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The Bureau enters into a Consent Decree with Metropolitan Management Corporation of Tennessee

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Standard General and its leader, Soohyung Kim, may be intent on grabbing greater influence in the broadcast TV company it has invested in.

But, its latest attempt to woo over shareholders may fall on deaf ears. Why? TEGNA stock finished upward again on Tuesday, bringing it to its highest point in five years.

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In November 2019, paperwork was filed at the FCC indicating American General Media (AGM) would be growing its Bakerfield properties with a Class A FM licensed to Arvin, Calif., to the south on a high peak allowing the signal to reach the southern San Joaquin Valley.

It is now known that the deal never closed. Now, this FM is going to a woman in Glendale, Calif., who is agreeing to pay more than what AGM had planned to spend.

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In June 2013, David Walker agreed to purchase a Class C3 FM serving the Lubbock, Tex., market. Today, it is the “Red Dirt Rebel,” focused on Texas-flavored country music.

Walker hopes it will continue to serve as a home for this local music. But, that will only come with more financial stability.

His Walker Radio Group has voluntary filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

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As first reported Wednesday morning (4/6) by Streamline Publishing’s Radio Ink, Bustos Media Holdings has agreed to purchase an FM radio station with a broadcast tower due east of Portland, Ore.

Until recently, covering the Rose City wasn’t possible. Now that it is, Bustos isn’t waiting for the deal to close to attract new listeners. A format change has already transpired at this FM.

How much is Bustos spending to obtain it? We have the details.

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ENCO enCaption4 Sample Web Page

WAMU(FM) in Washington is using a captioning system from ENCO to put live automated transcripts of its programming on its website, serving deaf and hard-of-hearing audience members.

The highly rated public station deployed an enCaption4 captioning system.

“The Washington area is home to a substantial population of deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, including approximately 1,500 students at Gallaudet University,” the company stated in a press release. “The inspiration for WAMU’s captioning project came when a deaf political candidate seeking office in Washington requested to appear on the station’s popular ‘Kojo Nnamdi Show’ and wanted the result to be accessible to all of his constituents.”

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

A pilot project drew about 150 people watching the captions, and now the station plans to promote it to the general public.

ENCO enCaption4 rack hardware

To make it work, audio is taken from WAMU’s Telos Alliance Axia audio-over-IP infrastructure and converted by an Axia xNode to an AES/EBU signal that feeds the captioning system. “enCaption4 ingests the same on-air signal path being routed to WAMU’s transmitter and online streaming encoders, enabling live, 24/7 captioning of all of WAMU’s on-air content,” ENCO stated. The captions it creates are fed to the website, where they are displayed on a transcription page.

ENCO said WAMU also plans to upgrade its content management system to allow integration of internal data sources, which will provide a dictionary of local names and events. It also intends to integrate captions into its streaming player.

Rob Bertrand is senior director of technology at WAMU.

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

 

The post WAMU Puts Captioning to Work appeared first on Radio World.

As Q1 2021 came to a close, so did Star Communications Inc.‘s intent to own an AM/FM combo and an FM translator serving a small West Virginia city situated between Charleston and Parkersburg.

The facilities have been sold, and await FCC approval before being handed to a new owner.

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India is working to decide how to deploy digital radio on the FM band; and Nautel is calling attention to its part in that process.

The RF manufacturer noted that both Digital Radio Mondiale and HD Radio are being evaluated in digital broadcast tests in India.

“All India Radio, operated by Prasar Bharati, has been testing methods of broadcasting multiple digital signals from a single FM transmitter in order to provide a wider range of services,” it said in an announcement.

“Both DRM and HD Radio standards are being evaluated; in both cases Nautel’s proprietary Digital Multiplexing technology has been instrumental in demonstrating the full potential of digital transmission.”

Nautel’s user interface shows digital multiplexing that combines multiple digital signals in the FM band using HD Radio, left, and DRM.

Nautel CTO Philip Schmid is presenting a paper on digital multiplexing at this week’s ABU virtual conference.

The digital multiplexing concept allows a user to combine multiple digital radio signals in the FM band, which are received via existing digital radio receivers.

“Nautel transmitters using digital multiplexing allow broadcasters to operate multiple channel allocations out of one transmitter, one antenna, and one location, which reduces their equipment needs,” Schmid said.

[Related: “Digital Radio Mondiale in Focus in India”]

[Related: “HD Radio and Digital FM in India”]

Nautel said the tests done by Prasar Bharati “have successfully demonstrated the viability of operating up to six separate digital channels from one transmitter, each of which carries multiple HD Radio or DRM services. Each channel can be operated independently, allowing several broadcasters to use the same transmitter while maintaining control over their content and distribution.”

Schmid said the concept is a suitable solution for nationwide rollouts of digital broadcasting, “especially in applications where multilingual services are required.” He also said the technology is applicable to single-frequency networks, with some of the content remaining local or regional while other channels are sent nationwide.

Nautel was involved in the rollout of digital MW broadcasting in India; 33 NX Series transmitters cover most of the country with a DRM signal.

The post Nautel Participates in India’s Digital Tests appeared first on Radio World.

It’s been nine months since Philip Falcone exited HC2 Holdings Inc. under a black cloud, with accusations that Falcone defaulted on loans leading to today’s efforts under new chief executive Wayne Barr Jr. to raise capital by divesting non-core assets.

For Falcone, he’s swiftly moved on, and in Q1 2021 became an active buyer of low-power TV stations through a newly created entity.

He’s at it again, and has just entered the Pacific Northwest’s biggest market.

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Xperi says the pandemic has increased the importance of personal vehicle and in-dash infotainment, and that “this is especially true for Millennials and Gen Z.”

It cites a survey of about 1,000 adults in the United States that was conducted in January on behalf of Xperi subsidiary DTS, which released the findings.

Xperi makes automotive technology platforms like DTS AutoSense, DTS AutoStage and HD Radio, and it is highlighting results of the survey that support the importance of car radio, personalization and hybrid radio features.

[Read: Xperi Has Big Ambitions for DTS AutoStage]

“Close to half (47%) of all vehicle owners feel their personal vehicle is more important than ever to them today versus pre-COVID, with only 6% saying their vehicle is less important as they no longer commute, according to the survey,” the company stated.

“The survey also found that nine out of 10 vehicle owners say it is important to have radio in their dashboard, with nearly 80% of Millennials valuing radio in the dashboard more than their generational counterparts (Gen Z/GenX/Boomers). The pandemic has also changed content consumed in-vehicle, and the significance of in-vehicle dashboard entertainment personalization has increased.”

It found that 91% of vehicle owners believe it is important to have radio in their dash, with 72% saying it is indispensable or very important.

The survey was done by Engine Insights. Xperi quoted Eric Corliss of the survey company saying it was notable that Millennials value radio in the dashboard so highly.

Xperi also said the survey supports the importance of personalization, cost-free content and “service following,” being able to continue listening to a station digitally when the car has gone out of broadcast range. That’s a feature of hybrid radio platforms like the company’s DTS AutoStage.

 

 

The post Xperi Says Pandemic Put Emphasis on Dashboard appeared first on Radio World.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When it comes to texting and hand-held communications, there’s perhaps no group of National Capital Region residents more experience and savvy with such devices as the Gallaudet University student body and faculty.

This Northeast Washington institution has provided higher education opportunities to the deaf and hard-of-hearing for generations. While TV has been, along with print media, major services consumed by the hearing impaired, radio has been left out.

American University‘s NPR Member station, across town in Northwest Washington, has changed that — thanks to ENCO.

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To bring WAMU-FM‘s programming to all Washingtonians, the station deployed an enCaption4 captioning system from ENCO.

This generates live, automated transcripts of its on-air audio via the WAMU.org website — not so dissimilar to the audio transcripts of FCC open meetings found on the agency’s website.

As of today, live on-air captions remain in beta test. “We’re working to add live real-time captions to our radio broadcast,” WAMU says. “While we continue to refine this early release effort, please pardon our errors and inaccuracies.”

Interestingly, the caption feed is several seconds ahead of the audio streaming feed; this suggests the captions are synched with the over-the-air broadcast.

The inspiration for WAMU’s captioning project came when a deaf political candidate seeking office in Washington requested to appear on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show and wanted the broadcast to be accessible to all.

“At that moment, it stood out to us that we hadn’t been serving that important part of the population before and that there was demand for bringing our content to this audience,” said Rob Bertrand, WAMU’s Senior Director of Technology.

For that particular broadcast, the station used a service provider with live human transcription and live sign language interpretation for that particular broadcast. From there, Bertrand knew that a different approach would be needed to serve the hearing impaired community on an ongoing basis. “The timing of the content can be unpredictable, which means we can’t schedule a transcriptionist or sign language interpreter,” Bertrand said. “We realized there was now technology that would allow us to automate the process. Automated closed captioning has existed for television for some time. What if we could take the equipment used to generate captions for TV, and instead use it for radio to bring captions to our website?”

The enCaption4 was selected by Bertrand after learning of lots of positive feedback from broadcasters using it for television. “We did a demo of enCaption4, and our web development team came up with a way to present the captions it creates on our website,” he said.

How does it work?

Audio from WAMU’s Telos Alliance Axia audio-over-IP backbone is converted by an Axia xNode to an AES/EBU signal that serves as the input to enCaption4. Then, enCaption4 ingests the same on-air signal path being routed to WAMU’s transmitter and online streaming encoders, enabling live, 24/7 captioning of all of WAMU’s on-air content. The captions created by enCaption4 are then fed to the station’s website, where they are displayed in a dedicated transcription page.

As a pilot project until now, WAMU developed a small but loyal following, with roughly 150 people routinely watching the station’s captions for around 30 minutes per day. WAMU expects this to grow once the service starts getting promoted.

Furthermore, WAMU plans to upgrade its content management system to allow integration of its internal data sources with enCaption4, thus providing a dictionary that will further increase the accuracy of WAMU’s captions with the spellings of challenging local names and events.

The station also ultimately intends to integrate the captions directly into its core streaming player.

— Reporting by Brian Galante. Editing by Adam Jacobson.

Adam Jacobson is a 1994 graduate of the American University School of Communication.

It started off as a Generation Z and Millennial-focused news and information offering distributed strictly in the “over the top” (OTT) space. Then, it morphed into a MVPD-distributed cable channel.

Now, Newsy is headed to free-to-air television as a “DigiNet,” come this autumn.

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TORONTO — Exactly one year ago, he was named VP/Sales at Specialty Data Systems (SDS), following a 13-year stint as a senior sales manager at Wide Orbit.

Now, this familiar figure to radio station engineering pros is being mourned, as Jon Crossland has died. He was 68 years old. The cause of death was not released. However, SDS President Dave Cole said Crossland’s passing was sudden.

Crossland spent his formative years in Hood River, Oregon. Professionally, his Radio career includes a 12-year stint as a Regional Sales Manager with CBSI/Wicks Broadcast Solutions/Marketron. He also spent some 17 years in radio station management, and is a former Sales Manager at Entercom’s Seattle station group.

Circa December 1979, Crossland was in charge of KBFM-FM “B104” in McAllen-Brownsville, Tex.

— Editing by Adam Jacobson in Boca Raton, Fla.

The growth of iHeartRadio and the reboot of Radio.com as Audacy have certainly gathered the broadcasting world’s attention. What does this mean for TuneIn, which grabbed a significant share of the audio streaming consumer pot in the mid-2010s, only to see key U.S. radio broadcasting companies develop their own “walled gardens,” if you will?

A recent RBR+TVBR column on audio streaming prompted recently arrived TuneIn CEO Rich Stern to reach out, and he’s our guest on the latest InFOCUS Podcast, presented by dot.FM.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: TuneIn CEO Rich Stern” on Spreaker.

PILOT, the innovation initiative of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), has revealed this year’s recipients of its annual media technology and innovation scholarships.

The awards, valued at $2,500 each, will be presented to four college students — two undergraduate and two graduate — for pursuit of studies related to broadcast or media technology and innovation.

The scholarship program was launched in 2019 and is administered in partnership with the Broadcast Education Association (BEA).

This year’s winners (and the schools to which they plan to apply their scholarships) are as follows:

• Destney Johnson, Grambling State University
• Christi McGahan, Liberty University
• Sophie Theiss, Gulf Coast State College
• Julie Young, Loyola University of Chicago

Eligible academic areas for scholarship applicants include broadcast television or radio engineering and technology, broadcast content creation including sports and news production, web and online media, mobile media, media-related information technology (IT), multi-platform audience measurement and media technology research.

“The NAB is excited to work once again with BEA in presenting these PILOT scholarships to worthy students as they pursue careers in broadcast and media technology,” said Sam Matheny, the NAB’s executive vice president of Technology and chief technology officer. “Helping young people better understand our industry and its challenges will inspire fresh thinking to engage future opportunities.”

BEA Executive Director Heather Birks added that the partnership it has with PILOT “is dedicated to supporting the next generation of media innovators, and these scholarships will further our mission of fostering future leaders shaping broadcast radio and television.”

For further information, please visit nabpilot.org/scholarships.

A key provider of digital media tools and workflow products has purchased an application used around the world by broadcasters, production companies and post houses to streamline content creation workflows.

Genstar Capital’s Telestream is buying ContentAgent from Vecima Networks.

ContentAgent is an application used around the world by top tier broadcasters, production companies and post houses to streamline content creation workflows, built to automate common tasks such as camera card ingest for editorial teams and creating file-based deliverables such as broadcast masters and viewing copies.

“ContentAgent has done very well in the production and post production markets and we intend to bolster continued development and utilize its strengths as we continue to expand into additional markets including creative agencies and corporate enterprises,” said Dan Castles, Telestream’s CEO.

ContentAgent contains a graphic user interface and benefits for those in field production and in the post production process.

The ContentAgent team, based primarily in the United Kingdom, will be fully integrated into the Telestream family.

Existing customers can expect to see additional resources being deployed to support ContentAgent around the world, Telestream says.

LOS ANGELES — The maker of facility management software for broadcast and media companies has closed on its acquisition of Net Insight subsidiary ScheduALL.

The acquisition was first announced on February 24 by Xytech.

Xytech will continue to offer the MediaPulse facility management software and the MediaPulse Managed Cloud.

“We are excited to see what the future holds with the acquisition of ScheduALL complete,” said Xytech CEO Richard Gallagher. “These are two of the strongest companies in the resource optimization industry, and by joining forces, we are profoundly improving scale, offering even better solutions customers and are well positioned to take advantage of new technologies. We are thrilled to welcome ScheduALL customers into the Xytech family.”

Customers of both Xytech’s MediaPulse and ScheduALL will experience no service interruptions. This acquisition, Xytech says, allows it to tap into ScheduALL’s experience in the transmission market.

The pandemic has increased the importance of the personal vehicle and in-dash infotainment today, versus pre-COVID, a new study shows.

And, it appears this is especially true for Millennials and Gen Z.

So says a national CARAVAN survey conducted by ENGINE Insights. The survey was conducted on behalf of DTS. As such, it is no surprise that it is highly supportive of broadcast radio consumption while in the car.

Still, the findings are telling, regardless of the sample size or where the respondents came from.

According to the survey, radio is “indispensable/highly important” to seven out of ten vehicle owners, with nearly 80 percent of Millennials who participated in the study valuing radio in the dashboard more than their generational counterparts (Gen Z/GenX/Boomers).

“This new survey reveals key trends driven by the pandemic, including the rise in the importance of both the personal vehicle and in-dash infotainment, as well as a change in the kind of content listened to in-vehicle,” said Eric Corliss, Manager at ENGINE Insights.

He was particularly struck by some of the demographic data. For example, Millennials value radio in the dashboard highly, with 78% saying it is indispensable and that households with children are most likely to find their vehicle more important today — and to view it as a place of refuge.

Furthermore, these demos, along with Gen Z, are the most likely to place greater importance on dashboard entertainment/information today, versus pre-COVID, Corliss said.

Personal Vehicle Grows in Importance – Place of Refuge

The CARAVAN survey also finds that 47% of all vehicle owners feel their personal vehicle is more important than ever to them today versus pre-COVID, with only 6%saying their vehicle is less important as they no longer commute. Those who say their vehicle is more important now are equally likely to cite as reasons: a discomfort with public transportation or ride-sharing, and a perception of their vehicle as a place of refuge during these challenging times – and these numbers are even higher for those with children in the household.

The bigger takeaway: Nine out of ten vehicle owners participating as respondents say it is important to have radio in their dashboard, with over half wanting it as the anchor of their media diet.

Other key findings include that dashboard entertainment/information has become more important in the pandemic because of the ability to listen to music as an anxiety reliever, given all the bad news and stress in the world (especially true for Gen Z) and the ability to access local news/pandemic bulletins.

More than half say the kind of content they listen to in their vehicle has changed versus pre-pandemic.

Jeff Jury, GM for the Connected Car division of Xperi, comments, “Given how highly Millennials value today’s radio, its relevance to the vehicle dashboard is confirmed for decades to come. This study also reinforces that car owners are looking for a dashboard that offers infotainment content that is personalized, discoverable, and textually and visually-rich.”

Personalization Key

Four in five vehicle owners say it is important for their in-vehicle dashboard entertainment to be personalized to their particular tastes and interests and this is increasingly relevant to young consumers, Gen Z (91%) and Millennials (89%). Top reasons for the importance of personalization include not having to fiddle with controls while driving, too much content clutter and being used to having relevant content pushed to them on other digital platforms.

Then, there’s the peacocking. The DTS-sponsored survey finds that four in five vehicle owners say “no-cost listening choices are important and relate to the sentiment that, with so much great broadcast radio and free, discoverable content available, it makes no sense to pay.”

Those at Sirius XM and individuals privy to in-car use of Apple Car Play-friendly apps including iHeartRadio and Audacy (formerly Radio.com) may have something else to say about that.

That’s not to say digital consumption of radio isn’t important. Being able to continue listening to a radio station digitally when the vehicle has gone out of broadcast range is also important. And, compared to their older counterparts, Millennials and Gen Z place greater importance than older demographics on having content relevant to what they listen to “discovered” for them, and having rich visual/textual information about the artist and song they are listening to.