RBR+TVBR 2016 Spring Special Report

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Do You Know Why The AM Revitalization Order Is Flawed?

Experts Say Broadcasters Still Feeling Effects Of The Telecom Act 20 Years Later

The debate about whether the 1996 Telecommunications Act helped or hurt radio and television owners continues to this day. We spoke with movers and shakers who were there.

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Why FMs Will Face Repack Expenses Too

Rich Redmond, Chief Product Officer, GatesAir, and Dan Fallon, Senior RF Engineer, Dielectric, take us through possible spectrum channel repack scenarios that can affect your entire transmission chain — with significant financial ramifications.

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Radioactive LLC CEO Randy Michaels refers to the FCC’s efforts to help AM owners as good intentions meeting politics with insufficient science. Some parts of the order will help the AM band, but others will make an even bigger mess of the senior band with more interference.

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Design, Planning Help Optimize Efficiency In Station Builds

Traditional facilities built in the 1960s and 1970s were built at a time when interior space standards were less efficient than current requirements.

Interior renovations of existing, working facilities continue to be necessary to suit today’s needs to fit more people and equipment into less space, says HLW International Broadcast Design Director and architect Keith Hanadel.

Brad Kelly Is Nielsen’s New Point Man

By Leslie Stimson Brad Kelly is now the managing director of Nielsen Audio, overseeing the company’s network, corporate, and local sales and account management activity across the United States in the radio broadcast business sector. He’s been in his new role four months; previously he was senior vice president of radio sales. He began with the former Arbitron 18 years ago as vice president of radio group sales.

Kelly is a second-generation broadcaster; his father was one of three Don Kellys at WBAL(AM) Baltimore, beginning on-air and then becoming program director in the late ’60s. From there he got into sales and then sales management, and finally, general management. Brad recalls handing out T-shirts and Frisbees at station remotes, and says he learned how to run the audio board at age 12.

Speaking personally, Kelly believes it’s interesting that Nielsen has decided to not only put a former Arbitron guy into the role over audio, but someone who is very much a radio guy. “I have a vested interest in seeing the industry not just survive, but thrive,” he told RBR+TVBR Editor in Chief Leslie Stimson in a recent interview covering issues that affect both radio and television at the audience research firm.

RBR+TVBR: Let’s begin with television. With the increasing TV audience fragmentation, what are some of Nielsen’s challenges?

Kelly: The fragmentation is both an opportunity and a challenge. They’re opposite sides of the same coin.

That’s equally true for our customers as well as Nielsen.

The analogy is that these are pieces of a puzzle that are fitting together to deliver a total audience. The pieces come together, and you can see what the total is. But the puzzle is constantly changing. The pieces are getting cut into different sizes and different shapes, and they are constantly morphing and subdividing and recombining in different ways.

So the opportunity, the first side of the coin for customers, is that they can take advantage of all these new technologies to create product-line extension. They’ve got the huge reach of broadcast. But now, they’ve also got the targetability of digital. The challenge is figuring out how to operate to optimize those assets so they can monetize them....

As I see it, the ground is constantly shifting and Nielsen needs to be able to adapt to those changes. Smaller audiences, whether they become increasingly fragmented and more niche, require different measurement techniques. We can’t rely on sample-based technology. That’s why we’re moving into census-level technologies, like the SDK [Software Developer Kit].

If I can stick with the analogy for a moment, another challenge is getting the pieces of the puzzle to fit together correctly. Different media lend themselves to different units of measurement. You’ve got the traditional and familiar average quarter-hour, but across media, you’ve got average minute, you’ve got C3 and C7 [live viewership plus three and seven more days, respectively, to capture time-shifted viewing].

RBR+TVBR: As more television viewing shifts to the web and to on-demand — we were just talking about C3 and C7 — how is Nielsen measuring across platforms for television?

Kelly: An initiative that we refer to as Total Audience measurement. Nielsen launched this initiative almost exactly a year ago. It is putting those pieces together, like we talked about. It is

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total content ratings, it is digital content ratings. It is, regardless of where the viewing is occurring, capturing that and then giving the TV customer the ability to combine those into a total audience picture. This is something that the company is really committed to and fully behind, and in fact it is gaining traction in the form of client engagement and client usage. That’s on the TV side.

Now, on the radio side, we are pulling a page out of that playbook in the form of digital audio. Digital audio is the first stage in Total Audience measurement for radio. It’s something that Arbitron fumbled and stumbled with. Once Nielsen acquired Arbitron, we took advantage of all the work they had done on the TV side and applied it to radio with very similar technology. In fact, in many ways, it’s easier to apply to radio than it was for TV. So we went from neutral to jamming things into third gear. And the digital audio service, that is on the launch pad and there is smoke coming from it, and we are ready to hit the go button with that thing. At this point, we are targeting a second-quarter release. It is imminent on the audio side. [Since this interview, Nielsen has announced it’s targeting a mid-May release.]

RBR+TVBR: You are saying it is imminent. Have you gotten a consensus? Last I heard Nielsen was saying you had to hear from the ad agencies and the broadcasters and for everybody to agree on how they wanted the measurement to look. Has that happened?

Kelly: Consensus is sort of a tough thing to accomplish.

When business interests diverge, trying to get everybody to a common, single point of understanding is extraordinarily difficult, we have found. The best we can do is sort of get everybody into the right ZIP code. Ultimately, Nielsen needs to do what’s in the best interest collectively for the industry and make the decision and move ahead with it. Because otherwise we sit here in neutral.

Someone once told me, “You can’t steer a parked car.” We need to go ahead and put this thing into gear, make a decision, and move ahead. To answer your question, I don’t know that consensus is achievable in that sense of the word, but hopefully there is a middle ground where everybody can find available solutions, and I think that is ultimately where we are going to end up.

RBR+TVBR: I want to go back and finish up the TV before we come back to radio. On the TV side, we were talking about Total Audience. ComScore has made a lot of noise, saying it can challenge Nielsen with its own cross-platform measurement. How does Nielsen respond to that?

Kelly: To set the record straight on that, I personally like and respect the folks at comScore, many of whom were former colleagues. They’re good folks, and I’ve got nothing but good things to say. I will also say that Nielsen welcomes the competition. I am a believer in the free enterprise system. I believe it will end up sharpening both us and comScore. It will force us to innovate and challenge convention.

All that said, I think that comScore will find, and are finding now, that crossplatform measurement is a lot harder than it looks. I do also think that comScore entering the total measurement space is actually a validation of Nielsen’s work to get our Total Audience service to the market. This is not on the drawing board for Nielsen; this is real. It’s live. It’s out there now.

The fact that comScore is very interested in the space would indicate that there’s a market for this. It is valued. It is important. So how do we respond to it?

We welcome the competition. We are glad to see a lot of folks agreeing that total audience measurement is an important objective for the industry, and we’re glad that we’re in the marketplace with a solution.

RBR+TVBR: Is the integration of Arbitron into Nielsen all done, or are there still things occurring that could impact clients?

Kelly: We jokingly say that the Arbitron folks and the Nielsen folks, we live in the same house. Two years down the road, we’ve experienced natural integration growing pains that I think most people in the radio industry could easily identify with. But it has gone, actually, quite well. What is there left to do? It’s a lot. I refer to it as the promise of Nielsen....

It’s been no secret: The motivator of why Nielsen bought Arbitron, first and foremost, is the meter. But what else? Nielsen also recognized that there is headroom for growth in the radio industry. Radio represents 20% of the media-consumption week. Right now it’s getting some 7 cents on the ad dollar — 20% of media consumption and 7% of the ad dollar. There’s opportunity here.

Nielsen can ask itself, what else can Nielsen bring to help this industry grow faster than it otherwise might? … It’s not about creating better weapons for the industry to beat each other up with. It’s creating new tools to help grow the pie — pie expanders. To help the industry grow faster than it otherwise could,

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and it’s doing that.

You asked where we go from here. Nielsen is doing stuff that Arbitron never could have dreamed of. They got what they refer to as the “three R’s”: reach, resonance, and reaction. Reach, that’s what we’re familiar with — what is the reach of the medium? That’s the ratings. And that’s what Arbitron did very well for a long period of time. But Nielsen is upping the game, because now Nielsen can do this cross-media comparative analysis. Arbitron was in a silo: Arbitron did radio.

But now, we can lay radio next to TV, next to digital, and see how they stack up. Radio stacks up extraordinarily well. Radio reaches more consumers than any other media, according to the company that measures them all. That’s powerful.

That’s the reach. The resonance and reaction, that’s what happens when somebody hears the ad. What happens next? Did the message resonate? Ultimately, did it motivate them to change their behavior? Did it move products off the shelf?

Nielsen has vast credit card databases [showing] tens of millions of dollars transacted every month. Nielsen Catalina utilizes the frequent-shopper club cards, when you go in and scan your card and it’s capturing all the product purchases at the product level.

So you take these databases and you stick them together with the ratings information, what do you have? You kind of have the Holy Grail of advertising.

And then what happened? Some of these studies that we’ve released, these return-on-ad-spend studies, [show] radio delivers a six-to-one return on investment. More recently, in Q4 of 2015, we did it at a more discrete level, and we found that certain categories, be they big box stores, etc., had multiples of six-to-one investment. Categories were delivering 16- and 17-times return on investment on the radio ad dollar, which is a tremendously powerful story for radio.

[Regarding] this idea of connecting the ratings databases beyond the credit card usage ... We’ve created this Nielsen voter rating service to see how different formats attract types of voter leanings, political leanings. The opportunities are mind-bending, almost limitless. What comes next? We will stitch together the ratings with voter registration, potential health care, pharmaceutical — all meant to create new insight and new ways of looking at radio and how radio can target specific consumers more effectively.

Going back to the question, is there anything left to do, the answer is we’ve only just begun. There’s some really cool stuff two years out of the chute, but the best is yet to come. Collectively, what I think it’s doing is creating a steady drumbeat of positive proradio success stories. All of a sudden, radio is cool again. I would like to think that Nielsen is playing at least a small part in that.

RBR+TVBR: Taking the political theme a little further, how can the new tool help stations pull in more of those ad dollars? Are any broadcast groups using it right now?

Kelly: The answer is yes. How can political help the industry? Radio has been a perpetual bridesmaid as it pertains to political.

RBR+TVBR: Oh, yes, compared to TV. Kelly: 2012 was a disappointing political year, general-election year. 2014 was an even more disappointing interim year. The question I ask broadcasters, my customers, is, what are you doing differently? What is the plan for 2016 to change that equation, change the nature of the discussion? Nielsen’s voter ratings tool now gives the industry something to talk about.

What you’ve got is the extreme political personas. It goes from the diehard Democrat to the crimson red Republican and sort of all shades in between. At a respondent level, it’s matching that to the PPM data. Now we can see how different formats attract different types of voters. It is a really interesting story for the radio industry to tell when they’re dealing with candidates, campaigns, and political action committees. Rather than just say, “Hey, I’d like to sell you a schedule,” it’s, “I can show you how many swing voters we can deliver your message to.”

As part of the service, we’ve also created a sales manager guide to selling political. So beyond just the ratings information, now we are providing our customers with ... you can see where the money is being spent, who is up for election, are there any issues up. It sort of helps create the roadmap for stations to present their story.

Then finally, the punch line is, once you get the meeting, once you get the appointment, what do you talk about? That’s where ratings come in. What you see there is that there are very definite political profiles that change formatically.

But you can’t even generalize, because what we find is that an urban station in Philly is a very different political profile than an urban station in Los Angeles.

They attract different consumers, different types of voters. It is really fascinating information. The industry is embracing it. You can’t get out of the way of political stories that we see appearing in the trade press virtually every day.

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Why the AM Revitalization Order Is Flawed

By Randy Michaels, CEO, Radioactive LLC The FCC’s so-called “AM Revitalization Order” has an Orwellian title. The order is the result of good intentions meeting politics with insufficient science. Some provisions will help the AM band, and others will help some current AM broadcasters. AM stations will have greater flexibility in relocating transmitter sites, and the idiotic ratchet rule is gone. But other provisions will make an even bigger mess of the senior band by increasing interference.

It is obvious that one does not “help” the AM band by giving some AM stations FM translators.

It may help the stations that get translators, but it certainly doesn’t help the band; encouraging those still listening to AM to migrate to FM hurts the AM band. It’s ironic that in the name of AM improvement, the FCC is now cluttering the FM band and limiting the service area of FM stations.

The process redistributes the wealth. The weakest and least viable AM stations, Class C and D

stations, got priority in the auction window, as well as a waiver of the major-change rules. A broadcaster who gave up on AM, sold tower land, took down a directional antenna, and accepted flea power at night was given an advantage that those who remain committed to the band did not have.

The big problems of AM are interference and noise. In many cases, 99 watts on FM is better than 1,000 watts on AM because there is so much interference. Newton Minnow, the same FCC chairman who called television a “vast wasteland,” also warned that post-war policies designed to create new stations by relaxing interference protection

“Encouraging those still listening to AM to migrate to FM hurts the AM band.”

Do we have customers using it? Yes. We changed the game a little bit, though. The traditional way of Nielsen selling its service is you sell through at the local level, and once the station subscribes to it, the national rep firm has the ability to use it nationally.

But what we found is that Katz, they sell the division very quickly. They said this is kind of tricky because different stations in different markets [are] choosing different surveys, and there’s no commonality here.

Trying to use that at the national level is going to be an extraordinarily difficult proposition.

So what we did, in partnership with Katz, we adopted what we call the “Katz First” approach.

We turned the whole equation upside down, and licensed Katz at the national level to use the political ratings for all of their customers at the national level, with the ability to make the pitch and create the success stories for radio. But then we are selling it through locally to the stations and the groups to use at the local level. We’re seeing some really nice successes there. It’s sort of a two-phased approach: Katz first, followed by local radio.

RBR+TVBR: How’s the enhanced Critical Band Encoding Technology testing going?

Kelly: Very well. Our rollout was completed in December of 2015. At this point, more than half of the stations have confirmed that they have successfully upgraded to the enhanced CBET. It’s the right half. They represent 80% of the market share. Now that’s not to say that the rest haven’t upgraded, but there is sort of a last step that requires that the station send us an audio sample for verification. So you can upgrade, and then we ask you to verify the upgrade by sending us an audio file, just so we can confirm that the new enhanced CBET is, in fact, on there successfully.

We are waiting for the balance to either send us the audio file or to go ahead and do the upgrade, and then also send us the audio file. But the number is about 80% market share. It’s a very long tail.

Many of our customers have upgraded for their pri-

mary, but then in some cases they’ve got a backup, and they’ve also got redundant backups. In some cases it is a backup, and then a backup to a backup that they haven’t gotten to yet. Or sometimes it is the HD2 or the HD3 or the Internet streams that have fallen a little bit further down on their priority lists.

RBR+TVBR: Ultimately, when everybody converts everything, how many stations is that?

Kelly: Eleven thousand encoders, we’ve got out there. But again, that includes your HD2, HD3, HD4, Internet. I think of the 11,000, we are somewhere north of 5,500 that have been successfully upgraded and the audio file came back and was verified as having a clean, enhanced CBET code on it. The last point that I will make is, looking at the data coming back, we’ve taken the year-over-year, January 2016 versus January 2015, and in fact, what we’re seeing is an 11% bump in average quarter-hour — which is consistent with the test results that we expected and we communicated to the marketplace in 2015 ­— as a result of the enhanced CBET. RBR+TVBR: Does each station still get backup encoders for every single channel? Say, for your main and then your HD channels?

Kelly: Yes. You’ve got it.

RBR+TVBR: When we were talking about crossplatform measurement for radio and including digital, do you see HD Radio or even listening through the NextRadio app as part of that?

Kelly: Yes. NextRadio and HD are currently measured, because they are broadcast in PPM markets.

They are encoded for PPM. In the diary markets, to the degree that people write these stations down in the diary, that is all captured, regardless of the device used. That said, NextRadio has an interesting added dimension to it. They are collecting digitaltype data; it’s almost like log file information. And we have engaged the folks at NextRadio on how we might be able to work together to incorporate some

were creating “small islands of service in a sea of interference.”

He could not have imagined the mess the AM dial is today. What we now call Class A and Class B stations were once capable of covering a market. Increasing interference and electronic noise, combined with urban sprawl, mean that very few AM stations can cover a market as well as even a Class A FM station. This order will help some stations with lousy coverage a little but hurt those few stations that can still compete on the basis of coverage.

Many at the FCC, meaning commissioners, should study how AM radio works. Many on the FCC staff understand the problems of the AM band, but politics apparently speaks louder than science.

“AM improvement” is to be accomplished in part by relaxing restrictions on critical hours operation. The “critical hours” are the time from sunrise to two hours after sunrise, and from two hours before sunset until sunset, local time.

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of that information into the Total Audience measurement solutions for audio.

RBR+TVBR: When you say log data, what does that mean?

Kelly: It’s almost like — and the folks at NextRadio can articulate this much better than me — it’s almost like web traffic, log file-type data. So when someone uses NextRadio to tune into a station, they’re capturing that. They are capturing what station they tune to, duration information. So the PPM code is passing through. That’s the mechanism that they were using to capture it. But they have, in parallel, this log file-type data.... It’s an interesting piece of the puzzle, because right now those audiences are small.

Using a sample as the instrument to collect that can be a challenge when you have a small audience. But the answer is, we’ve learned, on the digital side, to utilize a census-based measurement, or near-censusbased measurement. The NextRadio log file data would sort of be headed down that path.

RBR+TVBR: Is there anything else you think our readers should know?

Kelly: I guess, personally speaking, I think it is interesting that Nielsen has decided not just to put a former Arbitron guy into the role over audio, but very much a radio guy into this role. I am secondgeneration radio. I have a vested interest in seeing the industry not just survive, but thrive. This is a vote of confidence, I think. I don’t want to pat myself on the back too hard, but it’s a vote of confidence for the radio industry, and Nielsen is seeing the opportunity and putting a radio guy over that. I take it very seriously, my role in representing radio’s interest within Nielsen. I see it as my role and my responsibility to represent radio’s interest when it comes to Nielsen’s decision-making and creative energy and focus and resources. I hope to make radio proud in that regard.

It’s in my blood, and I love the industry. I want to do right by it.

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(Continued from page 4) During this time, certain stations may be operating with reduced power because this is when the propagation of radio waves changes from groundwave to skywave (at sunset) or vice versa (at sunrise). This can cause stations to be picked up much farther away, possibly causing interference with other stations with nearby frequencies.

The problem is that critical hours effects are quite real and have been ignored, to the detriment of many current stations. For instance, when the FCC decided to allow regional channels up to 50kw, one of the stations that got increased power was WHBC/Canton, OH, from 5kw to 15kw daytime.

The computer programs show that this power level protects co-channel WDJO/Cincinnati — and it does, at noon. Many fall and winter afternoons, WHBC can be heard overriding WDJO in downtown Cincinnati, sometimes as early as 3 p.m.

Most AM antenna arrays attempt to concentrate as much radiation as possible along the ground.

Very little skywave is returned to the ground near the station; if it was, it would cause interference to the primary radiated signal. The strongest skywave from most arrays is a couple of hundred miles from the station, and this can lead to serious interference issues.

Chart 1 shows the relative average skywave intensity produced by WHBC during critical hours.

Shown in black is the allegedly protected service contour of co-channel WDJO. As you can see, the WHBC array hammers WDJO as skywave starts to build. What makes it worse is that the propagation changes first at the top end of the band, so 1480

CHART 1: This map shows the relative average skywave intensity produced by WHBC during critical hours. Shown in black is the allegedly protected service contour of co-channel WDJO.

“The number of stations that don’t change pattern or power at night is shameful.” is experiencing major reflective conditions before nightfall on most days.

Critical hours interference is real, and destroys both drivetimes for many stations. So what does the loss of critical hours protection mean in terms of interference? WGN/Chicago often gets significant critical hours interference from co-channel WGCR even with WGCR operating at reduced power. Chart 2 shows a relative average interference map for WGCR vs. WGN with WGCR operating at its licensed critical hours power of 15kw. The WGN .5mv contour is shown in black, the protected contour in green. Chart 3 shows what will happen when WGCR operates with 50kw.

What could the FCC do to help AM stations?

The first one is easy. Hundreds of stations would have better signals if the FCC enforced its own rules! The number of stations that don’t change pattern or power at night is shameful. The AM band is a mess on Friday night during high school football season as stations all over the country stay on high power for the game. I spoke with one manager who told me with a straight face that the FCC has a “high school football waiver.” Given that the FCC does nothing about this practice, it effectively has.

The second thing the FCC can do is turn off AM IBOC. It isn’t in-band, on-channel, it’s in-band, adjacent-channel (IBAC), and it puts hiss on the

CHART 2: A relative average interference map for WGCR vs. WGN, with WGCR operating at its licensed critical hours power of 15kw. The WGN .5mv contour is shown in black, the protected contour in green.

neighboring frequencies. It doesn’t work well and isn’t used much.

The third and big thing the FCC can do is the tough one. FCC decisions driven by politics instead of science have trashed the AM band. There are few competitive AM stations left. Nibbling away at the service area of those few useful stations to provide small increases to the weakest stations is not a logical idea.

A better idea is to eliminate the stations that provide very little service. Experts have suggested to the commission that those owners committed to AM be allowed to buy out stations that just don’t work in order to create meaningful service areas, perhaps with tax credits as part of the package.

From 1924 through the late ’40s, the FRC/FCC was committed to policies that fairly allocated service free of interference. As knowledge was gained and the state of the art improved, the FCC

was able to add stations that provided good service and minimum interference.

The FCC rules of 1927 protected the night service areas to modest values. This maximized the ratio between service and interference. Politics and policies like the “10% rule” allowed stations with very high night limits to be built. Stations with very small service areas and large interference areas were the result. The night limits of stations with good coverage were raised in the process. Pre-sunrise and post-sunset operation made regional channels sound like local channels.

Some of this so-called AM “improvement” is more of the same.

It is good to see the “ratchet rule,” a rule that punished good signals for moving or upgrading, go away. And the 10% rule is no more. But the damage has been done. The nature of AM modulation, where audio is just imposed on the carrier,

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“FCC decisions driven by politics instead of science have trashed the AM band.”

CHART 3: This is what will happen when WGCR operates with 50kw.

and the propagation characteristics of the .54 to 1.7 mHz spectrum are such that AM may be unfixable. AM has always suffered from atmospheric and power line noise. AM propagation is constantly variable. Noise from computers, TV sets, light dimmers, CFL bulbs, switching power supplies, and so many other things make AM a tough catch in the house.

Even if you get away from the house, the failure of the FCC to protect service from interference has created a mess. I would invite anyone who works for the agency to drive the Washingtonarea Beltway after dark with the radio on scan.

You won’t find a single local AM station that you can hear all the way around the Beltway without interference.

Should AM radio be saved? Some European countries have just said no. Canada first eliminated daytimers, and has more recently been converting the stations in all but the most populated areas to FM. Is there still a reason to preserve the senior band?

We know the problems of AM. Almost everything digital is a noise generator. Hybrid cars are hostile to AM. The noise level in the AM band inside most homes is quite high, and modern building construction shields AM signals. Is there anything to be said about AM that is positive?

First, AM is simple: the imposition of audio on an RF carrier. It’s particularly easy to detect. All one need do is pass the signal through a nonlinear device to recover the audio. Remember that the crystal sets of yore were not powered. They used only the power of the station signal to produce reception. In a modern AM radio, most of the power consumed is used to amplify the sound.

FM is more complicated to demodulate. A radio tuned to FM will run through batteries much more quickly than one tuned to AM when played at the same volume. In times of emergency, AM is tough to beat. And how about digital? Demodulating a digital signal takes a lot of juice! That’s one reason you don’t see a lot of portable HD Radio sets. A small AM radio may run 50 or more hours on a set of AAA batteries. Try that with your cell phone.

It’s relatively easy to improve AM reception when you get away from noise. A wire or a tuned loop can turn an average radio into a machine capable of long-distance reception. FM isn’t so easy, requiring a tower and outside antenna.

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We are finally building better AM radios. In the late ’70s, the quality of AM car radios went way down. Broadband front ends replaced tuned AM RF sections. Windshield antennas replaced 56” whips. Manufacturers responded to interference complaints by restricting audio bandwidth. The situation is much better today. Most of today’s car radios have chipsets that intelligently set bandwidth based on interference. Low-noise amplifiers have made antennas in glass work. Take most of today’s car radios out on the interstate away from interference, and they will produce noise-free reception below 100 microvolts (0.1mv/m) and listenable reception to 50 microvolts and below.

While AM IBOC is a joke, the chipsets designed to demodulate it do some amazing things. They are sensitive. They adapt the bandwidth to noise.

And they use a form of synchronous detection that eliminates the phase distortion caused by skywave selective fading. You will hear some phase rotation, but the signal does not lose intelligibility as it does with envelope detection. AM HD Radio has created radios that make skywave more useful than it has been.

On the portable front, there are radios being made that provide great AM reception at low cost. Some of the one-chip radios built around the Silicon Labs DSP Si4734 chip, like the Tecsun PL-310 or 390, give amazing reception, variable bandwidth, signal strength, indication, signal to noise, the time, and even the temperature at very low cost. Great, affordable AM radios are back.

If you want an inexpensive AM radio with great sound and reception, do some reading at radio jayallen.com/.

If we are going to save AM, returning to something like the early plans of the FCC makes the most sense. Reserving some channels for highpower long-distance operation, some channels for medium-power, low-interference regional service, and some low-powered local stations makes sense. The issue is that such a plan cannot accommodate anything close to the number of stations now operating.

Using tax credits or other incentives to reduce the number of stations per frequency is perhaps an answer. As more owners give up on AM, the FCC should take the opportunity to clean up the band.

One idea that may be too late is removing the 50kw power limit. It is most unfortunate that

politics froze our AM development at this level. In Europe and Asia, wide-area AM stations operate with power levels from 400kw to 2,000kw. Here is why that makes much more sense: By the 1930s, the FCC recognized that it takes at least 2mv to serve a populated area, more in city centers and industrial areas. At 50kw, stations produce a 50% .5mv skywave out to about 700 miles. They do not produce a 50% 2mv contour at all. Signal levels may surpass 2mv from some stations on some nights, but the average value is below .5mv 50% of the time. At 500kw, a station produces a 2mv 50% skywave out to about 700 miles. At 50kw, skywave service is secondary and unreliable. Many nights, skywave is just interference, not service. At power levels above 500kw, skywave starts to become useful and interesting.

Would anyone do this today, even if allowed?

Probably not. Should the option of using the band logically be available? Why not?

People will still listen to AM if there is something unique, compelling, and difficult to duplicate on a signal they can hear. Look at the flack BMW is taking for eliminating AM radio instead of solving the interference problem created by electric cars.

The AM band is a good place for spoken-word programming that does not depend on high fidelity. It’s a place for niche formats, like music targeting older Americans or ethnic groups. AM stations can provide service in areas hostile to FM, and with the proper plan, some AM stations can serve wide areas with reliable service not possible on FM. AM reception is simple and easy on batteries, and therefore perfect for emergencies.

Is it possible to put science ahead of politics?

Pretending that there is no daytime skywave or critical hours interference or that a 25mv night interference limit is efficient spectrum allocation has made a mess of things.

AM may not be fixable. But if you want to improve it, the answer is less interference, not more. There are too many stations on the AM band. Allowing those with marginal signals to reduce the service area of the few stations that still cover a market is a goofy idea. How does making all stations more equally useless help AM?

4/5/16 8:03 AM

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The Impact of the Telecom Act 20 Years Later

By Leslie Stimson The 1996 Telecommunications Act is now 20 years old, and the debate continues to this day about whether it hurt or helped radio and television.

Several experts RBR+TVBR spoke with believe the changes were modest for television but radical for radio, and the results still reverberate in the radio industry today.

Back in 1995, proponents of the changes in the bill, among them owners of large radio groups, pushed for elimination of all ownership limits, both national and local. They said that for one thing, the FCC’s passage of Docket 80-90, which increased the number of FMs in a market, further divvied up the advertising pie and made it hard for all radio owners to make money.

Coupled with this rule, before passage of the act, the national radio ownership limit was 40 stations to an owner (up to 20 AMs and 20 FMs), and the local limit was four stations (two AMs and two FMs) per owner in a market.

In a U.S. House Commerce Committee Report in 1995 on the act, members stated: “We believe that the rules promulgated by the FCC … have had direct and detrimental effects on the ability of some stations to compete in both the major metropolitan markets and the smaller and medium-sized markets associated with rural areas. In some instances, this has hindered certain stations’ ability to continue to provide the diverse array of viewpoints and programming choices that the public has learned to enjoy and expect.”

“That was a windfall.”

— Dick Foreman

Reed Hundt, who was FCC chairman at the time, said “big kahunas,” meaning large owners like the Mays family and others, “wanted to buy all the little stations.” He said, “They wanted to consolidate the market, and they told the House Republicans what they wanted, and they got what they asked for.”

In that era and even today, radio was, as a political medium, primarily a platform for rightwing “Trump-like shows,” according to Hundt, and the premier show in that format at the time was Rush Limbaugh’s. “That platform, radio as a political medium, was very important” to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and the new majority in the U.S. House, Hundt said.

“The radio provisions in the ’96 act were unlike any other provisions,” according to the former chairman. “Nothing was delegated to the FCC. Instead, the law was specifically written to say the FCC can’t get in the way as the consolidation takes place.”

GOP pressure in Congress came to bear, and that’s how the national radio ownership limits were eliminated entirely and the local limits were greatly relaxed, to the tiered system we have today, with an owner allowed to own up to eight stations in markets with 45 or more commercial stations, on down to five in markets with 14 or fewer total commercial stations.

Hundt was actually an opponent of the relaxation, telling Congress and the Department of Justice that allowing radio owners to “pretty much

Top 10 TV Owners - 1995 Est. Revenue-Owner YE 1995 ($000)

Share of Industry Revenue

Owner # Stations YE 1995

ABC/Disney

$1,247,200

7.5%

11

CBS Station Group

Owner

$1,076,400

6.5%

19

Fox Television

$918,100

5.5%

13

NBC/GE

$839,800

5.1%

9

Tribune Co.

$687,200

4.1%

10

Gannett Co.

$583,900

3.5%

15

New World Comm Group

$474,600

2.9%

13

CBS TV

$409,500

2.5%

12

Cox Media Group

$384,400

2.3%

6

Belo Corp.

$353,000

2.1%

7

Est. Revenue-Owner YE 2014 ($000)

Share of Industry Revenue

Owner # Stations YE 2014

Fox Television

$1,746,825

8.7%

30

CBS TV

$1,629,250

8.1%

30

Comcast/NBC

$1,365,150

6.8%

28

TEGNA

$1,343,575

6.7%

48

Sinclair Bcst Group

$1,281,710

6.4%

129

Tribune Media Co

$1,257,875

6.3%

51

ABC/Disney

$1,132,450

5.7%

8

Media General

$989,500

4.9%

98

Hearst Television

$838,700

4.2%

37

Univision

$752,350

3.8%

60

Source: BIA/Kelsey

Top 10 TV Owners - 2014 Owner

Source: BIA/Kelsey

buy anything” was a mistake for the industry and consumers. He actively fought the bill — and lost.

The Impact When the act passed and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, big radio owners were poised to acquire — fast.

According to BIA/Kelsey, in 1995, the top five radio ownership groups, in order, were: CBS Radio, with estimated revenue of $497.8 million, a 4.7% share of industry revenue, and 39 stations. Infinity was second, with $459.6 million in estimated annual revenue, a 4.4% share of industry revenue, and 42 stations. Evergreen Media came in third, at $285.9 million in estimated annual revenue; that added up to a 2.7% share of industry revenue with 35 stations. ABC/Disney was fourth, with $269.8 million in estimated annual revenue, a 2.6% share of industry revenue, and 21 stations. Chancellor was fifth, at $207.4 million in estimated annual revenue and an even 2% share of industry revenue with 41 stations.

Clear Channel was sixth, at $137.2 million in estimated annual revenue and a 1.3% share of industry revenue with 36 stations.

Ten years later, in 2005, Clear Channel was number one, according to BIA/Kelsey, with $3.6 billion in annual estimated revenue, a 20.1% share of industry revenue, and 1,184 stations. CBS Radio was second,

with $2.29 billion in annual estimated revenue, a 12.7% share of industry revenue, and 179 stations.

Entercom was third, with an estimated annual revenue of $594.2 million, a 2.8% share of industry revenue, and 103 stations. Cox was fourth with $494.9 million in estimated annual revenue, a 2.7% share of industry revenue, and 78 stations. ABC/Disney was fifth, with $469.9 million in estimated annual revenue, a 2.6% share of industry revenue, and 72 stations.

Flash forward to 2014, the most recent data available, and the renamed iHeartMedia is number one with an estimated $2.67 billion in annual revenue, an 18.3% share of industry revenue, and 858 stations. CBS Radio was number two, with $1.3 billion in annual estimated industry revenue, a 9.1% share of industry revenue, and 117 stations. Cumulus was third, with an estimated annual revenue of $825.4 million and a 5.8% share of industry revenue and 451 stations. Entercom was fourth at $516.7 million in estimated annual revenue, a 3.7% share of industry revenue and 127 stations. Finally, Univision was fifth, with estimated annual revenue of $342.4 million, 2.4% of industry revenue, and 67 stations.

For media brokers, the changes were profitable. Dick Foreman, head of Richard Foreman & Associates, said the years 1995 through 2002 “were probably the best, not just for me, but for most people in the brokerage business. That was a windfall APRIL 2016 · RB R .C O M · 9

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Top 10 Radio Owners - 1995 Est. Revenue-Owner YE 1995 ($000)

Share of Industry Revenue

Owner # Stations YE 1995

CBS Radio

$497,750

4.7%

39

Infinity Broadcasting Corp.

$459,950

4.4%

42

Owner

Evergreen Media Corp.

$285,850

2.7%

35

ABC/Disney

$269,800

2.6%

21

Chancellor Broadcasting Co.

$207,400

2.0%

41

Clear Channel Comm

$137,200

1.3%

36

Jacor Comm Inc.

$124,250

1.2%

20

CBS Corp.

$121,500

1.2%

12

Bonneville Intl

$119,400

1.1%

17

SFX Bcstg Inc.

$117,350

1.1%

99

Source: BIA/Kelsey

Top 10 Radio Owners - 2014 Est. Revenue-Owner YE 2014 ($000)

Share of Industry Revenue

Owner # Stations YE 2014

iHeartMedia

$2,586,965

18.3%

858

CBS Radio

$1,280,325

9.1%

117

$825,415

5.8%

451

Owner

Cumulus Media Hldgs Entercom

$516,725

3.7%

127

Univision

$342,375

2.4%

67

Cox Media Group

$300,125

2.1%

56

Townsquare Media Inc

$274,265

1.9%

315

Radio One Inc

$237,625

1.7%

52

Hubbard Radio

$225,125

1.6%

46

Emmis Communications

$166,500

1.2%

23

Source: BIA/Kelsey

... also for people who wanted to expand their interests strategically in the marketplace” and who, up until the passage of the act, had not been able to do so.

Foreman recalls one of the first radio duopoly transactions involving two public companies; he sold ABC Radio’s two stations in Denver to Jefferson-Pilot in 1995.

“I will never forget being on the phone with Jim Arcara, who we had done some business with before — actually, I was having lunch with him in the city and saying, ‘I am going to tell you, if you want to sell, here is the buyer that we’ve got for the two radio stations in Denver.’ And he asked, ‘Who is the buyer?’ I said the buyer will probably be, most likely, Jefferson Pilot. He said, ‘Are you crazy? I’ve got to talk to my direct competitor?’ I said, ‘Jim, it’s a brand new world.’ Jim was the president of ABC Radio at the time.”

Television For television, the ownership changes were modest, according to experts we contacted. Covering the passage of the act on Capitol Hill at the time, this writer recalls lots of discussions centered on the V-chip, which would give parents the ability to block adult programming. It was a way lawmakers could make the industry “inside baseball” discussions about the Telecom Act more sexy in the news.

But the V-chip didn’t catch on with consumers, who found it too difficult to use.

Hundt said television owners mainly wanted to delay implementation of the digital transition, and fought provisions in the bill that would have facilitated it. The transition finally happened during the

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Radio companies that are successful still emphasize “live and local.”

– Dick Wiley

Obama administration.

According to BIA/Kelsey, the top three television owners in 1995 were ABC/Disney, at $1.25 billion in annual estimated revenue, a 7.5% share of industry revenue, and 11 stations. CBS came in second, with an estimated annual revenue of $1.08 billion and a 6.5% share of industry revenue and 19 stations. Fox was number three, with estimated annual revenue of $918.1 million, a 5.5% share of industry revenue, and 13 stations.

Fast forward to 2014, and the number one television group was Fox, with $1.75 billion in annual estimated revenue, a 8.7% share of industry revenue, and 30 stations. CBS came in second, with annual estimated industry revenue of $1.63 billion, an 8.1% share of industry revenue, and 30 stations. Comcast/ NBC was third, with annual estimated revenue of $1.36 billion, a 6.8% share of industry revenue, and 28 stations.

Today Radio and television were tiny parts of the Telecom Act; the bulk of the bill concerned tele-

“Big kahunas,” meaning large owners like the Mays and others, “wanted to buy all the little stations.”

— Reed Hundt

phony. Richard “Dick” Wiley was FCC chairman before Reed Hundt; he is a founding partner of Wiley Rein LLP and heads the firm’s 80-attorney communications practice.

The act itself was simple in its intent and complex in its implementation, according to Wiley: “That was to try to develop a competitive deregulatory national policy framework that would open all markets to competition and to accelerate the deployment of advance services,” he said. “I think that worked very well, and where you had a lightly regulated marketplace, there’s a light touch applied. For example, in information services and mobile services, I think it worked well. But where the markets remain heavily regulated, like wire-line telephony or broadcasting, it was less effective.”

Hundt’s FCC implemented the changes in sixmonth increments, and it was an intense 18-month process. Asked by RBR+TVBR how he determined what to tackle first, he said that “was probably the single most important decision for the agency.” He noted that some parts of the law were going to be “tremendously beneficial” to some companies — like the telephone companies being able to enter the long-distance market. Hundt said, “We decided that it was such a big opportunity, it should be one of the last things we did,” to ensure that phone companies would work with the agency constructively.

Looking back 20 years and fast-forwarding to today, RBR+TVBR asked all three experts whether the changes, especially for radio, were good or not for the industry.

Hundt says the changes “were a mistake” because the large companies that pushed for the changes “paid too much and bought too much.”

The result, he said, is that content creation “has shriveled.” He said, “They all bought everything, and terrible things happened to their businesses.”

Wiley noted that “radio has still survived” and the companies that are successful still emphasize “live and local.”

Foreman, meanwhile, believes radio and television are much better off with the changes brought about by passage of the Telecom Act because they’re able to create greater market share through advertising. “Radio was a very difficult business to buy years ago, because it was so fragmented,” he said. “You had everybody coming in saying, ‘We’re number one in 18-49-year-old.’” Additionally, “tremendously low rates” were another problem, according to Foreman. He said, “Through harnessing the effects of the Telecom law, we were able to create greater bulk, greater revenue, greater value, and higher rates. And all of that was wonderful for radio, and to a certain extent, television. But the big push was in radio.”

4/5/16 8:03 AM

Why FMs Will Face Repack Expenses Too

By Rich Redmond, Chief Product Officer, GatesAir, and Dan Fallon, Senior RF Engineer, Dielectric Many radio owners may not realize that the upcoming television spectrum auction and subsequent repack will affect them as well — and the significant financial ramifications that are on the horizon. FM owners who share common towers or rooftops with TV, take heed: Those radio owners who lived through the DTV conversion remember daily on-air disruptions, which can lead to revenue loss.

Indeed, the FCC’s release of the Reverse Auction Opening Prices in February magnifies the reality of the TV-spectrum repack.

The forthcoming activities will have at least some impact on all 210 U.S. DMAs, from New York City to Glendive, Montana, as well as Puerto Rico. Many UHF stations will have several options that span from moving to a new UHF assignment, channelsharing, relocating to low-band or high-band VHF, or going completely dark.

Each station that chooses channel relocation will face a unique set of circumstances around the redesign of existing RF systems. The rare UHF channel moving within a channel of its current assignment may have the option of simply retuning the existing transmitter and antenna. A very small number of stations with broadband panel antennas — major metropolitan markets with shared broadcast sites — can also likely accommodate channel changes with combined adjustments in the RF plant, and retain existing hardware.

These situations will not represent the typical use case. For most broadcasters, there will be significant changes to the transmitter, antenna, and RF filtering. Many will also require significant tower work, including reinforcement to accommodate auxiliary antennas, mounts, and transmission line.

The saga extends beyond the TV broadcaster in many cases. For FM owners on shared TV and radio tower sites, significant disruption to their RF operation is very likely.

season, these TV stations will begin filing construction permits to initiate the required tower, antenna, and RF plant work.

As the auction process winds down, TV stations will have approximately 39 months to move to their new channel assignments. With few tower-rigging crews and an enormous amount of work to be done, few expect that every site will be completed within that window. To accommodate the deadline, many stations will have to prepare auxiliary systems to support the new channel assignment. In the midst of these many changes, the FM broadcaster on a shared tower site will also need to prepare for disruption.

Repack And The FM Broadcaster There are approximately 1,200 tower sites in the U.S. that share TV and FM operations. The numbers add up to 2,368 FM radio stations or translators on TV towers today — 1,300 of them full-power FMs —

that may be impacted by the spectrum repack. This means that approximately 35 percent of existing FM radio stations could experience significant interruption to their operations as a result of ensuing construction activities.

Broadcasters will be able to remain on the same tower in most cases. However, transmitters, filters, antenna systems, and other RF components are, for the most part, frequency-specific. As a result, most of this gear will need to be replaced or significantly updated if the TV station moves more than one channel away.

FM owners who lived through the DTV conversion recall off-air disruptions due to extensive tower work. Though over-the-air TV is reclaiming viewers in the U.S. due to changing consumer habits, TV broadcasters have several alternative distribution methods. Cable and satellite penetration remains strong even as more viewers cut the cord. Generally speaking, taking the TV transmitter off the air will affect only a small percentage of the broadcaster’s audience.

This is not the case with radio. It’s true that streaming is on the rise, but most radio listeners still

Dielectric’s Mount Bigelow tower farm in Arizona

The Current Landscape TV broadcasters in the U.S. and Puerto Rico were required to inform the FCC of their intent to participate between December 1, 2015 and January 4, 2016. That intent was to be delivered via an application filing for the reverse auction. A generally quiet period through March 29 allowed stations to make minor corrections or modifications to their original applications.

March 29 into the month of May represents an important window for registered broadcasters: Commit to turning off your signal or selling your spectrum. The financial rewards vary based on the broadcaster’s choice. For example, based on the Reverse Auction Opening Prices, one leading UHF broadcaster in Philadelphia stood to make nearly $700,000 by going dark, nearly $525,000 by moving to low-band VHF, or nearly $280,000 by moving to high-band VHF. The reverse auction process itself happens in May, followed by a forward auction through September that ultimately decides what entities will pay for the spectrum. By the end of September, the FCC will begin making payments to broadcasters and allotting new channel assignments to stations that did not go dark. As we move toward the 2016 holiday

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listen over-the-air. For the FM broadcaster, it’s a big deal when the transmitter is off the air.

Therefore the FM owner must begin planning for disruption now, and understand the options that exist to combat service interruptions. This means engaging with TV broadcasters to understand their planning processes and identify how channel changes will impact other tower residents. It may also involve planning for possible alternative or backup sites for FM operations. By establishing joint timelines, owners involved can minimize, or completely avoid, disruptive design and construction issues later.

Approximately 35 percent of existing FM radio stations could experience significant interruption to their operations.

may need to be recovered from other site users to support continued TV operations. One issue is that many TV stations have yet to dispose of their analog transmitters, given the lack of a secondary market Inside Impact and the expense of disposal.

Both TV and radio owners will need to prepare for This is where the situation becomes perilous to a number of changes inside the RF plant. Since most the radio broadcaster whose main line to the listener digital TV transmitters on the air have limited ability is through over-the-air delivery. Reconfiguration to change to different frequencies, a large percentof the floor plan will be the first determination on age of these transmitters will require replacement. whether the FM will be impacted at site.

To avoid off-air time, the replacement transmitter The introduction of a second digital TV transmitwill need to be installed and tested prior to changter will likely shuffle the positioning of equipment ing channels. This means that the site will need to racks, support equipment, and RF systems for both accommodate two TV transmitters simultaneously.

TV and FM tenants. Thankfully, today’s higher-effiNaturally, accommodating two TV transmitters ciency DTV transmitters are significantly reducing will not mean operating two simultaneous channels. the transmitter footprint, which may take total site Unlike the analog-to-DTV conversion, there will be relocation off the table for the FM owner. no overlap period to establish a gradual transition Assuming there’s enough real estate inside the process. Instead, once the transmitter and auxiliary building to avoid relocation, the outside tower and antenna are in place and tested, the transition to antenna work will likely impact FMs. Many FMs will the new channel will, ideally, be a planned and choneed to power down during TV antenna installation, reographed flash cut. This means that a significant or potentially reposition their antenna on a lower amount of parallel work will be happening in the section of the tower to make way for an auxiliary TV RF plant to accommodate the new transmitter, STL antenna. This means ensuring the FM transmitter can connectivity, filtering changes, electrical and cooling operate at a lower power level, and reducing power in needs, and dummy loads for testing purposes. alignment with the new lower antenna position and/or Depending on Vertical the site layout, additional space safety Bridge Half Page.pdf 1 3/11/2016 11:31:03 AM requirements for working tower crews.

Often, these power reductions will be significant — think 10% of the station’s standard Total Power Output. Broadcasters with a solid-state transmitter can most likely lower power levels via remote control button as needed. Tube transmitters can safely be reduced to 20% to 30% of TPO without significant design changes. However, reducing a 30kW power output to 3kW or lower will require a more complex adaptation of the transmitter architecture, which necessitates significant labor.

Elsewhere, changes to electrical and cooling systems may disrupt the FM operation depending on how substantially the TV and FM operations are intertwined. This will require validating how to separate the grounding, electrical entrance, and service panels for each broadcaster, and how to effectively reconfigure these systems to better isolate the FM operation.

Perhaps most importantly, FMs should plan for possible alternative or backup sites. In instances where special filtering is required because of the TV station frequency — or when FM and TV stations combine into a common antenna — the design changes may be wholesale enough to warrant a move to another location. For some owners, installing a temporary transmitter at the studio facility may be the most viable option.

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The goal for both the TV and FM owner is to minimize tower work. mainly operate circularly polarized antennas. This means they have as much power in the vertical plain, a polarization method that is better optimized for mobile FM delivery, as the horizontal plain.

Coverage studies will help both FM and TV stations better understand how coverage patterns may shift from both a tower-position change and an antenna-polarization design change. Using special computer software, the broadcaster can intelligently build a model to simulate how a shift in azimuth pattern and polarization strategy affects overall coverage.

Dielectric antenna site for TV and FM in the hills of Curral Ridge in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Outside Impact Outdoors, the work required across towers and antennas will vary considerably from site to site.

Periods of reduced power or total darkness to ensure tower crew safety are a certainty. On shared sites, both TV and FM owners will need to understand how a channel change will affect every phase of the RF and antenna system to ensure these periods remain minimal.

While the 39-month window may be enough time to change channels, construction work on towers will likely continue for another three to four years, given the shortage of qualified tower crews.

Therefore, the goal for both the TV and FM owner is to minimize tower work. Proper planning from the transmission line up and mapping out a clear schedule in advance will go a long way in achieving that goal.

The majority of FM antennas are side-mounted.

This is almost certainly the case when the tower is shared with a TV station, since those virtually always command the top-mounted position.

The TV owner will likely need a temporary antenna upon moving to a new channel. This will require a side-mount antenna that best replicates the coverage of a top-mount position.

The strategy behind the auxiliary TV antenna will be based on several factors associated with the new channel assignment. Foremost, the FCC will look to replicate coverage, and not Effective Radiated Power, for stations moving to a new channel. A station staying within the UHF band and moving from Channel 51 to 20, for example, will find its allotted power significantly reduced. The reasoning behind this is the greater distance that the Channel 20 signal can radiate.

This may or may not have an effect on antenna size. Reducing the antenna gain but maintaining the same transmitter power may allow for a slightly smaller antenna. Since the lower channel has a larger wavelength, the antenna is inherently larger for the same gain. However, the broadcaster may opt for a taller antenna, tower structure permitting, to reduce the TPO of the transmitter and save money.

There is no way around reducing your antenna size if moving to a VHF channel. The antenna gain

may be lower as the station’s ERP will be dramatically reduced to maintain the same coverage.

However, the wavelength associated with VHF spectrum will result in a larger antenna.

That said, most stations will likely opt to stay within the UHF band and channel-share.

The Lower We Go, The Wider We Get In many circumstances on a shared TV/FM tower, the existing side-mounted FM antenna will need to move to a lower elevation. In the case of significant tower work, the FM tenant may need to relocate its antenna — and entire RF operation — to a temporary site.

Moving to a lower tower position is naturally the preferred path for the FM owner, but that has several implications. The face of the tower, for example, affects the azimuth pattern, which represents how the antenna radiates in each direction.

A wider face can dramatically alter the horizontally polarized component of the azimuth pattern. For example, if the antenna is positioned on the north side of the tower, moving to a lower position with a wide tower face can provide additional interference, or nulls, to the south, southeast, and southwest especially.

The same can be said for the TV broadcaster moving down in tower height since most TV broadcast antennas are horizontally polarized.

Since most tower designs are tapered from the zenith to the base, there is a strong likelihood that the new, albeit temporary, antenna will be affixed on a wider face. As these coverage nulls shift, coverage loss in some directions where a wider tower face exists is likely. If the site planning can retain the same face width and the same antenna position relative to the face — even if it’s on an adjacent tower leg — the azimuth pattern may remain unchanged. Each case must be studied, since it is not only the tower but what is inside the tower that affects the pattern.

TV broadcasters remaining in the UHF band may additionally want to consider new polarization strategies, especially if they are interested in reaching mobile receivers. Compared to the horizontal polarization of most TV broadcasters, FM broadcasters

Toe The Line The antenna is naturally the most pressing concern for FM owners, but there are several additional factors to consider when it comes to repack-driven RF-infrastructure changes.

Proposing a new system should highlight the weight and wind load of both the antenna and its associated transmission line. This information will be used to confirm that the additional weight and wind load on the tower does not require tower modifications.

Since transmission lines may be frequency-specific, there are instances where TV transmission line will require replacement. In some situations, the FM owner may be asked to share its existing line with the TV broadcaster, pending additional line capacity. This enables the TV owner to feed an auxiliary side-mount antenna while the reinforcement work to accommodate new TV transmission line proceeds.

Assuming the additional line capacity exists, installation crews can add a tower top splitter to feed separate signals to the TV and FM antennas.

In the absence of extra capacity in the FM line, the tower crew may run a temporary air cable to feed the auxiliary antenna.

FM owners should prepare for disruption if tower reinforcement is required to support additional weight from new transmission line. The weight and length of the new transmission line may vary based on the new channel frequency and associated new antenna. That reinforcement work may be substantial enough to include new braces or guy wires, the latter of which would force broadcasters to go dark on that tower for longer periods.

To add another wrinkle, all reinforcement work must comply with Revision G of the TIA-222 Standard. Assurance of code compliance will cross all structural design and fabrication work on the tower beyond antenna modifications, including antenna mounts, structural components, guy assemblies, insulators, and foundations.

Calculations of antenna and line wind load will also figure into Revision G compliance.

FM and TV broadcasters can collectively be prepared for changes — and if necessary, make accommodations to broadcast from alternative sites — with the appropriate planning. In addition to what is outlined above, a thorough line sweep of the entire RF system will help the site engineer to understand if an existing transmission line can be used to accommodate a new channel.

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Design, Planning Help Optimize Efficiency in Station Builds

By Leslie Stimson As part of their M&A strategies, station owners build station consolidation and construction costs into their budgets. In the past, change has been driven primarily by technology. Now, with marketplace changes, as well as new demands for increased productivity and efficiency for existing real estate, owners need to adapt to a new workflow. Traditional facilities built in the 1960s and 1970s were built at a time when interior space standards were less efficient than current requirements. Interior renovations of existing, working facilities will continue to be necessary.

The FCC’s spectrum auction and subsequent channel repack will lead to many studio builds on the TV side, so RBR+TVBR Editor in Chief Leslie Stimson turned to HLW International Broadcast Design Director and architect Keith Hanadel for his take on the role of design in optimizing efficiency and facilitating collaboration. HLW has designed studios for television and radio broadcasters like ESPN, ABC/ Disney, and Univision. A key takeaway: Owners are learning they can fit more people and equipment into smaller spaces to save on real estate costs.

RBR+TVBR: Should broadcast owners start thinking about new projects or renovations sooner than later, to save money?

Hanadel: [C]osts are probably going up. [There are] pressures on the producers of the TV station, of the radio station … because the changes in the way people are consuming their media have created a need for them to be much more efficient than they used to be. As the architects, we see that pressure reflected in the need to be ruthless about staff reduction throughout the industry, and everyone wants to match [that] with a real estate reduction. Costs are going to go up, so if you are going to do something, you might want to think about it in the near term rather than the long term, because construction prices are inevitably rising.

RBR+TVBR: You mentioned staff reductions. Are studio sizes shrinking in general for TV and radio?

Hanadel: Certainly. Yes, I think that’s pretty clear everywhere.

Studio size, control room sizes, all of those big real estate chunks that comprise the technical [aspects] are being reduced.

Rack rooms don’t ever seem to be reduced. I’ve been doing this long enough that at one point I think everybody thought that the change from a tape-based environment to a digital-based environment was going to mean … that rack rooms were going to be smaller, they were going to consume less electricity. I don’t know that that’s actually happened. I think there are a lot more pieces of equipment than people imagined at the outset. Energy use has declined, but it has declined

because of changes in the way manufacturers are specifying the heat output and the temperatures that the equipment can run at. Rack rooms don’t seem to get any smaller, as far as I can tell.

RBR+TVBR: The HVAC costs are being maintained, right?

Hanadel: Mechanical costs, yes. Air conditioning costs and electricity as well. Electricity is still going in and out of those places. There’s tremendous pressure on producers of content across the board. I have a young, 20-something son who doesn’t have a television but is able to figure out how to access any and all media that he wants from his handheld tablet or his great big workstation. I think that kind of pressure is changing the conversation.

RBR+TVBR: Typically, what are owners cutting back on when they’re doing a build or a remodel?

Hanadel: They seem to be cutting back on overall real estate. Work stations are getting smaller, and edit rooms are smaller. Storage, we rarely see anybody build a storage room for anything anymore.

Storage has changed pretty dramatically. Studios are getting smaller. I think the next wave is studios that are no longer two levels high. … We’ve already seen some clients talk about bringing … systems on board so that they can have single-height studios rather than double-height studios for television. That’s a big change.

RBR+TVBR: Two-level studios?

Hanadel: Traditionally they’ve needed two-level studios because they never wanted to show ceilings and television’s lighting — which is traditionally at 12 to 14 feet. Then there’s a lighting grid which brings it up to about 16 to 18 feet. They need adjustability up there. Traditionally, studios have been at 20- to 24-foot height. There’s big ductwork in the room that takes up space. There’s pressure on that because that requires an investment and that has a lot of varying real estate cost.

RBR+TVBR: How do you bring all that down to one level?

Hanadel: I think there are technical systems now that allow you to have a partially built virtual set that masks the fact that it’s in a one-story space. When you look at it on-screen, it looks like a much bigger space than it actually is. We’ve worked with clients that are imagining installing those kinds of systems in terms of the cost and the volume the air conditioning requires and the amount of real estate that you would have to buy or rent.

RBR+TVBR: Do you work with radio clients at all?

Hanadel: A little bit. We just moved Univision Radio in Miami. They were down in Coral Gables for 30 years, maybe longer. We moved them into a facility we did for Univision in Doral, which is a northwest corner of Miami. They reduced their real estate footprint. At the same time, we kept a fair number, eight new studios, eight new control rooms. It was a very interesting project because we did it all as modular studios and control rooms instead of stick-built.

RBR+TVBR: So it was built off-site in sections, and then you had those delivered?

Hanadel: Then it was delivered and installed, which is not the traditional way to do it for something that big, but it was the flexibility that Univision decided they wanted. It had some pluses and minuses. Unfortunately for us, the company that was supplying that stuff went bankrupt right at the end.

So there were some headaches associated with that.

RBR+TVBR: Did that method save time in the build?

Hanadel: There was some conversation about the idea that it would save time, but it ultimately did not, unfortunately. It may have, but again, there were some problems with the company that was supplying us. They were in the throes of something.

RBR+TVBR: Overall, you’re saying saving on real estate is a trend for both radio and television right now?

Hanadel: I think so. Yes, a pretty clear trend.

RBR+TVBR: I guess companies are doing it to save money, but also because they are trying to get the jobs done with fewer people.

Hanadel: I think so. That means that you have to be more efficient. It used to be that there was a person who spent all day just running a tape back and forth from this room to that room. A new tape comes in, you mark it. The tape is gone, and that person is gone. That person, while they were running tape, was also helping out with three other things. They were kind of generalized gophers. A young person, usually.

Those positions have evaporated, so that the glue that held the pieces

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together, the additional hands that could jump in at any moment, that stuff is all gone. It’s lean and mean now.

There is much more need to be efficient. The relationships between the creative people need to be more controlled and as efficient as they can be.

At the same time, the change to the digital environment has allowed for a little more flexibility in how the technical facilities are planned.

But we can, hopefully, design more efficient relationships.

So, yes, I think they are clearly reducing staff.

they kind of had to adapt themselves to the system, where they were in space, and the rooms used to be refrigerated. The acknowledgment of the creative staff is stronger now. Now there’s more of a balance between the technical needs. I think the social and creative needs of the people are being more addressed.

Owners want to keep creative people. As an architect, I think that is a really good thing.

RBR+TVBR: I noticed with the 2013 NPR build on North Capitol Street here in Washington, DC, it’s much smaller than the Massachusetts Avenue building was.

Hanadel: Yes, it’s much smaller. That building had a very generous space standard. The standard of the room size was very generous in the old building.

RBR+TVBR: We are talking about real estate costs and about how radio and TV are looking to be more efficient in the size of their plants. Does that mean being more space-efficient? Does that mean it takes less time to build a new studio or revamp an old one?

Hanadel: Revamping an old one is always complicated, because if someone is trying to renovate in an environment that is online and has people working within it, [that] is the most complicated of tasks. That’s a live station, and you don’t want to do anything to injure them.

Maybe new builds have reduced some of that time — but probably not really. The infrastructure components continue to be the items that set the schedule, if you will. In other words, buying air conditioning equipment, electric gear, lighting — the technical infrastructure components that you need in the building, that have to support the building and support the production facility — they tend to be the things that end up controlling the schedule. If a backup generator is required, generators take 24 weeks to get. Those things continue to dominate the schedule.

I think it may cost somewhat less per square foot. If you looked at it on an equalized basis, and if the costs were similar year to year — if you looked at it without inflation, I bet the costs are somewhat reduced, but that’s an analysis that someone would have to do.

RBR+TVBR: If you had a piece of advice for station owners deciding whether to do a new build or renovate, what would you say?

Hanadel: I guess my own piece of advice would be to engage the entire design team to tackle that prob-

lem with you. In other words, rather than just, inhouse, kind of saying, “Well, if we did x, y, and z, what would happen?” 0r rather than just sort of bring the architect in or rather than just bring the engineer in, bring in both the architect and the engineer. Bring the technical integrator. Get them all in a room and say, “Help us work out the two scenarios: Stay? Go?” Because there’s a tendency at that phase, and this is human nature, to sort of generalize it to the point where you get to a very quick answer. “OK, if we do x, y, and z, then we can accomplish that.” But now maybe we have forgotten how much noise and vibration are going to affect our current production facility.

Because we didn’t have [someone] in the room saying, “We are going to be demolishing a wall over here.”

And have that person raise his or her hand and say, “You know what, that it is right next to your on-air audio control room. You’re going to have a problem.

Let’s talk about that.” And maybe come up with the other things you need to do.

My one piece of advice is get a team of people involved to help you make the decision.

RBR+TVBR: Maybe to prevent something like when, years ago, Minnesota Public Radio built a glass-walled studio near railroad tracks in St. Paul.

Hanadel: Yes, I have looked at locations in the past that were immediately adjacent to railroad tracks for people. They should remain nameless, but they dragged me all over looking at sites, and every one of them had a railroad track. There was a carcrushing plant next to one.

RBR+TVBR: Is there anything else that I should have asked you that I didn’t?

Hanadel: I think the good news is that the creative process is alive and well in these places. And I think the creative process now is acknowledged by owners to be as important as the technical systems.

It seemed to me when I first started in this business that technical systems were absolutely dominant in everybody’s thinking, and all the folks that were the creative staff, the ones who produce the content,

RBR+TVBR: It is. I can’t tell you how many cramped little studios I worked in when I was on the air in radio.

Hanadel: Radio studios are notorious. It is a little tiny black box and you are sitting there with a microphone talking to yourself for eight hours a day.

RBR+TVBR: Sometimes there would be the lessexpensive option, shag carpeting on the walls instead of foam.

Hanadel: Dirty shag carpet or, God forbid, flannel. I think the companies are acknowledging the importance of the creative staff much more than they ever did.

RBR+TVBR: Having a brightly lit space, having room to meet, you mean that kind of thing?

Hanadel: I think the spaces are more cramped.

Everybody is getting less space, but I think the understanding that you need breakout space, you need a place to make a private phone call, there needs to be meeting space — that’s being acknowledged. I think the relationship between the parts and pieces to allow people to be more efficient and creative, I think that’s being acknowledged. Some of the environmental factors in the control rooms are being handled better than they used to. The facilities are getting better.

RBR+TVBR: How long have you been with HLW? Hanadel: 16 years.

RBR+TVBR: And you’ve always been an architect?

Or did you start off in something else?

Hanadel: I started off in the construction business many years ago. I went back to architecture school in my 30s. I was lucky enough to work for Lorne Michaels for five years. He has a post-production television company.

RBR+TVBR: You need to understand something about the equipment because you are building the space it’s going to be in.

Hanadel: Exactly. Initially I was confronted with spaces I couldn’t design because I couldn’t understand how they worked. That prompted me to get interested.

FACILITY BENCHMARKING MAJOR MARKET TELEVISION STATION 92,611* USF

NETWORK NEWS BUREAU 30,508* USF

MEDIA CONTENT PRODUCTION NETWORK 68,960* USF

REGIONAL SPORTS NETWORK 51,465* USF

BROADCAST

REGIONAL TELEVISION STATION 52,031* USF

KEY CONTENT PRODUCTION

WORKPLACE

POST PRODUCTION DISTRIBUTION

OFFICE SUPPORT

*Circulation distributed throughout total USF

PRODUCTION SUPPORT

13 %

14 %

15 % 22%

4%

3%

33%

BROADCAST

38%

26 %

52% 22%

28%

3%

33%

6%

BROADCAST

40%

22%

59% 28%

10 %

16 %

BROADCAST

30 %

27%

4% 7%

8%

26 %

4 1%

13 %

14 %

15 %

15 % 9%

BROADCAST

22%

10 %

14 %

5%

7%

4 1%

15 %

4%

BROADCAST

36%

3% 3 3 %SPACE TYPE AVG.

4%

26 %

5%

BROADCAST2 2 % 45% WORKPLACE OFFICE SUPPORT

28%

29% 26%

22%

30 %

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