Industry News

It appears that despite its appeals, Florida Community Radio won’t able to get the noncommercial station that it had planned to build in Horseshoe Beach, Fla.

This is a case at the Federal Communications Commission that involves the legal concept of “tolling.” FCC rules specify time limits on construction permits but also provide for them to be “tolled,” meaning extended, in certain circumstances like natural disasters.

In 2015 the FCC issued a CP for a new FM to be called WRDB, with a three-year deadline. Shortly before it expired in 2018, the applicant Florida Community Radio asked the Media Bureau for a delay, citing the effects of Hurricane Irma and the FCC’s decision to eliminate the main studio rule, which meant it needed to do more engineering analysis for an STL. The bureau gave a six-month extension, but only for the second reason.

[Related: “Radio Eyes Advantages of Deregulation”]

Then in October 2018, Hurricane Michael hit. FCR requested another delay based on the impact of that hurricane on its ability to construct the station; this too was granted.

Shortly before that extension ran out, FCR submitted another tolling request so it could perform an analysis of whether station power lines should be underground rather than on a pole and to do a structural analysis of the potential impact of a future Category 5 storm on its antenna. At this juncture the Media Bureau said it asked for specific information explaining how Hurricane Michael had prevented FCR from meeting its latest deadline but that FCR did not provide it.

The bureau denied the extension request, saying the studies involved could have been done within the extended construction term. This would mean no new station.

The applicant asked for reconsideration but the FCC denied it late last year. FCR, still hopeful, then came back with an application for review by the full commission, asking it to overturn what the Media Bureau had decided.

It said the CP deserved further postponement because the tower that FCR wanted to use is in a FEMA-designated floodplain area, and that the FCC is required to evaluate the effects of proposals in floodplains, “especially when such alternative steps being proposed … are meant to reduce or mitigate the risk of damage in anticipation of an act of God.” It raised other objections to the bureau’s earlier actions.

Now the commission has turned down this appeal. It said the latest argument tried to raise new matters that its staff never had the opportunity to address (but would have rejected anyway). It also said the appeal tried to reintroduce an issue it had already decided when it denied tolling after the earlier hurricane. And, among further reasons, it said FCR has not shown impediments caused by Hurricane Michael “but instead now predicates its argument on potential future acts of God.”

In short, the commission has dismissed or denied all the arguments in the application for review; so barring further actions, there’ll be no CP for Florida Community Radio, and WRDB’s call letters now bear the dreaded “D” prefix for deleted.

The post FCC Rejects Appeal From Florida FM Applicant appeared first on Radio World.

Talk about a product fit for our times. Riedel Communications has come out with a “distance monitoring device” called DisTag that you stick in a pocket or wear around your neck.

It says media professionals are among those who could benefit from it.

“DisTag is a reliable and precise instrument that immediately alerts its wearer via haptic, visual and acoustic signals whenever the mandatory minimum distance to other people is about to be breached,” states the German company. (We wonder if the gizmo can be made to shout “Danger, Will Robinson”…)

You can set the proximity limits per your local situation and regulations for social distance. Battery life is 10 to 12 hours before recharge via micro USB. We asked the company for its price and will post it here when confirmed.

Riedel says possible users include those who work in “media and event production, industrial operations, retailers, medical facilities, public and cultural institutions, and schools and universities.”

The company makes various types of audio, video and data gear for specialty markets, including intercom systems.

The post Come No Closer: Riedel DisTag Keeps You at a Distance appeared first on Radio World.

One of the more notable jobs in the U.S. public radio sector is that of VP radio at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington. CPB now has named Jacquie Gales Webb to fill that role.

She succeeds Erika Pulley-Hayes, who in January became the president/CEO of WMFE/WMFV in central Florida.

The VP radio is responsible for CPB strategies to “strengthen the ability of public radio stations to create high-quality, multi-platform content and to grow their audiences.”

Gales Webb is not a stranger to prominent projects. She has managed grants on a number of familiar ones including the StoryCorps Mobile Booth and One Small Step projects, WGBH’s World Channel, the Urban Alternative music format, radio station engagement for the PBS series “Country Music” and NPR’s international coverage.

“She has been integral to the development of projects to help minority and rural stations increase content production, community engagement and revenue capacity,” CPB stated in the announcement. She also helped shape the Texas Station Collaborative, now the NPR Texas Hub, and managed other journalism collaborations.

The announcement was made by CPB Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Levy, who praised Gales Webb’s earlier work as an award-winning producer as well as her accomplishments with CPB.

She’s also the longtime host of a gospel music show on WHUR in Washington; CPB said she is recognized as a national authority on gospel music.

The post Jacquie Gales Webb Is New VP for Radio at CPB appeared first on Radio World.

Broadcast software developer ENCO has announced the appointment of Shane Finch as sales director for the broadcast and pro AV markets.

[Read: Gene Novacek, Founder of ENCO, Dies]

Finch previously worked at software developer MusicMaster where he liaised with ENCO in product development and distribution as vice president, business relations. He has also worked as an on-air broadcaster and in radio station management.

ENCO President Ken Frommert said, “Shane’s experience with sales management and customer relations, along with his direct familiarity with ENCO’s technology and business culture, makes him a natural fit for this important role in ENCO’s continued global growth.”

The post ENCO Appoints Finch appeared first on Radio World.

In what it is calling a “new chapter,” the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers has announced its SMPTE 2020 Annual Technical Conference will take place as a “remote experience” when it gets underway in November.

“We are thrilled to deliver an immersive, world-class experience to our community around the world and we encourage each of you to think of this as YOUR SMPTE 2020 — regardless of where you live,” the announcement reads.

SMPTE continues that the remote experience is eliminating the traditional barriers of travel, accommodations and scheduling conflicts, while also offering an interactive experience with learning and networking opportunities for a “broadly accessible and truly global conference.”

This is another major conference that has opted to go the virtual route in place of a traditional physical conference this year, following in the footsteps of NAB — for both its spring Las Vegas show and fall New York event — as well as IBC and more. SMPTE made no mention of the coronavirus pandemic in its official announcement, but SMPTE Executive Director Barbara Lange mentioned it during a video on the remote experience; the other conferences cited the pandemic as a key reason to go virtual.

SMPTE did share what they will be offering during this remote experience. The theme for this year’s conference is “Game On,” and a full day will be focused on the convergence of esports/gaming and media technology.

The virtual environment that attendees will have access to is expected to include a main conference hub, meeting rooms, theater space for sessions and an exhibition hall with private meeting space. Attendees can create their schedule based on their interests and schedules, SMPTE says.

The SMPTE 2020 Annual Technical Conference will be held from Nov. 10–12.

The post SMPTE 2020 Says “Game On” to Remote Experience appeared first on Radio World.

The author of this commentary is automotive partnerships director for Radioplayer.

Audi and the VW Group recently renewed their partnership with Radioplayer to continue supporting their brilliant hybrid radio (FM, DAB and IP seamlessly working together with no need for users to choose platforms) and to collaborate on the development of future in-vehicle radio experiences — ensuring Audis, VWs, Porsches and Lamborghinis will all continue to have the best radio experience in their dashboards.

The new deal builds on a successful collaboration that’s been in place since 2017 and lays the foundation for a longer-term relationship. It’s a great example of Radioplayer’s partnership model with the automotive industry — providing a high-value, low-cost partnership direct with broadcasters to develop world class radio experiences in the car.

To do this Radioplayer provides official broadcast metadata direct from thousands of radio stations, technology development support and user-interface design consultation, all free-of-charge wherever possible.

In return, we ask to collaborate on development of the future radio experience. Collaboration with car manufacturers and technology suppliers is essential if radio is to remain competitive in an increasingly crowded dashboard.

We believe that hybrid radio offers the best radio experience today and that’s where our focus is. To ensure continual improvement of radio’s dashboard experience we need constant discussion between car manufacturers and broadcasters to agree and deliver a joint roadmap that keeps pace with both listener expectations and in-car technology. Radio broadcasters must be at the heart of these discussions spanning metadata, technology and the user-interface (UI).

Our official broadcast metadata is of vital importance to a good user experience and as more countries and broadcasters join Radioplayer it will keep on improving. We’ve seen too many instances where unofficial metadata from third parties is either wrong (station logos) or altered (broadcast streams), leading to a poor user experience, so we make it as easy as possible for broadcasters to get their official metadata to us. We’re also proud and active members of WorldDAB and we’re supporting their forthcoming campaign to raise awareness among broadcasters of the importance of making metadata available for car dashboards.

We are technology/platform neutral, and are big supporters of open standards such as RadioDNS and DAB+. We closely monitor technological developments and intervene when we feel radios prime position in the car could be impacted.

One current example is Google’s Android Automotive Operating System, which is starting to grow in importance as it’s adopted by more car manufacturers. We began work in late 2019 on a project to ensure hybrid radio is technologically possible in Android Automotive and the capability is baked into the core source code (known as AOSP) and available to everyone. It’s a complex, emerging area but we’re leading on behalf of our broadcasters and are open to wider collaboration, hopefully including Google, as it could have huge benefits for the radio experience.

We’ve also seen that the standard broadcast radio user interface in Android Automotive is currently poor, a list of FM frequencies, no station names, no station logos, no now-playing information. So at the same time as working on the hybrid capability we’ve also developed a great user interface within Google’s template guidelines which we hope will demonstrate what can be done. Our UI designs are based on the WorldDAB Automotive User Experience Guidelines which we ask all our car manufacturer partners to respect.

In the future there will be other UI design challenges as we merge on-demand and podcast content with live radio and create a personalized experience for listeners. We intend to be at the center of that to help our broadcasters and automotive partners benefit from each other’s expertise. To get it right we’ll need to work together.

As the broadcast and automotive sectors emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic into a difficult economic climate, we believe that deeper collaboration offers a win-win that will undoubtedly improve the radio experience in connected cars. We also want to help ensure radio development projects, particularly on hybrid radio, remain on-track and unaffected.

Of course, we know the pandemic is likely to impact wider automotive trends. Understanding these trends and the implications on longer-term planning for the in-car experience is an important part of how we intend to work to foster collaboration with car manufacturers and keep broadcasters at the heart of radio’s dashboard development.

[Related: “Hybrid Radio Picks Up Momentum”]

The post Broadcasters Must Be at the Heart of Radio’s Dashboard Development appeared first on Radio World.

The author of this commentary is director distribution of the BBC World Service.

In response to Frank Karkota’s commentary “No to Digital AM”:

The AM radio band represents a very valuable resource to society and to broadcasters. It offers the opportunity to transmit programs over large areas and well beyond line of sight.

In the present age, digital technologies present a threat and an opportunity for radio broadcasters. Digital technologies generate radio frequency noise that degrades the audio performance of analog AM services (drive past an ATM listening to AM radio and you’ll know what I mean) but also an opportunity to transform the quality of service delivered in the AM band.

Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) supports such a transformation. It not only makes the transmitted signal more resilient but allows much lower power level to be used to cover the same area as an analog service. At the same time it delivers additional information to the listener enhancing the service that can be offered and making services accessible by brand and not just frequency.

Broadcasters can achieve reduced operating costs and deliver higher value services to their audience, which remain free to consume (this is important in many markets where the population cannot afford to access internet services). Commercial receiver solutions are being worked on and being improved all the time. There is an effective aftermarket solution (to retrofit in existing vehicles), and the latest information can be found at drm.org/receivers.

We have recently presented improvements to the open source DREAM software that allow it to work with the readily available Raspberry Pi device. As such it provides an entry-level receiver ideally suited to the hobbyist.

We live in a digital world, and kids today are equipping themselves with the skills and tools needed to live in it and shape it. Broadcasters can take many benefits from that same technology, and we owe it to society to continue to use frequency bands that support audiences remote from or not linked to other forms of connectivity and not allow populations to be constrained by line-of-sight services. DRM digital transmissions in the AM band are the way forward.

[Read more articles and commentaries about digital radio trends and technologies.]

The post BBC’s Fry: Digital in the AM Band Is the Way Forward appeared first on Radio World.

Kudos for the story of pre-vacuum tube transmitters [“When Brute Force Transmitters Ruled the Air,” RWEE, April 22]. In reading this item, there was one statement that has been bugging me: “True to Ohm’s law, when the voltage flowing through an ordinary resistor increases …”

What?

Later in the same paragraph: “increasing voltage results in lowered current flow …” Huh?

I’ll admit that I’ve been out of school for many years; however, I don’t believe the behavior of the elements of Ohm’s Law have changed very much.

Voltage does not “flow,” current does.

Voltage is a difference of potential that causes current to flow.

Did I miss something here?

Author James O’Neal replies to the above letter:

Thanks Clay for catching the slip-up. Apparently, my fingers weren’t fully engaged with my brain when I typed that.

I should have written: “True to Ohm’s law, when the voltage across an ordinary resistor increases, the current flowing through it increases proportionally (I=E/R).”

Please forgive this transgression. I sentence myself accordingly to 60 seconds of being in close proximity to the stench that results from attempting to pass an excessive amount of current through a carbon resistor!

I do defend my statement in the next sentence that in the case of a negative resistance, an increase in voltage results in a reduction in current flow. As I tried to make clear in the article, this (negative resistance) is a special case and does not apply to ordinary resistive circuit elements.

The post Letter to the Editor: A Difference of Potential appeared first on Radio World.

Citing links to the Chinese government, the Federal Communications Commission has said no, at least for now, to an application to deliver Mandarin Chinese content from a studio in California to a radio station in Mexico for rebroadcast back into the United States. And it ordered a halt to the arrangement within 48 hours.

This is the latest twist in a story that has been making headlines for a couple of years. The setup — allowed under a previous special temporary authority — has been the subject of complaints from a low-power FM station that serves the Chinese-American community and, more prominently, from critics like Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio who are worried about national security.

The LPFM station has argued that the cross-border deal was “unlawful,” that one of the companies involved is a front for the People’s Republic of China and that the programming is propaganda targeting the large Mandarin-speaking population in the Los Angeles area — allegations that the companies have denied. Meanwhile Sen. Cruz has pushed for legislation to flatly block cross-border broadcasts by entities associated with the Chinese government.

In dismissing the application to deliver content from Irwindale, Calif., to AM station XEWW in the Tijuana/Rosarito area, the FCC did not comment on the content of the programming, and it left the door open to reviewing the situation once it knows more about the companies involved. But it did use the phrase “California studio with links to Chinese government.”

The original application came from GLR Southern California and its parent H&H Group USA, which took an ownership stake in the Mexican AM station two years ago. “The application was dismissed because the parties failed to include in their application a key participant, Phoenix Radio, which produces the Mandarin programming in its studio,” the commission said in a press release highlighting its decision.

“Phoenix Radio is partially owned by two entities with Chinese government ownership, Extra Steps Investment Limited and China Wise International Limited … Phoenix Radio’s known activities at this broadcast programming studio are such that, without reviewing its role as an applicant, the FCC could not evaluate the proposed service.”

The applicants in early 2019 did file an extensive document replying to FCC questions about its business arrangements that included some descriptions of the role of Phoenix. The bureau says now that if a revised application is filed that includes Phoenix Radio, the commission “would review it under applicable law.”

GLR Southern California and H&H Group USA told the commission in 2018 that this arrangement is “not a front” for the Chinese government, and that even if the commission evaluated content, “it would find the programming leaves no room for propaganda.” They have said that the FCC has reviewed “countless programming arrangements that are legally and functionally indistinguishable” from this one.

In that same filing, they said that the LPFM that objected to the arrangement “bases its arguments on wholly unsupported allegations of improper influence in a self-serving effort to protect itself from competition to the Southern California Chinese-speaking American audience. There is a history, and always a danger, that in times of insecurity citizens and the government will make harmful generalizations about race, language and ethnic heritage. … The facts are that the station is carrying programming produced by a publicly traded company that provides Chinese-language programming around the world, including throughout the United States to major TV distributors.” But those arguments have not sufficed to convince the FCC to allow the arrangement to continue, at least for now.

The post FCC Says No to Cross-Border Mandarin Chinese Setup appeared first on Radio World.

Add another to the list of industry events going virtual this year: the National Student Electronic Media Convention, which had been planned for Baltimore in late October.

It will be online-only instead. The convention is scheduled to go to Orlando in 2021 and return to Baltimore in 2022.

College Broadcasters Inc., which produces the gathering, said its board has been weighing the matter for some time.

“To ensure that our decision was made with the greatest possible amount of data and transparency, we surveyed our membership multiple times and convened several focus groups.”

[Related: “College Radio: After the Shock, Resistance”]

But it cited “the uncertain budgetary situation” faced by many members, institutional travel freezes, a predicted spike in cases in the fall “and the reality that many people are understandably uncomfortable traveling or gathering in groups right now.”

For a current list of events and cancellations, see the Radio World events calendar at https://www.radioworld.com/calendar.

The post College Media Convention Will Be Virtual-Only appeared first on Radio World.