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The Society of Broadcast Engineers threw a surprise party Thursday for departing Executive Director John Poray.

“You taught us how to be an organization,” veteran engineer Fred Baumgartner told Poray during a Zoom meeting attended by more than 75 people.

The group included numerous past presidents of the society, current and past board members and committee leaders, representatives from state broadcast associations, and friends and Poray family members.

[Related: “SBE’s Poray to Retire in 2020”]

Poray was SBE’s first full-time executive director and has been with the society since 1992.

He began his career with the Boy Scouts of America’s Central Ohio Council and went on to work for Kiwanis International, The Apartment Association of Indiana and The Columbus Apartment Association.

Among those on the call were two engineers who interviewed Poray for the job 28 years ago, Rick Farquhar and Fred Baumgartner.

Poray told the online gathering that when he joined, he figured he might stay in the job for four or five years.

“I’ve never been with a group that enjoys their work so much,” Poray said. “You like what you do, it’s part of you. That really rubs off.”

Poray noted that he is not an engineer but that he shared interests of many SBE members, having DXed as a boy and collected QSL cards.

Society veterans on the call praised Poray for his administrative abilities, good ideas and efforts to provide stability and growth for the organizations.

One said that when he became an SBE officer, his predecessor told him, “It’s an easy job. Just do what John tells you and you’ll be fine.”

New Executive Director James Ragsdale comes on board in January.

The post SBE Gives John Poray a Big Sendoff appeared first on Radio World.

The next NAB Show isn’t until October thanks to the pandemic effect; but the association says exhibit hall reservations are off to “a significant head start.”

The National Association of Broadcasters said it has approximately 540 companies that have committed to the show in October in Las Vegas, including vendors from 31 countries. Organizers are promoting the event as “the time to restart, rebuild and reconnect.”

Among brands familiar in radio that NAB said have committed to the show are Audio-Technica U.S., Comrex, Nautel, Rohde & Schwarz, Wheatstone and WideOrbit.

NAB also highlighted AT&T, Inc.; Adobe Systems; Amazon Web Services; Blackmagic Design; Dolby Laboratories; Grass Valley; Ikegami; Limelight Networks; Panasonic; Planar; Pixel Power; Ross Video; Sony Electronics, Inc.; Telestream; Verizon Business and Verizon Media; and Vizrt.

It quoted Executive Vice President of Conventions and Business Operations Chris Brown saying, “Together with our partners, we are on a path to building a critical event that will reunite the industry and create a much-needed forum for building momentum going into 2022.”

It said initial applications account for about 330,000 square feet of space.

The show will co-locate with the Audio Engineering Society fall convention, the Radio Show and NAB’s Sales and Management Television Exchange. The Society of Broadcast Engineers also will coordinate its annual national conference with that schedule.

The post NAB Show Cites Early Exhibit Hall Sales appeared first on Radio World.

Starting this week, viewers in the nation’s 14th largest TV market — Detroit — get a taste of the future as five local TV stations have banded together to launch NEXTGEN TV in Detroit.

This market is vitally important for ATSC 3.0’s data capabilities, as automotive executives and production facilities can learn first-hand of how the connected car can benefit.

Are companies such as Ford and General Motors aware of what NEXTGEN TV can provide? Yes, says Anne Schelle, the Managing Director of Pearl TV, who speaks exclusively with Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson in this InFOCUS Podcast, presented by DOT.FM.
Listen to “RBR+TVBR InFOCUS Podcast: Anne Schelle” on Spreaker.

It’s presently airing an all-Christmas format, but with country music artists.

Soon, it will be devoting all of its musical choices to Jesus Christ and his teachings.

A Class B1 FM serving Canton, Illinois, with coverage of much of Peoria, has just become the latest acquisition for Educational Media Foundation.

The parent of the KLOVE and Air1 noncomm Christian Contemporary Music (CCM) networks is agreeing to purchase WCDD-FM 107.9 in Canton, Ill.

The seller is Illiana Communications, which is earning $170,000 from the divestment. An $8,500 deposit has been made by EMF.

The deal does not include the tower for WCDD. As such, EMF will lease it from Illiana. Terms call for monthly rent of $500, starting on the first anniversary of the lease, enacted at closing. The monthly rent is payable for the following 47 months. When that agreement ends, a new one is exercisable at a 10% increase in value.

The transaction does include the following:

Entering the Peoria area is likely one of many objectives for EMF as it seeks national coverage. The closest station airing KLOVE to Canton, Ill., is WLKU-FM 98.9 in the Quad Cities of Illinois and Iowa.

“Radio is one of the best performing media to help brands recover from a recession.”

Really? For broadcasters across Great Britain, that seems to be the case, new research from Ebiquity indicates. What learning lessons are there for U.S. radio broadcasting companies that can’t seem to propel themselves out of the COVID-19 bog?

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A new post on the Voice of America public relations website provides an update about the ongoing test of Digital Radio Mondiale from a shortwave transmission site of the U.S. Agency for Global Media in North Carolina.

It noted that a series of USAGM tests of the digital radio technology was launched in early 2020 with content targeting Cuba and Latin America.

[Read: DRM Advanced Radio for All]

The article cites the experience of Gerhard Straub, supervisory director of the USAGM Broadcast Technologies Division; Gary Koster, broadcast radio technician and transmitter expert; and Macon Dail, chief engineer at the transmitting station in Greenville, N.C.

“The USAGM test, says Straub, is ‘coasting along’ in the pandemic, but additional content will be added when technicians can travel again,” the story states. “Straub says the VOA signal was taken off in the initial test to concentrate on the [Office of Cuba Broadcasting] digital content and to keep the signal robust. Now that there is good reception data, he noted, the digital bitrate can be increased and VOA content added back into the test in 2021.”

The article also mentions advances by DRM in India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Brazil and North Korea.

The test DRM signal carries audio, scrolling text and rotating images.

“You have to stop thinking of it as radio, because it’s not,” VOA quotes Straub as saying. “Just like we broadcast digital data on the internet, we can broadcast digital data over shortwave without being hampered by an internet firewall that maybe limits what we can send to a particular country.”

Read the article “USAGM, VOA Testing Innovative Digital Radio Platform.”

The post USAGM’s Test of DRM Is “Coasting Along” appeared first on Radio World.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The FCC has issued a Report and Order updating its rules to promote the introduction of ATSC 3.0-enabled innovative ancillary and supplementary broadcast services, a.k.a Broadcast Internet.

The positive response from key lobbying groups in Washington, D.C., was immediate, and positive.

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For Nielsen Holdings, Wednesday was “Investor Day.”

It was also the day the company formally unveiled the “new Nielsen,” with a “detailed view of its focused growth strategy and medium-term financial framework” on display.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Yes, there was an agenda. But there stories about Buffalo and a lemonade stand, too, and smiles as the FCC’s December Open Meeting entered its first 15 minutes on Zoom.

It’s the end of an era, and the meeting is the last for one of its Republican Commissioners — with its Chairman’s goodbye scheduled for January 13, 2021.

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CAMARILLO, CALIF. — It is hardly a secret that a large segment of the Spanish-speaking U.S. Hispanic population is conservative and greatly tied to Christian values. As such, serving this group of consumers with in-language news and information could be of some value to the right media company.

Salem Media Group believes it is the entity to bring such an endeavor to its successful fulfillment.

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NBCUniversal is expanding digital inventory and audience targeting capabilities to local marketers across the nation by bringing its recently launched NBC Spot On platform under the NBCUniversal One Platform trading model.

This, the Comcast unit says, is the next way it is scaling its offerings, opening up more of its audiences and assets to even out the playing field for all marketers on a global level.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — He was once the licensee of radio station in Hood River, Ore.

Then, he became nationally known as the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, for which he served as Republican Leader since January 2019.

On Wednesday, Greg Walden, who opted not to seek re-election, delivered his farewell remarks on the House Floor. He’s retiring from more than 30 years of public service — including 22 in Congress.

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ST. LOUIS PARK, MINN. — MPR News has been selected as a host newsroom with Report for America, a national service reporting program.

Report for America places talented emerging journalists in newsrooms across the country to meet an identified gap in local coverage.

MPR News applied to be a Report for America host newsroom with the goal of expanding coverage and building stronger relationships with Minnesota’s growing Latino communities.

The assigned corps member’s work will include extensive travel around the state. The journalist will focus on telling solutions-related stories that offer new perspectives on immigration and highlight people within the Latino community.

“We’re honored to have been selected to host a journalist in this role,” said Mike Mulcahy, interim managing editor of MPR News. “This reporter will help expand our coverage of an important community that has become a major part of Minnesota’s neighborhoods and economy. We’re also looking forward to welcoming a new colleague to MPR News and helping them grow in their career as a journalist.”

The Report for America corps member assigned to MPR News will be announced in April and will begin reporting in June 2021. The application period for the Report for America corps is open now through Jan. 31. The journalist assigned to MPR News will be selected from a pool of highly competitive candidates as part of the national competition.

Minnesota Public Radio is seeking donor support to go towards this project. Report for America encourages local philanthropy to support journalism by matching donations to this project up to $25,000.

Just in time for last minute Christmas shopping, the “Global Radio Guide” from Teak Publishing is available in its new, 15th edition.

Gayle Van Horn’s treasure for the shortwave aficionado “dives into how and where to hear exotic shortwave stations transmitting in the world’s tropical radio bands.”

A release add, “[T]hese stations serve as a window into the culture and daily lives of countries not served by large international broadcast stations. Even in an increasingly connected and digital world, for many of the citizens in these countries, these radio stations serve as the only source of news and information they have at their disposal.”

The guide features 24-hour station/frequency guide with schedules for selected AM band, longwave, and shortwave radio stations; hourly schedules for all language services, frequencies, and world target areas for over 500 stations worldwide; listings of DX radio programs and internet website addresses for many stations, time and frequency stations as well as other odd signals in the shortwave ether.

In addition to contributions of Van Horn, W4GVH, Ken Reitz and Fred Waterer of Spectrum Monitor along with Larry Van Horn add significant content.

The “Global Radio Guide” is available as an ebook for $8.99.

The post Latest Edition of Global Radio Guide Available appeared first on Radio World.