Industry News

Responding to the story “Urban One Disappointed by FCC Action on AM Multicasts”:

Someone please put Ajit on the shoot and ask him why the commission won’t support expanding the FM band in the lower end!

It’s the simplest way to revitalize the AM stations in a way that is most easily supported by radio and transmitter manufacturers, and applying the same or similar rules governing the existing FM band.

This band could be designated all-digital and allow the AMs time to build their facilities ahead of and during the manufacturing of radios, while working toward a migration of the existing FM stations to an all-digital mode as well, with the possibility of fixing some allocation variances, like grandfathered overlaps that become meaningless in some cases once the stations are all digital.

I’ve been saying this for two plus decades now. Has we started one decades ago, we’d be settled in pretty good by now!

I’ve also spoken about the future use of the existing AM band being given (allocated) to local municipalities for their public notifications, information and other messaging.

Nothing serves the public better than the city council and other divisions, having a direct connection to their citizens. We used to have this on our cable TV providers, but those have pretty much all dried up. But, being able to access this from anywhere (car, home, portable) is a better solution than the cable ever provided.

Traveler’s Information Stations are well programmed in some cities, but not many exist. A 250 watt TIS could serve two or three suburbs, or an entire community of small towns, especially when they aren’t all piled on top of each other’s frequency.

In light of recent and past events, maybe a local municipality’s TIS could be a platform for protests, rather than unsafe disruptions of traffic in the streets! That doesn’t work now because you can barely hear them, basically making them a waste of energy as just noise generators. At a minimum, they would sure be public service if they provided the city official’s updated information regarding those and other events.

Comment on this or any letter or article. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject field.

[Related: “FCC Officially Proposes to Allow All-Digital on the AM Band”]

The post Letter: AM Migration Is Still a Good Idea appeared first on Radio World.

If your radio station is tackling that elephant in the room (Hello there, Mr. Coronavirus) with panache, style or outright parody, the creators of a new awards event want to hear from you.

That’s the consensus of a new awards event — the Coronavirus Radio Ideas Awards — which will honor radio professionals from around the world that have used their brands and ideas to better serve their listeners during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Read: Radio Is the Local Lifeblood for Brands During COVID-19]

The Coronavirus Radio Ideas Awards will highlight the best ideas in 10 separate categories, such as Best Social Media Video Content and Best Hometown Video. Two other areas — Best Podcast and Best Journalistic Content — will be up for recognition later in the year.

Radio professionals have through July 31, 2020, to nominate their favorite ideas. After that, online voting will begin on August 6, 2020, and will continue through Sept. 7, 2020.

The contest is the brainchild of the radio industry companies Benztown, P1 Media Group as well as Radiodays Europe, Radiodays Asia and RDE Podcast Day.

The 10 categories up for nomination are:

Best Social Media Video Content

Best Virtual Event

Best Parody

Best Virtual Concert

Best Station Promo

Best Community Service

Best Social Media Visual

Best Hometown Video

Best Sales Promotion

Best Mega Promotion

The two other categories that are part of the awards can be nominated later in the year and those two will be being judged by a panel of experts. Those two categories are: Best Podcast and Best Journalistic Content.

To nominate your favorite promos, visuals, videos and parodies, go here.

The post New Awards to Honor Radio’s Humor and Insight on Coronavirus appeared first on Radio World.

AM radio station owners in the United States are likely to get a rule break next month from the Federal Communications Commission.

Chairman Ajit Pai says the FCC will vote on whether to eliminate the radio duplication rule for AM stations while retaining it for FMs.

“In 1964, the FCC first adopted rules to restrict the duplication of programming on commonly owned broadcast radio stations operating in the same geographic area,” Pai explained in a blog post.

The original reason was to prohibit FM stations in larger cities from duplicating too much programming of a co-owned AM station in the same area, though the cross-service limitation later was dropped.

“We’ve revised [the rule] several times throughout the decades in response to changing market conditions. The current version of the rule was adopted in 1992. Going on three decades later, the rules are overdue for a revision,” Pai wrote.

[Related: “Radio Duplication Rule Up for Discussion”]

Given other recent votes that eased AM rules by this commission, it seems the change is likely to pass.

The rule at present prohibits any commercial AM or FM radio station from devoting “more than 25 percent of the total hours in its average broadcast week to programs that duplicate those of any other station in the same service (AM or FM) which is commonly owned or with which it has a time brokerage agreement if the principal community contours … of the stations overlap and the overlap constitutes more than 50 percent of the total principal community contour service area of either station.”

When the commission proposed the change a few months ago, it noted that the current rule was adopted 27 years ago to foster competition, programming diversity and spectrum efficiency, but that radio has changed significantly since then.

Pai cited “realities of the marketplace” and technical challenges faced by AM broadcasters as reasons to lift the rule from those licensees. “This approach will afford AM broadcast licensees greater flexibility, facilitate all-digital broadcasting by AM stations and ultimately allow stations to improve service to their communities.”

(Pai’s reference to all-digital service on the AM band was brief but suggests that the FCC soon will allow AMs to switch to that mode if they wish, as it has recently proposed.)

Another rule change that looks likely to be adopted at the August commission meeting has to do with broadcast infrastructure and antenna siting.

The rules currently prohibit the grant or renewal of a license for an FM or TV station if the applicant or licensee controls an antenna site that is “peculiarly suitable” for broadcasting in the area and does not make it available for use by other similar licensees.

The FCC noted last fall that when these rules came about around the end of World War II, FM and television were in their infancies, and the infrastructure available to broadcast a signal over the air was sparse.

“Back then,”  Pai wrote, “the commission froze the construction of new broadcast facilities in order to preserve equipment and materials (or materiel, if you’re so inclined) for the war effort. At the same time, the commission adopted rules requiring existing broadcast licensees to share their facilities in certain situations. To our knowledge, there has never been a case where all the criteria necessary to invoke the rules were successfully met. And given the significant broadcast infrastructure deployment since then, and the fact most towers are now owned by independent companies that lease tower space to broadcasters, these rules no longer serve any practical purpose.”

Pai said no broadcasters even filed comments about the proposed repeal.

Meanwhile on the C-Band front, Pai said he has circulated final draft procedures for a C-band auction to be held in December, to be voted on next month, and said the commission is moving quickly on this issue.

“If it weren’t for COVID-19, the ‘Top Gun’ sequel would be in theaters right now,” he pointed out. “Nonetheless, you can rest assured that we’ll all be mavericks in three weeks. That’s because when it comes our August meeting’s main attraction, repurposing C-band spectrum for 5G, we feel the need — the need for speed.” And he kindly provided a link for that cultural reference.

The post FCC Is Likely to Kill the Duplication Rule for AM Stations appeared first on Radio World.

Eight-year Nautel vet Kyle Dibbin looks to be moving out in the world with a new appointment as regional sales manager for Africa and the Middle East for the transmitter maker. He was most recently business development manager for the VS line of FM transmitters.

Dibbin started in 2012 in a hands-on role in testing and repair before moving to customer service roles.

Nautel Senior Director of Broadcast Sales Wendell Lonergan said, “Kyle has a wealth of knowledge both in the technology behind Nautel transmitters and customer interaction on a daily basis. … His passion for providing long-term quality transmitter solutions to customers will be a great asset to our partners in this region.”

The post Nautel Names Dibbin for International Sales appeared first on Radio World.

An AM radio station in Indianapolis has received permission to operate experimentally using all-digital transmission; it would be the second such full-time test station in the United States.

But the experiment may never take place.

Station owner Urban One is not happy that the Federal Communications Commission approved only part of its request. The commission did not allow the company to rebroadcast digital multicasts of the AM test station over two analog FM translators.

In response, Urban One CEO Alfred Liggins III told Radio World, “AM radio is at best beyond challenged, and at worst headed towards extinction. Any digital applications that improve coverage and the ability to deliver multiple streams of content is critical to AM’s survival.”

He said the fact that FM digital allows the ability to broadcast multiple sources of content over translators has been a key use for FM digital. “That ability is even more critical to the survival of the AM spectrum. I hope the FCC will allow this key use of AM digital technology in our quest for experimental authority. Everyone says they want to save AM; now here is a chance to do it.”

The Story til Now

The station in question is WTLC in Indianapolis, located in Nielsen market #25.

Urban One asked for permission to use the MA3 mode of HD Radio to test all-digital operation there. (FCC rules currently do not allow all-digital operation on either AM or FM, though the commission has been considering lifting that restriction for AM stations, and many in the broadcast industry have expressed support of that idea including the National Association of Broadcasters.)

To continue serving local listeners during its test, WTLC proposed that two FM translators associated with WTLC would continue to operate in analog — an important consideration since all-digital testing means listeners with analog receivers would no longer be able to hear the AM signal.

The FCC accepted all of the above and it notified Urban One of that in a letter in May.

However, it did not approve the company’s request that multicast channels of the AM test signal be rebroadcast over those two FM translators. And therein lies the rub.

Urban One had hoped that the project would be a logical “next step” to the work done at Hubbard’s WWFD in Maryland. The potential use of multicast channels in AM digital has taken on a higher profile since WWFD tested an HD-2 multicast in December, as we’ve reported.

“WTLC will introduce an HD Radio MA3 multicast feature into a top 50 Nielsen radio market with consequent publicity to gauge listener interest in the purchase of AM multicast receivers,” Urban One wrote in its application.

“As technology is fast-moving and radio receivers for 2022 and beyond are now being designed, new AM receivers incorporating the reception of HD Radio MA3 multicast sub-channels may depend upon concrete indications from the FCC that it will authorize this multicast mode, and from broadcasters that they will utilize this multicast capability.”

But the FCC staff apparently didn’t buy into this idea, at least not yet — perhaps feeling that the question of allowing all-digital AM stations and the question of using such stations for a new kind of translator “play” deserve separate consideration. This is speculation because the commission’s only comment on the matter was brief: “At this point we are not authorizing the rebroadcast of the (second) multicast channel on an FM translator station,” wrote James Bradshaw, senior deputy chief of the Audio Division, in the same letter.

Urban One attorney John Garziglia of Womble Bond Dickinson told Radio World that the company had

engaged in “several in-depth discussions” with Audio Division officials ahead of the filing and explained its intentions, including the use of translators to rebroadcast multicast channels in the same way that FM stations can. He said Audio Division officials had “expressed optimism” that the request would be favorably received.

Only after the filing was made, he said, did the staff say it would not allow the AM multicast channel to be carried on an FM translator. Garziglia said Urban One would not would have asked in the first place had it not received informal assurances that the proposal as written would be favorably considered.

He also said that Urban One subsequently told the FCC it would not proceed — “it simply does not work for WTLC as a business matter” — but that the commission issued its partial approval anyway.

Radio World invited comment Tuesday from the FCC and will report any reply.

“Chicken and egg”

Garziglia expanded on Urban One’s thinking in his comments to Radio World: “Unlike HD sub-channels, which are a reality, the HD Radio digital multicast channel chipset is being just being introduced. Going forward, it will be a ‘chicken or egg’ situation — multicast capability will not be included by consumer receiver manufacturers because they are not sure that consumers want this feature, and consumers will not ask for this feature because they are unaware that it exists.”

Urban One, he said, “was trying to take a lead, consistent with its business responsibilities, to expend the funds and efforts to introduce AM HD Radio digital multicast programming to the public, and to enable receiver testing of the AM MA3 multicast technology by manufacturers.”

Without the ability to simulcast the AM HD Radio digital multicast programming on an FM translator, he said, “the public will never know that the AM digital multicast programming is there. In addition, the purpose of introducing AM multicast capabilities to the public so that the public will demand such receivers is lost.”

He said the company saw a business benefit of serving the public with two AM multicast streams of programming; but without the multicast carriage, “it would be a losing business proposition, a consideration of which is often overlooked by the FCC but is vitally important to radio broadcasters.”

He concluded, “Unfortunately, at least at this point, the FCC is an obstruction, rather than a forward-looking champion of the radio listening public” in failing to approve the authority.

Garziglia said Urban One intends to seek an audience with Chairman Ajit Pai in the hope that his office can encourage the Audio Division “to take the wider policy view” — that the introduction of AM digital multicast broadcasts carried by FM translators “will be good for the public, good for the future of radio broadcasting, and good for the FCC in its encouragement of diverse programming.”

WTLC is a Class B AM station on 1310 kHz with 5 kilowatts daytime and 1 kW nighttime directional. Branded “AM 1310 The Light,” its format is inspiration and praise. The test would be in cooperation with Xperi and Nautel, both of which supported the request and are also involved in the first experimental station, Hubbard’s WWFD in Frederick, Md.

The testing would use a Nautel NX5 transmitter with NX HD upgrade, Exgine and HDMC+, operating in Xperi’s HD Radio MA3 all-digital mode broadcasting both a digital main channel and a digital multicast channel.

Comment on this or any story. Email radioworld@futurenet.com with “Letter to the Editor” in the subject field.

The post Urban One Disappointed by FCC Action on AM Multicasts appeared first on Radio World.

Having closed its fiscal year in June, the family-owned Sennheiser Group has announced its financial results for 2019, and while sales were only slightly down overall for the year, the company is preparing for the worst. Citing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on its consumer and professional businesses, as well as a slowdown in the headphone market, Sennheiser will cut roughly 650 employees by the end of 2022, with about 300 of those jobs in Germany.

Daniel Sennheiser, co-CEO of Sennheiser, noted in a statement, “In order to position the company for a successful future, we will adapt our organizational structure to the changing conditions and align it with the new requirements.” As a result, the company will be looking to make cuts in corporate functions such as supply chain and operations. Aiming to enact the reduction in what it termed a “socially responsible manner,” Sennheiser will consider measures such as not filling open positions, a voluntary redundancy scheme and severance options in addition to offering partial and early retirement.

“We are a family-owned company and every single one of our employees is part of the team,” said Dr. Andreas Sennheiser, co-CEO. “Together we share a passion for audio. With this in mind, these have been very difficult decisions to make and it is important to us primarily to avoid redundancies and to find individual solutions together with employees.” He added, “We will continue to focus on our core competencies and further strengthen both our consumer and professional divisions by transferring operational responsibility completely to these two business areas.”

Sennheiser’s fiscal year 2019 saw the company grow in its professional division while it landed below expectations in the consumer business. In total, the Sennheiser Group generated turnover of $863 million — 6.5% more than in 2018.

The company attributed much of its slide on the consumer side to the global headphone market, which has declined by 30 to 40% in recent months, largely due to physical retail outlets worldwide being closed or operated under shortened hours. Accordingly, sales of Sennheiser headphones also decreased to the same extent. In order to mitigate those effects, in March, the company introduced cost reductions and reduced working hours in Germany. Measures to reduce personnel costs and material costs were implemented to the same extent at Sennheiser’s international locations.

The effect of COVID-19 has also been felt in the company’s live sound microphone sales, as Daniel Sennheiser explained: “With the cancellation of live events all over the world, the entire event and music industry has been practically brought to a standstill and is only slowly getting back on track. The future of many rental companies, and other service providers is under threat. This is having a significant impact on sales of microphones, which will continue to be reflected in our business performance next year. Exceptions are studio microphones.”

In the fiscal year 2019, the professional division generated turnover of $414.4 million, an increase of 9.2% over the previous year. Growth was driven in particular by the product categories of live music, studio recording and business communication. The consumer division generated turnover of $448.7 million. Although turnover increased by 4.1%, that landed below the growth of the headphone market as a whole, despite the launch of new headphone models in the premium segment.

Playing to a hometown crowd continued to be Sennheiser’s forte when it came to sales — EMEA continued to be the region with the highest turnover in 2019 with $436.4 million, garnering an increase of 6.4%. In its home market Germany, Sennheiser was able to increase turnover by 1.8%. The APAC region recorded the highest increase in percentage terms with 10.6%. Growth was driven in particular by the markets in China, Japan and South Korea, while in the Americas region, turnover increased by $7.2 million, or 3.3%, year on year to $226.6 million.

With imminent job cuts and an expected continued downturn ahead, Sennheiser added that it fully intends to keep funding its R&D efforts going forward, including the development of its AMEBO immersive audio technology. “To create innovative audio experiences for our customers and to shape the future of the audio industry, we are continuously investing in our development activities, “ said Dr. Andreas Sennheiser. Sennheiser Group’s investments in 2019 increased by 4.1% to $71.8 million, which corresponds to 8.3% of turnover.

The post Sennheiser Announces Layoffs Amidst Slowing Market appeared first on Radio World.

Inovonics has published a comparison chart to help its users figure out which AARON receiver to buy. (A link is provided below.) We asked Sales & Marketing Manager Gary Luhrman about it.

Radio World: For those not familiar, briefly what is the AARON series?

Gary Luhrman: The AARON series is a family of three FM and FM/HD Radio rebroadcast translator receivers built to handle the most challenging reception scenarios. Boasting sensitivity and selectivity superior to even the most elite professional or consumer receivers, the AARONs combine premium features with unparalleled receiver performance.

Starting with a unique Software Defined Radio (SDR) front-end that provides extraordinary sensitivity, selectivity and RF shielding, each model adds additional functionality designed to meet unique needs according to the broadcaster’s application. The AARON products also provide remote access and valuable monitoring feedback via an intuitive web interface that is accessible from any web-enabled device (smart phone, tablet or PC). Engineers can listen via an audio stream and receive notifications via email or SMS messages for audio loss, low signal, RDS error, pilot loss, and audio failover back-up.

RW: Who came up with the idea for the series? 

Luhrman: Inovonics had made re-broadcast receivers for years but we were being asked for more features, better sensitivity and selectivity than our traditional analog designs could offer. That’s when we took a second look and decided to totally do a redesign from the ground up.

RW: How is Aaron different from other products in its class, what sets it apart?

Luhrman: The selectivity and sensitivity of the receiver make the AARON a strong contender to be Number 1 in its class. The straightforward setup and intuitive management from the web interface make the AARON easy to work with, and additional built-in tools at your disposal, such as RDS encoder, composite pass-through and MPX regeneration modes, along with failover audio back-up features. Finally, Inovonics’ three-year factory warranty and Premiere After Sales Service helps to “seal the deal” when engineers are looking for a reliable rebroadcast receiver.

RW: We’ll share a link to your chart below. But give a quick summary of how these three models differ.

Luhrman: The AARON 650 is our most popular FM Rebroadcast Receiver due to its flexibility to handle most scenarios.

For starters it has the sensitive and selective digital FM receiver referred to earlier along with Composite Pass-through and baseband regeneration modes, which are valuable tools when the FM reception is very challenging and the signal needs cleaning-up before passing it on to the FM transmitter.

The 650 also has a built-in RDS encoder, which allows you to alter or modify the RDS message to the translator. The 650 has two Antenna inputs and two MPX outputs along with some audio back-up capabilities via Web-stream or SD-Card. Finally, the interactive Web interface allows remote listening via Web-stream, FFT Analyzer, Alarms/Notifications, and supports SNMP.

The AARON 640 is the “no frills” model with the same digital SDR front-end for great FM reception, Composite Pass-through, and Active Reception Processing for bandwidth, stereo blend, HF blending and more. And of course it has the interactive web interface with remote listening via web stream, Alarms/notifications and SNMP support.

The AARON 655 FM/HD Rebroadcast Receiver is almost in its own category. It was designed to accept FM and HD Radio 1-8 program sources for rebroadcast, as well as analog, AES-digital and streaming inputs with fallback-priority selection.

You can think of the 655 as three products built into a single 1U box. It has the sensitive FM/HD Radio SDR-based receiver; a complete three-band audio processor with stereo generator; and a dynamic RDS encoder.

Some of the unique features of the 655 include creating a dynamic RDS message by converting the Pad Data from HD Radio channel or Streamed audio. The built-in audio processor allows the broadcaster to provide the best possible audio signal to the FM translator, and the 655 has input options for Analog, AES-digital, and Streaming audio.

RW: What are the retail price points?

Luhrman: Here are our list prices for the AARON rebroadcast receivers; I urge broadcasters to contact their preferred Inovonics dealer for a competitive quote that may be more attractive than the prices you see here:

• AARON 640 FM Rebroadcast Receiver = $2,100
• AARON 650 FM Rebroadcast Receiver = $2,390
• AARON 655 FM/HD Radio Rebroadcast Receiver = $2,600

RW: What else should we know?

Luhrman: All Inovonics products are designed, manufactured and assembled at our factory in Felton, Calif. USA. They come with a three -year factory warranty and Premiere After Sales Service. We can be reached for any questions at www.inovonicsbroadcast.com.

Link to the Inovonics AARON Comparison Chart (PDF).

The post How to Pick the Right Inovonics AARON Receiver appeared first on Radio World.

Digital Radio Mondiale is welcoming a policy statement from the government of South Africa about digital radio.

“This is a momentous decision for South Africa [and] the African continent and represents a first for digital audio broadcasting anywhere, as it brings together in one policy the two ITU-recommended open digital radio standards, DRM and DAB+,” DRM wrote in an email from Chairman Ruxandra Obreja.

DRM was reacting to a directive from Stella Tembisa Ndabeni-Abrahams, minister of communications and digital technologies, regarding the introduction of digital sound broadcasting in South Africa. It recommends both DRM, for AM and FM bands, as well as DAB+.

“The directive is based on the regulatory South African acts, the ITU Radio Regulations of 2016, the Southern African Development Community band plans and the Broadcasting Digital Migration Policy,” DRM wrote in a summary.

“Its aim is to provide a licensing framework and optimum allocation of radio frequencies for the South African three-tier system of public, commercial and community broadcasting services.” The goal is to stimulate local industry in the manufacturing of digital receivers and encourage investment in broadcasting.

“This is both a positive sign and strong encouragement to the broadcasting sector to attain the goals of universal service and access to all,” DRM continued.

“With this pragmatic and pioneering recommendation, the South African citizens will be free to consume an ingenious and complete digital platform through which they can access education, achieve social change and attain economic empowerment.”

The statement directs the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa to “determine priorities for the establishment of digital broadcasting networks and services in the frequency bands allocated for these services, to introduce DSB services alongside the existing analog services.” The authority is to “encourage market availability and use of multi-standard receivers to allow for the continued use of analog FM alongside DAB and DRM.”

The recommendations are Digital Radio Mondiale to complement analog AM service in the medium-wave band (535.5–1606.5 kHz) and analog FM services in VHF band-II (87.5–108 MHz); and to be deployed in the allocated VHF band-III (214–230 MHz). DAB+ transmissions would complement those in the allocated VHF band-III (214–230 MHz).

The post DRM Welcomes South Africa Digital Policy Statement appeared first on Radio World.

The Arkansas Broadcasters Association is the latest to cancel an annual conference due to the ongoing effects of the pandemic in the United States.

“In the interest of addressing the health and safety concerns of our members and partners, we have decided not to move forward with ARKCON 2020,” Executive Director Luke Story wrote in an email to members.

“This was not an easy decision. Fortunately, we did not have to make this decision alone, and are grateful to our members and partners for helping us through the difficult process.”

The organization will host a virtual sales and management media summit on July 22 and 23; it will be free to ABA members.

As we reported earlier, the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association recently made a similar decision about its annual Broadcasters Clinic. And September’s fall Radio Show had been cancelled earlier by the National Association of Broadcasters and Radio Advertising Bureau.

The post Arkansas Broadcasters Won’t Meet in Person appeared first on Radio World.

Broadcast business software developer Marketron has announced a new ebook and series of free webinars.

The ebook is titled “Digital Transformation Playbook: A Play-by-Play Guide for Broadcasters to Grow Digital Advertising Revenue.”

The upcoming webinar series is called “Radio’s Digital Transformation” and the individual events are:

• July 15 — Develop a Vision and Prepare for Change;
• Aug. 6 — Designing Your Digital Product Suite;
• Aug. 26 — The Importance of Workflow and Processes;
• Sept. 16 — Creating Your Digital Organizational Structure;
• Oct. 7 — Launch Your Digital Game Plan;
• Oct. 28 — Tracking Performance and Removing Roadblocks.

Marketron CEO Jim Howard said in the announcement that in terms of product value, “radio has always been hard to beat as an advertising medium” but that broadcasters are recognizing the potential of digital advertising to drive growth.

The post Marketron Makes Broadcast Business Software Ebook Available appeared first on Radio World.