GeoBroadcast Solutions, developer of the "ZoneCasting" FM transmission system, will conduct a full-scale commercial test in Florida next spring or summer. The test-station will be WRMF, an independently-owned adult-contemporary music outlet in West Palm Beach.
Although the FCC has yet to grant experimental authorization for this test, GeoBroadcast and Palm Beach Broadcasting have already secured FM booster-transmitters and a simulcast coordination system from Harris and are negotiating tower leases for the boosters. Continue reading “ZoneCasting: Commercial Test in 2013”
Author: diymedia_tu6dox
All-Digital AM-HD Tests Underway
Proponents of revitalizing the AM band using HD Radio are now testing the all-digital signal in the wild.
The guinea-pig is WBCN 1660 – a CBS-owned station in Charlotte, North Carolina. Currently a satellite-fed conservative talk station, WBCN will switch to a satellite-fed sports talk format in the new year. In a market of some two dozen stations, WBCN ranks 20th. Continue reading “All-Digital AM-HD Tests Underway”
HD Radio's Latest "Killer App" Isn't Radio
Radio World has awarded Paul Brenner its 2012 Excellence in Engineering award. Brenner, the senior VP and chief technology officer for Indianapolis-based Emmis Communications, has been the industry’s latest point-person regarding innovations involving HD Radio. He’s led the development of a prototype smartphone with FM-HD reception capability as well as an application that melds radio reception with “value-added” content delivered over the cellular network.
Brenner’s also president of the Broadcaster Traffic Consortium – an alliance of some two dozen radio companies who, along with NPR, are exploring ways to use digital radio signals to deliver real-time traffic information. Brenner estimates that there are about 12 million navigation devices in use that utilize radio to receive traffic data, and that figure’s growing by about 1-2 million per year. Continue reading “HD Radio's Latest "Killer App" Isn't Radio”
LPFM vs. Translators: A "Resolution"
Last week, the FCC approved significant rule changes to the low-power FM radio service; this week the agency formally released the text of those changes.
There’s a lot of good things in the latest Report and Order. LPFM stations have finally achieved something close to technical and legal parity with FM translator stations. LPFM rules have been refined to provide a substantive preference for those who actually plan to focus on live and local programming. And the next filing window for new LPFM stations will open in the fall of next year. Continue reading “LPFM vs. Translators: A "Resolution"”
Beware Broadcasters' Post-Sandy Opportunism
One month ago today, those of us in NYC and the surrounding area were hunkering down and riding out a storm named Sandy. As conditions worsened and disruptions in communications technologies multiplied, people did something they don’t often do en masse anymore: they turned to radio to find out what was going on.
A few radio stations did provide an informational and emotional lifeline, demonstrating that the medium still has an important role to play in our modern media environment. The ubiquity of broadcasting, coupled with the ease of access to it (no device necessary save for a cheap receiver, no contracts, no terms of service) made radio the go-to medium after almost everything else stopped working. Continue reading “Beware Broadcasters' Post-Sandy Opportunism”
Larry Bloch: 1953-2012
Larry Bloch, a founding member of radio free brattleboro, died last month of pancreatic cancer. He was 59.
Bloch was one of those rare and lucky folks for whom activism was a full-time vocation. After working with Greenpeace throughout the 1980s, he created the Wetlands Preserve in New York City in 1989. The nightclub became a magnet for many bands that rose to fame out of the “alternative” music soup of the 1990s. Continue reading “Larry Bloch: 1953-2012”
Human Rights Radio Turns 25
On November 26, 1987, Mbanna Kantako founded WTRA, an unlicensed microradio station broadcasting from the John Jay Homes in Springfield, Illinois.
Legally blind and in his twenties at the time, Kantako started the station to protest the imminent destruction of the housing project by the city and the pervasive police abuse that occurred there.
WTRA would later be re-named Human Rights Radio to reflect the Kantako family’s widening concern with issues of social injustice.
Crowdfunding Community Radio?
This crowdsourced funding call to build a new community radio station crossed my tweet-stream Tuesday. The Media Institute for Social Change, a non-profit media literacy/empowerment group in Portland, Oregon, has apparently secured a “rare opportunity” to build a new radio station in town. The goal of its campaign is to raise $3,500 by November 16. As of today, $2,220 has been pledged.
“We have accomplished perhaps the hardest part – we have acquired an FCC license, an incredibly rare commodity,” writes the Media Institute for Social Change’s executive director Phil Busse. “Your donation, quite literally, will be the nucleus around which the radio station is built…. Continue reading “Crowdfunding Community Radio?”
Future of AM: Decided in Secret?
There’ve been more developments regarding the radio industry’s potential plans for “modernizing” the AM band. Radio World reported last month that the NAB’s Radio Technology Committee and CBS have selected an unnamed AM station “in an area that could be characterized as a medium-sized market” to be a guinea pig for all-digital AM-HD Radio test broadcasts.
This is the first of “three or four” AM stations that may be tapped to test the all-digital protocol. The experiments are likely to be done by an “outside engineering contractor” and primarily financed by HD’s developer, iBiquity Digital Corporation. They could begin before the end of the year. Continue reading “Future of AM: Decided in Secret?”
FCC Goes Gangbusters on Jammers
On the heels of admonishing a half-dozen people for hawking cell-phone and GPS jammers on Craigslist earlier this month, the FCC unveiled a new web portal and toll-free hotline for reporting the use of such devices. In doing so it cited another six people for their online sales shenanigans.
Within these documents (sample), the FCC details its planned strategy for enforcement in this domain:
While we previously have issued warnings to operators in the first instance -primarily because non-monetary penalties historically have proven effective in deterring unlawful operation by individuals – we are not required to do so. We are mindful of the serious risks posed by jamming devices and the apparent need to provide greater incentives…to cease the operation, importation, and sale of jamming devices altogether. Therefore, we caution you and other potential violators that going forward, and as circumstances warrant, we intend to impose substantial monetary penalties, rather than (or in addition to) warnings, on individuals who operate a jammer. Continue reading “FCC Goes Gangbusters on Jammers”