Industry News

If you watch NBC‘s affiliate in markets such as Buffalo and Portland, Ore., you’re in no danger of facing any sort of channel change. The same can be said for NBC affiliates serving the Tampa Bay region and Columbus, Ohio.

That’s because the Peacock parent is starting 2021 with two valuable new affiliation agreements — with some of broadcast TV’s biggest players.

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Early Monday (1/4), Nexstar Media Group confirmed that it and its operating partners have come together to renew the existing NBC network affiliations for 33 DMAs across the U.S.

The agreement covers a total of 29 Nexstar O&Os and four stations Nexstar operates via Shared Service Agreements with other owners, in order to comply with the FCC’s current media ownership concentration rules.

The stations include former Media General, and Clear Channel Communications, NBC affiliate in Tampa, WFLA-8. Other stations include WCMH-4 in Columbus, Ohio; KXAN-36 in Austin; WOOD-8 in Grand Rapids; WAVY-10 in Norfolk; KSEE-24 in Fresno; and WBRE-28 in Scranton-Wilkes Barre.

“We are pleased to renew our affiliation with Nexstar Media Group to serve these 33 markets,” said Philip Martzolf, the president of NBC Affiliate Relations. “We have a strong partnership with Nexstar and look forward to our continued collaboration to bring NBC programming to millions of households across the country.”

Nexstar President/COO and CFO Tom Carter added that the company, the largest broadcast TV company in the U.S. by number of stations, is “delighted” to extend its partnership with NBC on a long-term basis.

The news came just two hours after TEGNA, the broadcast media company formerly known as Gannett, signed its own “comprehensive, multi-year deal” that renews station affiliation agreements for 20 DMAs.

The agreement includes renewals for WXIA-11 in Atlanta; KPNX-12 (and Flagstaff-based repeater KNAZ-2) in Phoenix; KING-5 in Seattle; KARE-11 in Minneapolis; KUSA-9 in Denver; WKYC-3 in Cleveland; KGW-8 in Portland, Ore.; WCNC-36 in Charlotte; KSDK-5 in St. Louis; WTHR-13 in Indianapolis; WTLV-12 in Jacksonville; WGRZ-2 in Buffalo; and affiliates serving Knoxville; Portland, Me.; Waco, Tex.; Boise, Idaho; Twin Falls, Idaho; Odessa-Midland, Tex.; Beaumont, Tex.; and Bangor, Me.

It’s a major agreement for Comcast and NBCUniversal: The 20 markets renewed cover 17% of the U.S. audience and nearly 21 million households, and TEGNA is the largest independent owner of NBC affiliates.

“We are proud of our longstanding partnership that serves our communities,” TEGNA President/CEO Dave Lougee said. “This new multi-year agreement allows our stations to continue providing consumers and advertisers with premium network content such as TODAY, Sunday Night Football and the Tokyo Olympic Games. We value our collaboration, which enables us to provide must-have national content alongside our award-winning local news, weather and sports.”

 

NAB’s PILOT technology initiative recently posted technology predictions for the coming year.

A sampling of those related to radio:

PILOT Executive Director John Clark wrote that consumers will have one-on-one conversations with their preferred local news providers over voice platforms.

“Chatbots and messaging apps with these kinds of personalized ‘conversations’ are already prevalent in other areas (e.g., customer service apps), including news. As these interactions extend to voice platforms, we’ll see local news being delivered not just as a request for a headline but as a conversation about a headline.”

David H. Layer, NAB vice president, advanced engineering, said U.S. broadcasters will embrace RadioDNS, as hybrid radios for vehicles become more prevalent. He called on stations to create a RadioDNS Service Information file so they will display properly.

“Broadcasters can do this themselves or work with a number of service providers who can assist free of charge. It’s vital for broadcasters to do this so that automakers can be assured that their investment of time and resources in developing great radio receivers is appreciated and supported.”

Jeremy Sinon, VP of digital strategy for Hubbard Radio, says companies are “waking up to digital channels that have been available to us all along and getting serious about maximizing their potential.” Key trends, he wrote, will include “doubling down on podcasting and social media, producing more digital video (live and recorded) and taking advantage of the built-in discoverability potential of YouTube.”

Joe D’Angelo, senior vice president of radio at Xperi, said the past year demonstrated broadcast radio’s vital role “to inform, calm and entertain.” With the FCC’s approval of optional all-digital transmission on AM, he said, “look out for launch of some very exciting all digital AM formats.” He also highlighted the company’s rollout of DTS Connected Radio.

Beyond radio, Jason Friedlander, senior director of product marketing at Verizon Media, said that “edge compute” will begin to make personalized experiences a reality. Mike Kelley, vice president and chief information security officer at E.W. Scripps, said ATSC 3.0 will begin to have dramatic and unexpected impact.

And Sam Matheny, NAB’s chief technology officer and executive vice president of technology, wrote, “NAB Show will roar back as the world’s largest trade show for media, entertainment and technology in October. With the benefit of a vaccine and time, it will be an early success story leading the way for large-scale in-person gatherings.”

Read their comments and others.

The post Tech Predictions for Radio and Digital appeared first on Radio World.

Unless you’re from the Land of Lincoln, you likely haven’t ever heard of such Illinois communities as Argenta, Auburn, Hoopeston, Mowequa, Paris, Taylorville or Westville.

Thanks to small-market MVPD Sparklight and the owner of the FOX and The CW affiliates serving these towns, they’re now in the national spotlight.

Why? It’s just another retransmission consent impasse involving a licensee that has given sales and services needs to Sinclair Broadcast Group but needs to hash out a new agreement all on its own.

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There will be nearly 2 billion active subscriptions to on-demand video services in 2025.

That’s the key finding of a new report by U.K.-based research and analytical services firm Juniper Research — and good news for broadcast TV station owners.

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The Media Bureau has said yes to a media company’s Petition for Declaratory Ruling seeking FCC approval to exceed the foreign ownership benchmark.

It’s a victory for a Burbank, Calif.-based entity focused on Hispanic consumers reborn one year ago, when it exited bankruptcy, changed its name, and said goodbye to its founders.

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Tom Hartnett is the technical director for Comrex.

This article appeared in Radio World’s “Trends in Codecs and STLs for 2020” ebook.

Despite being around for decades, FM broadcasting remains the most popular audio media around. A lot of the reason FM thrives, despite the attempts to create a “better” digital alternative, is technical. FM was defined with technical standards that deliver a low noise signal that allows for easy reception in most environments. But more than that, FM was defined as having deviation standards that allow for an audio bandwidth that covers the majority of the hearing spectrum. Sure, modern audio media bests FM in frequency response and signal-to-noise, but the fidelity of FM remains “good enough” for the vast majority of listeners. So much more than features like stereo imaging and dynamic range optimization, it’s the fidelity of FM that keeps listeners engaged. The ability to hear the funky bass line along with the high-hat cymbal, or the ability to derive the emotional nuances of a speaker’s voice is what makes FM radio shine.

But any broadcast airchain is only as strong as its weakest link. With digital recording and production, it’s relatively easy to make a great-sounding in-studio product. But generating live, remote audio has always come with its own set of challenges and costs. Too many times, broadcasters have been willing to compromise on the fidelity of remote feeds for the sake of cost and convenience, airing live audio from telephones. Telephone systems, by design, convey only the fraction of audio spectrum required for intelligibility. They filter out lows to avoid noise pickup, and they filter out highs for reasons having to do with the dated economics of 20th century digital telephony.

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Comrex has built a company, and I’ve built a career, finding alternatives to live telephone audio for radio broadcasters. It doesn’t take any scientific studies or high-priced consultants to know that telephone audio is grungy, thin, and fatiguing to listen to at length. If the competitive challenge is to avoid listeners hitting the “next station” button, then maintaining listenable audio throughout your programming should be the primary goal. At the same time, it’s incredibly important that stations engage in their community (and monetize their brand) with remote broadcasting. Technology has helped combine these goals.

I’ll spare the reader a detailed history of this science, but a list of recent technology is helpful. Dedicated loops (when telephone tariffs reigned supreme), RPU radios, frequency extenders (maturing to multiphone line models), ISDN and POTS codecs each saw their era of popularity and utility wax, and each waned for their own reasons. Something new was always available that was more cost-effective or easier to procure. But the main objective — fidelity — was always either equaled or improved.

We all use IP pretty much exclusively for live out-of-studio audio these days, due to ubiquity and cost. And luckily, IP makes carrying higher fidelity audio feeds easy. Audio coding science has come a long way and implementations are now cheaper and lower power. Wireless IP has made the remote broadcaster’s dream a reality. It’s now possible to carry a handheld, battery powered device into the field, and generate programs that rival the sound of in-studio sources.

So game over, right? What could possibly come next? Problems remain to be solved. We still air telephone audio from listeners. Setting up a remote broadcast can still be a challenge for the nontechnical. And specialized audio encoding gear has significant cost.

Meanwhile, nonbroadcast industries have discovered that offering “toll quality” audio for communication isn’t good enough. Like broadcast, a competitive edge can be had by offering an experience with higher audio fidelity. The recent boom in video chat apps proves this point.

While audio challenges exist in that world with regard to echo cancellation and delay, fidelity has never been an issue. Developers saw early on that high-quality audio needs to be part of any system from the ground up. Facetime, Skype, Zoom, Teams, Messenger and Duo all use high-fidelity audio encoders.

Voice-over-IP systems, now common in office environments, aren’t constrained by the legacy telephone system within their borders. They can by default deliver high-fidelity audio encoders when talking exclusively over their LANs. Even on a relatively poor audio system like a telephone handset the difference between an in-office call and out-of-office call can be startling.

This is because calls outside the LAN must convert the fidelity of the audio to the “lowest common denominator,” which is the legacy phone system.

Mobile phone audio quality is a long-time frustration for broadcast. For programming with listener call-ins, there’s been a routine need to disconnect callers who are unintelligible. This makes programs suffer and wastes valuable airtime. But even here, we see that the industry has realized there’s not always a need to stick with legacy low-fidelity audio.

As mobile phones and networks mature, it’s becoming increasingly common to experience high-fidelity “HD Voice” calls between mobile callers. Modern audio encoders like G.722, AMR-WB and EVS are integrated into late model phones, and the voice-over-LTE networks that support this traffic are quickly replacing the legacy networks. Several carriers are able to cross-connect high-fidelity calls between them, expanding the number of users who experience HD Voice on calls.

On VoIP and mobile networks the existing challenge is the same: there’s no easy way to “bridge the gap” and bring this high-fidelity audio into a broadcast studio reliably. So even when calls originate from these advanced networks, the caller audio is converted into the thin fatiguing sound we all know, in order to be compatible with legacy “bridging” systems.

So the next step in the evolution of high-fidelity remote audio for broadcast clearly involves finding a way to leverage existing systems into the studio. While that work is underway, there’s already one existing tool that can be used today to improve telephone audio: WebRTC.

When I first introduced this concept to broadcasters several years ago, it was a hard sell as it was difficult to describe in a concise sentence. But don’t be afraid of the scary technical-sounding name. WebRTC is essentially a video chat app that’s built into virtually every web browser, whether desktop or mobile. It’s an open standard and allows anyone to create a video chat service without requiring any software installation on the participant’s system. That’s because the critical pieces are already in the browser, waiting to be “woken up.”

Like other video conferencing apps, WebRTC uses a high-fidelity audio encoder by default. This encoder is called Opus, and it’s becoming the de facto standard for live web conferencing.

Because WebRTC doesn’t require the video part of a call, every web browser, both desktop and mobile, can now be considered a high-fidelity audio encoder using Opus.

Using WebRTC can be as simple as subscribing to an audio-only service provider like ipDTL, Cleanfeed, or SourceConnect Now. This will require a pro-grade audio-ready computer at each end of the link. The Comrex Opal provides a pro-grade hardware solution that handles all the complexity within its server box.

Either way, by using WebRTC you’re leveraging the power of developments that were never intended to be used for broadcast. This is the way things have been done for decades — from POTS codecs, ISDN to IP, broadcast always finds a way to leverage new developments for their unique requirements.

We’ll continue to do that as existing “HD Voice” networks converge and interoperate. Maybe someday soon the goal of banishing telephones from the radio will come to pass.

The post As Remote Audio Evolves, Fidelity Reigns appeared first on Radio World.

Audio equipment maker TASCAM has added to its USB audio interface line with the US-HR series. These are high-resolution audio versions, 24-bit/192 kHz sample rate compared to the 24-bit/96 kHz of the current US line of USB audio interfaces.

The new kids match also out with the US line in its I/O complement with the US-1x2HR, US-2x2HR and US-4x4HR.

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The core of the US-HR line is the Ultra-HDDA mic preamplifiers with +48V phantom power. Naturally, the line is compatible with Mac and Windows systems.

The US-1x2HR has XLR and 1/4-inch inputs; the US-2x2HR and US-4x4HR offers XLR-1/4-inch combo inputs along with MIDI I/O.

TASCAM says that bundled free software includes Steinberg Cubase LE/Cubasis LE 3, IK Multimedia SampleTank 4 SE, and a free, three-month subscription to Auto-Tune Unlimited.

The maker also points to the physical build of the line: “[the] aluminum honeycomb structure on the side panels with [has] a slight upward tilt. This design not only provides a sleek, eye catching design, it also provides just the right amount of weight so the interface won’t move when cables are connected or disconnected. Equally important, the upward tilt provides the ergonomic benefit of being angled in such a way as to make these interfaces easy to work with.”

Info: www.tascam.com

 

The post TASCAM Adds to USB Interface Offerings appeared first on Radio World.

I’d like to kick this column off with a heartfelt thank you to all of the Workbench readers and friends who sent congratulatory words on reaching the 30-year Workbench milestone. It’s been great reconnecting with you, and I am truly blessed by each of you. Thanks for your support as we start year 31!

Not all wipes are created equal

One of those messages came from Pennsylvania’s Tim Portzline.

Fig. 1: Cleaning wipes may be conductive, posing a risk to electronic parts.

Tim has been reading the column since it first appeared, and he included his first submission with his latest note! He is now an engineer with the Pennsylvania House of Representatives while also doing contract work for several radio stations.

Tim notes that sanitizing wipes are a popular way to clean desks, countertops, doorknobs, etc., especially when trying to stop the spread of COVID-19. However, don’t forget that not all sanitizing wipes are safe for electronics.

He recently got a call from a radio clients about a PR&E BMX console that had failed after being cleaned with wipes that were not intended for use around electronics.

In fairness to the staffer involved, the product labeling didn’t mention anything about sensitive devices. But the liquid in the wipes apparently leaked between the modules and ran down the printed circuit boards below the console’s surface. Channels began turning on and off on their own, and the problem made operating the board impossible for a short time.

By the time Tim arrived at the studio, most of the solution had evaporated so the board was beginning to return to normal. But as a precaution, Tim removed the modules and cleaned them with isopropyl alcohol to eliminate any possible residue that remained.

Fig. 2: Note the resistance of a towel soaked in isopropyl alcohol.

After he finished working on the board, Tim got curious about whether the fluid in the wipes had any measurable resistance.

Ideally, the resistance should have been infinite. However, Tim measured as little as 28K-ohms across a small area with a digital multi-meter, as shown in Fig. 1.

The resistance was certainly low enough to interfere with normal circuit operation of the board, akin to dropping hundreds of stray resistors across the traces of the printed circuit board.

Taking the experiment a step further, Tim tested a paper towel saturated with 91% isopropyl alcohol, shown in Fig. 2.

Here the resistance was infinite, or at least greater than the 2M-ohm maximum resistance of the DMM, making it high enough not to interfere with most low voltage circuits.

So, Tim’s tip: Don’t assume that cleaning wipes are non-conductive! Check them first.

[Related: “Radio Equipment Pandemic Cleaning 101”]

Down the drain

ELWA Ministries Association is a U.S.-based nonprofit, nondenominational Christian ministry providing spiritual and physical aid to the West African country of Liberia.

In addition to a hospital and dental clinic, the organization runs ELWA Radio (Eternal Love Winning Africa), and we welcome their readership.

ELWA engineer Alan Shea writes about condensate drains, which we discussed in Workbench in October. Alan’s tip originates with his dad, who was also a broadcast engineer and was Alan’s first mentor.

To keep the drains clear, especially the trap where water can sit, take a piece of bare #12 solid copper wire and snake it through into the trap where it can sit. The copper leaches out into the trap water and helps kill algae by binding to it, which damages the algae cells, causing them to leak and die.

Another point while we’re on the subject of drains: If you have multiple air handlers, make sure that the condensate drain for each is plumbed individually outdoors, or to a larger drain.

Sometimes, to save time and installation cost, drains are tied together in a manifold-type arrangement. When the tech blows out one drain with compressed air, any algae plugs are simply blown into another A/C unit because of the manifold. Separate drains make more sense.

Alan also had an interesting experience with washing equipment. He encountered a piece of gear with a primary power supply toroid transformer that was a single piece of coiled-up steel. It was running hot, and constantly blowing the input fuse.

Alan realized that the steel laminations had too much eddy currents running through them.

He soaked it in a saltwater solution for an hour, then allowed it to air dry for a day. This created enough rust “insulation” between the laminations to cut down the eddy currents so that the toroid ran cool and no longer blew the input fuse.

Sometimes rust can be a good thing!

Down at the Shack

Any engineers with a little gray on the sides of their heads will remember the ubiquity of RadioShack. I and hundreds of other engineers used their parts more than once, in emergencies, to keep a critical function working.

RadioShack is a shadow of its former self. As a recent AP Business story put it, the company “was unable to capitalize on the PC boom that began in the mid-eighties … it also found itself largely on the outside of the portable device revolution of the aughts and drifting toward irrelevancy. It booked its last profit in 2011.” The brand has been through two bankruptcies in recent years.

Longtime Workbench contributor Dan Slentz dropped us a neat note about an online revival of RadioShack. According to business news reports, the new majority owner Retail Commerce Ventures is a retail acquisition group whose strategy is to buy well-known brands that can benefit from its e-commerce expertise. They previously bought Modell’s Sporting Goods and Pier 1 Imports out of bankruptcy.

The new RadioShack will be online, selling from its own website and via an Amazon storefront. Let us know of any experiences you have with it.

The existing 400 or so brick-and-mortar RadioShacks operate independently and remain open.

What’s hard to believe is that the brand will celebrate its 100th birthday in 2021.

E-commerce sites

Speaking of the internet, Frank Hertel, a consultant with Newman-Kees and another longtime Workbench contributor, was intrigued by the online store Ali Express, which is part of the Alibaba Group based in China that you may have read about. The site is www.aliexpress.com. It offers a most varied selection of “things” — wall-mounted stands, brackets, cables and even gaming accessories.

Have you had experiences good or bad with that e-commerce site or any other alternatives to Amazon, in shopping for things to help you in your engineering work? Drop us a note and let us hear about them.

John Bisset has spent over 50 years in the broadcasting industry. He handles western U.S. radio sales for the Telos Alliance. He holds CPBE certification with the Society of Broadcast Engineers and is a past recipient of the SBE’s Educator of the Year Award. Workbench submissions are encouraged, qualify for SBE recertification and can be emailed to johnpbisset@gmail.com.

The post Workbench: Germicidals May Kill Your Electronics appeared first on Radio World.

Younger listeners play music and shows online and from digital personal collections. My research finds that this music is distributed almost entirely in its original, unprocessed form (Getty Images/JGI/Jamie Grill)

The author is senior engineer with Cavell Mertz & Associates Inc.

Audio processing has reached a level of performance where audio content can have high loudness without the traditional artifacts of audible clipping, pumping, intermodulation distortion, etc.

Of course, audio processing in a broadcast medium is justifiable for over-modulation protection and combatting noisy listening environments.

Due to freedom from distortion in processors and loudness wars, however, much of radio has reached a state of hyper-compression, where already-compressed popular music is fed to multiband compressors and limiters that aggressively reprocess the audio.

This situation is hard to reverse in broadcast, where competitive loudness remains a concern, but I believe minimal processing may be the right direction for online radio media.

I hate to be nostalgic, but FM was once considered a “high fidelity” medium (I’m old enough to remember!).

Consumers used to buy exquisite, expensive tuners to get the best FM sound for their living room systems. Today a number of my non-technical friends don’t even hook up the antenna on their multimedia receivers.

What happened to that reputation, and is it connected to FM’s gradual loss of listeners to online media?

A look at the General Electric transmitter two-page ad in a 1940s issue of Broadcasting Magazine says a lot about FM’s change. (You can see it in detail by clicking the image.)

Click to enlarge.

The signal-to-noise ratio of the new FM system promised to deliver “double the Dynamic Range” of AM and remove “the unreality of artificially controlled sound levels that compress a fortissimo.”

Using an ingenious size comparison between AM and FM (using a photo of an all-woman orchestra during World War II) GE touted the “contrasts of sound intensities … in all its glorious realism.”

Along the way, years ago, FM radio got the idea that dynamic range had no value, and louder was better.

The development of stronger and stronger FM audio processors began. That seemed to work for FM for many years — after all, it was a portable and in-car medium with lower noise and wider frequency response than AM, as well as stereo.

However, the 2000s brought a newer medium: online digital audio that could be delivered to smart phones as well as home computers.

Is less more?

While FM’s decline of listeners may be due to a combination of causes, online audio (streams, podcasts and on-demand playout) have flourished.

Online audio is a 16-bit digital system having a dynamic range greater than 90 decibels, regardless of the bit rate, and lossy compression codecs have continued to improve in sound quality.

Younger listeners play music and shows online and from digital personal collections. My research finds that this music is distributed almost entirely in its original, unprocessed form.

This is true of major on-demand music services, and some are now are offering high-fidelity channels with higher bit rates and even “lossless” coding. The tracks are simply normalized (gain offset) to a common loudness target, without touching the dynamic range of the content.

In a recent project for a major radio group, I found that some online distributors of live station audio are using substantially less processing than their on-air broadcasts. Perhaps some are learning that “artificially controlled sound levels” are not preferred by listeners.

Similarly, podcasts — the fastest growing segment of online audio — are produced and delivered with little or no audio processing.

The target loudness of the online industry is changing to a lower value to permit greater dynamic range.

Rethinking the target

I have the privilege of chairing a drafting committee at the Audio Engineering Society, which is writing a new technical document for online audio parameters.

These interim specifications will evolve to a profile with even wider dynamic range to match audio-for-video standards — and we know how much dynamic range video services deliver!

Broadcasters are now faced with another choice if they adopt “hybrid radio,” which provides a streaming alternative to radio reception as listeners drive outside the broadcast coverage.

FM stations could choose to match the audio processing of their stream to the (hyper-compressed) broadcast audio, to avoid changes as the dashboard receiver switches between off-air and stream.

Or should they? Perhaps radio should reconsider what it broadcasts and move with the audio industry and away from heavy compression.

When hyper-compressed audio is normalized to the same integrated loudness as lightly-processed audio, a heavily-compressed stream sounds weak and flat by comparison. Compressing a stream to sound like air can’t compete with natural, dynamic sound.

Considering this, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the FM stations, too, returned their own air audio to a high-fidelity condition, as FM promised 75 years ago?

A free Radio World ebook explores trends in processing for radio, including the management of over-the-air and streamed signals. Find it at radioworld.com/ebooks.

The post Is It Time for Radio to Restore Dynamic Range? appeared first on Radio World.

Minnesota broadcaster Greg Borgen died in December. He was 64.

According to his obituary, he died unexpectedly on Dec. 21.

He was owner and president of Borgen Broadcasting, licensee of Twin City-area stations WDGY(AM) and WREY(AM) and several associated FM translators; and he has been a member of the board of the Minnesota Broadcasters Association.

“Greg was a second-generation radio broadcaster who was known, loved and admired throughout Minnesota, western Wisconsin and beyond,” the obituary read. “He was a true family man, who did everything and more for his family that he loved so dearly.”

 

The post Greg Borgen Dies, Age 64 appeared first on Radio World.