Industry News

A peculiar thing is happening to drivers of some Mazda’s operating in and around the Seattle area, and it could be caused by images displayed on dashboard screens.

Car owners are reporting their car radios are locking on 94.9 MHz leaving them unable to change the tuner. The only models affected are 2014–2017 Mazdas equipped with factory-installed HD Radios.

KUOW(FM) in Seattle, the NPR station that operates on 94.9 MHz, says it is hoping Mazda or Xperi can help. The radio station confirmed Tuesday on its website it is aware of the issue and has received complaints.

Mazda drivers have been complaining of the issue for several weeks, according to reviews of Reddit threads.

Some commenters on the discussion forum say the infotainment systems are “either locked up or constantly rebooting” and inevitably locking up on 94.9 MHz. Some drivers also have complained on the discussion board about not being able to make calls using the infotainment systems while driving.

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KUOW shared with Radio World a statement provided by Mazda after its dealerships in the Seattle area began receiving complaints from frustrated drivers about the problem.

“Between 1/24–1/31, a radio station in the Seattle area sent image files with no extension, which caused an issue on some 2014–2017 Mazda vehicles with older software. Mazda North American Operations (MNAO) has distributed service alerts advising dealers of the issue.”

Mazda continued: “While dealers are currently experiencing parts delays due to shipping constraints, MNAO will support impacted customers with replacement parts. These customers should contact their local Mazda dealer who can submit a goodwill request to the Mazda Warranty department on their behalf, order the parts, and schedule a free repair when the parts arrive.”

A KUOW spokesperson said the HD Radio system in the vehicles “pulls images from an NPR tool and uses the KUOW logo when there is nothing from NPR to use.” It’s unclear how widespread the problem is, according to the radio station.

Xperi, the developer of HD Radio, said its “assessment is that there was a formatting issue with the transmitted data.”

The company’s statement continued: “We have worked with the station to address it, and we do not believe there are any ongoing issues with car radios in the market.”

Some Mazda owners posting on Reddit theorize the images with no extensions likely corrupted lines of code in Mazda infotainment systems. “We have not received any information from Mazda on which specific file they believe triggered the issue,” the radio station spokesperson said.

Here is the statement KUOW posted on its website earlier this week:

“KUOW is aware of an apparent issue between our signal and some Mazda infotainment systems, causing radios to reboot when they connect to KUOW’s 94.9 FM signal. We have been in contact with Xperi, the company who owns the technology behind HD Radio, and have given them complete access to our transmitters to investigate what is causing this issue.

“Our operations team is doing everything they can to support them in finding a quick resolution. We also appreciate the assistance of listeners who helped alert KUOW to this issue and have provided additional information to aid the investigation.”

The post Radio Mystery for Some Seattle Mazda Owners appeared first on Radio World.

Updated at 12:50pm PT to include a comment from Xperi Corp.

On Sunday, January 30, an owner of a 2016 Mazda hatchback was driving in Ballard, Wash., when his in-dash entertainment system suddenly went awry. For some strange reason, the HD Radio his vehicle was equipped with would only play the main NPR member station for the Seattle-Tacoma market.

This driver wasn’t the only to experience the exact same problem. Is the glitch something every station equipped with the Xperi Corp.-owned product needs to be concerned about?

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Deadlines have been set to file comments in the latest NPRM from the Federal Communications Commission concerning emergency alerting.

As we’ve reported, the commission has a notice of proposed rulemaking that it says would improve the clarity and accessibility of visual Emergency Alert System messages to the public, particularly to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. In a companion NOI, the commission asks questions about broader measures to enhance the Emergency Alert System’s overall functionality and accessibility.

The NPRM presents proposals for modifying the text associated with national EAS messages, including pre-stored templates for NPT messages, and it proposes requiring “triggered” CAP polling.

The NOI asks, among many other questions, whether it would make sense to use legacy EAS only for the Emergency Action Notification (EAN) and NPT, but require use of CAP for all other alerts, and if legacy EAS can’t be reasonably modified to allow alert originators to distribute text to transcribe a two-minute audio message, whether the legacy EAS architecture should be redesigned altogether.

You can read Radio World’s recent story about the NPRM and NOI.

Now the deadlines are set. Comments on the NPRM are due March 11, and replies are due March 28. Comments on the NOI are due April 11 and replies by May 10.

Read the full proposal at https://tinyurl.com/rw-eas-4. File comments to the FCC at www.fcc.gov/ecfs/. To read others, enter 15-94 in the “Specify Proceeding” field.

The post Deadlines Are Set to Comment on EAS Changes appeared first on Radio World.

While the media industry has experienced its share of frustrations over the last two years, it has also seen one particular platform demonstrate steady, stable upward growth — despite the ongoing impact of the pandemic.

All in all, said Edison Research Senior Vice President Tom Webster, “It was an eventful year for podcasting.”

Edison Research recently announced its list of the top 50 podcasts of 2021. The list ranks podcasts by audience size based on the Podcast Consumer Tracking Report, a service that measures relative audience size and demographics of all podcast networks.

Last year the most popular genres were true crime, comedy and news programs, Webster said, although the list reveals a vibrant and diverse list of programming.

For the second year in a row “The Joe Rogan Experience” sits at the top of the list, a long-form interview and conversation podcast run by comedian Joe Rogan. The program recently made headlines when Neil Young and other musicians began demanding Spotify remove their music from the service due to Rogan and some of his guests’ promotion of misinformation about COVID-19. In addition, a video complication emerged of Rogan using an ethnic slur to describe the Black community. (Despite this, Spotify Technology CEO Daniel Ek said the platform would not cancel its $100 million licensing deal to be the exclusive host for the podcaster’s program archive, although some episodes have since been removed.)

The number two spot in 2021 belonged to The New York Times’ “The Daily,” a 20-minute weekday news roundup followed in the third spot by “Crime Junkie,” a weekly true crime podcast created by the Indianapolis media company audiochuck. Number four is “This American Life,” a weekly public radio program and podcast produced by NPR station WBEZ(FM). The top five is rounded out with the iHeartRadio program “The Stuff You Should Know,” focusing on obscure and captivating topics like how fortune cookies are made and how the game rock/paper/scissors became a decider of things.

A review of the networks on the top-50 list includes both well-known media sources and smaller media companies. iHeartRadio, The New York Times and NBC News sit in the top 10 as well as smaller media companies like audiochuck, Exactly Right and Earwolf. The top-50 list includes a few media networks with multiple popular podcasts, including NPR with its programs “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me,” “Planet Money,” “Up First” and several others. PRX is distributor for three top-50 podcasts, “TED Talks Daily,” “The Moth” and “Welcome to Night Vale,” while the Cumulus Podcast Network has two programs on the list, “The Dan Bongino Show” and “The Mark Levin Show.”

When compared to 2020 — the first year Edison Research began compiling and ranking U.S. podcast listening trends — the top four podcasts on the 2021 list exactly mirror the top four podcasts of 2020. The fifth place podcast in 2020 was “My Favorite Murder” by Exactly Right, which swapped places with “Stuff You Should Know” to drop to number six in 2021.

Investigative topics remained popular, including the serialized audio narrative and investigative journalism podcast “Serial,” along with true crime podcasts like “Criminal” and “Morbid: A True Crime Podcast.” Newcomers to the 2021 list include a twice-monthly weird fiction podcast focused on the imaginary town of Night Vale, a place rife with intriguing residents and conspiracy theories that has since spawned several books, albums and live shows. Other podcasts in 2020 that dropped off the list in 2021 include the design podcast “99% Invisible” and “Lore,” a podcast exploring the stories and people behind our strangest folk stories.

The top-50 list was compiled by Edison after gathering 8,000 online interviews with weekly podcast consumers in the U.S. aged 18 and older. The list tracks usage from the first quarter to the fourth quarter of 2021.

The full list is below.

The post Top 50 Podcasts of 2021 Court Crime, Comedy, Fiction appeared first on Radio World.

Telos Alliance has appointed Scott Stiefel as co-CEO, joining co-CEO Tom Swidarski to lead the company.

Frank Foti, Telos Alliance founder and executive chairman of the board, complimented Stiefel’s leadership skills and knowledge of both business and engineering.

In a company statement Foti noted, “Over the years, it’s been such a pleasure to see him grow, first as an engineer, then taking on the business segment.”

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Stiefel said he was “excited to join Tom in leading Telos through yet another era of growth and transformation.”

Stiefel’s career at Telos began in 1994, where he designed the ISDN card for the Telos Zephyr, worked on the original Omnia.FM and Audioactive Encoder products and served as project manager on the Zephyr Xstream.

In 2001, he moved from the engineering group to become operations manager for Telos, overseeing production, supply chain, logistics and quality.

After a six-year stint as vice president of operations at ViaSat, he returned to the Telos Alliance in 2014 and served as COO until this promotion.

Send news of engineering and executive personnel changes to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Scott Stiefel Appointed Co-CEO at Telos Alliance appeared first on Radio World.

“Against the high bar we set in our fiscal second quarter last year, we have once again delivered revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth in the second quarter of our 2022 fiscal year, while continuing to invest in our digital growth initiatives.”

Those are the words of Lachlan Murdoch, as the Executive Chair and CEO of Fox Corporation enjoyed a three-month period that saw net revenue and earnings per share each beat Wall Street forecasts.

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With the cancellation of NATPE Miami, originally scheduled for January 18-20 in Miami Beach, the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) has moved forward with a slate of in-person and virtual events across the next several months.

Among them: a virtual February 17 “Station Group Summit” that, based on the agenda, is curiously devoid of the nation’s largest broadcast TV station ownership groups.

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — One week after a second nomination hearing for Gigi Sohn to serve as the FCC‘s fifth Commissioner was originally set to take place, the Counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler appeared solo Wednesday morning in front of the Senate Commerce Committee.

While Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) spoke warmly of Sohn, Republican members — led by its Ranking Member — came armed with questions for Sohn on two key topics. First, her ties to now-shuttered “vOTA” service Locast and the timing and monetary value of its settlement agreement with the “Big Four” networks needed further explanation. Second is her decision, after her first nomination hearing held in December 2021, to sit out on matters involving retransmission consent or TV broadcast copyright for the first three years of her term.

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NEW YORK — Local radio stations hit the jackpot with digital sales last year, generating $1.5 billion, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau’s 10th annual benchmarking report on the industry’s digital activities.

Stations are poised to follow last year’s growth of 33% with another strong year, with digital sales forecast to grow 22%, approaching the $2 billion mark.

“The radio industry seems to have finally found its digital groove,” the RAB report, compiled by Borrell Associates and sponsored by Marketron, notes. The 47-page analysis covers the activity of more than 3,000 radio stations.

“The findings from this report highlight the rewarded efforts of stations’ digital offerings to drive results for local advertisers,” said RAB President/CEO Erica Farber. “The focus on the importance of digital training has produced dividends for stations and sellers alike. RAB continues to provide business and professional development training that will help stations to super-serve their local businesses.”

For Gordon Borrell, he was happy to report that Borrell Associates underestimated radio’s digital determination when last year’s report was published. He comments, “We predicted that radio would hit a double by increasing sales 18%. They hit a triple – maybe even a home run. It’s quite impressive, especially when you see that little stat that shows how digitally savvy radio sales reps are in the eyes of local advertisers.”

The annual report showed that the average station made $362,250 in digital revenue in 2021, and the average market cluster made $1.6 million.

Top-performing market clusters made more than $10 million, even in some of the smaller markets.

“The local radio salesperson is now the marketing expert in their community by bringing linear and digital solutions to advertisers that produce real, measurable results,” said Todd Kalman, SVP/Sales at Marketron. “In this report, you’ll find data and insights that position radio and digital together for new advertising opportunities in 2022.”

The findings are a part of the RAB and Borrell’s 10th annual report, “Finally, A Digital Bounty: Radio’s Digital Sales Rise 33%,” released today to RAB members. It analyzes online ad revenue from 3,645 radio stations, as well as survey responses from 1,107 local radio buyers and 256 radio managers.

Among the findings:

• Advertisers now rate radio sellers higher than all competitors for marketing expertise.

• Advertisers now rate radio sellers on par with or higher than competitors for digital expertise.

• Nearly one in four station managers now deem their digital strategy “brilliant.”

• Eighty-eight percent of radio advertisers buy digital advertising, but only 46% buy it from their radio rep.

• Twice as many stations as last year say online-only reps are the best way to drive more sales.

• Virtual events didn’t stick in 2021; only 13% of stations are planning them this year.

• While 44% of stations have a local podcast, only 20% have one that produces revenue.

He’s made it clear that his media enterprise plans to invest approximately $10 billion to acquire more ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX television stations over the next two years with the goal of creating the largest broadcast television group in America.

Now, Byron Allen may be taking a page from Jeff Smulyan’s playbook by confirming his interest in owning a professional sports franchise.

The revelation also notes that it was the Commissioner of the National Football League, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who suggested to Allen three years ago that he consider the investment.

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