Industry News

The author is president of V-Soft Communications and Doug Vernier Telecommunications Consultants. This is one in a series of articles about how to get the most out of various popular broadcast products.

Lost the lease on your tower? Need to find a better channel? Can you increase power?

These are the common questions posed by FMCommander users. Here is how you can make the best of V-Soft Communications’ widely respected FM channel-study program.

Need a new tower site? Start the program and enter your station’s call sign, then click the “Compile” button to create your job file. (In this case we have used KAZY.) The program will access the V-Soft FCC database, updated daily, to find all the stations that must be protected by the reference station under the rules:

Within a few seconds the program will show you the minimum separations channel study:

Well, it looks like your station already fails the minimum separation required to KCWA. The user can see the situation graphically by opening the “Separations Mapping” screen.

The big plus mark reference site must not be inside another station’s separation circle. The radius of this circle is the Sec. 73.207 required minimum distance between stations based on their class. As you can see, the site is inside the separations circle for KCWA. This can happen if one or both stations use the Sec. 73.215 short space rules. But can the station be moved to a different tower that can satisfy the rules?

To look for usable existing towers click open the “Map Information“ window and click the bullseye icon to see the default coverage of the reference station. Any new tower location must satisfy the FCC requirement for the 70 dBu to cover at least 80 percent of the principal city to which the reference station is licensed (note that is barely the case for the now existing tower).

Click on any of the towers to move the reference station to the selected tower. For this example, we will click on the tower to the west of Cheyenne. The tower I.D. number and heights are listed immediately below the tower.

Looking at the updated main screen table, we find that that besides the overlap with KCWA, we now have another problem with KMAX-FM. Notice that, on the Main screen, KMAX-FM is now colored magenta (below). This means that the site fails to meet the minimum 73.215 short space distance to apply the required (U-to-D) contour-to-contour rules. As you can see by the maps, there are no other towers that are outside KCWA circle.

This likely means that a new tower must be built at a nearby site that would properly serve the principal city and that would not make the short space contour overlap worse. The application at such a site must show that, based on the protected and interference contours of two stations, there is no overlap that would cause interference. When the lightning bolt icon is clicked from the Map Information screen, the screen will show the contour relationship of the reference station and KCWA.

As one can see, there is no contour overlap and the site meets the 73.215 short spacing requirements. It appears that the current tower’s location is the only area that meets all the requirements.

Got a suggestion for a product you’d like to see in this series? Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Tips for FMCommander Power Users appeared first on Radio World.

As first reported by RBR+TVBR on August 7, 2019, the FCC said Cumulus Media violated the terms of a Consent Decree reached in 2016 to civilly resolve a violation of the commission’s sponsorship ID rules.

The matter originally involved a New Hampshire radio station. But, two Detroit-market stations; stations in the Michigan markets of Flint and Ann Arbor; and a Macon, Ga., AM were found to make similar violations of FCC regulatory policy.

This resulted in a hefty Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture. Now, despite the dissent of Democratic Commissioner Geoffrey Starks, the Commission has signed off on a forfeiture order.

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Who knows why the last couple of months have seen an explosion in broadcast/podcast microphones but enjoy the bounty.

The latest is TASCAM’s TM-70, a supercardioid pattern microphone with a dynamic element “for live broadcasting, podcasting, film dialog, and audio streaming.”

[Check Out More Products at Radio World’s Products Section]

The company lists the frequency response at 30 Hz–20 kHz.

The company said, “the TM-70 was specifically engineered to capture what it is pointed at, effectively isolating sound sources such as directional dialog. The mic’s super cardioid directivity makes it resistant to ambient noise, thus enabling users to achieve a clean, clear audio signal that results in first class speech intelligibility.”

It ships with a shockmount, six-foot mic cable and a tabletop mic stand.

Info: www.tascam.com

The post TASCAM Joins the Mic Rush appeared first on Radio World.

The author is executive director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters. NFCB commentaries are featured regularly at www.radioworld.com.

This week, ethical breaches at the New York Times’ radio offerings came to a head. The lessons of how content and errors in judgment related to it can impact a station’s visibility in the community are matters worthy of reflection.

On Jan. 11, the Public Radio Program Directors association sent a letter to the New York Times, raising concerns from nearly 30 stations about ethical failures involving many parties. One of the Times’ recognized names, Michael Barbaro, host of “The Daily,” is at the center of the scandal.

[Read: Community Broadcaster: Making Sense of Chaos]

The Times lays out the criticisms, which include Barbaro allegedly pressuring reporters around coverage and failure to disclose his romantic relationship with Lisa Tobin, the executive producer of the now discredited “Caliphate” podcast. Andy Mills, implicated in past controversies at WNYC, is also among the names raised amid these issues.

At least one station, Houston Public Media, has dropped “The Daily,” which became a syndicated radio offering last year. Tobin, Mills and Barbaro have yet to issue their own statements, though the Times has noted Barbaro regrets some of his actions.

The signatories of PRPD’s letter take a very clear position on programming that should be instructive to every station. “[M]illions of Americans rely on our news organizations every day as one of their most trusted sources of information and we are accountable for all the programming that we provide to them,” they write. “That trust, and our responsibility in upholding that trust, is the very foundation on which we operate; it is the most important and sacred bond that ties us together. When that trust is called into question, we must respond. We must make our very best decisions about the programming we deliver and ensure it meets the high standards that our listeners expect and demand from us, while also staying committed to the standards by which our newsrooms operate.”

In brief, when programming does not live up to the trust listeners put in it, such stumbles put the station in a position where its credibility and trust as a whole are put into question. In economically challenging times, no station can really afford to have audiences feel like the outlet can’t be trusted with its programming, because that cascades into every relationship including giving.

For many years, community radio stations took a laissez faire approach to programming, believing that individual statements of paid and volunteer producers on air were up to them. Sometimes this could result in creative radio, such as the freeform radio movement of the 1970s and 1980s. At other times, it could result in broadcasting random opinion and conspiracy theories. In the last 10 years or so, however, more stations realized what larger outlets did before — the listener generally believes that the medium is responsible for what it puts on the air.

Today, it is common for community radio to ensure producers get training about what language is legally and ethically permissible. Plenty of stations still adhere to an open-ended approach that relies on producers to handle the airwaves well. Yet no station is immune from weighing out the interests of an individual producer and the station’s status in the city.

Community radio has come a long way in appreciating the art of radio requires an audience to make it magical. Trust is key to such a bond.

The post Community Broadcaster: Off-Air appeared first on Radio World.

Cumulus has failed to convince the Federal Communications Commission to reduce a $233,000 fine for violating sponsorship identification rules. The FCC also scolded the company for violating terms of a consent decree.

Broadcasters are required to disclose information about sponsors of paid-for programming. The commission decided last summer that various arms of Cumulus had aired paid programming without sponsorship ID announcements 26 times, and failed to notify the FCC about 13 of them as required by a 2016 consent decree that resolved earlier violations.

[Read: Broadcaster to Pay $125,000 as Part of Civil Penalty and Consent Decree]

Cumulus didn’t contest the findings in August but wanted the penalty reduced to the base penalty of $104,000. It said that the higher fine is excessive and argued that earlier incidents should not be used to justify a higher penalty because Cumulus had subsequently been reorganized, went through a transfer of control and now had a different board.

But in this week’s order the FCC wrote, among other things: “The respondent’s implication that it is a drastically different organization post-transfer is belied by the fact that its core senior management remained unchanged by the transfer of control.” And it stated: “The commission expects parties to honor agreements made in consent decrees, and when parties fail to do so, it is a very serious matter.”

Cumulus also had argued that its overall record of rule compliance is “as good as or better than any other large broadcaster in the industry,” that it has a “stellar” reputation, that management has focused on adherence to FCC rules, and that out of approximately 135 million ads during the three-year period covered by the consent decree, there were only two occasions of sponsorship ID noncompliance.

The commission dismissed those arguments too, saying, among other things, that it doesn’t take a company’s overall size into account as a mitigating factor. “To the contrary, if a corporate entity chooses to acquire many stations, it must ensure that it scales up its compliance efforts accordingly.”

Read the order.

The post FCC Confirms Cumulus Sponsor ID Penalty appeared first on Radio World.

The violence at the U.S. Capitol prompted some poetic words from Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel when the Federal Communications Commission met this week.

She made time in her remarks during the online meeting to talk about her feelings after the insurrection.

“The images of that day linger. They are hard to shake,” said Rosenworcel, who prior to the FCC was senior communications counsel for the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

[Read: Newest Commissioner Urges Cooperation, Peaceful Transfer]

“I worked for many years in the Capitol. I know its towering heights, secluded corners and labyrinth hallways. But it’s not the loftiness of those spaces that I find most compelling. It’s what’s down below on the floors,” she said.

“I’ve traversed them too many times to count, heading back and forth, clicking on the tiles in less-than-sensible work shoes. I think the most beautiful floor tiles in the Capitol are the mid-19th century encaustic mosaics. The clay is inlaid, so the colors in the tiles are especially vibrant and diverse. It’s like the metaphor for our union is right there on the ground. Even where these mosaic floors are uneven and worn, what strikes you most is the durability. They have survived so much in our history.

“History, of course, is always being written. The violence done to the Capitol last week is an especially ugly chapter. To see those sacred spaces desecrated stings. To see those gorgeous floors smeared with feces and hate hurts. To see the Confederate flag paraded across those tiles sears and burns. And to watch those disowning the hatred that brought us here when for too long they walked too casually alongside it is difficult.”

“It was Martin Luther King Jr. who said: ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that.’ Now we have an opportunity to lean into the light.”

Wednesday’s FCC meeting also was the last for Chairman Ajit Pai and the first for Commissioner Nathan Simington.

Rosenworcel, a Democrat considered to be in the running as the next FCC chair, thanked Pai, a Republican, “for his years of public service” and praised him “for the work he has done to help keep those who work here safe during this pandemic. He went above and beyond to keep the staff of this agency informed and engaged in a time of real crisis.”

The post Rosenworcel Poetic About Capitol appeared first on Radio World.

Beasley Broadcast Group shares finished Thursday’s trading at $1.97, rising 4.8% as the media company in eSports and radio programming disclosed an early look at its Q4 2020 results that are decidedly positive.

With the COVID-19 pandemic hammering revenue, any single-digit year-over-year dip can be viewed as a good thing. And, that’s where Beasley stands: the company generated net revenue of approximately $67.4 million to $67.9 million for the three months ended December 31, 2020. That compares to reported net revenue of $72.1 million for Q4 2019, representing a year-over-year decrease of between 5.8% and 6.5%.

For Q4, Beasley’s estimates a year-over-year decrease in commercial advertising revenue due to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, partially offset by growth in digital, esports and political revenue.

Meanwhile, Beasley says its Q4 “Station Operating Income,” a preferred non-GAAP financial measure, increased by approximately 23.1% to 28.8% year-over-year to approximately $19.2 million to $20.1 million. This compares to reported Q4 2019 SOI of $15.6 million.

Furthermore, Q4 2020 EBITDA increased by approximately 25.0% to 33.8% year-over-year to approximately $17.0 million to $18.2 million, compared to $13.6 million in Q4 2019.

How did Beasley do it? A reduction in operating expenses and corporate overhead,  realigning a company-wide cost structure, political advertising, and “an expected gain on a land sale” in Q4 2020 were noted.

What is that land sale? Look no further than Charlotte, where real estate developer Beauxwright purchased a 5.397 acre site utilized by expanded-band WBCN-AM 1660 and an adjacent 0.1 acre property for approximately $5 million.

Townhouses will pop up where the station’s single tower now sits, just north of Five Points Park in northern Charlotte.

WBCN-AM is dark. However, its “Fox Sports Charlotte” programming lives on via an FM translator fed from a HD multicast signal.

Network advertising sales executive Deidra Hoye has been named SVP/Ad Sales as part of a department-wide expansion at Sun & Fun Media’s radio syndication company Key Networks.

Hoye is based in Los Angeles and was previously VP/Network Sales for iHeartMedia-owned Premiere Networks. She had been with Premiere since 2001. Now, Hoye will oversee Key Networks’ newly expanded sales team.

Among the recent hires are VP/Eastern Sales Maggie Nugent Sisco, Vice President/Midwestern Sales Brian Pollina, and Supervisor of Sales Support & Operations Michelle McLynn.

Sisco joins Key Networks from Podcast One, where she was Vice President/Director of Sales, Eastern Region.

Pollina was previously with United Stations Radio Networks, where he was VP of Digital Assets and Midwest Sales for the last eight years of his 12-year career there.

McLynn joins Key Networks from Westwood One, where she was Affiliate Services Manager.

The Colorado cities of Aspen, Steamboat Springs and Vail are famous for their ski resorts.

In each of these locales, low-power TV stations have been licensed to serve local viewers.

Now, they are being snapped up by Ravi Kapur.

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In May 2015, the Rev. Denny Hazen passed away, leaving behind his wife, Marge.

Both were widely known across Northeast Ohio for their long-running broadcast ministry, which saw the launch of a TV program and ownership of radio stations.

Now, one of those FMs is being spun.

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