman will over the next few issues teach us what we need to know about three-phase power. Most all of us use equipment that employs 208-, 240- or 480-volt three-phase power, but what do we really know about it? What do we need to know about it? I know you’ll enjoy Dennis’s approach to this topic, and I guarantee you’ll learn something.

Meanwhile, the next time you run into a special need at one of your radio stations, you might think about taking a walk on the wild side and rolling
your own. You’ll get a lot of satisfaction out of creating a purpose-built device of your own to meet that need.

The post Sometimes It’s Best to Roll Your Own appeared first on Radio World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
Maine Association of Broadcasters Hires CEO

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 12:39 PM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/maine-association-of-broadcasters-hires-ceo


Tim Moore is the new president and CEO of the Maine Association of Broadcasters.

He succeeds Suzanne Goucher, who passed away in January. Goucher had led
the association for almost three decades.
Tim Moore

The hiring was announced by MAB Board of Directors Chairman David Abel. He
said the board “was looking for someone with deep experience in Maine broadcasting and extensive relationships throughout the state.”

Most recently Moore was most VP of programming for iHeartMedia New
Hampshire.

Earlier in his career he worked at WKSQ(FM)/Bangor and was longtime
operations manager of WHOM(FM) and WJBQ(FM) Portland. 

He is a former member of the MAB Board of Directors, former Board Chair,
and a member of the MAB Hall of Fame. He was awarded its inaugural
Broadcast Achievement Award in 2010.

[Visit Radio World’s People News Page]

Suzanne Goucher kept the Maine association prominent among U.S. state
broadcast associations. She was a past president of the National Alliance
of State Broadcasters Associations and an expert on the Emergency Alert
System and the Amber Alert Program; she was quoted by Radio World and other publications on those topics. 

At the time of her death, she was chair of NASBA’s EAS Committee. She had testified about EAS and the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System in
front of two congressional committees, according to her obituary.

Moore’s appointment is effective immediately.

The post Maine Association of Broadcasters Hires CEO appeared first on
Radio World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
Big TV Deal Drove U.S. Deal Market in Q1

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 12:17 PM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/big-tv-deal-drove-u-s-deal-market-in-q1


The first quarter of 2022 was a big one for broadcast station sales in the United States. They reached their highest volume by dollar amount in almost three years. 

Most of it was due to one very large TV transaction.

The TV and radio deal market in the first three months of the year reached $11.05 billion, according to data from Kagan, the media research unit of
S&P Global Market Intelligence. The company said this was only the eighth quarter in which volume exceeded $10 billion over the past 40 years.

“Standard General LP in partnership with Apollo Global Inc., which owns a majority stake in Cox Media Group Inc., announced a $24-per-share deal on
Feb. 22 that would take private TEGNA Inc., the third-largest TV station
owner by revenue and one of the few remaining publicly traded groups,” the company noted in a recap.

“We estimate the value of TEGNA’s 64 full-power and three low-power TV stations at approximately $8.71 billion, making it the second-largest transaction in broadcast deal history, topped only by the 1999 Viacom/CBS merger, for which we estimated the value of the TV stations at $8.75 billion.”

[Visit Radio World’s News and Business Page]

The largest radio deal in Q1 was the acquisition of Cherry Creek Media LLC
by Townsquare Media Inc., announced in March. 

Though puny compared to the TV deals, that $18.8 million transaction is
still the largest radio transaction since 2019.

Kagan noted that Townsquare will spin off six stations and place two in a divestiture trust.

“Cherry Creeks stations are located in six different states, mostly in nonrated areas,” the company noted. “All the other large radio deals of the quarter focused on one or two markets or states.”

The second largest radio station deals was the sale of two Florida FM
stations from CXR Radio LLC, a divestiture trust for Cox Radio, to Spanish Broadcasting System Inc. for $12.5 million. And third was the largest single-station radio sale of the quarter, the $8 million transfer of San Franciscos KSJO-FM from Universal Media Access-KSJO-FM LLC to Silicon
Valley Asian Media Group LLC.

The post Big TV Deal Drove U.S. Deal Market in Q1 appeared first on Radio World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
NAB, EBU Emphasize Carmaker Relationships

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 11:00 AM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/global/nab-ebu-emphasize-carmaker-relationships


The car industry’s importance to the continued economic health of radio was at the heart of the WorldDAB Automotive 2022 conference, held in London and online last week.

The relationship between these two giants was discussed during the trans-Atlantic session “Working With the Car Industry: Broadcaster Lessons Learned.”

It was presented by April Carty-Sipp, the vice president of industry
affairs at the National Association of Broadcasters in the United States,
and Ben Poor, project manager for digital radio at the European
Broadcasting Union.
AM Remains Important in U.S.

For North American broadcasters, persuading automakers to continue
supporting in-car AM radio is a big challenge.

This is particularly true when dealing with electric automakers, said Carty-Sipp. They are concerned about AM’s vulnerability to noisy static caused by electric propulsion systems, she explained, even though NXP Semiconductors has “developed chips and architecture that can combat this interference issue in AM radio.”

As well, NAB has been testing all-digital AM radio reception with Xperi in
both electric and fossil fuel-propelled cars, “and found some good results
as far as noise.”

In trying to protect in-car AM radio, the NAB is trying to preserve service
to some 48 million weekly listeners.

“The audience thats listening to AM radio in the U.S. on a regular basis is very large,” said Carty-Sipp. Leaving AM radios out of new cars “doesnt only affect small markets and rural areas, but large markets in the U.S.
where we’re talking about 400,000 to 600,000 listeners a week in cities
like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. In some cases, AM is number one in
the market which are the news and the talk stations.”
Staying Prominent in Cars Matters

Ben Poor said, “We don’t necessarily have that much AM in Europe,” so keeping AM radios in cars isn’t as much of a priority there. Instead, what the EBU’s radio members care about is the challenge of retaining radio’s “prominence” in car entertainment systems, at a time when streaming and other non-radio platforms are muscling this medium aside.

To prevent this from happening, EBU’s members have talked about “having a dedicated radio button” in new cars, but are more concerned with “how radio services will be prominent in the future, whether that would be (through) a defined radio button or a radio application, but also, for instance, their
own applications.”

The EBU’s goal is to ensure that European public radio broadcasting retains the prominence they’ve enjoyed among listeners for the past 100 years, as “disseminators of information, entertainment and education.”
Future on the Dash

Despite European concerns about radio retaining its in-car prominence, Poor said that he is “actually quite optimistic” about radio’s future on the dashboard. The reason? “Radio broadcasters have kind of a secret sauce:
They have a magic gift, which is they’re content producers. (And) car manufacturers want content in their cars.”

This analogy particularly applies to public service broadcasters, he said,
who have been producing quality content for a century that audiences still
want to hear.

As a result, “I think broadcasters are really sitting on a hugely valuable resource of content and expertise that is still relevant, that is still important,” said Poor.
Working With Google

April Carty-Sipp also discussed NAB’s efforts to integrate radio in Android Automotive, Google’s operating system designed for in-car applications.

According to Carty-Sipp, that effort is being embraced by broadcasters and automakers around the globe

“We have many U.S. participants from Audacy, Beasley, Cox, iHeartMedia, New York Public Radio (and) NPR,” she told WorldDAB delegates. “There’s worldwide ones (such as) WorldDAB, Commercial Radio Australia, BBC, to name
a few. And then in the auto space, we have Ford, Volkswagen, Audi and
Cariad (Volkswagen) participating.

“Its clear that Google has committed significant resources to having this conversation,” Carty-Sipp said. That’s good news for radio broadcasters and automakers alike.”

[Related: “WorldDAB Tackles Driver Distractions”]

The post NAB, EBU Emphasize Carmaker Relationships appeared first on Radio World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
FCC Clarifies Class D FM Exemption

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 09:00 AM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/business-and-law/fcc-clarifies-class-d-fm-exemption


The Federal Communications Commission is clarifying a question about public inspection files for Class D FM stations.

Section 73.3527 of its rules explains obligations of noncommercial
educational stations in regard to their online public inspection files. Nonexempt NCE stations are required to include a list of programs showing
their most significant treatment of community issues during the previous
three months.

But the rule did not define “nonexempt” or clarify which stations are exempt from that requirement.

In a new order, the FCC now has clarified that Class D FMs do not have to comply: “Exempt licensees include those offering wholly instructional programming and those operating under Class D, 10-watt authorizations.”

There are about 100 such stations in the United States.

It was back in 1984 that the commission last visited the requirement for stations to maintain issues/programs lists. At that time the FCC noted that Class D FMs are exempt due to the limited nature of the service they
provide.

But even though the commission’s order highlighted that exemption, the
actual text of the new Section 73.3527 inadvertently omitted the language.

Afterward, an order by the Mass Media Bureau noted that the exemption had
been omitted.

But there was further confusion. The Class D note inadvertently was deleted again in 1988.

Making things worse, in 2009, the Media Bureau issued a forfeiture order in
a case involving the University of Montana Western in which it specifically rejected an argument that Class D FM stations are exempt.

Now the FCC has clarified that it never actually rescinded the Class D exemption. “In reaching this determination, we are guided by the fact that the commission never proposed to issue, and never issued, an order
rescinding the Class D Note or otherwise deleting the Class D Note from
section 73.3527,” wrote Media Bureau Chief Holly Saurer.

She also wrote that the bureau “disavows” its erroneous 2009 ruling.

[Read the text of the new order.]

The post FCC Clarifies Class D FM Exemption appeared first on Radio World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
Inside the June 22, 2022 Issue of Radio World

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 06:41 AM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/resource-center/digital-editions/inside-the-june-22-2022-issue-of-radio-world


Randy Stine talks to equipment manufacturers about their supply chain
problems.

Paul Kaminski test-drives the CEntrance Portcaster.

Eric Smith shares some tricks to get the most out of your mic processing.

HD Radio gains ground in Canada.

John Bisset shares a fun do-it-yourself project.

Read it here.

The post Inside the June 22, 2022 Issue of Radio World appeared first on
Radio World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
17 Studios in the "Heart of America"

Posted: 27 Jun 2022 05:00 AM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/tech-and-gear/17-studios-in-the-heart-of-america




This story is excerpted from the Radio World ebook “Spectacular Radio Studios.”

Just before the pandemic hit, Cumulus Media’s Kansas City cluster designed and built out a stunning new facility with 17 studios at a new location in
the Corporate Woods office park in Overland Park, Kan. The lease was set to expire on its old location.

Signals served by the new facility include FM stations KCFX, KCMO, KCHZ,
KMJK and KCJK; AM station KCMO; KCFX HD2 with translator K279BI; and KCMO
HD2 with translator K273BZ.

Construction began in October 2019 and the installation team was given
access to the space in January 2020. The migration began in early March,
just as the pandemic was ramping up in the United States.

“We moved from a hybrid facility that was 20-plus years old and was a
mixture of analog, digital and AoIP technology to a facility that is 100% AoIP,” said Market Engineering Manager Dennis Eversoll. “This included not only the studio audio but also STL paths that were converted to AoIP.”

Cumulus Vice President of Engineering Michael Gay handled the extensive planning, and VP of Technical Operations Yancy McNair was the lead for the physical portions of the installation. Eversoll and his team provided
support and muscle as needed while also handling the ongoing engineering
needs of the cluster.

The main planning contractor was SHP Architects, which has done several
other projects for Cumulus including a similar one in Chicago. The facility buildout was by local contractor Baron Construction, which also handled the
IT infrastructure based on design instructions from Cumulus.

Telos Alliance provided the AoIP backbone and 17 Axia control surfaces, including 12 Fusion and five iQ models.

A new BSI OpX audio delivery system was installed using Axia drivers.

The studios have 66 Shure KSM44A large-diaphragm, side-address condensers interfaced with Wheatstone M-2 two-channel digital mic processors. Omnirax furniture was custom ordered.

Audio processors feed Gates Air IP Link 200 audio codecs that are linked to
the transmitter sites via an MPLS circuit. For redundancy these units allow
an automatic failover to a secondary IP source such as standard internet available at each site.

The studios are equipped with ESE clocks as well as a Paravel Systems
WallTime system that provides time synchronization.

Color coding of the studios is based on colors in the Cumulus logo,
primarily blue. Window and door surfaces throughout feature a material that emulates etched glass; that work was done by a local design contractor,
Digital Lagoon.


The 21 racks in the TOC are equipped with Tripp Lite surge suppressors.
Power for the studio area passes through an Eaton 40 KVA UPS, with a 250 KW Cummins Onan generator system as a backup power source.

“Given the exclusivity of the office park, the generator was equipped with
a sound-baffled enclosure that renders it virtually ‘sound invisible’ while operating,” Eversoll said. “The unit was sized to run the entire floor — all systems including the HVAC.”

He is enthusiastic about the results.

“In all my 50-plus years as a broadcast engineer, I had always handled a studio move within the local staff so the ‘team approach’ was new to me,” said Eversoll.

“The project went incredibly well and turned out to be an amazing feat of engineering, kudos to Michael Gay and Yancy McNair and the upwards of 30 Cumulus engineers who helped out during the project’s 12 weeks of the
wiring and setup phase. The facility turned out to be a real showplace.”

The post 17 Studios in the “Heart of America” appeared first on Radio World.


///////////////////////////////////////////
WWL, FEMA to Unveil PEP Upgrade

Posted: 26 Jun 2022 05:00 AM PDT https://www.radioworld.com/news-and-business/headlines/wwl-fema-to-unveil-pep-upgrade


FEMA and Audacy will unveil the latest upgraded Primary Entry Point
facility in New Orleans on Tuesday, part of an ongoing effort to harden the Emergency Alert system infrastructure.

The “all-hazards upgrade” was done at WWL(AM/FM). It is the 15th radio station to work with FEMA in this series of upgrades.

“The modernization to the emergency studio increases WWL’s resiliency to continue broadcasting under all conditions, including natural disasters and acts of terrorism,” FEMA and Audacy wrote in a joint press release.

“This facility is one of 77 across the country that serve as a National Public Warning System Primary Entry Point station, participating with FEMA
to provide emergency alert and warning information to the public before,
during and after incidents and disasters.”

The all-hazards upgrades include increased sheltering capabilities,
expanded broadcast capacity and sustainable power generation for all types
of hazardous events. You can see photos of similar facilities at other
stations at the links at the bottom of the story.

A Tuesday news conference at the WWL site will include Erik Hooks, deputy administrator of FEMA; Antwane Johnson, director, Integrated Public Alert
and Warning System, FEMA; Manny Centeno, IPAWS program manager; Cynthia Lee Sheng, Jefferson Parish president; and Kevin Cassidy, senior vice president
and market manager, Audacy-WWL and John Kennedy, senior vice president, technical operations at Audacy.

Related:

FEMA Celebrates PEP Upgrade at Historic WBZ

KIRO Unveils Upgraded Emergency Studio





The post WWL, FEMA to Unveil PEP Upgrade appeared first on Radio World.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)