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Commission adopts a Report and Order modifying technical rules to promote expanded use of distributed transmission systems or single frequency networks by broadcast television stations

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The Media Bureau summarized key accomplishments of the Bureau from 2016-2020 at the January 13, 2020 Open Meeting

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Chicago is very much a competitive PPM market. While it is hard to be perfect, seconds of off-air time are costly, and minutes of off-air time are just not acceptable. If you’re not on the air with PPM encoded audio, you are losing ratings.

Handling emergency audio situations has evolved considerably since I first came to manage the engineering department here at Crawford Broadcasting’s Chicago operation six years ago. I remember early on that there seemed to be no plan. When something out of the ordinary occurred, like the automation system stopped playout, the operators seemed to have no plan what to do.

When this type emergency occurred, if it was a time when engineers were on duty, they would leave the room to try to find an engineer without putting anything on the air first.

Many times, when I walked into a control room, the staff would be throwing their hands in the air, saying something like, “I didn’t do anything!” to which my reply would be, “You’re right, you didn’t do anything!” In other words, why were you not getting any audio on the air before seeking or calling an engineer?

To me the priorities of every operator should be, Number One, making sure no objectionable material gets on the air — we don’t want a $325,000 fine — but Number Two, keeping the meters moving! It’s a competitive PPM market, and the minutes waiting to find an engineer to fix the issue are just not acceptable. The duty of every operator is to make sure we have audio on the air, then call engineering to get things fixed and back to normal audio.

About the only plan that seemed to exist among the operators was perhaps to find a CD to put on the air. Often, they didn’t know where the emergency CD was located, or they didn’t even know such a thing even existed.

Basically, there was no plan, and very little training for such events. The plan seemed to be call engineering and throw up your hands to make sure everyone knows it wasn’t your fault.

A few years back, we purchased USB thumb drive players to place at the transmitter sites for emergency audio. Using silence detection and macro programming in the Burk ARC Plus Touch remote control units, we designed a system that will play audio from the USB stick when both STL paths are silent for two minutes. Then, when normal audio is restored for a solid two minutes, it will revert back to it.

This is great for dire emergencies like the STL equipment being down or the studio generator not coming on during a power outage. However, for events like audio problems in the studio, when we have operators on hand, two minutes is an eternity!

So we wanted to give the operators a way to do the same thing we had at the transmitter site, but this time in the studio.

Dedicated fader

To achieve this, we added USB thumb drive players in the studio. We again put emergency audio on thumb drives and these were attached to the players by chains so they wouldn’t be lost.

While this was a better plan than CDs that would get lost in the studio, we still found operators not remembering in an emergency where to locate the drives, how to get the fader on the board changed to the player, and how to get it on the air. By the time this all took place, the two minutes were up, and the transmitter site player was already on the air.

I knew that the WheatNet-IP blades offered internal audio players, but we were still in a mixed infrastructure with the control rooms still having G5 Wheatstone control surfaces connected to the legacy TDM system. We also had some WheatNet-IP blade infrastructure with interconnections to the TDM system.

Still, it was going to be an issue for the operators to use the internal players if they had to dial up a fader on the old G5 surfaces

We went through our studio rebuild this past year and now have an entirely WheatNet-IP infrastructure. With that, we are now using the LXE control surfaces, which also took us from 16 faders to 20 faders. This allowed me to have a dedicated fader just for an emergency audio source.

We purchased four licenses, one for each station, and activated the Audio Player tab on each of the M4 microphone processing blades in the control rooms.

The audio player screen in the Wheatnet Navigator app.

We then assigned them to the very last fader on each of the LXE control surfaces.

Now here’s the catch: We wanted to make things as easy as possible — to have an emergency audio source that the operators could get on the air with one button. This means we had to make it difficult for the operators to change the fader to any other audio source.

One cool thing about the LXE control surfaces is that they are very programmable. Just about every button on the surface can be customized to the need.

Well, the first thing I did after assigning the emergency audio player to Fader 20 was to defeat the source select knob to remove the ability to change to the source at all on that channel. I also programmed the soft key to only select the emergency audio player.

I then took the program bus select button on the channel and made it into a tally-only button, showing that the fader is in program. Hitting the button does nothing to turn the fader program on or off. I instead used the second soft key button to be the program assign button on the fader.

The emergency channels are on the far right on the LXE surfaces.

The idea is that this fader is always in program and can’t be easily taken out of program without special knowledge. We still have conscientious operators who turn the program bus assignment off on what they deem unnecessary faders at the beginning of their shift, a practice that you usually only find with our very experienced operators but is not desired in this instance.

I, of course, enabled all the necessary steps so the player is remote started. The result is that the operators have an emergency audio source that only takes two steps: Turn up the fader and push the “on” button.

In my mind, this should mean that anything more than 10 seconds of silence is unacceptable. If the main audio source stops playing, that first instinct should be to immediately press that “on” button and then call engineering.

This article originally appeared in the Local Oscillator newsletter of Crawford Broadcasting.

Rick Sewell, CSRE, CBNT, AMD is engineering manager for Crawford Broadcasting–Chicago. Radio World welcomes tech tips and story ideas at radioworld@futurenet.com.

 

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Starting March 1, Emmis‘ Indianapolis radio stations will have a new Market President.

It is a woman who has spent 22 years with Emmis in a variety of radio sales and promotions leadership roles.

She’ll replace a 11-year veteran who will be moving on.

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The Pearl TV broadcaster business group is applauding the decision by the FCC to give broadcasters more flexibility when using a Distributed Television System (DTS) for NEXTGEN TV broadcasts using ATSC 3.0.

Public and commercial broadcasters had sought the refinement of Commission rules, in order to ensure that a local broadcaster could better serve its market of viewers.

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CHICAGO — WGN America, the cable network that’s getting a major news-focused overhaul under new owner Nexstar Media Group, has selected a VP of Creative Marketing and Brand Communications to help growth the operation’s presence even further in 2021.

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The E.W. Scripps Company has appointed a veteran television sales executive to serve as its new Chief Revenue Officer.

Today marks his first day in his new role.

Landing the position is Michael Teicher.

He’ll be responsible for developing the company’s ad sales strategy for all the Scripps networks across all platforms, including general market, direct response, programmatic/digital, long-form and sponsorship advertising.

He reports to Jonathan Katz, chief operating officer and head of entertainment for Scripps networks.

Teicher joins Scripps from 20th Television, where he served as EVP of Media Sales, overseeing the syndication for all Fox and Debmar Studios Syndicated television shows, including Modern Family, Family Guy, Family Feud, and The Wendy Williams Show.

Teicher was previously EVP/Media Sales for Warner Bros. Domestic TV Distribution, leading the sales efforts for all of the company’s syndicated television shows.

He also spent more than a decade in ascending roles with Turner Broadcasting Sales,  where he developed new, incremental revenue streams around the Turner and Time Warner portfolio while also helping to create and run the company’s marketing solutions group.

Teicher also had successful sales stints with Major League Baseball Productions, Replay TV and Harmonic Communications.

“Michael is one of the industry’s most widely-respected and seasoned sales executives, having successfully brought to market some of the most popular shows on television,” Katz said. “As we bring ION into the fold and combine our networks, his experience positioning top brands and creating unique and powerful marketing solutions for advertising partners across multiple platforms will be a tremendous asset.”

The modern era’s biggest competitor to broadcast media content consumption, Netflix, on Tuesday afternoon released its Q4 2020 results.

How did it do? Perhaps the Q1 2021 forecast is a better topic of discussion. While 21.5% year-over-year revenue growth was seen for Netflix, net income was down.

Why? Global Streaming Paid Net Additions were down year-over-year in Q4.

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For exactly 82 minutes until what seemed to be, at least to laymen, an abrupt end, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in the FCC and NAB’s case seeking the high court’s reversal of the Third Circuit Federal Appeals Court remand of its cross-ownership media rule rewrite.

What’s the key takeaway from the session? Several justices seem confused by what they are being asked to judge, and the Justice Department’s Deputy Solicitor General serving as the FCC’s counsel was definitely on the hot seat.

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When Marci Ryvicker was Managing Director of Wells Fargo Securities, a role she had for 16 years before exiting in August 2018, she was a champion of Entercom Communications.

Some 2 1/2 years later, her successor at Wells Fargo is equally enamored with the audio media company, as he’s just given its stock an important vote of confidence.

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The U.S. Supreme Court for exactly 82 minutes on Tuesday morning (1/19) heard a consolidated oral argument in FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project. That’s the case that sees the Commission seeking the reversal of the Third Circuit Federal Appeals Court’s remand of its cross-ownership rule rewrite.

The questions from the justices and, in particular, how the FCC’s legal counsel addressed some of them, was just one of the topics Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth co-Managing Member Davina Sashkin discussed in an exclusive conversation with RBR+TVBR Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson.

What was on the mind of the justices? What happens now? When can the broadcast media industry expect a ruling? Sashkin shares all in this podcast, presented by DOT.FM.

Listen to “The InFOCUS Podcast: Davina Sashkin” on Spreaker.

Earthworks Audio has introduced its Icon USB and Icon Pro XLR microphones, both intended for use in podcasting, remote working, streaming and home recording.

The condenser-type Icon USB offers a frequency response of 20 Hz to 20 kHz, used a cardioid polar pattern, and can take on up to 132 dB. Meanwhile, the phantom-powered Icon Pro expands on those specs with a frequency response of 20 Hz to 30 kHz and a maximum acoustic input of 139 dB. Both versions weigh 1.5 pounds.

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

Designed with an eye towards providing visual flair for those who appear on camera with their mics, the Icon series mics are stainless-steel constructed. Earthworks partnered with Triad-Orbit to design and build a custom desktop microphone stand that ships with the Icon microphones. The integrated M-2R swivel ball joint can be disconnected and remounted on any studio mic stand or boom arm.

Icon Pro looks and feels similar, but is hand-tuned with an extended frequency response; the capsule has a faster rise time speed of 11.67 microseconds. Because it is an XLR broadcast microphone requiring 48 V of phantom power, it offers extended headroom and dynamics. The mic ships with an integrated Triad-Orbit M-2R adapter as well.

Both microphones are currently shipping. Since all components are machined and hand-assembled in Wilton, N.H., the initial launch will cater to U.S. distribution. Icon retails for $349 and Icon Pro sells for $499.

Info: https://earthworksaudio.com

 

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Emmis Communications will promote company veteran Taja Graham to become president of its important Indianapolis radio market on March 1.

She’ll succeed Bob Richards.

Graham is currently VP of sales. The company said Richards recommended Graham for the role and that he will pursue other career interests after a transition period.

In the market, Emmis owns news/talk WIBC(FM), adult contemporary WYXB(FM) “B105,” country WLHK(FM) “Hank FM,” the multi-signal sports/talk “The Fan,” and Network Indiana.

Graham has been with Emmis for 22 years in a variety of radio sales and promotions leadership roles. She is a graduate of the Radio Advertising Bureau’s Mentoring and Inspiring Woman in Radio (MIW) Rising Through the Ranks program.

The change was announced by Chairman and CEO Jeff Smulyan.

Bob Richards has also been an executive with Cumulus and Susquehanna. Smulyan commended him for his successes with revenue and ratings at Emmis Indianapolis.

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