It’s been a challenging six months on the NYSE for Audacy shares. At 2:15pm Eastern Thursday, the company’s stock dipped as low as $2.93, continuing a fresh downturn that began August 5 but, on a grander scale, dates to mid-March.
Friday’s trading was a bright one, however, with heavier than average volume fueling a 9.8% rise.
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SAN LUIS OBISPO, CALIF. — With the NAB Show adopting a vaccination mandate for all attendees of its October conference and expo in Las Vegas and RBR+TVBR learning Friday that some sort of virtual option is in the works for fully registered participants, an event “where the world’s leading digital creators, platform innovators, and their fans converge in one place” won’t be happening less than two weeks later in Southern California.
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The leaders of every state broadcast association with an annual summer or fall conference have been asking themselves the same questions lately, trying to determine the best and safest way to hold their events in light of the ever-evolving COVID situation.
The Georgia Association of Broadcasters is one of the associations with an event on the fall calendar. The challenges to show organizers are reflected in its latest email to members:
“The GAB board of directors, along with our staff and partners, have been in deep discussion on how best to approach this year’s convention, GABCON, the GABBY Awards banquet and our Hall of Fame luncheon,” wrote Bob Houghton and David Hart, GAB president and chairman, respectively.
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“At this time, we are continuing to move forward with our live, in-person events as scheduled for Oct. 22–23. Over the next few weeks, we will continue to monitor the current public health situation and make adjustments if needed.”
Local rules in Atlanta mean that unless something changes by October, GAB attendees will have to wear masks indoors at the conference, regardless of vaccination status, except when eating or drinking. Masks will be available on site. Visitors must also consent to touchless temperature checks.
Houghton and Hart encouraged members to register for the event, saying that if a person later changes their mind and wants to cancel, they will get a full refund without penalty. GAB also is offering a 50% registration discount through the end of August.
Other upcoming regional events on the broadcast industry calendar include the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association Broadcasters Clinic and the Virginia Association of Broadcasters Annual Convention, both in September; the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association Sound Bites 2021 conference and the Midwest Broadcast & Multimedia Technology Conference, co-produced by the state associations of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana, both in November; and the previously postponed Alabama Broadcasters Association conference in January.
Submit news about your event to radioworld@futurenet.com.
The post GAB Moving Ahead With October Conference appeared first on Radio World.
Until now, the National Association of Broadcasters has remained quiet with respect to whether or not individuals who do not travel to the 2021 NAB Show in Las Vegas will have an option to participate via the comfort of their home or office, digitally.
On Friday (8/20), welcome news for those who have opted not to get the COVID-19 vaccine, or are simply not comfortable with travel to a large indoor gathering due to the Delta variant of the virus arrived.
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A low-power FM radio station serving the Florida city of Palatka has avoided a FCC financial penalty for filing its license renewal application after the due date.
As such, this mini-radio facility is getting an admonishment, with its forfeiture cancelled by the Commission.
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It’s a broadcast television station owner with eight properties in 7 markets.
Now, it is adding a property in Virginia’s quintessential college town, Charlottesville.
The seller: Jeff Winemiller.
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Who knew that building awareness and inspiring consumers to get fit could benefit from a multiplatform marketing agreement with a company focused on audio content creation and distribution via streaming and broadcast platforms?
It’s the latest innovative ad sales partnership inked by iHeartMedia.
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The author is chief engineer of Minnesota Public Radio.
Legacy T1 circuits have long provided radio broadcasters with a reliable way to contribute and distribute program audio. The telecom industry’s transition to IP has introduced challenges to broadcasters with existing T1 infrastructures.
While many of these TDM-based networking and transport systems remain in service, the price of T1 circuits continues to rise while quality of service has grown uneven. Telcos have also shortened contractual renewals for these circuits, with an obvious eye toward a T1 sunset.
Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media, with 46 public radio stations and 41 translators serving listeners in eight states, are among those that retain a high-performing T1 infrastructure for audio contribution and distribution.
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We currently operate a hybrid infrastructure that includes IP codecs from a mix of vendors.
Management of our long-distance connections to the PRSS NOC is among my key responsibilities. Our APM program portfolio, which includes BBC World Service, C24 and Marketplace, reaches nearly 17 million listeners each week. To maintain that level of listenership we need to ensure our programs reach ContentDepot in Washington, and for this we have long relied on GatesAir Intraplex T1 equipment.
With T1 services fading, we are transitioning these circuits to IP with GatesAir. We now uplink a number of live streams using Intraplex IP Link 200 codecs. Full-time 24/7 streams include the BBC World Service and our own C24 Classical Music Service. BBC is delivered from London, while we originate C24 in our St. Paul studios.
The reliability of IP-type circuits is proven, but giving up the circuit diversity that T1 offers was a concern. We have found that the IP Link 200 does the job well, including the transatlantic hop from London.
We have also established a bidirectional link between Washington and Los Angeles, and we intend to serve more points from St. Paul with additional codecs. We expect to have more than 20 IP Link 200s in service before long.
We’ve gained experience with codecs over the years, and the IP Link 200’s feature set is impressive. It’s ideal for our deployment strategy with its advanced functionalities, including two bidirectional feeds and additional front-panel monitoring/GUI features when needed.
Most important is GatesAir’s Dynamic Stream Splicing software, which lets us send multiple identical streams over two separate paths to borrow data from each other in compensation for packet loss. We also use Intraplex LiveLook software to monitor stream performance and network conditions. Both systems, notably DSS, have been invaluable to our daily operations and stream reliability.
The DSS software adds even more value when using public internet. Experience has confirmed that the IP Link 200 performs reliably and consistently over two public internet circuits with stream splicing. I expect that our first IP-based STL will be GatesAir as well.
Our initial goals with the T1 to IP transition have been modest. We wanted to efficiently and reliably deliver program audio from point A to point B, and show our staff the potential these units offer as we expand our contribution and distribution services. The IP Link 200 has encouraged us to look beyond T1 and transition more of our contribution and distribution services to IP.
Info: Contact Keith Adams at GatesAir at 1-513-459-3447 or visit www.gatesair.com.
Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.
The post User Report: MPR Tackles T1 to IP Transition With GatesAir appeared first on Radio World.
Users of the donation-based local TV via IP service the NAB and the nation’s “Big Four” networks despise have another point of access now available to them.
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As director of Omnia radio processing sales for Telos Alliance, I get to talk to some very IT-savvy engineers who have either moved their audio processing into virtual environments or are flowcharting future deployment.
From these conversations, I created a checklist of some things you should consider before virtualizing your audio processing.
Before we dive into the list, however, we should answer the most often-asked questions: “What is this virtualization business? And why is it useful?”
Virtualization
Virtualization is the concept of taking a server and, with the help of virtualization software, partitioning it so that it appears as several virtual servers running their own operating system, allowing the user to employ the server for several different applications instead of just one.
As applied to audio processing, imagine running hundreds of FM, HD or stream-processing instances, delivering content where needed and backed up on-premise or off-premise (cloud).
Why virtualize?
There are a number of good arguments for virtualization. Among them:
Just over a year ago, Omnia released its first virtual audio processing ecosystem, Omnia Enterprise 9s, which is designed for high-density or virtual deployment. It’s based on the sound, performance, features and interface of our famous Omnia.9 hardware audio processing platform.
Pictured in Fig. 1 is the interface of the Omnia Enterprise 9s, which, if you are familiar with an Omnia.9, is identical.
Fig. 1: Omnia Enterprise 9s interface showing Omnia.9 display metering with processing activity, I/O loudness readings, and frequency analysis for one station. Up to eight are available from this interface and NFremote.However, look closely and you will see one major difference: options for Stations 1 through Station 8. That’s separate processing paths for eight radio stations, all running on one server.
Checklist to Deploy Processing Virtually
1- Bandwidth — Not everyone has access to fiber. With the Omnia µMPX codec in the Enterprise 9s, you don’t need that kind of bandwidth to send the entire FM baseband with RDS and stereo pilot across a link. With µMPX, it passes at a low bandwidth of 400 kbps without degradation of the audio baseband or transcoding artifacts. FLAC can be sent at 800 kbps.
2- Secondary ISP — Seriously consider a secondary ISP to carry your content or composite signal in the event of main failure. You’ll find two NICs on the rear of the Omnia MPX Node for full redundancy capability. For that matter, Starlink (from Elon Musk) may soon become an option for transmitter sites way past “the end of the internet.”
3- Appropriate Server, CPU or Host — Assuming you are running a virtualized environment for your audio processing. In our cloud testing of Omnia Enterprise 9s, moving from one physical server to another requires little or no “hit” or downtime. For users deploying one instance of Enterprise 9: each FM and µMPX output requires four CPU cores and 500MB total RAM.
4- Handling I/O — In the Omnia Enterprise 9S environment, here’s what is available today:
Input — Livewire, AES67 and Windows drivers. Stream receiver.
Output — For true MPX out, including pilot and RDS, you will need to license the µMPX codec for FM transmission over some type of IP link with Omnia MPX Node hardware deployed at the transmitter site (Fig. 2). In that figure you also see an Omnia.9sg deployed (optional). The Omnia Enterprise 9s software can encode a lossless FLAC stream, which the 9sg can use to make composite at the transmitter site.
5- Handling EAS and PPM — EAS: If your studio or program feed is generated elsewhere, current solutions include having your EAS unit at the transmitter, on its own separate local audio processor.
Watermarking: Stations in PPM metered markets that want to virtualize their airchain will need a way to properly watermark their signal. Full market testing has rolled out in a couple of large markets for MRC accreditation with Nielsen. While not released yet, this initiative will put the watermark where it belongs, inside the audio processor. (Our Linear Acoustic TV processors have had Nielsen watermarking for some time.) This also eliminates maintaining a hardware watermark encoder.
6- Appropriate IT Department — Do I have the appropriate IT talent to maintain the IP paths to where audio, or composite, is delivered?
7- Can I get this in a container? — This is on our roadmap.
To help illustrate redundant paths to the transmitter site, Fig. 2 shows two ways to generate composite with Omnia Enterprise 9s on a server, feeding:
It’s fascinating to see stations using this Omnia Enterprise 9s product in so many different ways and workflows. It’s a credit to the ingenious radio engineers in the industry that no two deployments have, so far, remotely been alike.
Questions about this article? Email Paul Kriegler at paulkriegler@telosalliance.com or Mary Ann Seidler at maseidler@telosalliance.com.
The post Virtualizing Your Audio Processing: A Checklist appeared first on Radio World.
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