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In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announces that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has approved non-substantive and non-material changes to the information collections associated with certain rule amendments adopted in the Report and Order, FCC 20-8, MB Docket Nos. 19-165, 17-105 (Report and Order), to modernize certain notice requirements for cable operators and direct broadcast satellite (DBS) providers. The Commission also announces that compliance with the revised rules is required. This document is consistent with Electronic Delivery of Notices to Broadcast Television Stations, published March 20, 2020, which stated that the Commission would publish a document in the Federal Register announcing the compliance date for the revised rules listed in the DATES section below.

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Having closed its fiscal year in June, the family-owned Sennheiser Group has announced its financial results for 2019, and while sales were only slightly down overall for the year, the company is preparing for the worst. Citing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on its consumer and professional businesses, as well as a slowdown in the headphone market, Sennheiser will cut roughly 650 employees by the end of 2022, with about 300 of those jobs in Germany.

Daniel Sennheiser, co-CEO of Sennheiser, noted in a statement, “In order to position the company for a successful future, we will adapt our organizational structure to the changing conditions and align it with the new requirements.” As a result, the company will be looking to make cuts in corporate functions such as supply chain and operations. Aiming to enact the reduction in what it termed a “socially responsible manner,” Sennheiser will consider measures such as not filling open positions, a voluntary redundancy scheme and severance options in addition to offering partial and early retirement.

“We are a family-owned company and every single one of our employees is part of the team,” said Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, co-CEO. “Together we share a passion for audio. With this in mind, these have been very difficult decisions to make and it is important to us primarily to avoid redundancies and to find individual solutions together with employees.” He added, “We will continue to focus on our core competencies and further strengthen both our consumer and professional divisions by transferring operational responsibility completely to these two business areas.”

Classic Sennheiser MD 421

Sennheiser’s fiscal year 2019 saw the company grow in its professional division while it landed below expectations in the consumer business. In total, the Sennheiser Group generated turnover of $863 million — 6.5% more than in 2018.

The company attributed much of its slide on the consumer side to the global headphone market, which has declined by 30 to 40% in recent months, largely due to physical retail outlets worldwide being closed or operated under shortened hours. Accordingly, sales of Sennheiser headphones also decreased to the same extent. In order to mitigate those effects, in March, the company introduced cost reductions and reduced working hours in Germany. Measures to reduce personnel costs and material costs were implemented to the same extent at Sennheiser’s international locations.

The effect of COVID-19 has also been felt in the company’s live sound microphone sales, as Daniel Sennheiser explained: “With the cancellation of live events all over the world, the entire event and music industry has been practically brought to a standstill and is only slowly getting back on track. The future of many rental companies, and other service providers is under threat. This is having a significant impact on sales of microphones, which will continue to be reflected in our business performance next year. Exceptions are studio microphones.”

In the fiscal year 2019, the professional division generated turnover of $414.4 million, an increase of 9.2% over the previous year. Growth was driven in particular by the product categories of live music, studio recording and business communication. The consumer division generated turnover of $448.7 million. Although turnover increased by 4.1%, that landed below the growth of the headphone market as a whole, despite the launch of new headphone models in the premium segment.

Playing to a hometown crowd continued to be Sennheiser’s forte when it came to sales — EMEA continued to be the region with the highest turnover in 2019 with $436.4 million, garnering an increase of 6.4%. In its home market Germany, Sennheiser was able to increase turnover by 1.8%. The APAC region recorded the highest increase in percentage terms with 10.6%. Growth was driven in particular by the markets in China, Japan and South Korea, while in the Americas region, turnover increased by $7.2 million, or 3.3%, year on year to $226.6 million.

With imminent job cuts and an expected continued downturn ahead, Sennheiser added that it fully intends to keep funding its R&D efforts going forward, including the development of its AMEBO immersive audio technology. “To create innovative audio experiences for our customers and to shape the future of the audio industry, we are continuously investing in our development activities, “ said Dr. Andreas Sennheiser. Sennheiser Group’s investments in 2019 increased by 4.1% to $71.8 million, which corresponds to 8.3% of turnover.

 

The post Sennheiser Announces Layoffs Amidst Slowing Market appeared first on Radio World.

Inovonics has published a comparison chart to help its users figure out which AARON receiver to buy. (A link is provided below.) We asked Sales & Marketing Manager Gary Luhrman about it.

Radio World: For those not familiar, briefly what is the AARON series?

Gary Luhrman: The AARON series is a family of three FM and FM/HD Radio rebroadcast translator receivers built to handle the most challenging reception scenarios. Boasting sensitivity and selectivity superior to even the most elite professional or consumer receivers, the AARONs combine premium features with unparalleled receiver performance.

Starting with a unique Software Defined Radio (SDR) front-end that provides extraordinary sensitivity, selectivity and RF shielding, each model adds additional functionality designed to meet unique needs according to the broadcaster’s application. The AARON products also provide remote access and valuable monitoring feedback via an intuitive web interface that is accessible from any web-enabled device (smart phone, tablet or PC). Engineers can listen via an audio stream and receive notifications via email or SMS messages for audio loss, low signal, RDS error, pilot loss, and audio failover back-up.

RW: Who came up with the idea for the series? 

Luhrman: Inovonics had made re-broadcast receivers for years but we were being asked for more features, better sensitivity and selectivity than our traditional analog designs could offer. That’s when we took a second look and decided to totally do a redesign from the ground up.

RW: How is Aaron different from other products in its class, what sets it apart?

Luhrman: The selectivity and sensitivity of the receiver make the AARON a strong contender to be Number 1 in its class. The straightforward setup and intuitive management from the web interface make the AARON easy to work with, and additional built-in tools at your disposal, such as RDS encoder, composite pass-through and MPX regeneration modes, along with failover audio back-up features. Finally, Inovonics’ three-year factory warranty and Premiere After Sales Service helps to “seal the deal” when engineers are looking for a reliable rebroadcast receiver.

RW: We’ll share a link to your chart below. But give a quick summary of how these three models differ.

Luhrman: The AARON 650 is our most popular FM Rebroadcast Receiver due to its flexibility to handle most scenarios.

For starters it has the sensitive and selective digital FM receiver referred to earlier along with Composite Pass-through and baseband regeneration modes, which are valuable tools when the FM reception is very challenging and the signal needs cleaning-up before passing it on to the FM transmitter.

The 650 also has a built-in RDS encoder, which allows you to alter or modify the RDS message to the translator. The 650 has two Antenna inputs and two MPX outputs along with some audio back-up capabilities via Web-stream or SD-Card. Finally, the interactive Web interface allows remote listening via Web-stream, FFT Analyzer, Alarms/Notifications, and supports SNMP.

The AARON 640 is the “no frills” model with the same digital SDR front-end for great FM reception, Composite Pass-through, and Active Reception Processing for bandwidth, stereo blend, HF blending and more. And of course it has the interactive web interface with remote listening via web stream, Alarms/notifications and SNMP support.

The AARON 655 FM/HD Rebroadcast Receiver is almost in its own category. It was designed to accept FM and HD Radio 1-8 program sources for rebroadcast, as well as analog, AES-digital and streaming inputs with fallback-priority selection.

You can think of the 655 as three products built into a single 1U box. It has the sensitive FM/HD Radio SDR-based receiver; a complete three-band audio processor with stereo generator; and a dynamic RDS encoder.

Some of the unique features of the 655 include creating a dynamic RDS message by converting the Pad Data from HD Radio channel or Streamed audio. The built-in audio processor allows the broadcaster to provide the best possible audio signal to the FM translator, and the 655 has input options for Analog, AES-digital, and Streaming audio.

Click image to view the full chart.

RW: What are the retail price points?

Luhrman: Here are our list prices for the AARON rebroadcast receivers; I urge broadcasters to contact their preferred Inovonics dealer for a competitive quote that may be more attractive than the prices you see here:

• AARON 640 FM Rebroadcast Receiver = $2,100
• AARON 650 FM Rebroadcast Receiver = $2,390
• AARON 655 FM/HD Radio Rebroadcast Receiver = $2,600

RW: What else should we know?

Luhrman: All Inovonics products are designed, manufactured and assembled at our factory in Felton, Calif. USA. They come with a three -year factory warranty and Premiere After Sales Service. We can be reached for any questions at www.inovonicsbroadcast.com.

Link to the Inovonics AARON Comparison Chart (PDF).

The post How to Pick the Right Inovonics AARON Receiver appeared first on Radio World.

Digital Radio Mondiale is welcoming a policy statement from the government of South Africa about digital radio.

“This is a momentous decision for South Africa [and] the African continent and represents a first for digital audio broadcasting anywhere, as it brings together in one policy the two ITU-recommended open digital radio standards, DRM and DAB+,” DRM wrote in an email from Chairman Ruxandra Obreja.

DRM was reacting to a directive from Stella Tembisa Ndabeni-Abrahams, minister of communications and digital technologies, regarding the introduction of digital sound broadcasting in South Africa. It recommends both DRM, for AM and FM bands, as well as DAB+.

Stella Tembisa Ndabeni-Abrahams is South Africa’s minister of communications and digital technologies.

“The directive is based on the regulatory South African acts, the ITU Radio Regulations of 2016, the Southern African Development Community band plans and the Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy,” DRM wrote in a summary.

“Its aim is to provide a licensing framework and optimum allocation of radio frequencies for the South African three-tier system of public, commercial and community broadcasting services.” The goal is to stimulate local industry in the manufacturing of digital receivers and encourage investment in broadcasting.

“This is both a positive sign and strong encouragement to the broadcasting sector to attain the goals of universal service and access to all,” DRM continued.

“With this pragmatic and pioneering recommendation, the South African citizens will be free to consume an ingenious and complete digital platform through which they can access education, achieve social change and attain economic empowerment.”

The statement directs the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa to “determine priorities for the establishment of digital broadcasting networks and services in the frequency bands allocated for these services, to introduce DSB services alongside the existing analog services.” The authority is to “encourage market availability and use of multi-standard receivers to allow for the continued use of analog FM alongside DAB and DRM.”

The recommendations are Digital Radio Mondiale to complement analog AM service in the medium-wave band (535.5–1606.5 kHz) and analog FM services in VHF band-II (87.5–108 MHz); and to be deployed in the allocated VHF band-III (214–230 MHz). DAB+ transmissions would complement those in the allocated VHF band-III (214–230 MHz).

 

The post DRM Welcomes South Africa Digital Policy Statement appeared first on Radio World.

The Arkansas Broadcasters Association is the latest to cancel an annual conference due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic in the United States.

“In the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our members and partners, we have decided not to move forward with ARKCON 2020,” Executive Director Luke Story wrote in an email to members.

“This was not an easy decision. Fortunately, we did not have to make this decision alone, and are grateful to our members and partners for helping us through the difficult process.”

The organization will host a virtual sales and management media summit on July 22 and 23; it will be free to ABA members.

As we reported earlier, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association recently made a similar decision about its annual Broadcasters Clinic. And September’s fall Radio Show had been cancelled earlier by the National Association of Broadcasters and Radio Advertising Bureau.

 

The post Arkansas Broadcasters Won’t Meet in Person appeared first on Radio World.

Broadcast business software developer Marketron has announced a new ebook and series of free webinars.

The ebook is titled “Digital Transformation Playbook: A Play-by-Play Guide for Broadcasters to Grow Digital Advertising Revenue.”

The upcoming webinar series is called “Radio’s Digital Transformation” and the individual events are:

• July 15 — Develop a Vision and Prepare for Change;
• Aug. 6 — Designing Your Digital Product Suite;
• Aug. 26 — The Importance of Workflow and Processes;
• Sept. 16 — Creating Your Digital Organizational Structure;
• Oct. 7 — Launch Your Digital Game Plan;
• Oct. 28 — Tracking Performance and Removing Roadblocks.

Marketron CEO Jim Howard said in the announcement that in terms of product value, “radio has always been hard to beat as an advertising medium” but that broadcasters are recognizing the potential of digital advertising to drive growth.

 

 

The post Marketron Makes Broadcast Business Software Ebook Available appeared first on Radio World.

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Makes Spectrum Available for 5G Wireless Services and Applications, Spurring Job Creation and Economic Growth

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FCC rescinds grant of application for consent to assignment of WQZS(FM), Meyersdale, PA

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WTB and MB designate a single point of contact for coordinating BAS operations during the upcoming 2020 National Political Conventions and the 2021 Presidential Inauguration

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