Industry News

Strong operating and financial results.

Adjusted EBITDA growth of 6% for the year, compared to 2019.

For an audio media company, such achievements could be the stuff of dreams, considering the battering COVID-19 and the pandemic, entering its 12th month, has brought to Radio.

Yet, that’s exactly what Sirius XM is touting, as its fourth quarter and full-year 2020 results released early Tuesday paint a rosy picture that will certainly make newly appointed CEO Jennifer Witz happy.

For the three months ended December 31, 2020, Sirius XM enjoyed growth in both its subscriber and advertiser revenue — incredible accomplishments given the pandemic and its initial impact on radio’s cume due to fewer in-car occurrences.

This speaks to Sirius XM’s ease of accessibility outside the vehicle, perhaps — exposing a weakness of Radio it has not fully come to terms with.

Q4 2020 subscriber revenue for Sirius XM grew to $1.62 billion, from $1.57 billion. Advertising revenue in the quarter grew to $474 million, from $403 million.

Along with an equipment revenue gain to $60 million from $46 million and “other revenue” of $40 million compared to $44 million a year ago, total consolidated revenue in Q4 grew to $2.19 billion, from $2.06 billion.

Sirius XM’s expenses ballooned to $2.69 billion, from $1.66 billion.

However, a $976 million impairment charge is a big reason for this increase. If not for that, there’s only one other category where the cost of services noticeably increase.

Thank you, artist advocates and recording industry royalty increase lobbyists.

Sirius XM’s revenue share and royalty fees grew to $662 million, from $607 million, in Q4.

Including the impairment charge, Sirius XM swung to a net loss of $662 million (-$0.16 per diluted share), from net income of $243 million ($0.05).

On an unaudited pro-forma basis, adjusted EBITDA increased to $660 million, from $587 million. That translates to EPS of $0.07, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $0.05.S

Also on an adjusted basis, Q4 Free Cash Flow grew to $448 million, from $408 million.

And, that’s what Wall Street watchers will likely cheer about across Tuesday’s trading on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market. SIRI started the day at $6.26, and has largely been in the $6 range for the last 50 weeks.

On a year-over-year basis, FY2020 results show Sirius XM’s consolidated revenue at $8.04 billion, a 3% increase from FY2019. Adjusted EBITDA grew to $2.58 billion in 2020, an increase of approximately 6% from $2.43 billion in 2019.

SLOWING THE CHURN

For years, analysts and radio industry execs traditionally looked closely at Sirius XM’s subscriber count, and then ask the question, “How many subscribers did Sirius XM lose, compared to how many it gained?”

Here’s the answer: “ending subscribers” decreased 1% for the full year of 2020.

That’s correct: Sirius XM lost fewer subscribers in the pandemic-plagued year of 2020 than in the go-go days of 2019.

Wait, there’s more: As the percentage of paid promotional subscribers fell by 22% year-over-year to 3.83 million, the amount of self paid subscribers increased by 3%, to 30.89 million.

In Canada, however, where Sirius XM penetration has largely been seen in big markets such as Toronto and Calgary, subscribers decreased by 3% to 2.62 million; the Canadian economy, coupled with more stringent COVID-19 stay-at-home restrictions in Ontario, could be factors there.

Looking specifically at Q4, self-pay subscriber rolls surged by 19% year-over-year.

And, that all-important self-paid monthly churn is at 1.6%.

A FAMILIAR WORD FOR RADIO

In prepared comments, Sirius XM Chief Financial Officer Sean Sullivan, who landed the role on Oct. 26, 2020, used a word that broadcast radio has incorporated into dozens of quarterly earnings calls — reach.

“The tremendous reach of SiriusXM’s platforms, the company’s unique business model, and the quality of its people attracted me to join the company last fall as CFO,” he said. “All of these attributes have been affirmed in the past three months since I came on board, and it has been a pleasure to partner with Jennifer as she made the transition to CEO.”

That reach story seems to be working for Sirius XM.

SiriusXM increased its regular quarterly dividend by 10% in November for the fourth consecutive year; some radio companies have retained their deeply slashed or suspended dividends.

At the end of the fourth quarter, SiriusXM’s debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 3.3x.

And, Sullivan concluded, “We have tremendous liquidity to continue investing in the business and returning capital to stockholders.”

2021 GUIDANCE

The company reiterated its 2021 guidance for SiriusXM self-pay net subscriber additions, revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow originally issued on January 7, 2021:

• SiriusXM self-pay net subscriber additions of approximately 800,000
• Total revenue of approximately $8.35 billion
• Adjusted EBITDA of approximately $2.575 billion
• Free cash flow of approximately $1.6 billion

The technology behind one of the most respected brands that helped ignite today’s streaming media landscape is back as an independent, sharply-focused company.

Newly formed Antix Digital Inc. has acquired the live streaming and compression solutions portfolio from Imagine Communications.

Led by Tony Huang, the former head of product management for the same product family at Digital Rapids, the new company will accelerate future development of the solutions while taking over service and support for existing customers and systems.

The transaction encompasses software-based compression, processing and streaming solutions that enable leading media enterprises to efficiently and profitably engage audiences across delivery platforms ranging from mobile and OTT services to linear broadcast and cable channels.

The foundation of the product line was developed by streaming solutions developer Digital Rapids, which Imagine Communications acquired in 2014. Imagine continued to evolve the portfolio with enhanced features and new products, but with streaming media delivery now deeply entrenched in today’s society far beyond commercial media and entertainment applications, it became clear that there are broader opportunities.

“Imagine Communications has been a great steward of the technology and solutions it acquired with Digital Rapids, but the ubiquity of multiscreen media consumption creates opportunities beyond Imagine’s core focus, from social media streaming to immersive, interactive training,” said Huang. “Transitioning the product family to Antix lets each company focus on their strengths, primary markets and best opportunities. We are excited to kick-start a new era for these solutions while bringing their powerful benefits to new customers and applications.”

The transaction also marks the return of the portfolio’s original “StreamZ” product branding.

Products making the transition to Antix Digital ownership include:

• The StreamZ Live family (previously re-branded by Imagine Communications as SelenioFlex Live) of multiscreen live/linear encoders for streaming and OTT applications
• The StreamZ Ingest (previously SelenioFlex Ingest) multi-format ingest and encoding platform for live-to-VOD and archive applications
• The StreamZ ONE (previously Selenio One) unified compression platform for traditional linear and multiscreen distribution

Imagine will continue to sell the Antix-acquired products to their customers as a non-exclusive Antix reseller, while Antix will honor Imagine Communications’ existing customer support contracts for these solutions.

Prior to Digital Rapids, Huang worked in product management for DTV compression products at broadcast vendor Evertz.

With nine television stations, 18 radio stations, and a multi-faceted website, Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) strives to educate, entertain, and enrich the lives of its audience with programming that includes statewide radio news, current affairs, and educational resources.

Already using the SGrecast SaaS platform from StreamGuys to efficiently manage their podcast publishing workflows, the broadcaster recently leveraged SGrecast’s new development API for seamless integration with GPB’s website content management system (CMS).

The result has unified GPB’s audio publishing, storage, and delivery processes while further simplifying operations at a time when its digital media properties are seeing their highest traffic ever.

Prior to the new integration, GPB used two distinct workflows for different types of audio content. SGrecast was used only for pre-produced podcast episodes, which operators uploaded directly into SGrecast along with corresponding metadata for automated publishing and distribution. Non-podcast audio clips such as sound bites and story reads, which accompany articles on GPB’s news website, were handled separately. When the broadcaster merged its dedicated news portal into the main GPB.org site last year, the team took the opportunity to combine its behind-the-scenes audio processes.

“Our main GPB.org site wasn’t set up to serve audio files, so we needed a good place to host its new audio content,” said Carl Zornes, director of digital media, GPB. “We were already using SGrecast very successfully to host our podcasts, so we decided to expand its use to both content types. Bringing our podcasts and news audio clips together in our website CMS would also remove some manual steps for our podcast producers.”

GPB and its website developers, Lullabot, used StreamGuys’ just-released API to let producers and news reporters submit both podcasts and general audio content to SGrecast through the same CMS interface.

“Uploading audio clips to SGrecast is now fully automated through the CMS,” explained Zornes. “When creating an article, a user clicks to add audio just as if they were uploading an image to the website. If it’s only intended for the website, the user doesn’t need to go through any podcast-related steps – the audio is automatically sent to SGrecast for storage and hosting, and it will be rendered within the article on our site. However, if the user checks the option in the CMS to make the audio part of a podcast, they can also get a list of all the podcasts available in SGrecast. They select which podcast to attach the audio to, and once the content is approved by an editor and published in the CMS, an automated API call triggers SGrecast to add the content to the podcast feed and distribute it to our target outlets. The only time a podcast producer now goes manually into SGrecast is to insert ad markers.”

A second SGrecast integration simplifies the creation of website landing pages for GPB’s podcasts. When crafting such pages in the website CMS, an API call embeds an instance of StreamGuys’ SGplayer multimedia player using SGrecast’s unique ID for that podcast. When listeners subsequently visit the published landing page, the player appears automatically, including a dynamically updated episode list.

GPB’s new API-driven audio publishing workflow went live in June 2020, just as demand for their digital content took off. “With students learning from home because of the pandemic, our partnership with our State Department of Education is bringing more people to our website,” said Zornes. “We also stream live press conferences for our Governor and Secretary of State, and with Georgia’s key role in the 2020 elections, all eyes and ears have been on our state. It has been a banner year for our content.”

In addition to the time savings afforded by the new API integration, Zornes praises the rich metrics provided by StreamGuys’ software suite and the overall publishing efficiency of SGrecast. “I love the analytics we get from SGrecast and SGreports,” he elaborated. “I like to slice and dice our metrics to understand our audience better, and the data we get from StreamGuys is phenomenal. I also appreciate that we can build one podcast feed and identify all the different providers we want to send it to. We only have to do that once, and we’re covered everywhere, whether it’s five places or two dozen.”

GPB’s key initiatives for 2021 include further expansion of these distribution outlets, with plans to add Google News and Apple News alongside roughly 20 existing partnerships that include Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify. Zornes notes that as GPB’s digital reach continues to grow, so too will its use of SGrecast. “SGrecast makes it so easy for us to expand to new outlets,” he concluded. “My responsibility is to make our content available wherever our users expect us to be. Whatever’s next, we’ll be using StreamGuys to reach it.”

— Brian Galante

Evertz, the global leader in media and entertainment technology solutions, has rolled out its next-generation UHD/3G/HD streaming platform for contribution over IP networks.

The XPS Series is a software-defined HEVC and H.264 10-bit 4:2:2 real-time encoding/decoding platform that is ideal for live or cloud-based applications where secure, high quality and low-latency is essential.

The XPS can be used for live sports and entertainment events, where it provides reliable and cost effective contribution encoding over private IP networks.  In cases of breaking news events and Esports competitions, the XPS provides reliable and low-latency encoding over public networks using Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) or Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST) protocols.

“In today’s COVID-19 environment, for remote or stay-at-home operations, the XPS provides low-latency remote monitoring of broadcast facilities or as an extension to production control room environments,” the company said.

Lastly, The XPS platform can be used as the on-ramp and contribution encoder for cloud production or playout hosted by public cloud providers.

“The launch of the XPS Video Streaming Platform comes at a critical time where the Sports, Media & Entertainment industry is experiencing a dramatic change due to the pandemic,” said Evertz Senior Director of Engineering Abdullah Merei. “Now, more than ever, companies need reliable solutions that enable remote production, remote operation and live production in the cloud.”

IP audio and control company Barix this month celebrates its 20th anniversary.

Over two decades, the Swiss company has grown from a control and automation upstart into a globally recognized Audio over IP innovator primarily serving the professional AV, broadcast and security industries, while supporting a variety of vertical markets within each.

Barix has shipped nearly one million devices to serve control, streaming and transport applications for end users, OEM vendors, service providers and systems integrators.

Chief Technology Officer Johannes G. Rietschel founded Barix in 2001. “I had spent too much time traveling to tradeshows doing ‘research’ with little to show beyond expense reports,” he said. “My vision was to build a product that would fit the market and adapt to customer requests from there, instead of overthinking. That’s the premise on which Barix was founded.”

Barix’s roots took shape in residential automation, an area the company remains active in through partnerships with Aiphone, Crestron and other companies. Rietschel soon added audio distribution to his vision, introducing products to move voice and music throughout homes. Commercial markets came calling in search of inexpensive ways to move audio and control signals over then-novel IP networks. Barix’s four core product lines were established before long, with proven hardware devices for voice and intercom (Annuncicom), automation and control (Barionet), and music/audio streaming (Instreamer encoders, Exstreamer decoders).

The broadcast industry was among the first to take interest. It wasn’t long before broadcasters adopted Barix to transport live program signals between studios and transmitter sites over IP networks. Around the same time, Barix saw quickly rising interest in its Annuncicom products for IP paging and intercom systems, and its Instreamer and Exstreamer systems for background music (BGM) delivery. Visionary integrators and service providers were soon moving BGM, paging, intercom and even control functions (HVAC, lighting and more) over a common IP architecture using Barix hardware.

By 2006, Barix had a global partner network — including the highly successful Barix Technology USA division, long managed by the late Andy Stadheim — and a worldwide presence in education, government, hospitality, medical, radio broadcast, retail, scientific, transportation and worship environments. Product developers, enthused by positive feedback, soon came to Barix requesting modular solutions to help them build their own products.

“Many of today’s primary Barix applications were discovered by chance, or developed through early enthusiasts,” said Rietschel. “That’s especially true in broadcast, where many AM and FM radio stations didn’t have the budget for STL systems that ran tens of thousands of dollars. We also saw strong interest from music service providers and retail operations that urgently needed to transition from expensive satellite systems, and transit companies that were replacing copper with fiber. Barix was in a perfect position to assist these customers with their IP transitions, as our devices offered the combination of price, reliability and performance they needed.”

He recounts one challenging period in this timeframe when RoHS environmental regulations forced a substantial product redesign. Barix ran low on cashflow, and one shareholder opted out of further investment. Rietschel worked for months without pay and invested more of his own money to redevelop products and meet regulations. Within months, Barix sold several thousand of the then-new Exstreamer 100 decoder — a product that remains available today.

While Barix continues to develop new IP audio and control hardware devices, the company’s focus has increasingly shifted to more software-defined and cloud-based architectures. These have led to recent game-changing, enterprise-level BGM streaming solutions like RetailPlayer and SoundScape; cloud-based radio signal distribution solutions like Reflector; and fully networked communications systems like Paging Cloud and Simple Paging.

Barix was also an early innovator of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) technology, first adopted by security customers for efficient VoIP connections and now gaining traction in broadcast; and among the first to merge digital signage and BYOD mobile applications with its AudioPoint solution. Meanwhile, the company’s OEM business continues to flourish; Barix is now on its fourth-generation IPAM Series module (IPAM400), and most recently introduced its IP Former solution to help loudspeaker manufacturers transition their legacy products to IP networks.

The unending innovative spirit and sense of creative freedom at Barix has been instrumental in the company’s global growth. The company continues to attract engineering talent from inside and outside their core industries, and recently opened a new “innovation center” in Portugal that focuses on research and development for new and existing markets.

Current CEO Reto Brader, who has accelerated the company’s transition to more cloud and SaaS solutions, jumped at the opportunity to join Barix after growing familiar with Rietschel’s continuously evolving vision. He finds Barix inescapable even while just going about his daily business.

One of Brader’s favorite stories is from a farmer in a rural northwest area of the United States who uses Barix to play music for 3000 cows on a 30-acre dairy farm. “It’s been running in a very harsh weather environment where the temperatures are very extreme and power issues abound, yet it all keeps running,” he said. “The creativity and innovation at Barix extends to our partners and customers that continue to find unique and compelling ways to use our products.”

Rietschel adds that the longevity of their installed products correlates with the longevity of Barix. “Our products are reliable and hold up well over years and even decades, and the more recent generations of our products will have even greater longevity through firmware updates,” he said. “While we have never been the biggest company, we remain profitable and have made it through 20 years and challenging business environments without ever laying off employees.”

— Brian Galante

Triton Digital is harping the addition of what it is calling “robust audit functionality” within its podcast platform, Omny Studio.

The new audit log within Omny Studio provides “an unprecedented level of tracking data that enables users to view who from within their organization or network have created, modified, or deleted a wide range of objects including chapter markers, clips, playlists, programs, and more,” Triton says.

Additionally, the audit log can be utilized to track network and organization activity, such as user settings, invites and permissions.

“We remain committed to providing our clients with powerful and innovative tools to support their enterprise podcast strategies,” said Sharon Taylor, Managing Director at Triton Digital.  “Our in-depth audit log was purpose-built to provide both users and their development teams with the granular information they need to efficiently manage and troubleshoot changes to their content and within their network or organization, enabling them to spend less time manually tracking activity and more time creating great content.”

The Omny Studio platform is used by such companies as Cumulus Media and Canada’s Bell Media.

Telestream, known for its file-based media workflow orchestration, media streaming and delivery technologies, has brought to market the latest version of Wirecast, its live production and streaming platform.

“The new version is filled with features that users have asked for as Wirecast continues to be relied on for remote production and live streaming as well as a capture source for further postproduction and editing,” the company says.

Wirecast’s Rendezvous peer-to-peer remote conferencing and multi-site production feature now includes a back-channel chat feature enabling behind-the-scenes messaging between hosts and guests. “Replicating an on-set comms network, it helps keep programs organized and professional with no surprises during live events,” Telestream claims.

For Wirecast Pro, the new Shot ISO feature allows users to independently record any shot to disk including Rendezvous shots, audio-only shots, or any user-generated shots.

The latest version also supports Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) output using the Caller
method with either x264 or Apple H.264 encoding. SRT is an open-source video transport
protocol that enables the delivery of high-quality and secure, low-latency video across the
public Internet.

The release contains several new features and updates as requested by the user
community. These include ProRes encoding on Windows, for both ISO recording and record
to disk; performance and efficiency improvements for playback of PNG animations, and
restoring the ability to easily bring audio from any application into Wirecast on a Mac.

At the same time, an updated Blackmagic SDK adds new resolution options and improves capturing at certain resolutions. Additionally, Rendezvous connection improvements provide users with better reconnection if Rendezvous guests are disconnected.

A new online event on April 1 will provide a spring convention feel to radio and pro audio professionals who want to learn about new products and technology and network with colleagues and manufacturers.

Future plc, the parent company of Radio World, has announced the Pro Audio & Radio Tech Summit, a free one-day online show produced jointly by Mix magazine, Pro Sound News and Radio World.

The event will feature a virtual exhibition floor, panel presentations, live chat and numerous media presentations showcasing technologies and trends in both radio and pro audio, on two separate session tracks.

“It’s been a challenging year across all entertainment and technology markets, but also a transformative one,” says Paul McLane, editor in chief of Radio World.

“We’ve seen changes in workflow, changes in how we collaborate, and rapid changes in distribution of all media. But users and manufacturers have stepped up, often in creative ways, to ensure that talented people have the right tools to produce quality audio and broadcast content. We plan to explore the state of the industry and highlight some of the trends and success stories from across the country.”

The event will use the vFairs virtual events platform, which provides attendees with an impressive convention-live user interface and facilitates interaction and networking.

The Pro Audio Track will feature sessions on remote production, the multipurpose house of worship studio, the rise of immersive music, audio networking technologies, and improved audio for education.

The Radio Track will feature sessions on hybrid radio, Android Automotive, AoIP, virtualization, streaming, and trends in transmission. These topics will be of interest to any radio broadcast manager or engineer who manages technology or uses it to advance their careers and business missions.

Learn more and register here.

The post Pro Audio & Radio Tech Summit Announced appeared first on Radio World.

A dramatic new transmission tower that stands above Istanbul, Turkey, includes 100 liquid-cooled Rohde & Schwarz FM transmitters.

The manufacturer said it was picked to provide FM infrastructure at the striking Camlica Tower by transmission service provider Kule Verici Tesisleri Isletim Ve Teknolojileri A.S. “after many other companies claimed the transmission challenge was impossible to achieve.”

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

R&S quoted the project management as citing transmitter efficiency and a small footprint as one of the reasons for choosing its model.

The visually striking TV/radio tower, about 1,200 feet high, is on a hill overlooking the city. According to news reports the structure replaces numerous older transmission towers, and features restaurants, observation decks looking out over the Bosporus Strait, and exhibits. It is expected to be a major tourist attraction.

See more photos of the structure.

Send news for Radio World’s Who’s Buying What coverage to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post R&S Celebrates Istanbul Tower Project appeared first on Radio World.

The battle of the QSRs is on at Spot TV, the latest Media Monitors Spot Ten TV report shows.

While McDonald’s remains a top 5 advertiser, Wendy’s is revving up its activity.

Please Login to view this premium content. (Not a member? Join Today!)