Industry News

The Montclair State University students at college radio station WMSC(FM) 90.3 MHz have proven that limitations created by the current pandemic will not keep them from getting back to the business of radio. In fact, they were pretty busy on the evening of the recent presidential election. Radio World spoke with Anabella Poland, general manager of WMSC at Montclair State University about the radio station and program available to the students.

Radio World: Please describe your media operations, including the physical plant. How many studios, and how are they equipped? Where is the transmission facility? How is it equipped?

Anabella Poland: There are three studios, as well as performance space and control room. There is also a Foley studio, which students have used to create radio dramas. The station is located on the second floor of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University Montclair, N.J. You can take a quick tour of the facilities here.

The studios are equipped with Axia Element boards with 12 POTS line bridge; Comrex Access codecs; Electro-Voice RE20 microphones; Sony MDR 7506 headphones; VoxPro workstations, Nautel transmitter; Telos Z/IP One; and Telos Zephyr ISDN codecs. Software includes: RCS NexGen automation and music library; Pro Tools, Hindenburg and Audition; VPN access to remote into the station; and StreamGuys streaming services for ACC and MP3 streams.

[Read: College Media Spotlight: University of Nebraska, Omaha]

RW: Who makes the executive decisions for the station? What role do the students have in station operations? What types of programming do they produce?

Poland: As the general manager, I oversee the station’s budget and make executive decisions. The station is not under the student government association but within the School of Communication and Media.

The student management team consists of 11 directors in the roles of station manager, program director, news director, sports director, music director, production director, engineer, digital marketing director, web director, business director/office manager and morning show producer. Most directors also have an assistant. These leadership roles are designed to train students and give them an opportunity to work in a real-world situation giving them room to explore, discover and learn. The student directors make decisions about programming, promotional activities, award submissions, staff and show scheduling. The format is alt-rock and talk, but we also have a few specialty shows (metal, classic rock, Broadway and standards).

RW: Are students on campus now or learning and operating remotely?

Poland: Currently, the radio station is operating in a hybrid, high-flex modality, with some students on campus and some students operating remotely.

Students who work on news and sports shows have access to the live studio as their programming has a short shelf life, while all other programming is prerecorded and scheduled for air. There is a limit of two students max in-studio at any given time; masks are mandatory; and we set strict sanitation guidelines that include disposable headphone covers, vinyl gloves, sanitizer and disinfectant wipes for electronics. Newscasters, sportscasters, contributors and guests connect to the station for live shows via Zoom.

RW: Is the station currently on the air? What means and products (software or hardware) are being used?

Poland: Yes, the station is on air and has been on air since March 23. During the stay at home orders, we used VPN to remote into the station for live shows without needing a board op in-studio, and we used Zoom to connect with students at home to take them to air.

Once the fall semester began, we transitioned to live, in-studio board ops for live shows to free up resources that took us to air for the previous five-plus months, but also because students were eager to be back in-studio.

For live shows we use Zoom. For recorded shows, students use Cleanfeed, Discord and Zoom. For podcasting, we use Zoom and Cleanfeed, but students can also reserve the production studio for which they must follow COVID-19 protocol and guidelines. Students working remotely use a variety of USB microphones such as the BLUE Snowball and Yeti microphones and a variety of gaming headphones.

Recent example of live programming: This link takes you to the five-plus hours Election Night show, which was also live on the station’s YouTube page. The two hosts were in-studio and the contributors and guests joined over Zoom. The broadcast included prerecorded and live interviews with experts in the field of politics, education, communication and economics. The show also featured reports from student reporters at sister stations located in battleground states: Pennsylvania (Neumann University), Wisconsin (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Michigan (Michigan State University) as well as a student reporter from sister station in Sweden (K103 Goteborgs) and a student from sister station in Texas (University of Texas Arlington).

RW: What impact has COVID-19 had on the station? Challenges due to social distancing?

Poland: The greatest challenge is that prior to COVID-19, the station did all its shows live and there was not a system or even the infrastructure in place to upload recorded shows. Doing radio became significantly more cumbersome especially for the programming team in charge of reviewing all recorded shows for content and quality but also uploading and scheduling. This procedure taxed our time exponentially. This modality also entailed training DJs on producing recorded shows, and some of them did not have any audio editing experience. The program and engineering directors put together quick video tutorials to guide everyone. That said, occasionally we get shows that need to be treated by our production team, an area that can quickly become a bottleneck operation.

RW: If the students are operating remotely, how are you making that happen? Can you give examples?

Poland: Specific example: The morning show “The Morning Buzz” pre-COVID-19 gathered five students in the studio (co-hosts, newscaster, sportscaster and contributor) During stay-at-home orders, we connected everyone from home via Zoom and then we connected into the station via VPN. Students at first used gaming headphones to do radio and they slowly transitioned to USB microphones (BLUE Snowball Black Ice, Yeti, etc.). This changed with the fall semester, and now a student board op is in the studio for live shows, and uses Zoom to connect to co-hosts, contributors, producers, etc.

We created a virtual radio station on Discord mirroring the quantity of physical space at our station, and “hired” a Discord bot to assist with recordings over Discord voice channels. The bot is summoned to the virtual studio with a written command and records multitrack/multichannel recordings. Once the recording is done, the bot provides a link with the recording for download.

Student management meetings, general meeting and team building activities take place via Zoom and Discord server. We use Google Suite for collaborating on scripts, show schedules, surveys, prerecorded shows logs, etc. We collaborate on Canvas for digital marketing efforts. Students exploited the video capabilities of Zoom taking live video to our social media pages.

RW: Is there anything else our readers should know?

Poland: The day N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy announced restrictions due to COVID-19, we were at a collegiate broadcasters’ conference in New York City and we had just visited SiriusXM headquarters where I was director of talent and industry relations between 2008 and 2015. To say the students were on Cloud Nine would be an understatement. The mood quickly soured that evening when, upon hearing the news, I made the decision we would not be going to the second day of the conference the next day. Although we had a dozen award nominations and were scheduled to present at the conference the next day, the risk was simply too high. Instead, we met at the radio station and offered the presentation over our Instagram Live.

We headed into an extended Spring Break (two weeks). On the first couple of days of the second week of Spring break, it became apparent students were experiencing high levels of anxiety caused by the uncertainty of the pandemic. Many lost their jobs on campus. Some had their parents lose their jobs. Although the station could have continued in automation, I felt it was imperative and natural to provide a link back to campus and to one of the activities they love the most, radio.

I spoke to Chief Engineer of Broadcast and Media Operations Adam Goldberg and I asked: “What can we do?” Within a week we had a plan and the necessary software to take students to air. The ability to stay engaged and continue broadcasting has been quoted by several of the DJs and directors as the “true north” in the midst of so much chaos and many unknowns.

WMSC was nominated for the prestigious Marconi award twice in the last four years: In 2017 for Best Non-Commercial Station of the Year and 2019 for Best College Radio Station of the Year.

The post College Station Spotlight: Montclair State University appeared first on Radio World.

Nautel has issued an updated release of its free Nautel Legacy AUI Access application for Windows and macOS.

“The app enables continued access to your existing Flash-based AUI without concern for the end-of-year removal of Flash support from commercial browsers,” the company said in a customer service memo to clients.

“No changes are made to the transmitter and no site visit is needed.”

This version eliminates the need for Adobe AIR and Adobe Flash Player to be installed on a user’s computer; it runs as a standalone executable. Information and download are provided on the Nautel website.

The app is intended as an interim solution that will function throughout 2021 so users can choose when they want to migrate to Nautel’s new AUI, according to its website.

Nautel’s AUI or Advanced User Interface provides local and remote monitoring and control for its transmitters; Nautel is replacing the Flash-based AUI with an HTML5 version because Adobe will stop distributing and updating Flash Player at the end of this year, as announced in 2017. The Nautel support page has more info about that and about the impact on major browsers.

[Related: “Broadcast Tools Preps for End of Flash Support”]

The post Nautel Updates Legacy AUI Access App appeared first on Radio World.

Manufacturer Inovonics is saluting longtime employee Wolfgang Rietz on his retirement.

Founder Jim Wood described Rietz as “the helpful and happy financial wizard of Inovonics.”

“Inovonics has been both a short-term and career home to many fine people over our history, but in the almost 50 years we’ve been in business, this is the first formal retirement we’ve celebrated,” Wood said.

Rietz — known to many as Wolf — has been with the company more than 20 years.

The company celebrated his retirement recently with a “socially-distanced” barbecue at its headquarters in California. He and his wife Marge are relocating to Idaho.

President/CEO Ben Barber said Rietz instituted formal bookkeeping and accounting processes that provided clear indications of the firm’s financial direction and tendencies.

“From the very first day, Wolfgang strove to move Inovonics and its procedures forward. He streamlined processes with the goal of making all aspects of accounting more concise, measurable and controllable,” Barber said.

He’s shown in the photo at bottom with co-workers at the 2004 NAB Show.

Send People News items to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Inovonics Salutes “Wolf” Rietz appeared first on Radio World.

Pam Johnston is the general manager for news at GBH in Boston.

Like all of our stations east of the Mississippi River, GBH’s radio and TV call letters started with a “W.” WGBH recently rebranded to GBH to reflect the growing reality of the digital era beyond broadcast.

Today, more than half of GBH’s total impressions are digital. As the world moves from the age of broadcast to the era of streaming, we’ve decided to drop the W from our name to reflect this shift in how we connect with our audiences.

[Related: “Public Media Biggie WGBH Drops the ‘W'”]

Why should traditional radio broadcasting adapt to this digital era?

As we all know, the broadcast audience is changing. Largely due to the pandemic and a marked decrease in commuter listening in the last six months, overall broadcast listeners have shifted habits. At the same time, the streaming audience is growing and the social media audience is exploding.

How can we get radio listeners to know about and consume broadcast content online?

Although many of the things associated with broadcast are evolving, one thing remains constant, and that is high-quality content.

Here are three ways to pivot to multiplatform radio while keeping quality storytelling at the core:

1. Focus on a long-term tentpole project that involves multimedia components. For instance, GBH News has created an in-depth series, “COVID and the Classroom.” Its content appears on radio and online but it can also easily become a virtual forum, social media posts, a digital story or an email newsletter — all increasingly vital ways to consume radio content.

1. Double-down on digital content by posting news stories on your website and investing in photography. Adapt broadcast programs into podcasts such as GBH did with “In It Together,” our nightly newscast on how COVID-19 is affecting our community. Livestream your radio shows on Facebook (as we did with “Early Edition” and “Lunch Hour Live”). Create a YouTube channel for your audio stories. People are listening to audio more than ever, just not necessarily on the radio. You need to find audiences where they already are.

1. Focus on community building by positioning your station as a community partner. How are you elevating voices in your community on the air, online, through virtual events? Create virtual town halls or news forums on Zoom or other digital platforms. Collaborate with other journalists on digital content. (GBH is partnering with our cross-town rival WBUR to produce content for the NPR “Consider This.”)

Long gone are the days when we could count on our audience to seek us out on the dial at a specific time.

Now, we must go out there and find them, which is a tricky business. But if we want our stations to have meaningful reach and have an impact, we need to embrace this digital moment, especially if our programming involves news.

It has never been harder to be a journalist in America than it is right now.  But the need for incisive, inclusive and high-quality journalism on the issues facing our communities, our nation, and our world has never been greater. As local newspapers and commercial outlets are forced to close, radio programming is often the last local news source.

Broadcast radio will still be around for years but we can maximize its reach with these simple steps and a digital-first mindset.

GBH is the leading producer of content for PBS and a partner to NPR (via GBH 89.7 FM in Boston) and PRX. Comment on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Beyond Broadcast: Building Multiplatform Radio appeared first on Radio World.

From our Who’s Buying What page: Audinate is noting a facility project at Grupo Renascença Multimedia, which has three big stations in Portugal including Rádio Renascença (RR), Mega Hits and RFM.

Audinate’s Dante technology is used there for digital audio networking, distributing uncompressed multichannel audio channels via Ethernet networks.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

Equipment from AEQ is a big component, and Audinate said in a release that when RR moved into new headquarters in 2016, AEQ recommended a Dante-backed system for its AoIP capabilities and its interoperability with products from 500 manufacturers.

The studios utilize AEQ Netbox 32 interfaces, which convert studio audio into Dante signals. AEQ Capitol IQ mixing consoles are used in the studios, as are a few Behringer X32 mixing consoles, RDL RU-LB4 line-level bidirectional network interfaces and an AEQ 4MH interface.

“In total, the system makes use of more than 50 Dante-capable pieces of equipment and manages around 1,000 signals — mono and stereo — each day,” Audinate stated.

The primary owner of the radio group is the Catholic Church.

Users and suppliers are both invited to send news about recent installations and product applications to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post In Portugal, RR Puts Dante to Use appeared first on Radio World.

The AES fall show will co-locate with the NAB Show in Las Vegas in the fall of next year.

It is the latest major change in our industry’s usual convention schedule, which has seen upheaval since COVID-19 began hitting the United States hard.

Those few days in October are shaping up to be big ones for multiple organizations that hold annual events — assuming their schedule holds and that the national pandemic situation allows it by then — because the NAB Show, the AES show, the Radio Show and the SBE national meeting now will all take place in Las Vegas 11 months from now.

For many industry professionals who are comfortable traveling by then, these shows may well be their first in-person events since the pandemic started.

[Related: “NRB Plans an In-Person Event in March”]

The latest announcement was made by AES Executive Director Colleen Harper and NAB Executive Vice President of Conventions and Business Operations Chris Brown.

The Audio Engineering Society show will be held Oct. 11–13 at the Westgate Hotel adjacent to the Las Vegas Convention Center. The NAB Show, normally in the spring, will take place at the LVCC on Oct. 9 to 13, as previously announced, with the 2022 NAB Show to follow six months later on its normal schedule.

The fall AES convention in recent years has been held annually at New York City’s Javits Convention Center, and since 2017 it was co-located with NAB Show New York. Both were held online this year.

Announced previously, the 2021 NAB Show will co-locate with the Radio Show and NAB’s Sales and Management Television Exchange. And the Society of Broadcast Engineers plans to have its annual national meeting there.

The post 2021 AES Show Will Co-Locate With NAB appeared first on Radio World.

We conclude our series about the early days of broadcasting before and around the famous KDKA broadcast 100 years ago. See other recent articles in the Radio @100 series.

In any important endeavor there seems to be a certain amount of contention as to who was really “first.”

In aviation, the Wright’s supremacy in making the first powered flight has been challenged by supporters of Clément Ader, Hiram Maxim, Gustave Whitehead and Richard Pearse. There are those who argue that Elisha Gray or Antonio Meucci should be given credit for inventing the telephone.

In broadcasting, there are serious contenders for the history book position of being the “world’s first radio broadcaster,” including one that aired election returns at the same time KDKA held its inaugural Nov. 2, 1920 broadcast.

As mentioned in our earlier account of the KDKA broadcast, there seems to be some agreement on what constitutes a broadcast service. At a minimum, these include (1) programming intended for the general public, (2) the advertising of transmissions in advance and (3) a regular pattern of broadcasts.

Earlier “broadcasts” by Fessenden, de Forest and Herrold easily fall outside of these criteria.

SHOULD “MARCONI” GET THE PRIZE?

Interestingly, a British effort, initiated by Marconi employees no less, comes very close to passing the litmus test and certainly antedates the KDKA “big broadcast.”

This was the establishment in December 1919 of 6 kW experimental radiotelephone station MZX at the large Marconi manufacturing facility in Chelmsford, England.

Documentation reveals that broadcasts of a sort began there on Jan. 15, 1920, with regular programs of speech and phonograph records. More than 200 reports of reception were received from amateur and shipboard radio operators. The station initially could be heard from Norway to Portugal, with one report coming from a listener 1,450 miles distant. Power was soon upped (15 kW input) and a regular schedule of two transmissions per day was established in late February with the airing of newscasts.

Following this round of testing, MZX added “readings from newspapers, gramophone records, and … live musical performers,” as Tim Wander writes in “2MT Writtle: The Story of British Broadcasting.”

A still-extant telegram offers testimony that on March 20, 1920 the station’s offerings were heard as far away as Australia. “Listening in” was not confined to “hams” and commercial operators, either.

Newspapers began to take notice, and one, London’s Daily Mail, decided to make a broadcasting “splash” in a really big way by footing the bill for an international superstar of that era, opera soprano Dame Nellie Melba, to perform live at the fledgling station.

Melba (in whose honor “Peach Melba” and “Melba Toast” are said to have been created) was paid the huge sum of £1,000 — the buying power of about $50,000 today — for a 20-minute performance on the evening of June 15, 1920. Obviously, the newspaper believed there was a future in broadcasting.

The Mail gave its “big broadcast” quite a buildup, with the British government issuing almost 600 new receiver licenses during the two-month runup. It was a truly international broadcast too, being heard in countries all over Europe, even as far away as New York. (A loudspeaker arrangement was deployed in Paris so people in the streets could hear Melba perform.)

So, with success spelled in such numbers (listeners and talent fee alike), why shouldn’t MZX get the honors for being the premier broadcaster?

It boils down to lack of sustainability. Following a complaint made five months after the Melba musicale to the House of Commons by the Postmaster General about MZX’s operations interfering with “legitimate services,” the station was ordered closed.

As Wander put it in his book, “This view seemed to be echoed by the Navy and Army, who stoutly maintained that any civilian broadcasting would hamper ‘genuine experiments’ and would not be in the best interests of imperial defense. The critics of wireless broadcasting saw that the device was ideally equipped to be a servant of mankind, but were determined that it should never be considered as a toy to amuse children.”

DO DITS AND DAHS COUNT?

On the U.S. side of the pond, KDKA had contenders also.

One frequently mentioned is the University of Wisconsin’s 9XM, now WHA. It was licensed initially for experimental transmissions in June 1915 and, following the lead of similar stations at other schools, soon began a regular schedule of transmitting weather reports for the benefit of farmers and others. The rub: these were via radiotelegraphy, and those who wanted to benefit had to learn Morse code.

A couple of years into these daily code broadcasts, the station experimented with radiotelephony, broadcasting phonograph records and live announcements just as Conrad did at his ham station.

Progress was slowed by the World War but resumed in early 1920 with a relicensing of the station, which had been engaged in research for the military.

Radiotelephone broadcasts of the regular weather reports were promised but did not become a reality, continuing in code instead. As noted in his 2006 history “9XM Talking: WHA Radio and the Wisconsin Idea,” Randall Davidson wrote: “On November 2, the evening that KDKA made its debut broadcast with results of the Harding-Cox election, 9XM may also have been on the air, albeit only telegraphically.”

These code-only transmissions went on into until early 1921, with only sporadic attempts to transmit speech and music — too late to best KDKA in meeting the criterion of “being accessible by the general public.”

WHY NOT DETROIT?

Perhaps the greatest challenge to KDKA’s “first and foremost” status was Detroit’s 8MK (later WBL, and now WWJ), which was owned by The Detroit News.

It commenced radiotelephone transmissions on Aug. 20, 1920 of news on a daily basis, more than two months before KDKA took to the air. Adding to the station’s claim for priority was information printed in the News instructing readers as to how they could take advantage of this wireless service.

There was a slight problem, however. 8MK was licensed as an amateur station and could operate only on wavelengths reserved for amateur use, in this case 200 meters (about 1500 kHz), and as such was subject to interference from ham operators. (KDKA had requested and obtained a commercial license from the Department of Commerce, which allowed operation on a lower frequency well separated from amateur transmissions.)

And to further handicap matters, the de Forest “radiophone” transmitter leased by the News operated at one-fifth the power employed at KDKA.

8MK initiated a rather serious broadcasting agenda beginning on Aug. 20 with reporting of returns from an election held on that date, and continued with daily transmissions of news reports interspersed with music. Records show that the station was on the air the night of Nov. 2, 1920 with a pre-announced broadcast of election returns, just as KDKA was doing some 200 miles away,

So why shouldn’t this fledgling broadcaster get the honors for being first? They were on the air well in advance of KDKA, advertised their broadcasts in advance and continued on a regular schedule after the election eve reporting. (The station was licensed for limited commercial operation in late 1921 and received the call sign WBL. This was changed to WWJ the following year.)

Perhaps broadcast historians Chris Sterling and John Kittross explain it best in “Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting,” where they write:

“While it isn’t easy to compare and adjudicate such conflicting claims, it can be done. As to broadcasting licenses, KDKA led WBL (WWJ) by nearly a year. Conrad’s amateur station, 8XK, successor to the prewar station, went on the air more than a year before 8MK and was broadcasting music 10 months earlier. As to license holding, Westinghouse or one of its officers held a license before the Detroit News did. Only by maintaining that 8XK is not the precursor of KDKA, and that 8MK is the precursor of WWJ, can one uphold WWJ’s claim — and both Conrad’s status as a Westinghouse employee and the Detroit News’ delay in applying for a broadcasting license belie that position.”

Doubtless, other claims could be made for supremacy in terms of “who was really on first.” However, as the old saying goes, “close” only counts in the game of horseshoes.

The author thanks Mark Schubin for his assistance with the Dame Nellie Melba photo and information, and broadcast historian and author Tim Wander for information about the 1920 Marconi Melba broadcast. Wander has published a limited edition 270-page book “From Marconi to Melba, The Centenary of British Radio Broadcasting,” which details the beginnings of radio broadcasting in the U.K.

The post Others Were ‘On the Air’ in 1920 appeared first on Radio World.

The National Association of Broadcasters has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let the Federal Communications Commission go ahead with significant changes in its media ownership rules.

This is part of the culmination of a long legal fight. The FCC and the NAB had appealed a lower court ruling blocking the changes, and the Supreme Court recently accepted the case.

Now NAB has filed its opening brief.

[Read: Supremes to Hear Broadcast Dereg Case]

“The Third Circuit Court of Appeals overstepped its authority when it invalidated the FCC order modernizing its local media ownership rules,” the association wrote in a summary. “NAB asked the court to reinstate the FCC’s modernization order and end the Third Circuit’s 16-year assertion of authority over the commission’s media ownership rulemakings.”

The Third Circuit had blocked the commission’s 2017 quadrennial review order. The FCC wants to eliminate the ban on owning a print newspaper and a radio or TV station in the same market; remove restrictions on owning radio stations along with a TV station in a market; revise the rule limiting ownership of TV stations in local markets; overturn an earlier decision involving joint sale of ad time by two TV stations in a market; and reform its approach to “embedded markets.”

At the heart of NAB’s argument is whether the relevant part of the Telecommunications Act requires the FCC to look at statistical evidence or do an in-depth analysis of the effects of the changes on minority and female ownership.

The Telecom Act, NAB said, directs the FCC to “repeal” or “modify” any rule that is no longer “necessary in the public interest as the result of competition.” And it says the FCC did so in its planned rule changes. “Yet the Third Circuit concluded that the commission inadequately considered the effect of those changes on minority and female ownership — even though [the Telecom Act] says nothing about that issue.”

Further, NAB told the court, “The same divided Third Circuit panel has repeatedly elevated its policy concerns over the statutory text and purported to retain jurisdiction over the FCC’s Section 202(h) orders, effectively blocking review by any other court for more than 15 years.”

It called the circuit court’s actions “vastly overbroad,” and said it has “improperly retained jurisdiction” over FCC reviews of the relevant section of the Telecom Act.

The post NAB States Ownership Case at High Court appeared first on Radio World.

The FCC’s current proposal on application fees would force many TV and radio broadcasters to essentially pay twice for FCC services while others reap the benefits of these services without paying their fair share, the NAB argued in recent comments.

The FCC has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that looks to amend the scheduling of application fees. In the NPRM, the FCC proposes to increase several application fees and add new fee categories for TV and radio broadcasters based on the estimated direct labor costs to the FCC for providing these services, citing the RAY BAUM’s Act requirement of the commission recovering its costs to process applications, per NAB.

[Read: Radio Stations Get Little Relief on FCC Fees]

The commission says that the NPRM will take a “careful approach” to calculating the costs for those paying application fees that already have to pay regulatory fees so as to try and avoid doubling the costs of these services. However, the NAB argues that the proposed approach is the same whether a group pays regulatory fees, like broadcasters, or not, like big tech companies, giving the latter “a significant discount relative to costs.”

This is a continuation of the FCC’s refusal to acknowledge flaws in the regulatory fee process, according to NAB. In earlier comments regarding setting regulatory fees for FY2020, NAB and other broadcasters said the commission should account for broadcasters’ payments of application fees so as to avoid being charged twice. NAB also argued that the RAY BAUM’s Act gave the FCC the ability to expand the base of contributors to include technology companies that benefit from the FCC’s resources, including some of the largest companies in the world, with the NAB calling them “free-riders.” The FCC ignored these requests.

“As a result, broadcasters and other licensees not only pay twice for the commission’s costs of processing their own applications, but also bear the substantial costs of their competition’s fee-free participation in rulemaking and other proceedings,” NAB said in its most recent comments.

In addition to being unjust, the NAB says that this ultimately restricts broadcasters’ ability to provide free local broadcast services to the public.

The NAB therefore is calling for the FCC to ensure that its collection of regulatory fees is fair and accurately reflects the work the commission performs. However, until that time, the FCC must minimize the application fee increases in the NPRM by ensuring that only tasks involved in the review of unopposed applications are included and by excluding all levels of supervisory review. NAB also says that the commission should refrain from imposing any new application fees on broadcasters.

“The commission must take steps now to overhaul its fee collection methodologies to ensure that broadcasters are not paying twice for the same services and that the costs of the commission are recovered fairly from all of the commission’s work,” NAB concluded.

NAB’s full comments are available online.

The post NAB to FCC: Proposed Regulatory Fee Process Unfair to Broadcasters appeared first on Radio World.

The author is editor in chief of Radio World.

One of the best parts of my job is presenting the Workbench column in our pages.

Workbench was well established by the time I joined RW in 1996. Sometimes the smartest thing that the editor of a publication can do is support a good thing and get out of the way.

With this issue we celebrate 30 years of John Bisset writing Workbench, and salute the hundreds of readers who have provided the tips that are at the column’s heart.

Getting started

When RW’s founder Steve Dana sought to expand Radio World and its tech content the Workbench column was born. At the time, John was a chief engineer who had written product reviews for RW; he also taught a college-level broadcast engineering class part-time and enjoyed teaching.

Workbench quickly became popular and secured its place as a feature in every issue.

John had gotten his own start at age 12 by building what today would be considered a pirate top 40 station. (You don’t know how often I hear stories like that from people in our biz). He hooked a Lafayette mike mixer up to a couple of turntables and a reel-to-reel fed a Lafayette Wireless Mike AM transmitter. The station had about a two-block coverage.

John was always hanging around radio stations (again, sound familiar?) His first professional job was at WFAX(AM) in northern Virginia, serving the Washington area.

“Program Director Roy Martin hired me as a summer relief announcer, when I was 16. I worked there part-time through high school and college, and joined the full-time staff after graduation.” Around that time he received training in technical writing with an influential teacher, Professor Joey Horobetz.

Eventually John was promoted to WFAX chief engineer, and the same year fellow engineer Henry Stewart and he started a contract engineering business.

“I got into equipment sales by learning from Joe Novak at Delta Electronics. Later stops included Harris, Dielectric, Broadcast Electronics, Nautel and Elenos.” About eight years ago he joined Telos Alliance, where he is radio product sales manager for the western U.S.

John and I both seek to make sure that the column’s content is fair and thorough and not favoring any manufacturer, including those for which he has worked. John adds a hat tip to Telos for being so supportive in providing him time and opportunity to educate engineers on topics like AoIP and studio construction, in RW as well as other platforms.

Grab the bubble wrap

The column’s relationship with its readers is crucial.

“Over these 30 years, hundreds of engineers, programmers and managers have sent in tips and photos from all over the world,” John pointed out.

“Published tips qualify for SBE recertification credit,” John reminded me. But he’s especially proud of the programming and management readership of the column.

“I try to explain the tips and subject matter in such a way that the non-technical or semi-technical reader can use them, as well as the seasoned broadcast engineer.”

Have any reader tips stood out as most useful? He laughed.

“As I’ve gotten older, something to protect your knees when you’re kneeling in the back of a rack, under a console or in a transmitter — with the power off — that’s where bubble wrap comes in handy. Keep a few sheets in your service vehicle and at each site.”

(John, this is classic Workbench stuff. MacGyver would be proud.)

“Using a cell phone camera to document things ranks a close second,” he continued.

“Use the camera to take pictures of smoked components, animals you encounter and parts. Parts photos can be shared with a service department when you are missing a manual and need to identify something.” A camera also lets you share pictures anonymously with Workbench or just with your own station staff.

“Let’s face it, other than engineers, few employees of a radio or TV station understand what the transmitter site is all about. Posting pictures of exploded parts, dead snakes or raccoons that have taken up residence are great conversation starters.”

What about strange or unexpected submissions?

“Shortly after the column started, an engineer sent in a modification to an old transmitter,” he told me.

“The tube transmitter was atop a mountain several hours away, and occasionally the plate breaker would trip, turning the rig off.”

The engineer could never identify the problem and got tired of the two-hour drive.

“Frustrated, he mounted a cart machine solenoid to the front of the transmitter, right above the tripping breaker. He drilled a hole in the end of the breaker and connected a line to the solenoid plunger. The solenoid was connected to the remote control, so that when the breaker tripped, it could be reset ‘remotely’ by energizing the solenoid,” John related.

“I could see both sides of this solution. It’s not necessarily good engineering practice to remotely switch a breaker, because you don’t know why the breaker is tripping in the first place. But repeatedly driving two hours to simply flip a breaker on had to be pretty frustrating.”

He took heat from some readers who felt this idea was reckless; but many thought it was a genius solution to a problem that a new transmitter later corrected.

Efficiency

I asked John how the column has changed.

“In the early days, there were a lot more tips on modifying or troubleshooting equipment,” he recalls.
“There were engineering staffs consisting of a chief and a couple of maintenance engineers and maybe a transmitter tech. Today, one guy does it all.” And “all” now includes multiple stations for many engineers.

With that evolution, he focuses more on improving an engineer’s efficiency.

“The maturity of software-based products has made this possible. Features can be added or bugs addressed with a simple software update. The equipment is also more reliable, and in most cases modular, so many repairs involve simply swapping a module.”

Parts may be swappable but it’s hard to imagine Workbench without him. Thank you John for your contributions and hard work.

I can’t end without sharing a little-known early career fact about John Bisset that also captures his elfish sense of humor.

“I started out with a parallel career. Intrigued by medicine, I wanted to be a doctor. To help me ace my anatomy classes, I started working as an embalmer and apprentice funeral director.

“My patients never complained!”

 Sidebar: Warm Appreciation

Among colleagues and readers I hear warm appreciation for John’s work.

Marty Sacks, EVP of sales, support and marketing at Telos Alliance, has known John for four decades and calls him an industry treasure and trusted colleague. “He’s the same gentleman I have always known. The service he has provided to so many, including me, all these years through his Workbench columns have truly been a labor of love.”

Jim Wood, founder of Inovonics, calls Workbench “a turn-to in each issue; I always come away knowing a little more.” Colleague Ben Barber, president/CEO of Inovonics, saluted John for his expertise in collating and condensing useful information succinctly.

Frank Hertel of Newman-Kees-Hertel RF Measurements & Engineering remembers attending a meet-and-greet with an FCC agent out of Chicago, at which Frank posted a question.

“As it turned out, the FCC agent did not have an answer, but John did! He nicely stepped in and saved the day for the agent. He presented the answer authoritatively, but also with a calmness that radiated a true source of knowledge. After all, John actually was involved in writing the FCC ruling pertaining to low-power toroid RF Ammeter readings.”

And Charles “Buc” Fitch — who like John is a past recipient of the SBE Educator of the Year Award — has said that industry knowledge now seems to have a “half life” of about four years, meaning half of what we learn or buy today may be useless in that amount of time.

“So how do we keep up at this aggressive pace?” Buc asks. “How do we learn?

“We teach each other.”

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