Industry News

The tools of radio newsgathering have evolved constantly. Shown in 1989, British Conservative politician Chris Patten does a radio interview in London. Two portable recorders are visible. (Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Digging through a cabinet one day at my first radio news job at WOSH in Oshkosh, Wis., I discovered a Uher portable reel-to-reel tape recorder. News Director Bud McBain told me the German-made recorder had been standard gear for an earlier generation of radio news reporters.

That exotic Uher stayed in the back of my mind for years. I was curious to know more about how it fit into the history of radio news.

When my radio news career began in the early 1970s reporters were already depending on cassette machines for field reporting. The Sony TC-110 was ideal for broadcast news and used widely.

In those days, just about every commercial radio station had its own news department. At WOSH, and the other stations where I worked for the next decade, we covered the legislature, city council, school board, county board, courts and every local news conference we could get to.

We used alligator clip leads to tap our recorders into telephone handsets for feeding our live and recorded reports from the field to the newsroom. Usually our reports included actualities from newsmakers, sometimes they were ROSRs — radio on-scene reports — that used ambient sound in the background.

Back at the station the news anchor could go live at any time and speak to a reporter or newsmaker anywhere in the world, as long as they were near a telephone.

One day I heard a report on the police scanner that snow had caved in the roof of a local grocery story. With just minutes to my next newscast I consulted the city directory and called the barber shop across the street to record an eyewitness report.

Our tape-recorded audio cuts conveyed a sense of immediacy about news events every time we played them on the air.

Eventually FCC deregulation and radio consolidation removed the incentive for every station to do news, and a large percentage of stations freed themselves from that obligation.

I left my last full-time radio news job a decade and a half ago but I couldn’t forget that snazzy Uher recorder in the WOSH news cabinet. How did local radio news become the powerful medium that I discovered when I graduated from college and became a reporter?

Gathering stories

The stories of how news figured in radio’s beginnings in the 1920s, and how radio networks were created so that the world could be informed of the momentous events of the late 1930s and the 1940s, are well told in authoritative sources such as Erik Barnouw’s “A History of Broadcasting in the United States” trilogy and Ed Bliss’s “Now the News.”

But these sources typically shift focus to television when they get to the 1950s. They fail to tell the story of what I would call The Golden Era of Local Radio News.

My search for books on the history of radio news after the development of television was fruitless. I had to go to other sources: former supervisors and their colleagues who were all a decade or two older than me and who had lived through this transitional period.

Radio news in the first half of the twentieth century was almost always live, for two basic reasons. The networks had policies against using recorded audio, and the available recording technology was bulky and unreliable. The news of that day was reported through wire copy and occasional live special event coverage. Wire recorders existed but they were not user-friendly.

The first major innovation that reshaped radio news was the magnetic tape recorder, which made recorded events sound as if they were live. German engineers played an important role it its development, and the technology helped trick the Allies during World War II. Captured models were spirited back to the U.S. right after the war ended. Magnetic reel-to-reel tape recorders began to be used in radio stations in the 1950s.

Wayne Corey was with WBCH in Hastings, Mich., when the station acquired two state-of-the-art, portable Ampex recorders in the early 1960s. They were in two big suitcases and were used primarily in the main control room. They could also be deployed for special events.

“I took one of them out to tape football games and occasionally set one up at a city council meeting,” he said. “The things we taped were rebroadcast in long segments.”

At about the same time Jim Orr was at KCRG radio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He remembered noticing news sound bites, or actualities, starting to appear in ABC network newscasts in the early 1960s.

“Portable tape recorders were never used by newsmen at that station through 1964, possibly because the equipment wasn’t out there to any degree; it just wasn’t being done,” he said.

It took two more major technical innovations to complete the recorded audio revolution in radio news. The audio tape cartridge was introduced in 1959, and the tape cassette was introduced in 1963.

The tape cartridge used a tape loop of varying standard lengths to record commercials, news actualities, and other programming elements. After each play the cart would loop back to the beginning and stop. To be able to pop a cart in a player and press the start button was a great advancement.

“Even when properly cued on a rack-mounted reel-to-reel machine with remote start/stop switch right next to the mike button, there was always a risk of a wow sound as the reel to reel machine achieved full playback speed,” Orr said.

“The cart machine changed all that. Plus, you could have three or four cuts in the same newscast which would have otherwise required cueing and using four different reel-to-reel decks.”

Bill Vancil, a veteran programmer of radio stations in Illinois, Iowa and Wisconsin, said stations in the early 1960s typically used small reels (3 to 5 inches in diameter). “They had a wall of pegs with these little tapes that they would quickly play, rewind, and replace just as they used cart machines later.”

Putting news stories on the air with actualities using tape cartridges was becoming common in 1966, when Orr arrived at KSTT in Davenport, Iowa, to be a field reporter and news anchor. Cassette recorders were available at this time, but the audio quality was deemed not yet equal to the larger tape format. Orr and other news reporters still preferred using portable reel-to-reel recorders, that by this time had shrunk to the size of a dictionary.

That’s when the Uher entered the story. Dick Record, a former news reporter at WISM in Madison, Wis., and then general manager of WIZM in La Crosse, remembers his Uher well.

“It was smaller and easier to carry and operate. It used a 5-inch reel but had several speeds including, I believe, 15/16ths inches per second. That meant I could tape a whole county board or city council meeting and get audio cuts for air use.”

Music and news

The technology of the 1960s allowed for more aggressive radio news coverage at the local level. Record believes it was actually the competitive radio environment that drove the change.

In earlier decades, when network entertainment ruled radio, listeners tuned in to hear their favorite shows rather than a particular radio station. After network entertainment jumped to television, innovative radio programmers seized on the idea of jukebox-style music programming. The Top 40 format arrived to revive radio in the mid-1950s.

When another decade had gone by, there were a lot of Top 40 radio stations. Many were searching for programming distinctions to help them attract larger audiences. They discovered that a station that had reporters on the street, covering local news events, had a promotional advantage. Unlike the early days of radio, newscasts were now heard hourly, even more frequently during rush hour.

Vancil recalled that this was a time when powerhouse Top 40 stations successfully combined fast-paced hourly newscasts with rock and roll music and personality announcers. They promoted news heavily, and in many markets they became a more popular news source than the traditional full-service stations.

He cited examples such as WISM vs. WIBA in Madison; KSTT vs. WOC in Davenport; KIOA vs. WHO in Des Moines; WLS vs. WGN in Chicago and WMCA vs. WNBC in New York City.

The 1960s and ’70s was an exciting time to be a radio news reporter. Society was going through major changes and there was lots of news to report. There were hundreds of radio news jobs across the country, with many stations in each market competing to have the best news coverage.

Since then the technology has evolved in other directions thanks to digital platforms, smartphones and the internet. Today there’s still radio news but it’s primarily confined to a much smaller number of all-news, news/talk and public radio stations.

However, there are thousands of men and women who share the memories of reporting news on the radio during the highly competitive Golden Era of Local Radio News.

Gordon Govier reported on news in Wisconsin, Ill., and Nebraska during his 30-year radio career. He produces a self-syndicated weekly radio program/podcast called “The Book & The Spade,” which covers biblical archaeology and can be heard at radioscribe.com.

 

The post The Golden Era of Local Radio News appeared first on Radio World.

Gary Fisher

The author is president/partner at Equity Communications, a radio ownership group in southern New Jersey.

It was a brisk chilly April 15 morning on the Black Horse Pike in West Atlantic City.

It should have been the start of another bustling summer season at the Jersey shore; but we had just finished chatting with the mailman, who’d left without delivering any checks for the fifth straight day. (He did leave everyone else’s mail with Equity, since no other businesses in our five-story office building were open.)

This was exactly one month into what would become the depths of the pandemic.

No emails, no voice mails and 50% of Equity’s second quarter bookings had been cancelled in the previous 30 days.

Sales visits and phone calls were out of the question. No salespeople to make them, no clients to accept them. No local businesses planning their start-of-season promotions.

Phillies baseball, usually a $250,000+ revenue contributor for Equity, had been postponed indefinitely. The WZXL Beer Fest and Music Festival, a $100,000 event marketing revenue generator, was cancelled.

It was nuclear winter in April.

Biblical

My partner Steve Gormley and I formed Equity Communications in 1996 to hold nine radio stations and, more recently, a digital advertising and streaming business.

We’d been through 9/11, the 2006 financial crisis, Hurricane Sandy, the collapse of the local casino industry and the digital disruption of traditional media. But the pandemic and the plunge it created in revenues were like nothing we had ever seen. We’d spent 24 years building this company; almost half of it disappeared overnight. Earlier disruptions were rounding errors by comparison.

In March everything suddenly stopped. No cars on the road to listen to radio. No car dealers or casinos open to buy ads. No one at work to write checks for the ads we had already run.

The standstill was downright biblical. And Equity of course was not alone in that.

We had to take stock of everything we’d been doing for 24 years and put it through a COVID lens. Our company was forced to cut expenses, downsize staff, reduce salaries, reduce employee benefits, sell off assets and re-engineer its sales, programming and administrative departments.

Veteran AEs and DJs left, new digital salespeople emerged, hard personnel decisions had to be made. Legacy operations strategies and practices with diminishing effect were scrapped, new ones instituted. We listened harder to our clients and audiences to set our direction.

We were forced to get slimmer and faster. For Equity it was a complete reset.

Compressed changes

In a weird way we’d been prepared for this new economic reality. Our company had been growing its streaming audiences via websites and mobile apps, and had increased revenues five-fold by staffing up our highly successful in-house digital sales division.

The pandemic accelerated forces that had already been in play in advertising, delivering years of change in just a few short months.

From a sales point of view, everyone was thrust out of their comfort zones. From an expense control viewpoint, we stopped doing stupid, silly and fun stuff. From an operations point of view things, we looked at practices we’d deemed mission-critical and said, “Why in the world are we doing this?” From a content point of view, streaming music and digital programming, once thought of as an existential threat to over-the-air radio media, became our saviors.

We felt we had reinvent the company or we might not have one left. It was an opportunity to fast-forward modernization.

We took the approach that the pandemic didn’t happen to us, it may have happened for us. The worst crisis we had ever seen presented innumerable opportunities. We became the epitome of a modern media company.

We were at a bit of a disadvantage compared to local competitors like Comcast, Townsquare and the Atlantic City Press; we did not have the backing or liquidity of a larger corporation. On the other hand we had no debt or debt service to worry about.

We were also fortunate that Equity had an amazing core of a dozen or so employees who have showed up every day to keep the doors open. Staggered hours, skeleton staffing, physical distancing, separation, sanitation, ventilation, mitigation, lots of cleaning and masking kept us going.

An image from the Equity Communications media kit

These staff members, most of whom have been with us for well over 15 years, are the real architects of our reset — our essential workers.

Along the way Equity learned valuable lessons about dealing with adversity and with COVID. As cases start spiking again, our pivot may offer useful lessons to local businesses that have made it this far but may struggle to get through a tough winter.

Coming back

We’ve been telling our clients: We’re still here, we’re still big and popular, and now we’re more affordable than ever. Staying big, digital, friendly, local and cheap is our way through this.

We’re getting to the other side and are now seeing sequential improvement month after month. Our third quarter revenues improved by 66% over our second quarter, mirroring the recovery seen in other media companies. Actual forward pacing has returned for the fourth quarter as I write.

I’m encouraged that many banks, law firms, health care providers, car dealers, restaurants and casinos are calling staffs back to work. That should be a precursor to advertising and spending eventually coming back.

I’m sure most of the clients we’re Zooming with are still in their sweat pants and underwear; but it seems like more and more staffs are drifting back to work each week.

We don’t know what the coming quarters hold but we’re doing OK and our doors are open. We’re still here and we’ll be here.

I’m worried about projections that say one out of five small businesses will close this winter. But I hope after all our “eLectile dysfunction” calms down, there will be another round of stimulus for our clients. The real recovery will begin later in 2021 when everyone feels safe and people can eat in restaurants, hang out in bars and shop in stores without a concern.

When the exciting new vaccines and therapeutics are served up, combined with a side order of herd immunity, I think our local radio and digital will really take off. And with our new lean-mean-machine expense structure we should see actual profit and cash flow again.

We’re not bulletproof; but I feel we’ve toughened ourselves against second and third waves and associated shutdowns. Likewise I feel we’ll be ready to pounce on any real recovery the minute it starts. We’re like that Timex watch from those John Cameron Swayze TV commercials from 50 years ago. We took a licking but we’re still ticking.

Comment on this or any article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post How We Took on the Pandemic, and Won appeared first on Radio World.

Organizers of World College Radio Day saluted 10 stations in six countries that made special efforts for the event this year.

WCRD announced recipients of the “Bret Michaels’ Spirit of College Radio Awards” recognizing efforts made by college stations on Oct. 2.

The award was named this year for Bret Michaels, singer-songwriter, entrepreneur and front man for the band Poison. He is also a diabetic and survivor of a brain hemorrhage, and is active in a number of causes and charitable efforts.

He took part in a Q&A with students and donated $10,000 through his Life Rocks Foundation.

The 10 winners, listed below, were announced by Anabella Poland, president of College Radio Day 2020, and Eva Gustavfsson, president of World College Radio Day. They said a total of 570 stations in 43 countries participated in the day.

• Aggie Radio 92.3 KBLU-LP at Utah State University (USA)
• K103 Gothenburg Student Radio at University of Gothenburg/ Chalmers University (Sweden)
• KRSC-FM at Rogers State University (USA)
• MavRadio.fm at University of Nebraska-Omaha (USA)
• RADIO-E at Universidad de Costa Rica (Costa Rica)
• Radio 6023 at Università del Piemonte Orientale (Italy)
• Radio Katipunan 87.9 FM at Ateneo de Manila University (Philippines)
• The Wolf Internet Radio at University of West Georgia (USA)
• UST Tiger Radio at University of Santo Tomas (Philippines)
• Webradio EAP at Hellenic Open University (Greece)

The College Radio Foundation supports student radio including online, cable, carrier current, FM and AM outlets.

The post World College Radio Day Salutes 10 Stations appeared first on Radio World.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the U.S. Supreme Court ready to hear arguments in the FCC and NAB‘s joint appeal of the Third Circuit Federal Appeals Court remand of its local media ownership rule revisions, the Commission — in the final days of leadership under Chairman Ajit Pai — is voting to preserve the status quo with respect to a Fox Corporation request for a permanent waiver allowing it to own multiple TV stations and a newspaper in the nation’s No. 1 market.

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It’s a lightly traded stock, and the company’s fiscal health is arguably strong compared to some of its peers. Yet, Friday was a challenging day on Wall Street for the executive team at Townsquare Media.

On nearly five times the average volume, TSQ immediately fell from the Opening Bell and in the final minutes of trading dipped even further.

Townsquare shares were off by 11%, with a $6.60 price seen just six minutes before the Closing Bell on the NYSE rang.

When all was said and done, TSQ completed Friday’s trading with a 10.9% dip, to $6.62.

Volume was 47,881 shares on an average of 15,995 shares.

What prompted the downward activity for the local media company?

It’s not clear. But, it does come one trading session after Townsquare priced an offering of $550.0 million in aggregate principal amount of its 6.875% senior secured notes due 2026.

The notes will bear interest semi-annually at a rate equal to 6.875% per annum and were offered at par value. They are senior secured obligations of Townsquare Media and will be guaranteed on a senior secured basis by the company’s direct and wholly owned subsidiaries.

Closing of the offering is anticipated to take place on or about January 6, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.

Townsquare intends to use the net proceeds from the offering, together with cash on hand, to repay its existing senior secured credit facilities, to redeem all of Townsquare’s outstanding 6.500% senior notes due 2023, and to pay the premium, fees and expenses related to the offering.

Townsquare also intends to terminate its existing senior secured credit facilities, including its existing revolving credit facility.

There may be more timeless music than ever, and not playing it could be costing your radio stations revenue, Editor-in-Chief Adam R Jacobson notes in this Classic Media Information Bureau column worth a fresh read.

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It’s not often that the FCC receives a Acuerdo para venta y transferencia de licencia de un radioemisora.

In such cases, Fletcher Heald & Hildreth attorney Frank Montero is likely involved. And, that’s indeed the situation here, as a prolific Puerto Rico broadcaster has gained another AM on La Isla del Encanto.

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The E.W. Scripps Company has promoted its VP of Financial Planning and Analysis to the role that has until now been held by Lisa Knutson.

The bump up to CFO, which saw “a nationwide search,” yielded no external candidates. And, the transition will take place once Scripps closes on its acquisition of ION Media.

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A company that considers itself to be one of the pioneers of video-on-demand technology has claimed a small victory in its fight against AT&T, DirecTV, Dish Network and Amazon for copyright infringement of four patents covering streaming media innovations specifically tied to VOD services using the set top box and mobile app technology.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — At the FCC‘s October Open Meeting, one of the most important advancements in the history of AM radio broadcasting took only minutes to get the Commission’s approval.

Voluntary all-digital AM broadcasting moved forward, with a report and order released.

Broadcast station owners that wish to benefit will soon be free to do so.

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