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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