Industry News

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal by broadcasters and the FCC of an appeals court’s rejection of the FCC’s latest attempt to deregulate broadcast ownership.

Back in April, broadcasters and newspaper publishers petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision vacating most of the FCC’s effort under Chairman Ajit Pai to deregulate broadcast ownership, including by eliminating the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules.

[Read: Supreme Court Asked to Weigh In on Media Deregulation Decision]

Echoing the FCC’s petition, media petitioners said that outdated ownership rules remain in force because a divided panel of the court has prevented the FCC from implementing “necessary adjustments to its ownership rules” that the FCC concluded would serve the public interest.

The FCC said that it has been trying to initiate ownership deregulation for 17 years but has been thwarted by a series of decisions by a divided panel of the Third Circuit. It said the most recent decision to vacate “a host of significant rule changes” was based “solely on the ground that the agency had not adequately analyzed the rules’ likely effect on female and minority ownership of broadcast stations.”

The FCC argues that for those 17 years the court has blocked it from exercising its mandate by Congress to repeal or modify any ownership rule it determines is no longer in the public interest.

The Supreme Court does not comment on why it takes cases, simply listing the appeals it has agreed to hear.

The FCC and Third Circuit have been sparring over successive attempts to deregulate broadcasting for most of two decades. This is the first time the Supreme Court has gotten involved.

“Of course, we are disappointed at this additional delay,” said Benton Institute Senior Counselor Andrew Jay Schwartzman. “But we are confident the court will see that the FCC has failed to obey its mandate to promote diversity in media voices.”

The post Supremes to Hear Broadcast Dereg Case appeared first on Radio World.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal by broadcasters and the FCC of an appeals court’s rejection of the FCC’s latest attempt to deregulate broadcast ownership.

Back in April, broadcasters and newspaper publishers petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision vacating most of the FCC’s effort under Chairman Ajit Pai to deregulate broadcast ownership, including by eliminating the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules.

[Read: Supreme Court Asked to Weigh In on Media Deregulation Decision]

Echoing the FCC’s petition, media petitioners said that outdated ownership rules remain in force because a divided panel of the court has prevented the FCC from implementing “necessary adjustments to its ownership rules” that the FCC concluded would serve the public interest.

The FCC said that it has been trying to initiate ownership deregulation for 17 years but has been thwarted by a series of decisions by a divided panel of the Third Circuit. It said the most recent decision to vacate “a host of significant rule changes” was based “solely on the ground that the agency had not adequately analyzed the rules’ likely effect on female and minority ownership of broadcast stations.”

The FCC argues that for those 17 years the court has blocked it from exercising its mandate by Congress to repeal or modify any ownership rule it determines is no longer in the public interest.

The Supreme Court does not comment on why it takes cases, simply listing the appeals it has agreed to hear.

The FCC and Third Circuit have been sparring over successive attempts to deregulate broadcasting for most of two decades. This is the first time the Supreme Court has gotten involved.

“Of course, we are disappointed at this additional delay,” said Benton Institute Senior Counselor Andrew Jay Schwartzman. “But we are confident the court will see that the FCC has failed to obey its mandate to promote diversity in media voices.”

The post Supremes to Hear Broadcast Dereg Case appeared first on Radio World.

A new survey seeks to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion in the U.S. radio and TV industries.

The survey is from the National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation and it is aimed at station owners and general managers.

“Our goal is to assist the broadcasting industry in maximizing your diversity initiatives and meeting your business objectives,” wrote Michelle Duke, president of the foundation, in an email that was shared with state broadcast associations. Duke this spring became the NAB’s first chief diversity officer.

She wrote that the survey seeks to identify trends and support future initiatives to help stations. It is open online until Oct. 7 and estimated to take 10 minutes; find it here.

Among the questions:

-What diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, if any, does the station have in place, such as recruitment strategies, manager or employee training, seeking diversity among vendors or appointing an executive with specific responsibilities in this area;

-Has the station sought to measure discrepancies in pay or promotions for women or for people of color; how about in news coverage;

-Has it created a platform for “safe dialogue” with women and people of color about company practices;

-How, if at all, does the organization hold itself accountable for implementing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives;

-What methods does the company use when seeking candidates from underrepresented groups, such as job postings, career fairs, college partnerships, recruiting etc.;

-With what groups, if any, does the station feel it needs assistance with diversity hiring? Choices offered include women, people with disabilities, people over 50, veterans, LGBTQ+ and people of color.

Station owners and GMs can access the survey here.

The post Diversity Survey Seeks Owner/GM Input appeared first on Radio World.

A new survey seeks to learn more about diversity, equity and inclusion in the U.S. radio and TV industries.

The survey is from the National Association of Broadcasters Leadership Foundation and it is aimed at station owners and general managers.

“Our goal is to assist the broadcasting industry in maximizing your diversity initiatives and meeting your business objectives,” wrote Michelle Duke, president of the foundation, in an email that was shared with state broadcast associations. Duke this spring became the NAB’s first chief diversity officer.

She wrote that the survey seeks to identify trends and support future initiatives to help stations. It is open online until Oct. 7 and estimated to take 10 minutes; find it here.

Among the questions:

-What diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, if any, does the station have in place, such as recruitment strategies, manager or employee training, seeking diversity among vendors or appointing an executive with specific responsibilities in this area;

-Has the station sought to measure discrepancies in pay or promotions for women or for people of color; how about in news coverage;

-Has it created a platform for “safe dialogue” with women and people of color about company practices;

-How, if at all, does the organization hold itself accountable for implementing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives;

-What methods does the company use when seeking candidates from underrepresented groups, such as job postings, career fairs, college partnerships, recruiting etc.;

-With what groups, if any, does the station feel it needs assistance with diversity hiring? Choices offered include women, people with disabilities, people over 50, veterans, LGBTQ+ and people of color.

Station owners and GMs can access the survey here.

The post Diversity Survey Seeks Owner/GM Input appeared first on Radio World.

Author Christopher Ranck is associate director, program and operations services for WESM(FM)/Delmarva Public Media.

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. — Once a two-station NPR based in Salisbury, Md., Delmarva Public Media expanded to a three-station group in January through a collaboration with WESM(FM), a local public station based in southern Maryland.

While WESM still broadcasts limited NPR programming, Delmarva Public Media has become an independent public radio group, with each station establishing a unique programming identity.

The three stations share some common technology platforms that, while mostly used autonomously, can also be used collaboratively across the three stations. This includes ENCO’s DAD radio automation and production system, which has long been the automation choice at WESM and sister stations WSCL(FM) and WSDL(FM).

Like most public radio stations, WESM has syndicated and independent programming coming into the station over multiple platforms. Some of these programs, such as “The Red Rooster Lounge,” have long been manually downloaded — an often time-consuming and confusing process.

Thankfully, the recent addition of ENCO’s enConveyor automated file download utility to WESM’s DAD immediately solved this problem.

enConveyor not only automatically downloads these programs off of FTP and other websites, but it automatically places these programs in the proper folders. enConveyor is a fire-and-forget application that eliminates the operations manager eternal anguish of, “Did I remember to load that show?” while driving home from work. It also reduces the workload burden for our nontechnical staff, now that they only have to look at the enConveyor program to confirm that all programming is in the proper folders.

enConveyor runs within DAD as a standalone module, which makes it easy to add to existing systems. It runs in the background, which eliminates any danger of turning off the application accidentally. Once downloaded, enConveyor assigns the audio to the correlating cart number, and overwrites the content from the previous week. When everything is where it should be, the operator simply adds the programming to the playout schedule.

DAD is used across four locations at WESM: the on-air host station, two production studios, and a central computer running automation by the transmitter. We use DAD in the production studios to record underwriting messages, weather reports and other short-form interstitials that are subsequently uploaded to FTP. enConveyor again provides value here by adding these into the appropriate playlists upon recognizing the upload.

Further solutions

While enConveyor was added in the past several months, DAD’s feature set runs deep and we continue to benefit from other ENCO applications.

This includes ENCO’s Scheduling Wizard program, which specifically creates playlists for our syndicated programming. That application also interoperates with our Marketron traffic and billing system, which allows our traffic operators in Salisbury to send underwriting messages to WESM.

The Scheduling Wizard merges these messages into our DAD system, and most importantly, has eliminated the longstanding WESM process of creating playlists by hand, again saving us time and money. It’s an excellent example of how we can share ENCO’s workflow benefits across all three Delmarva Public Media stations.

DAD’s general ease of use is noteworthy. DAD is known for its colorful and legible interface, and our on-air hosts can easily switch between several customized mini-arrays for playing out show promos, public service announcements and other content. We have a small staff, and our hosts find it helpful to click from one page of mini-arrays to another to quickly find what they need, rather than searching through extensive libraries.

We have consistently updated our DAD system at WSCL(FM)/WSDL(FM) over the years, and we have taken that philosophy to WESM. Beyond enConveyor, we’ve purchased the Weatherology application from ENCO.

Like enConveyor, this is a module that will silently run in the background and ensure that weather reports are consistently accurate and up to date. Weatherology will automatically receive and schedule forecasts within DAD, so there will be no more reports of sunny weather when it’s raining outside.

DAD has been a technical win for all three stations while helping us change the way we work. Our workflows are simpler, our cost savings are up, and we are covering a much larger underwriting territory with WESM in the mix. And in the COVID-19 era, ENCO provides the flexibility to record underwriting and other content from home, and drop it into an FTP site where enConveyor once again does its magic. DAD has ensured that our operation continues uninterrupted, without added effort.

Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.

For information, contact Mark Stewart at ENCO Systems in Michigan at 1-248-827-4440 or visit www.enco.com.

The post User Report: ENCO enConveyor Serves Delmarva appeared first on Radio World.

Author Christopher Ranck is associate director, program and operations services for WESM(FM)/Delmarva Public Media.

PRINCESS ANNE, Md. — Once a two-station NPR based in Salisbury, Md., Delmarva Public Media expanded to a three-station group in January through a collaboration with WESM(FM), a local public station based in southern Maryland.

While WESM still broadcasts limited NPR programming, Delmarva Public Media has become an independent public radio group, with each station establishing a unique programming identity.

The three stations share some common technology platforms that, while mostly used autonomously, can also be used collaboratively across the three stations. This includes ENCO’s DAD radio automation and production system, which has long been the automation choice at WESM and sister stations WSCL(FM) and WSDL(FM).

Like most public radio stations, WESM has syndicated and independent programming coming into the station over multiple platforms. Some of these programs, such as “The Red Rooster Lounge,” have long been manually downloaded — an often time-consuming and confusing process.

Thankfully, the recent addition of ENCO’s enConveyor automated file download utility to WESM’s DAD immediately solved this problem.

enConveyor not only automatically downloads these programs off of FTP and other websites, but it automatically places these programs in the proper folders. enConveyor is a fire-and-forget application that eliminates the operations manager eternal anguish of, “Did I remember to load that show?” while driving home from work. It also reduces the workload burden for our nontechnical staff, now that they only have to look at the enConveyor program to confirm that all programming is in the proper folders.

enConveyor runs within DAD as a standalone module, which makes it easy to add to existing systems. It runs in the background, which eliminates any danger of turning off the application accidentally. Once downloaded, enConveyor assigns the audio to the correlating cart number, and overwrites the content from the previous week. When everything is where it should be, the operator simply adds the programming to the playout schedule.

DAD is used across four locations at WESM: the on-air host station, two production studios, and a central computer running automation by the transmitter. We use DAD in the production studios to record underwriting messages, weather reports and other short-form interstitials that are subsequently uploaded to FTP. enConveyor again provides value here by adding these into the appropriate playlists upon recognizing the upload.

Further solutions

While enConveyor was added in the past several months, DAD’s feature set runs deep and we continue to benefit from other ENCO applications.

This includes ENCO’s Scheduling Wizard program, which specifically creates playlists for our syndicated programming. That application also interoperates with our Marketron traffic and billing system, which allows our traffic operators in Salisbury to send underwriting messages to WESM.

The Scheduling Wizard merges these messages into our DAD system, and most importantly, has eliminated the longstanding WESM process of creating playlists by hand, again saving us time and money. It’s an excellent example of how we can share ENCO’s workflow benefits across all three Delmarva Public Media stations.

DAD’s general ease of use is noteworthy. DAD is known for its colorful and legible interface, and our on-air hosts can easily switch between several customized mini-arrays for playing out show promos, public service announcements and other content. We have a small staff, and our hosts find it helpful to click from one page of mini-arrays to another to quickly find what they need, rather than searching through extensive libraries.

We have consistently updated our DAD system at WSCL(FM)/WSDL(FM) over the years, and we have taken that philosophy to WESM. Beyond enConveyor, we’ve purchased the Weatherology application from ENCO.

Like enConveyor, this is a module that will silently run in the background and ensure that weather reports are consistently accurate and up to date. Weatherology will automatically receive and schedule forecasts within DAD, so there will be no more reports of sunny weather when it’s raining outside.

DAD has been a technical win for all three stations while helping us change the way we work. Our workflows are simpler, our cost savings are up, and we are covering a much larger underwriting territory with WESM in the mix. And in the COVID-19 era, ENCO provides the flexibility to record underwriting and other content from home, and drop it into an FTP site where enConveyor once again does its magic. DAD has ensured that our operation continues uninterrupted, without added effort.

Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.

For information, contact Mark Stewart at ENCO Systems in Michigan at 1-248-827-4440 or visit www.enco.com.

The post User Report: ENCO enConveyor Serves Delmarva appeared first on Radio World.

From our Who’s Buying What page: 2NBC FM in Sydney has new radio studios installed by Australian equipment dealer and integrator Broadcast Components and using AEQ AoIP equipment.

The two main studios are equipped with AEQ Capitol IP mixing consoles, Capitol Screen software and AEQ Netbox 8AD interfaces.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

The project comes as 2NBC FM celebrates its 30th anniversary. The community station, operated by volunteers, is based in Peakhurst, a suburb of Sydney, and is heard at 90.1 MHz and online.

A Broadcast Components team led by Sean Pritchard handled the integration.

The system is centered on a Dante AoIP network. Each AEQ Capitol IP console includes Capitol Screen visualization and operation-aid software and a double digital phone hybrid option.

Send info and photos of new facility projects to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Australia’s 2NBC FM Christens New Studios appeared first on Radio World.

From our Who’s Buying What page: 2NBC FM in Sydney has new radio studios installed by Australian equipment dealer and integrator Broadcast Components and using AEQ AoIP equipment.

The two main studios are equipped with AEQ Capitol IP mixing consoles, Capitol Screen software and AEQ Netbox 8AD interfaces.

[See Our Who’s Buying What Page]

The project comes as 2NBC FM celebrates its 30th anniversary. The community station, operated by volunteers, is based in Peakhurst, a suburb of Sydney, and is heard at 90.1 MHz and online.

A Broadcast Components team led by Sean Pritchard handled the integration.

The system is centered on a Dante AoIP network. Each AEQ Capitol IP console includes Capitol Screen visualization and operation-aid software and a double digital phone hybrid option.

Send info and photos of new facility projects to radioworld@futurenet.com.

The post Australia’s 2NBC FM Christens New Studios appeared first on Radio World.

Entercom’s WXYT(FM) in Detroit has renamed its broadcast studio in memory of Jamie Samuelsen. He passed away on Aug. 1.

Samuelsen was a veteran and morning show host for the sports talk station.

Entercom Detroit Senior Vice President and Market Manager Debbie Kenyon said, “We want to honor him in a special way, not only as a great broadcaster, but an extraordinary person. We hope the renaming of the studio will serve as a way to keep his memory alive and add to his incredible legacy here in Detroit.”

Samuelson was diagnosed with colon cancer in January 2019 and advocated for listeners to schedule colonoscopies during his final broadcast on July 27, 2020.

The post Samuelsen Studio Dedicated at Entercom Detroit appeared first on Radio World.

Entercom’s WXYT(FM) in Detroit has renamed its broadcast studio in memory of Jamie Samuelsen. He passed away on Aug. 1.

Samuelsen was a veteran and morning show host for the sports talk station.

Entercom Detroit Senior Vice President and Market Manager Debbie Kenyon said, “We want to honor him in a special way, not only as a great broadcaster, but an extraordinary person. We hope the renaming of the studio will serve as a way to keep his memory alive and add to his incredible legacy here in Detroit.”

Samuelson was diagnosed with colon cancer in January 2019 and advocated for listeners to schedule colonoscopies during his final broadcast on July 27, 2020.

The post Samuelsen Studio Dedicated at Entercom Detroit appeared first on Radio World.