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Commission adopts a Report and Order revising its comparative processing and licensing rules for Noncommercial Educational Broadcast Stations and Low Power FM Stations

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Great content strictly for engineers, including D-I-Y and first-person articles from Frank McCoy, Wayne Pecena, Todd Dixon and Cris Alexander, as well as insights by Dave Kolesar and Mike Raide about their real-world research into all-digital medium-wave transmission.

BAKING WITH PI
Pi for Everyone and Everything

What’s more fun than being able to solve a problem by combining ideas from your own brain with the power of a single-board computing platform? Todd Dixon has the first in an ongoing series of articles.

DIGITAL RADIO
Real-World Tests Make Business Case for MA-3

Continuing a report they began in the October issue of RWEE, Kolesar and Raide describe the technique and equipment used to measure power from the WWFD transmitter, and describes the day- and nighttime drive tests of the station’s all-digital signal.

 

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

• Do You Know What Time It Is?
• “Green” Tower Lights Are a Viable Option
• Receivers in a Box on the Roof

The post Inside the Dec. 11 Issue of RW Engineering Extra appeared first on Radio World.

Getty Images/Gian Carlo Ampie/EyeEm

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of car trips that we took, usually at night, between our home in the Texas panhandle and Dallas, where my older sister and later my brother lived. And I remember seeing those vertical stacks of red lights, some of which were flashing, and wondering what they were. “Those are radio towers,” or something to that effect, was my dad’s response.

Of course, at the time, I had no idea what radio towers even were or why they had to be adorned by those red flashing lights, but I thought they were pretty cool. Then, when I started at my first job in radio, there was a whole array of towers with flashing red lights right outside the back door. At that job, I had no responsibility for those lights, but I did know what they were for and if my job were at a non-directional station, what my responsibilities for them would be as a Third-Class Radiotelephone Operator licensee (with Broadcast Endorsement, of course).

That first radio gig was pretty much a summer job, and I landed a job at an FM station across town when it was done. That FM was located at the base of an 800-foot tower, and I worked 4 p.m. to midnight six days a week, which meant that I had to make the daily visual observation of the tower lights and faithfully enter into the operating log, “Tower lights are on and flashing.”

It was kind of a cool thing, standing in the dark at the base of that tower, listening to the ever-present Texas wind howling through the angle iron and guy wires and looking up at those red lights. The top beacon illuminated the “crow’s nest” above the top plate and beacon, and the tower had enough cross section that I could really see it and wonder what it was (I later climbed up there and saw it, the huge Huey & Phillips beacon and side marker fixtures up close).

A MYSTERIOUS BOX

The station signed off at midnight — there were few people out of bed after midnight in Amarillo, Texas, in those days, and of those that were, few had FM radios.

When the filaments and all the blowers shut off, I could hear a rhythmic grinding noise coming from the back wall. There was a mysterious electrical box of some sort that contained a motor, a cam and a pair of black bulbs with wires coming out of them. Up and down those bulbs went, one coming down as the other went up. I had discovered the tower light controls and mechanical flasher unit.

The KBRT LED tower lights are so efficient that we could run them off a single 300-watt solar panel and a deep-cycle battery.

For decades after that, I found similar setups at tower sites all over. Even when we bought new towers in the 1990s, tower lights and tower light controls were very much the same. They used the same pairs of 620-watt bulbs in the beacons, the same 110-watt lamps in the markers; and they used some kind of mechanical device to produce the flash, although mechanical contacts were used rather than mercury switches by then.

Over those decades, tower lights were always a pain in the backside. It seemed like I could never keep the lights all working for long — bulbs burned out, flashers developed mechanical issues and the constant vibration on the towers would cause wiring to chafe and occasionally short out. Then when solid-state flashers entered the scene, they were prone to failure, either from lightning or overheating. We would buy them by the case.

A FLASH IN THE DARK

Somewhere back in time, we began to see strobes come into use for some towers, usually with reduced intensity at night. We had (and still have) a tower in suburban Chicago that is 450 feet high and free-standing. It cost a fortune to paint, and we had to paint it every three or four years, so as soon as the FAA lighting standards would permit, I filed to change it from red lights and paint to a dual system with medium intensity white strobes during the day and red lights at night. While we no longer had to paint the tower after that change, those tower lights were a chore to keep working. It was always something with that high-voltage gas-tube system.

Sometime later, a few manufacturers began producing direct replacement LED red beacons and marker lights. These fixtures included integral 120-volt AC power supplies, so the existing 120-VAC wiring, power and flashers could be used with them. They weren’t cheap, but with the promise of much longer bulb life, we went down that road at a lot of sites, with mixed results. At some, we had no problems and the retrofit LED beacons and markers that we installed are still working after many years. At others, we had quite a bit of trouble and any power and bulb replacement savings was quickly consumed by repair costs.

In 2012, we built a four-tower 50 kW directional array for KBRT near Los Angeles, way up on a mountaintop with the L.A. Basin below to the west and the Inland Empire some 3,000 feet below to the east. The marking and lighting for that site were very much in question for all kinds of reasons. First was for air safety and obstruction marking. Then there was the question of light pollution — how much would the various lighting options contribute to light pollution above the skyline of the Santa Ana Mountains? And then there was the question of migratory (and other) bird attraction to the lights.

ENTER LED LIGHTING

After much study, we opted to install red LED lights on the four towers, lights with tightly-focused beams that would confine the light projection to the horizon plus or minus a few degrees. That seemed to satisfy everyone, but I had my doubts that an LED tower lighting system that operated on low DC voltage would be reliable with 50 kW of medium-wave RF present. But to my amazement, I had nothing to fear. The lights worked fine, and we have not experienced a single failure to date. Their power consumption was so low that I was able to run the tower lights off solar panels and deep-cycle marine batteries for a couple of months after the towers went up but before we had commercial power at the site.

Today’s LED tower light controllers are a far cry from the motor, cam and mercury switch mechanical controllers of old.

Since then, I’ve become a believer in LED tower light systems (and I’m speaking here of DC-powered LED systems, not hybrid or retrofit systems). I have been converting some of our oldest towers to new-technology systems. It’s amazingly easy. Beacons fit the bolt hole patterns of a code incandescent beacon, and all new wiring employing UV-rated SO cable is used to connect everything up.

A couple of years ago, the FAA began allowing the use of dual white/red systems on towers under 700 feet high, and that encompasses most of the towers in my company. It means that we can, in many cases, convert to dual red/white systems and (if the towers are galvanized) forget about painting forever. And don’t forget about the power savings, which can be significant on taller structures and multi-tower arrays.

So, the next time you find yourself troubleshooting a tower light issue … or relamping … or replacing a solid-state or mechanical flasher … consider making the move to new technology LED tower lighting. It’s the green (or maybe red) thing to do.

Cris Alexander, CPBE, AMD, DRB, is director of engineering of Crawford Broadcasting Co. and technical editor of RW Engineering Extra.

The post Green Tower Lights Are a Viable Option appeared first on Radio World.

The family of the recently deceased John Lyons has set up a GoFundMe account to help with the costs of education for his 7-year-old son.

[John Lyons Dies; Helped Shape N.Y. Skyline]

Lyons died unexpectedly the day after Thanksgiving. In addition to his wife Natasha and adult son Matthew, his family includes 7-year-old Constantine.

“In lieu of flowers, donations for Constantine Lyons’ education, extracurricular and other school-related needs to help support him as he grows will be greatly appreciated,” stated his obituary. As of Wednesday the site had raised about $5,000.

Find info here.

 

The post Fundraiser Will Benefit Constantine Lyons, Age 7 appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Tower Erectors has elected its new board of directors. Four board members will retain their seats, and the fifth will be occupied by Jessica Cobb, the association announced this week. The two-year terms are effective Feb. 16.

Cobb is CEO of MDTS in Ortonville, Mich. She is a current board member of the Michigan Wireless Association and also serves on the NATE Member Services Committee and as a member of the Women of NATE Committee.

The returning board members are MillerCo President Jimmy Miller, Tower & Turbine Technologies LLC President John Paul Jones, Millennia Contracting President Kevin Dougherty and Lee Antenna & Line Service President Bryan Lee.

“Looking ahead to 2020, the NATE board of directors will be governing during a very exciting and dynamic time in the industry that offers enormous potential to position the association for future growth and influence,” NATE Chief Operating Officer Paula Nurnberg said in the announcement.

The post NATE Election Results Are In appeared first on Radio World.

Cambridge Consultants has unveiled a design for a Digital Radio Mondiale receiver that it claims will cost under US$10 (about €9).

At its annual Innovation Day conference last week, the firm showcased a prototype of the low-cost, low-power DRM design.

This, according to the company, addresses the vital need for information by the global population that doesn’t have the internet or TV, adding that since it is low power, it can run from solar or wind-up.

Cambridge Consultants say the design will be ready in 2020, available for any radio manufacturer to license and incorporate into their own products.

Ruxandra Obreja

DRM Chairman, Ruxandra Obreja said she welcomes the announcement.

“The unique and inspiring design will finally lead to the development of a low-power, low-cost, small-screen, large-coverage receiver. This means we’ll be able to bridge the digital divide for millions of people who don’t have easy access to broadband.”

 

The post Cambridge Consultants Unveil Prototype for Low-Cost DRM Receiver appeared first on Radio World.

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During the latest national test of the Emergency Alert System, more than 84% of radio broadcasters successfully received the National Periodic Test alert, and then 82.5% of those retransmitted the code, averaging slightly better than all of the EAS participants combined.

That’s according to initial results of the 2019 Nationwide Test of Emergency Alert System released Dec. 9. This public notice includes “aggregated, anonymized data” derived from the Form Three filings submitted by EAS participants. 

This annual test is intended to assess whether the EAS would perform as designed, an increasingly important question as some debate whether the current system is the best way to keep citizens informed in the smartphone age.

[Broadcasters Need to Keep Eye on Latest EAS Updates]

A total of 19,607 EAS participants spanning radio and television broadcasters, cable systems, Internet Protocol Television providers, wireline video systems and others reported they received the alert, and 15,986 then retransmitted it. Radio broadcasters make up the majority of EAS participants at 13,940, followed by the 2,717 television broadcasters and the 2,626 cable system providers. 

Interesting, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau noted that nearly half of those who reported receiving the alert said that they were monitoring three or more over-the-air sources at the time. Almost 70% of participants who filed Form Three indicated that there were “no complications” in receiving the test, but about 12% said there were issues with the test’s audio quality. Also, nearly 75% indicated there were no complications during the retransmission, although a small minority said they encountered “other” difficulties.

Read the public notice (DA 19-1244) online here.

The post FCC Shares EAS Test Results appeared first on Radio World.

As 2020 approaches, community stations face many vexing yet familiar challenges. Most want to grow their volunteer base as well their audiences/donors, across generations as well as across socio-economic groups, at a time when the role and relevance of radio itself is being challenged or rethought.

Nina Simon

Nina Simon, author of “The Art of Relevance,” says managers might ask themselves, “How do I get young people to volunteer or listen to my station?” She feels this is the wrong question because it takes the onus off the station. 

Instead, she challenges organizations to focus on ways to make a station more welcoming to a plethora of audiences. 

The nonprofit that she founded is OF/BY/FOR ALL. It articulates this vision by stating, “Putting up a ‘Welcome’ sign is not enough. To involve people in meaningful, sustainable ways, you can’t just make programs FOR them. You have to involve them in their creation. And that means becoming OF and BY them too.”

Simon, speaking at the Community Media Conference of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters earlier this year, said she has learned that while most people believe their organizations are welcoming to all, they will also say that their current audience doesn’t reflect the diversity of their community. 

This is a disconnect with which many community stations grapple.

WHAT IS “INCLUSION”?

NFCB CEO Sally Kane has a deep understanding of the community radio landscape and agrees that there’s work to be done. 

“Lots of community radio folks say they are ‘inclusive,’ but in fact [their stations] are insider clubs that aren’t seeing or understanding the fullness of their communities. And I think that is perilous,” she said.

“For example, lots of rural stations are actually embedded in a dominant culture that is highly conservative, and [yet] they are more progressive. It’s important for the stations to at least acknowledge that and not pretend that they represent the community as a whole.”

Although it can be challenging for stations to connect with everyone, “community” is obviously the focus of community radio, for both its workforce of volunteers and for its audience of listeners and donors. 

“Community radio is, by design, intended to be of, by and for the people,” Simon said. “Especially today, when many community radio stations have been politicized or marginalized into perceived niches, I believe it’s critical and meaningful to recommit to involving everyone.”

[Facebook Needs Community Radio]

Kane believes these conversations about engaging with audiences are imperative in the current hyper-connected media landscape. 

 “The digital space is highly interactive, so a one-way pipeline of delivering content is no longer adequate, and stations need to integrate that into the way they approach communication and content and organizational culture.” 

Young people are identified time and again as a vital component of radio’s future; yet many a community radio station has an aging crew of volunteers and minimal involvement by new, young team members. 

Simon suggests that stations get specific: “Identify a specific community of young people who you want to involve, whether that be high school band nerds or young professionals starting their first full-time job and looking for creative outlets. Then talk with them about what they are looking for from a volunteer or engagement experience. Base your offerings on their goals and interests, not yours.”  

CALLS FROM HOME

Ways that community stations are seeking to engage and evolve are reflected by others who participated in that NFCB conference.

WMMT airs “Calls From Home,” promoted here on its website. The station in rural Kentucky works with listeners incarcerated in at least six nearby prisons.

WMMT General Manager Elizabeth Sanders says the rural Whitesburg, Ky., station works with its listeners who are incarcerated in at least six nearby prisons. WMMT has for many years communicated with prisoners and their families through its “Calls From Home” and “Restorative Radio” programs and more recently through a Prison Justice Assembly. 

Sanders shares letters that the station has received from prisoners. She said WMMT is trying to represent those who are “the most marginalized” and also wants to bring a “multitude of voices” to the airwaves.

Collaborating with organizations that are enmeshed in specific communities is another way that stations are touching new audiences. 

Kerry Semrad, general manager of KZUM in Lincoln, Neb., says the station has an innovative Podcast Partner Program that offers podcast training in order to broaden its public affairs programming. Through partnerships, the station was able to work with some of Lincoln’s refugee communities and learned more about how KZUM could address their needs. 

As a result, content is being developed in listeners’ native languages. Semrad says the “only way to remain relevant is to learn from each other constantly.”

[Community Broadcaster: Acting on Equity]

Similarly, WERU Community Radio in Maine has been increasing the number and depth of partnerships with community organizations in part to help make the station relevant to a broader audience, especially younger listeners. 

Development Director Heather Andrews says that through conversations and surveys, the station learned about specific programming needs. As a result, the station is looking more closely at local programming and on-demand and mobile access for listeners. Andrews said that it was critical to “break down barriers” and “change things up” in order to attract new audiences.

As at KZUM, podcasting is an entry point for new participants and listeners at many community radio stations. Station Manager Ursula Ruedenberg of KHOI in Ames, Iowa, said its entry into podcasting was unexpected. In response to the lack of audio production training at the nearby Iowa State University, KHOI created an audio lab in order to work with the school newspaper. Ruedenberg said the program has expanded and now provides training as the required audio production class in the school’s journalism program. 

In a moment in history when so many people are racing to get involved with podcasting, KHOI realized that it could provide a needed service while simultaneously engaging with new audiences to spread the word about KHOI. This type of collaboration also has helped to bridge the traditional “town and gown” divide in Ames, by bringing the student and non-student communities together in order to create audio.

The author is co-founder of Radio Survivor and co-chairs the College, Community & Educational Radio Caucus on the Library of Congress’ Radio Preservation Task Force. 

The post Community Radio Seeks More Engagement appeared first on Radio World.

FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks spoke in November at the Media Institute “Free Speech America” Gala. He addressed issues involving freedom of speech as well as diversity in broadcast ownership and hiring. His text:

THE FIRST AMENDMENT 

The need has always been clear: for free men and women to commit to the ideals of liberty and self-determination, they must be well-informed. A free press is the sentinel of our democracy. On this score, perhaps the greatest observer, and the greatest account, is Alexis de Tocqueville in “Democracy in America.” He writes: “The sovereignty of the people and the liberty of the press may therefore be looked upon as correlative institutions; just as the censorship of the press and universal suffrage are two things which are irreconcilably opposed, and which cannot long be retained among the institutions of the same people.”

In our current moment, perhaps more than ever, the need for a robust, independent free press has never been more critical. 

Today, there is an overload of information. It can be difficult to discern what is true, what is not; what are facts, and what are not; what is worthy to be called news, and what is not. And just as the promise of the First Amendment supported the free exchange of ideas in the age of typewriters and telegraphs, it continues to do so in today’s era of broadband and network broadcasting. Social media, deep fakes and the barrage of information that comes to each of us through the internet are potent new influences upon our democracy that admonish us to develop new responsive interpretive muscles.

But part of this hearkens back to the era of our nation’s founding. In the 1830s, Tocqueville wrote that “[t]he number of periodical and occasional publications in the United States actually surpasses belief.” The American people have a deeply ingrained urge to seek out and wade through what the Supreme Court has called a “multiplicity of information.” 

That’s a good thing because it is essential to our democracy that the American people go through the process of hearing from a wide range of sources, ideologies and viewpoints. The fabric of our shared culture has long understood how to make decisions in the midst of this fog. Democracy is inherently curious and competitive, which is why we often speak of our culture as the product of a marketplace of ideas.

Like all markets, the one of ideas rises and falls upon the quality and depth of information. As they say, “Garbage in, garbage out.” What we need, then, is a press that pursues unvarnished facts and, above all else, truth.

MEDIA DIVERSITY

The rights enshrined in the First Amendment, including freedom of speech and freedom of the press, guide the Federal Communications Commission’s public interest standard, which must inform everything that we do. But the fact that those celebrated words were written into the Bill of Rights does not, in and of itself, guarantee that it will work as intended. The First Amendment is not self-executing. Preserving its guarantees requires the vigilance of regulators, the media, and the public alike. 

Ida B. Wells once said: “The people must know before they can act, and there is no educator to compare with the press.” For its part, the FCC has an incredibly important role to play in supporting the First Amendment and preserving the freedoms it affirms. 

Namely, the FCC, by statute, is tasked with facilitating greater diversity in our national discourse. As the Supreme Court has stated, when considering the First Amendment, “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.”

Those in the media are both the beneficiaries and the guarantors of our First Amendment rights. They have the power to inform, to educate and to impact the way we view ourselves and the world. Where we strengthen our media, we strengthen our national conversation and reaffirm our freedom of speech at the same time.

The FCC, which governs our communications networks, has a critical role to play in securing and protecting public access to information. One of the many roles the law assigns to the commission is licensing broadcasters to use our public airwaves. In doing so, our controlling statute demands that we distribute these licenses in a way that prevents too many from winding up in the same hands and promotes ownership by women and people of color. 

[Starks Criticizes FCC Record on Media Diversity]

This is important. The capacity of broadcast media to empower and inform is indisputable, and it is critical that those exercising this power represent all of us, not a mere privileged or anointed few. Eighty-six percent of Americans get their local news from local TV stations, while only 23% get their local news from sources that are exclusively online. And numerous studies suggest that most of the news consumed online is originated by traditional sources, like broadcasters or newspapers.

Of particular concern to me, then, is the persistent lack of diversity in broadcast media ownership, and among its rank and file. 

America’s broadcasters should look like America. Ownership sets the tone for a media outlet, and employees manage its day-to-day operations and provide its public face. Given the crucial role our media plays in informing the public, it is critical that it reflect the nation at large, both behind and in front of the camera, and that our local media also be reflective of the local communities it is bound to serve. These institutions should mirror the richness of our population and give expression to its diverse voices.

The need for a greater focus on diversity and inclusion has never been more apparent, and the commission has, largely and over many decades, failed in meeting its statutory goals and obligations in this regard. 

This isn’t conjecture or political posturing. It isn’t even an opinion. It is a fact borne out by our data. 

The FCC’s numbers on broadcast ownership are collected every two years. The latest dataset was released in 2017. According to our most recent data, there are more than 1,300 full-power television stations licensed across the country, with only 12 owned by African Americans. If you were rounding, that would be closer to zero percent than 1% — and this has been so for a long, long time.

OPPORTUNITY

However, now we may finally have a chance to get this right. 

The FCC has been given a golden opportunity to succeed where it has previously fallen flat. As the Third Circuit Court of Appeals observed in its most recent media ownership decision, Prometheus v. FCC, the commission can and must do better in addressing the impact of its regulatory efforts on the ability of women and people of color to own stations. No longer can it rely on bad data and analysis while ignoring its obligations. The court sent back the FCC’s latest deregulatory efforts and demanded that we get the data and perform the analysis necessary to ensure that we are fully meeting our statutory requirements. [In November, the FCC, led by Chairman Ajit Pai, filed an appeal of the decision vacating the FCC’s media ownership rules. — Ed.]

Beyond ownership, the commission must redouble its Equal Employment Opportunity efforts to ensure that broadcasters are seeking diverse employees. For 15 years, the commission has had an open rulemaking proposing to continue a decades old data collection on the diversity of the broadcast workforce. And for 15 years, while we’ve been stuck in neutral, we’ve elicited zero visibility on whether station management and news teams reflect our communities. We cannot fully engage on this issue when our ability to understand the problem is compromised.

On both counts, when it comes to ownership and employment, there are those that would argue that collecting data or adopting meaningful policies to promote diversity would be unconstitutional. I couldn’t disagree more. 

First, collecting and analyzing data is a core function of an expert agency, and having a better understanding of the industries that we regulate is also just common sense. 

Second, when it comes to designing programs that would help improve our stagnant and declining ownership numbers, we can target our efforts based on race, ethnicity and gender, so long as we are careful and provide a well-supported reason for doing so. The Third Circuit Court has instructed us to do so. Given the historic problems we’ve had with broadcast diversity, new research like disparity studies identifying past discrimination in licensing, could be critical to both addressing the concerns of the Third Circuit and finally making good policy in this space.

So, we must get this right. We must do better in fulfilling our statutory obligation to promote diversity in broadcasting. And we must support the inclusion of marginalized voices in the national conversation. Only then can we claim to have upheld our responsibilities under our statute and secured the guarantees of First Amendment in the field of broadcasting.

Geoffrey Starks, a Democrat, was nominated by President Trump to the FCC seat formerly held by Mignon Clyburn. He was sworn in in January 2019. 

The post America’s Broadcasters Should Look Like America appeared first on Radio World.