RBR+TVBR Winter 2022 Special Report

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VIEWER, CREATOR, CONSUMER “Livecasting” and real-time engagement allow viewers to not only interact with the television programming they consume, but also a part of the content. Broadcasters stand to benefit.

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INTRODUCING BROADCAST MEDIA’S TOP TECH LEADERS TECHNOLOGY: EMPOWERING RADIO AND TV A BROADCAST MEDIA EXECUTIVE’S TECH GUIDE

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THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTING AND OTT FOR OVER-THE-AIR TV

RBR+TVBR shares ways “citizen journalists” and the average social media-minded viewer can become valuable content creators for your local TV station by chatting with Agora Director of Business Development for Media and Entertainment Brad Altfest.

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BROADCAST MEDIA’S TOP TECH LEADERS

Until now, the best tech minds in radio and television have largely been the unsung heroes of broadcasting. Now, the readers of RBR+TVBR have spoken with this first-ever ranking.

23 TECHNOLOGY: EMPOWERING BROADCAST RADIO AND TV

The cancellation of NAB Show 2021 and IBC in Amsterdam didn’t put a damper on the rollout of key broadcast technology offerings from such companies as GatesAir, CP Communications, and Qligent. Here’s what’s in store for radio and TV in 2022.

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PRODUCTS TO WATCH

With CES 2022 concluded and NAB Show 2022 on the way as of today, RBR+TVBR puts a spotlight on seven companies with products of particular interest to broadcast media.

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RADIO + TELEVISION BUSINESS REPORT CHAIRMAN Eric Rhoads

erhoads@streamlinepublishing.com

PRESIDENT/PUBLISHER Deborah Parenti

dparenti@streamlinepublishing.com

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Adam R Jacobson

ajacobson@streamlinepublishing.com

MANAGING EDITOR Brida Connolly

bconnolly@streamlinepublishing.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kenneth Whitney

kwhitney@streamlinepublishing.com

DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS April McLynn

amclynn@streamlinepublishing.com

ADVERTISING/MARKETING CONSULTANTS Joshua Gertzog

609.647.3994 jgertzog@streamlinepublishing.com

Jennifer Jacques

937.522.5971 jjacques@streamlinepublishing.com

Carl Marcucci

703.670.2860 cmarcucci@streamlinepublishing.com

George Wymer

937.609.6778 gwymer@streamlinepublishing.com

331 SE Mizner Blvd.

Boca Raton, FL, 33432 Phone: 561-655-8778 www.rbr.com Twitter: @rbrtvbr

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THE FUTURE OF BROADCASTING AND OTT FOR OVER-THE-AIR TV “L

ivecasting” and real-time engagement are increasingly important for marketers and media executives. Why? They allow a viewer to not only interact with a media outlet, but to become a part of the content. How critical is this technology for continued connectivity with TV consumers in the coming years?

Agora Director of Business Development for Media and Entertainment Brad Altfest is one industry professional perhaps best-suited to answer these questions, and others on the subject of consumer connectivity.

ARE YOU OFFERING ‘MUST-SEE TV’?

For the broadcast television executive, growth in the digital realm may perhaps be focused on advertising opportunities, and not so much on content, when it comes to consumer connectivity. Yet technological advances suggest there is much to gain for over-theair television from interacting digitally with viewers.

How is this being achieved, and what television networks or stations are pioneering this technology?

Altfest, unsurprisingly, offers the oft-repeated mantra that “content is king.” As such, viewers continue to gravitate toward linear television and use it alongside

“The traditional advertising opportunities work because the broadcasters have the content that people want to watch.”

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digital, OTT-delivered video content.

Thus, he says, “The traditional advertising opportunities work because the broadcasters have the content that people want to watch.”

With a greater variety of niche content than ever, and more platforms to view it on, “must-see TV” is becoming harder and harder to achieve, Altfest says. “At the same time, MVPDs including Comcast reported [in October] that they lost nearly 2 million viewers since the start of 2021, and most certainly not all of them went to Peacock. A portion of that audience didn’t go to another OTT provider at all.”

This is good news for broadcasters that seek to bring dollars to their streaming apps, and it is why, Altfest says, there are technological benefits that enable the creation of additional monetization opportunities beyond the use of pre-roll, mid-roll, and banner ads — interruptions to programming largely seen in the “freemium” experience that could lead to audience frustration and decreased viewer tolerance.

One network that is looking to leverage the inherent real-time buy directional of online is Canada’s Rogers. In early autumn 2021, it released the beta version of its hockey season application, “SoundOn.” It’s a social audio app for super hockey fans.

Another example that comes to mind for Altfest is Kumu — not the Honolulu radio station, but the Philippinesfocused video sharing and e-commerce social networking service. “It really has a soup-to-nuts real-time engagement deployed into its mobile apps,” Altfest said. “The RTE [runtime environment] space is huge in the APAC region.”

What does this mean to the dayto-day television industry executive who runs an over-the-air station in the Heartland of America? Altfest replies, “The way to think about traditional media, whether it was on-demand or even traditional live, it was ‘one way, one to many,’ whereas I would define real-time engagement as inherently bi-directional and interactive. In other words, it really is all about virtual presence.”

‘LIVECASTING’: THE 15-YEAR OLD NASCENT TECH

The concept of “livecasting” may be wholly unknown to some in broadcast TV. Yet a September 2007 article in Fast Company talks it up, shooting down 4 · R B R .CO M

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“The way to think about traditional media, whether it was on-demand or even traditional live, it was ‘one way, one to many,’ whereas I would define realtime engagement as inherently bidirectional and interactive. In other words, it really is all about virtual presence.” the notion that it was an internet fad by noting how it wasn’t anything new — just an example of technological advancement. How does Altfest describe the livecasting of today? And how is it helping to build the bond between a TV station and the viewer and the ways the viewer is able to participate as a content producer?

It requires expanding the conversation to include the “content ownerdistributor.” In many ways, that is a reflection of how the TV station is no longer the sole proprietor of content distribution. Take, for instance, TVU Networks, which provides a platform for broadcasters to distribute their content online and powers thousands of TV stations worldwide. “It enables a number of different user experiences, including co-watching parties.”

For the layman, think of these entities as digital-first TV stations. “They didn’t start as terrestrial stations that then went online,” Altfest says. “These are digital natives, but they are nevertheless broadcast on linear television.”

In South Asia, Disney and Hotstar did a co-watching party centered around the popular sport of cricket.

“In addition to watching the game online with your friends, maybe one would rather listen to the superfan friend as he narrates the game, rather than the sportscaster selected by the network,” Altfest suggests.

To some, that suggestion is heresy, given the millions of dollars invested in sports carriage rights and lining up the right commentators on a per-team and per-league level. Yet hosting a party and leading the discussion is a reality in 2021 that Altfest believes can only grow. So why not let broadcast TV in at a high acceleration point?

In the entertainment world, the Grammys and the Critics Choice Awards saw co-watching parties give birth to a “fan wall” in the live performance venue. Altfest explains, “Imagine you are at home and you’re watching the show with your cam on, having a virtual social experience with others in the ‘audience.’ Now, your cam is actually projected on to a video wall behind the presenter in the live performance venue, which you see on your primary content feed. We’re literally talking about ‘extended reality,’ giving you a virtual in-person-like experience from home.”

For some, such talk is perhaps too “Jetsons”-like, or too futuristic. Yet, with such activity happening today, applying the technology to local TV’s self-produced offerings and even its daytime syndicated fare could further ignite broadcast TV’s continued capabilities while sparking digital drivers marketers and consumers equally can find appealing.

‘MEDIA BEING SOCIAL’

To some, the idea of “livecasting” sounds too social media-centric and less programming- or newsroomworthy. That’s perhaps a misunderstanding of the capabilities “livecasting” can bring.

What are the best practical uses for this technology at a broadcast TV station?

“In this instance, it is not social media — it is media being social,” Altfest says. “How do we emerge from the silos that so many have complained social media has created and led to some of the polarization we face as a society, both here and worldwide?

What if, in addition to watching the news, I can also have a discussion about it in real time? Isn’t that a more nuanced way to consume the news?

“At the same time, think of livecasting as enabling the abilities for ‘citizen journalism’ by lowering the threshold required just to participate: have a cell phone, and go. I think it is interesting to note that The New York Times is beta testing their new social audio app.”

Altfest adds that AI can detect when the content is “real” — as in coming from an actual person. This would alleviate some security concerns a news organization could have. And, there’s also the “old school” newsroom delay option, putting a moderator between the viewer and a citizen journalist.

At the end of the day, getting the “superfan” is the goal.

In emergencies ranging from hurricane-fueled power outages and studio evacuations to cyberattacks that can cripple a station’s ability to deliver live and local newscasts, “livecasting” seems to be a solution. Is this something that perhaps should be fully integrated into EAS services?

“That makes a lot of sense to me,” Altfest says. “Today we have multiple providers that are using time-engagement platforms as a back end, both to provide a virtual master control room in the cloud as well as to use an on-location news production orchestration tool. So you’re the local news affiliate and you have three onlocation shoots you need to coordinate throughout the evening broadcast.

The fundamental nuts and bolts of livecasting can not only replace the old school walkie-talkie, but the video feed can be used for things like monitoring the live feed — even the surrounding environment, if the journalist is in a volatile situation.

“For EAS services, something where the on-the-ground services are inaccessible to the production team, you are perhaps in the best situation by having things reported by people in the middle of the situation — the citizen journalist. It is a redundant channel to report the issues that even has the ability to send out an S-O-S.”

MASTERING THE METRICS

Real-time engagement is something marketers crave, and for broadcast TV,

“More users equals more revenue.

Longer impressions also equals more revenue. It’s a virtuous cycle throughout the experience.” the OTT arena perhaps delivers that better than over-the-air broadcasts. As such, station streaming and the intersection of broadcast and digital are more entwined than ever. But are there metrics issues? How can broadcast TV fully monetize its multiple viewer platforms?

“That’s what’s really interesting about the real-time engagement space,” Altfest says. “Where OTT was a vast improvement metric-wise over the over-the-air broadcasting, giving one the ability to dig into cookie pools and get more rich data, we also live in a post-cookie iOS universe. What do advertisers do now when half the mobile ecosystem is entirely opaque?”

By enabling RTE, you’re building a richer data set than ever, Altfest believes, and not only from the user engagement you would presumably track and model.

“The RTE itself acts as a natural social recommendation engine,” he notes. “If I like what somebody had to say in the last segment, maybe I’m not so interested in the content, but maybe I am going to follow them into whatever room or discussion they decide to go into. What does that mean for advertisers? An increase in sustained impressions. More users equals

more revenue. Longer impressions also equals more revenue. It’s a virtuous cycle throughout the experience.”

With many unique opportunities ahead of linear TV in the digital space, what is the one thing a broadcast TV station executive should understand when it comes to real-time engagement, and the opportunities that come with fully linking an over-the-air channel with over-the-top viewer accessibility?

The concept of production and what constitutes content is perhaps the biggest takeaway Altfest offers. “I think there’s this misperception that this is like having a distracting phone call going on at the same time you are watching a show,” he concludes. “Even on that front, who among us watches something without fiddling with the phone at the same time? Gen Z is wellused to Twitch, Discord, etc., effectively combining live action gaming — a.k.a. content consumption — with real-time interactive communication.

“As for production, while I agree that ‘content is king,’ there is a misperception with traditional broadcasters that only highly produced content is appealing. The short-form user content world and reality TV both disprove that theory.”

Imagine the ability to combine the ephemeral emotional quality of short-form UGC, which livecasting fundamentally is, with your produced content. “Now you’ve figured out how to produce with virtually no-cost or low-cost content as a companion to your existing intellectual property,” Altfest says. “As one of the more sophisticated peers of mine in this space once said to me, ‘When I produce a show, I don’t think of the performance being on the stage. I think of the performance being the interaction in my audience.’”

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SALUTING THE TECHNOLOGY LEADERS IN BROADCAST MEDIA Since the start of the pandemic nearly two years ago, the best minds in radio and television have worked hard to accomplish tasks never before thought of: newscasts and radio talent live from home, “citizen journalists” into programming, and remote master control needs, among other things.

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he technology professional has thrived, overcoming multiple challenges while ensuring the continued operations of a broadcast media facility. This includes preventing a crippling cyberattack from happening, as well as keeping everyone connected via Zoom, Teams, or whatever other in-office essential is needed. RBR+TVBR readers have acknowledged these efforts, and for the first time RBR+TVBR has turned the spotlight on the Chief Technology Officers, IT heads, and engineering pros

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with the creation of our all-new Broadcast Media’s Top Tech Leaders rankings.

Yes, it is a ranked list, based on reader nominations and vetted by the editorial leadership of the Radio + Television Business Report. We are particularly proud to present this ranked Honor Roll, and salute each of these tech superstars for keeping the operations of the nation’s essential communications services up and running each and every hour of every day.

Del Parks

EVP/Chief Technology Officer Sinclair Broadcast Group

Topping our first ever Broadcast Media’s Top Tech Leaders list is Delbert R. Parks III. Parks is celebrating 50 years at Sinclair, where he has held various operations and engineering positions since 1973. Today, he supports the company by overseeing Engineering, Technical Operations, and Facilities, as well as charting its future technical and operational direction.

Parks has overall responsibility for the deployment of ATSC 3.0 and co-leads Sinclair’s technical and operational integration of the 21 recently purchased FOX Regional Sports Networks. He’s also directing the transformation of the company’s media and broadcast operations as they migrate to the cloud, as well as their future state.

Outside of Sinclair, Parks is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who has held various commands during his 26-year Reserve career. He’s also a member of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and in 2015 was honored as an SMPTE Fellow.

Parks was asked what, perhaps, is the most important aspect of the work he does when it comes to the smooth operation of Sinclair. He replies, “Sinclair is a very large enterprise with a high reliance on its media technology and operations to support its linear and digital distribution channels. The integration of these media assets across all of our platforms is critical to our company’s business success, and our technology teams are the best in the business. Providing the leadership and resources that allow our teams to perform is my greatest challenge and also my greatest reward.”

Is there one technological advancement of note for Sinclair, and how does it help make the company “future-

Del Parks proof” for consumers and advertisers? “The acceptance and deployment of ATSC 3.0 or NextGen TV is a monumental project that will provide broadcasters new tools to serve the public interest and open new revenue opportunities,” Parks says. “This IP-based Over the Air (OTA) standard is easily WINTER 2022

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received, even in moving vehicles, and based on Internet Protocol (IP), which offers all the advantages of the internet — targeted advertising and video content, distance learning, commercial delivery of data packets, advanced emergency information and alerting, and many other new business opportunities. This technology is a game-changer for broadcasters, and Sinclair has been the leader in its adoption and deployment.”

With digital, SaaS, and cloud-based applications more available than ever, how has this favorably impacted Sinclair and those within the company?

“There are obvious benefits of moving workplace technology aspects to SaaS in the cloud that Sinclair and many other companies are implementing,” Parks says. “Our Digital group has been using media in the cloud and SaaS for many years. However, the most exciting SaaS and cloud developments are in traditional linear media technology. At Sinclair, we saw the advantages of cloud-based media playout operations and content management several years ago.

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Brett Jenkins

EVP/Chief Technology Officer Nexstar Media Group

Jenkins ranks a very close second to Parks in our first ever Broadcast Media’s Top Tech Leaders rankings, as industry leaders salute him for his role overseeing Nexstar’s IT and engineering functions for both broadcast and digital businesses. He came to Nexstar through its merger with Media General, where he served as VP/CTO. Before that, it was LIN Media where Jenkins made his mark. Jenkins has also held technology positions at ION Media Networks and executive positions for Thales Broadcast & Multimedia and Thomson.

Not bad for a guy who keeps the pipes clean … sort of. “I often jokingly refer to the work of technology employees in media companies by saying we are plumbers,” Jenkins says. “Our primary mission is always to make sure that the pipes are working and allowing the content to flow smoothly and reliably.”

That job has become incredibly complex over the past decade. “Technology touches every part of our business now, from content production to distribution to data and analytics,” Jenkins says.

“There isn’t a functional area in our business that the technology group doesn’t serve. It’s hard to pinpoint a single ‘most important’ area.

“Generally, I still think of reliability as mission critical in our business. Whatever technology is used, it has to work all the time in a 24/7 business. Making sure our networks and systems are reliable, available, and secure is always a top focus.”

As is the case with other TV companies, a big focus on NextGen TV is ongoing. For Jenkins, the arrival of NextGen TV means advertisers can benefit from improved targeting and measurement. “Outside of our traditional business, we’re excited about the technology because it’s going to allow us to use broadcast spectrum to offer services beyond linear television,” he says.

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“Our first experience was when we deployed a five-hour children’s block that we ‘spun up’ in Azure using Imagine cloud playout software. This ran very successfully for about two years, and when the requirement lapsed, we ‘spun down’ the instance. This gave us the initial experience we needed to take the next step. We next moved the playout of our three 24/7 emerging networks, Comet, TBD, and Charge, to the AWS cloud using the same Imagine cloud playout software and used IP distribution from the LTN network to distribute these channels to our affiliates.” The three networks have been successfully playing out from the cloud for the last two years, Parks adds.

He continues, “Additionally, when we had a temporary requirement to provide a Tennis Channel feed to our Bally’s Regional Sports Networks, we used the same AWS cloud arrangement to ‘spin up’ the channel, and when the requirement expired, we were able to ‘spin down’ the channel. It’s all very efficient, and shows we are exploring our next steps in SaaS and cloud operations.”

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Brett Jenkins

Like Parks, Jenkins loves the easy accessibility SaaS and cloud-based applications bring to broadcast media. “This has really transformed the way all organizations work, and there’s no greater example of this than looking at how our company was able to adapt to the conditions of a global pandemic without skipping a beat,” he says. “Of course, there are also challenges that come with the benefits, and that brings us back to making sure that all the applications we use are reliable and secure.”

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Sarah Foss

Chief Technology Officer Audacy Inc.

She’s the first ever person at the company formerly known as Entercom to hold the title. Now, Sarah Foss has emerged as the top audio-industry Tech Leader as determined by RBR+TVBR readers. Foss spearheads Audacy’s efforts to innovate and differentiate its products and services via new technological capabilities. She also manages the company’s key technology initiatives, including software development, ad tech, business intelligence and analytics, data solutions, and Audacy’s recently acquired live and ondemand audio streaming business, AmperWave.

Recently promoted from Chief Information Officer, Foss joined Audacy in 2020 from FreeWheel, the Comcastowned media buying and selling platform. There, she served as SVP/Strategic Initiatives. Before that, Foss was the Ad Tech GM for Imagine Communications.

“The most important aspect of my day-to-day work is ensuring that our technology teams, partners, and systems are aligned to company goals and objectives — in essence, that we’re all rowing in the same direction,” Foss says. “Audacy is always evolving — and technology keeps changing! So it’s imperative that our acceleration is directionally sound. It’s too easy in this fast-paced consumer/media space to find ourselves deviating from our north star. As a leader, I need to set the direction and develop ways for us

to get from where we are today to where we are going without impeding the creativity, innovation, and talent of our teams.”

Foss says 2021 was an exciting year for Audacy. “We had a lot of technological advancement,” she says. “We have been investing heavily in our technical capabilities and infrastructure, whether that is our ability to marry audiences to advertisers or deliver new features and content to consumers. The acquisition of AmperWave (formerly WO Streaming) underpins our focus on premium-quality experiences for our listeners, affiliates, and advertisers; we are investing to control the listening experience for deeper engagement at all levels.”

Asked about the importance of digital, SaaS, and cloud-based applications within her organization, Foss is candid. “Simply put, Audacy could not have continued to deliver content over the past two years if we didn’t have a digital backbone and technology solutions that allow us to work anywhere while keeping our teams safe. We’ve leveraged key partners and capabilities to drive content ideation, production, and distribution across the country and in our various studios. We’re now designing a new future state that is data-driven, digital-first as we’ve seen how reliable our capabilities with SaaS and cloud can be.”

Sarah Foss

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David Burke

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David Burke

SVP/Chief Technology Officer Gray Television

Two years ago, David Burke was appointed to his current role at Gray Television, having spent the previous 22 years at Raycom Media. Before joining the company, Burke had something somewhat in common with Sinclair’s Del Parks — Burke served as an officer in the U.S. Air Force.

As far as he is concerned, the most important aspect of the work Burke does when it comes to the smooth operation of Gray Television is facilitating communication and planning. Yes, he realizes that sounds trite. But, he explains, “In any organization, communication and planning are critical to the health and operation of the organization. Gray maintains a streamlined corporate structure, yet we own and operate TV stations in 113 markets across the country. It’s imperative that we stay focused, align our priorities with both corporate strategic objectives and station goals, stay abreast of emerging technologies, and provide the support our stations and other business entities require. Underneath the technical complexities at a TV station, we must ensure our stations operate according to FCC rules and regulations.

“Over the past 20 years, the industry has experienced a migration away from niche proprietary broadcast platforms to general-purpose IT technologies. In Gray, we merged traditional television engineering and IT under the same organizational umbrella, posturing our company to handle the inevitable migration to complete IT-based technologies and systems.”

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Among the things helping to keep Gray “future proof” is the company’s “Technical Media Producer,” or TMP, model. This sees Gray blend production and master control responsibilities into a single, multi-talented role. “The underlying technology in the TMP model is a combination of automated news and master control systems with an IPbased KVM [keyboard, video, mouse] system,” Burke says.

“All control systems and surfaces are available via the KVM from any monitor in the control room. Besides streamlining systems and control room workflows, the TMP model positions our stations to quickly handle breaking news. TMP also enabled our stations to transition to a remote workflow during the heights of COVID, allowing the TMPs to direct newscasts and operate master control from elsewhere in the building or from remote locations.”

Burke adds that the TMP model assists Gray TV stations in the production of more live, local programming without significant capital costs or headcount.

Burke also points to Gray’s “OTT desk,” which began companywide deployment in 2021. He explains, “An OTT desk is a small studio-like setup typically situated in or near the newsroom that includes a small anchor desk with one or two PTZ cameras, a small switcher with playout, audio board, lights, etc. The OTT desk can be operated by a single person who serves as the producer, director, and talent. Using the OTT desk, a station can go live to digital platforms without tying up the main control room or studio or breaking into the live linear OTA broadcast. A typical OTT desk setup costs less than $20,000.”

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Jeff Littlejohn

EVP/Engineering & Systems Integration iHeartMedia

He’s a company veteran who dates back to iHeartMedia’s days as Clear Channel Communications. The engineering leader for the biggest owner of radio stations in the U.S. will celebrate 30 years at the organization in September 2022, and industry brethren are saluting Jeff Littlejohn for his many accomplishments within a muchdifferent organization than in the days of Lowry Mays and Hicks Muse Tate & Furst-formed AMFM, which merged with Clear Channel to create an industry giant.

Littlejohn was a Market Engineering Manager for American Media before joining a component of what is now iHeartMedia. From September 1989-September 1992, he served in a similar role for Beasley Broadcast Group in Aurora, Ill. “I so very much appreciate the honor,” he told RBR+TVBR ahead of CES 2022.

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Pat Browning

Chief Information Officer The E.W. Scripps Co.

Pat Browning, who leads the company’s enterprise technology strategy and operations, helped develop Scripps Networks Interactive (SNI)’s global technology and operations strategy. In the role, he maintained oversight of due diligence and integration efforts for acquisitions, and led technology cloud migration as well. Browning previously served as IT Finance Director at Scripps and began his career as a strategy and operations consultant for Deloitte.

Asked about the most important aspect of his work at Scripps, Browning replies, “Supporting and empowering an incredible team of IT professionals.

Their dedication, professionalism, expertise, and creativity are powerful force multipliers when given the freedom to flourish. We could not have integrated our largest acquisition, launched new national networks, and maintained smooth operations — all while working remotely — without the outstanding work of these incredible technologists.”

Browning is referring to the merger with ION Networks in 2021, which transformed Scripps into a dynamic visual media company with digital multichannel networks such as CourtTV and the recently re-booted Newsy.

He’s also pleased, like his peers, about how digital, SaaS, and cloud-based applications have favorably impacted his organization and those within it. “Cloud-based applications and services provide our organization with the flexibility and scalability required in today’s competitive marketplace,” Browning says. “It allows our colleagues to select best-in-class solutions for their challenges,

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Jeff Littlejohn

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Pat Browning which can securely scale and flex to meet their needs.

This allows our technical teams to focus on unique solutions that drive value and competitive advantage for the company.”

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Mike Cooney

VP of Engineering/Chief Technology Officer Beasley Media Group

At Beasley, owner of radio stations in markets including Detroit, Philadelphia, Boston, and Tampa-St. Petersburg, Mike Cooney is responsible for the general supervision and oversight of all engineering, IT, and technology matters. Additionally, he is integrally involved with the management of the capital and operating budgets.

Cooney is recent past Chairman of the NAB Radio Technical Committee, and a 2016 Radio World Excellence in Engineering Award recipient. He is also a Certified Engineer for the Society of Broadcast Engineers and has been in corporate engineering management for over 30 years.

In thanking the readers of RBR+TVBR for the honor, Cooney says, “We are in the middle of several studio moves across different markets, and this requires a lot of planning and management to keep them on time and budget. I’m one of two project managers who design and manage these projects, and it requires a lot of travel and time on site. While these projects take the most time, the most important aspect of my job is making Mike Cooney sure we are doing everything possible with our cyber security initiatives.”

Beasley has a multiprong approach to limiting a cyberattack and has multiple products and vendors in use.

“Cybersecurity-based products have had a big impact on our staff productivity and security,” Cooney notes. “From a security standpoint, we have found it is much more secure to use a cloud-based provider who is responsible for server updates, security patches, SOX compliance, and backups.

This also gives our corporate IT staff more time to deal with other issues. Another great benefit of having cloud-based products became vital during the COVID outbreaks. It made it much easier to send our staff home and still allow them to do their jobs without any disruption.”

Beasley will continue to roll out more cloud-based solutions in 2022, including all accounting functions.

Over the past few years, Beasley has made what Cooney calls a “very concerted effort” to expand its digital products, to better compete with companies like Google and Facebook. “We have hired multiple staffers and have seen huge growth in our owned-and-operated products; our streaming continues to have double-digit growth year after year. We have also teamed with other digital vendors to expand our suite of products to better serve the advertiser.”

Congratulations

Pat Browning CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER THE E.W. SCRIPPS COMPANY

Thank you for your mission-driven leadership that supports our vision of creating a better-informed world.

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Al Lustgarten

SVP/Technology & Information Services Hearst Television

When it came time to offer their nominations for Broadcast Media’s Top Tech Leaders, a group of RBR+TVBR readers saluted Hearst Television. One ballot was for Mahendra Durai, who is in the corporate group and not directly associated with the

“The technology and workflow tools should provide a positive experience and be accessible, reliable, and easy to interact with. I work with my team to ensure that this consistently occurs, and I view this as the primary objective of my work.”

Al Lustgarten

MIKE PROU DLY C E L E BR AT E S

C O O N E Y

F OR BE I N G NA M E D A MON G T H E T OP T E C H L E A DE R S I N BROA D C A S T I N G

Thank you for doing your Beasley Best!

62 Stations

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15 Markets

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20+ Million Weekly Consumers

Hearst Television operation.

That role belongs to Alvin R. Lustgarten, who was flattered to learn that in the industry’s recognition of Hearst’s technology accomplishments, he will appear on the Top Tech Leaders rankings.

Lustgarten rose to his current post in 2020, and previously served as SVP/Technology and IT. Before that, he was Manager of Information Services. Today, Lustgarten oversees Hearst Television’s technology function and leads its advertising operations. He provides strategic leadership for many of the company’s new-technology initiatives, including AI, machine learning, and analytics efforts, and has played a key role in overseeing Hearst Television’s cloud transformation. Lustgarten also leads all aspects of its security program and holds operational oversight of the company’s capital spending and fleet programs.

Lustgarten first joined Hearst in 1981, in the Hearst Magazines accounting and finance department.

RBR+TVBR: What is perhaps the most important aspect of the work you do when it comes to the smooth operation of your media company?

AL LUSTGARTEN: The employees, the Hearst Television viewers and visitors, and the advertisers we support should always have a positive experience with the systems, platforms, and tools we utilize. The technology and workflow tools should provide a positive experience and be accessible, reliable, and easy to interact with. I work with my team to ensure that this consistently occurs, and I view this as the primary objective of my work.

This has been complicated over the past two years. A pandemic requiring remote work, supply chain issues, and heightened security challenges have challenged the technology work we do.

RBR+TVBR: What is the biggest technological advancement of note for your company, and how will that help make it “future-proof” for consumers and advertisers?

AL LUSTGARTEN: Local media companies are powered by technology and are now incorporating artificial intelligence, analytics, and machine learning to manage content and enhance the value proposition for our advertisers.

AI/ML along with analytics will play a pivotal role in optimizing workflows and supporting the indispensability of local media for our viewers and advertisers.

Advertisers will be better able to reach their targeted audiences and visitors will get more relevant content, both with the ability to measure effectiveness.

RBR+TVBR: With digital, SaaS, and cloud-based applications more available than ever, how has this favorably impacted your organization and those within it?

AL LUSTGARTEN: The cloud has enabled us to move to an operational model that alleviates the need to purchase, install, and maintain on-premise systems.

Supply chain issues and complex software licensing agreements have been avoided. These solutions inherently offer scalability and flexibility to meet evolving requirements. These advantages allow us to focus on operations and not divert attention to cumbersome support tasks.

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· R B R . C O M · 15

TEGNA

salutes our own

Kurt Rao

Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

Congratulations on being selected as one of the Top Tech Leaders in the broadcasting industry.

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Kurt Rao

SVP/Chief Technology Officer TEGNA

Kurt Rao currently leads all facets of TEGNA’s technology strategy, including the development and implementation of the company’s next-generation client and customer technology solutions in the areas of content, advertising, data and insights, and media distribution, in addition to broadcast operations and information technology.

Previously, Rao was Chief Information and Technology Officer for Time Inc., where he led the transformation and growth of the media publishing organization into a digital content platform company. In addition, he optimized technology operations across the organization and built platforms to support content across video and digital while enhancing consumer data analytics.

Rao has also worked as VP of Technology for NBC Universal and Director of Application Development at Viacom Inc. “With TEGNA’s mission to serve our communities, the tech team is responsible for ensuring our employees have the best technical tools and experience to enable them to cover their communities and tell their stories,” he

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tells RBR+TVBR. “We continuously make investments in our people, our technology, education, and process improvements to support that goal.”

Rao also salutes TEGNA for its “cloud first” strategy, enabling it to leverage the cloud to help its teams collaborate, take advantage of scale and redundancy that the cloud naturally offers, and take advantage of constant product capabilities to optimize operations.

“As examples, we do this in our content production process, our content distribution capabilities, and for many of our corporate systems,” Rao says. “Similarly for advertising and marketing services, we use all the capabilities of the cloud to, for example, match advertisers with consumers using targeted advertising; guard against fraud; leverage AI and machine learning techniques; and provide transparency and attribution for our customers.”

Kurt Rao

Robert Acosta

VP of Information Technology Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS)

It is the owner of some of the nation’s top Spanish-language radio stations and of the Mega TV operation. Now, Robert Acosta is the top Hispanic-media Tech Leader as determined by RBR+TVBR readers.

At Miami-headquartered SBS, Acosta is responsible for the planning and implementation of information technology solutions. He joined the company in 2003 and has been the Vice President of IT since June 2018, rising from Director of IT. From 2005-2015, he served as SBS’s Systems Administrator.

The most important aspect of the work Acosta does at SBS, he says, is “realizing that technology is always changing and making sure that our IT department is always ready to adapt to these new changes and be able to deploy new solutions that will support our organization’s business goals.”

Acosta adds that the use of cloud computing technologies has been the greatest technological advancement for SBS. “It has allowed us to future-proof our company by protecting our data and information, allowing us to streamline operations, and has given us the flexibility to meet the demands of the ever-changing pandemic-era environment we find ourselves in.”

Additionally, the use of SaaS and cloud-based applications has allowed SBS’s business leaders to run its organization more efficiently by enabling access to “bestin-class systems” without the increased cost, complexity, and maintenance usually associated with them. Acosta says,

Robert Acosta “Digital, SaaS, and cloud-based applications have given our technical teams the ability to provide applications that improve productivity across all organizational units, while also being able to meet the latest governance requirements and securing the organization’s information and data.”

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Mike Ballerini

Chief Information Officer Salem Media Group

Mike Ballerini is a global CIO/IT Strategist with experience in diverse industries including media, electronics manufacturing, defense, aerospace, biomedical, consumer optics, health care, and agriculture. He has extensive ERP selection and implementation experience, having completed over 20 successful large-scale global implementations in 16 countries over a 40-plus-year career in IT. That makes him a principal lock-and-key gatekeeper for Salem and its stable of audio and digital media assets. “My focus is on security, stability, and service,” Ballerini says. “I feel that keeping all three in focus will help the company stay competitive and move smoothly through these challenging times.

Security is on everyone’s minds and is perhaps the single most important focus of any company. The goal of most bad actors in the world today is to disrupt. A solid security blanket keeps operations running smoothly despite constant attacks.”

This includes the incorporation of monitoring tools that watch all of Salem’s equipment and get solutions to issues before they disrupt. “Service of course is an attitude; while tools can help, the core of service is people,” Ballerini comments. “The IT group at Salem is staffed with people who go out of their way to serve, and my goal is to make sure we get the best people and keep them motivated.”

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Mike Ballerini Thus, weaving security into the DNA of Salem’s information network, using technology, has made the company better able to withstand the challenges of cyber threats that are now an integral part of the internet. “By using state-of-the-art security monitoring tools, utilizing both hardware and software services, I believe we are able to face this future confidently,” Ballerini says. “The internet, while being a powerful tool, also has a downside.”

12

Scott Schatz

EVP of Finance, Operations, and Technology Townsquare Media

Scott Schatz is a co-founder of “local first” digital and audio media company Townsquare Media.

Before helping to launch the company in 2010, Schatz spent nearly a decade as an investment banker advising companies on valuations, mergers and acquisitions, and capital raises in the Technology, Media, and Telecom groups of Bear Stearns and J.P. Morgan.

Of all of the important aspects of his work, Schatz salutes Townsquare’s employees and products, which are “constantly innovating.” He says, “With this rapid change come challenges — in communication, systems, data transparency and availability, and platform integrations. My teams evaluate these areas to reduce technological barriers and friction and increase the use and availability of data and automation.

This allows our employees to spend more time doing what they do best — creating hyper-local content for our audience, delivering best-in-class services and products to our clients, and further developing the innovative products and technologies that have been our hallmark since inception.”

Scott Schatz At Townsquare, “future-proofing” the company includes investment in software

engineering and digital teams and training since Day One. Schatz says, “Having all of our engineering and development in-house has allowed us to ‘create the future,’ from building website templates and publishing platforms to our own custom CRM. They have allowed us to be nimble, move quickly, and not have to rely on others to get the job done. This also gives us enormous control and flexibility over the user and consumer experience.”

Meanwhile, Schatz commends the company for shifting to cloud-based applications early on. “Externally, one of our most successful offerings [Townsquare Interactive] is an organically built SaaS application that delivers a web presence for small and medium-sized businesses. Internally, we migrated to Office365, and hosted traffic, accounts receivable and payable, and other financial and business intelligence systems prior to the pandemic. These allowed us to seamlessly transition to work-from-home and hybrid work arrangements that have increased efficiency and employee satisfaction and reduced expenses.

“Our Engineering and IT departments heavily leverage cloudbased identity, network and endpoint security, inventory, remote maintenance monitoring and control, and ticketing services that provide significant leverage to smaller teams, allowing them to do the work of teams many times larger.”

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Jason Ornellas

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Jason Ornellas

Regional Director of Engineering Bonneville International

Jason Ornellas has been involved in broadcast engineering for over 15 years and manages technical operations, system designs, building integration, budgets, and equipment standardization rollouts, and has constructed numerous studio and transmitter facilities. He is a member of the NAB Radio Tech Committee and chair of the PPM Subgroup committee of the NextGen Radio Architecture Working Group. Ornellas currently serves as Treasurer for the Society of Broadcast Engineers and holds a Certified Broadcast Radio Engineer (CBRE) certification.

He is also a member of the Audio Engineering Society and a regular contributor to radio engineering publications, and often presents at trade conferences.

In his view, advancing Bonneville’s technology presence across its markets and the industry is perhaps the biggest and most important aspect of his job. “We are customersupport-focused and strive to always go home every day knowing we helped out in a significant way,” he says. “I love the grind, teaching, and pushing the limits. When you work

for a good company that supports you, you always want to go above and beyond each day.”

What, in Ornellas’ view, is the biggest technological advancement of note for Bonneville International?

“Transmission!” he exclaims. “We have made significant investments in our transmission systems, and not just transmitters. Our streaming focus is equal with OTA. We just rolled out a new streaming encoder with top-tier processing and embedded watermarking to truly set ourselves up for growth and the future. Our streams are just as important as our transmitters, and we are taking care of our last line of technology before it reaches our clients and consumers. This was a way to set us up for continued success.”

With digital, SaaS, and cloud-based applications more available than ever, how has this favorably impacted Ornellas and his team at Bonneville? “It allows our workflow to change, and change for the better,” he says. “We are constantly adapting with trends to stay competitive but also making smart business decisions to continually be flexible and future-proof investments in new applications. We are always evaluating what we are doing and can we do it better, So with digital, SaaS, and cloud applications, it’s always a very fluid process.”

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR VERY OWN

SCOTT SCHATZ WHO PAVES THE WAY IN OUR INDUSTRY AS A TOP TECH LEADER! #HowHighisHigh 20 · R B R . C O M

· WINTER 2022

14

Dave Kolesar

VP of Digital Strategy Hubbard Broadcasting

To many, Dave Kolesar is known as the pioneer of HD Radio on AM. But his accomplishments go beyond that feat.

“To keep things running smoothly, I stay on call and pick up the phone 24/7/365, or as close to it as humanly possible,” says the Washington, D.C.-based Senior Broadcast Engineer for Hubbard Radio.

“Seriously, my primary role in the company is to take care of the transmission infrastructure, and the updating and hardening of the sites that our engineering staff has done over the past 10-15 years has really paid off in terms of uptime and me being able to sleep through the night.

“Out of necessity, I had to develop the ability to communicate clearly to management as to why any given particular equipment or maintenance expense is needed to avoid downtime, as well as position us for future growth.”

Kolesar’s primary role for the past 15 years has been to serve as the transmitter engineer for WTOP, the nation’s top-billing radio station; Federal News Radio (WFED); and WWFD “The Gamut,” the experimental HD Radio on AM facility in Frederick, Md., that Kolesar programs. Prior to working at Hubbard Radio, he was an Electronics Engineer in the Information Technology Division of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. It’s a role he held between 2001 and 2006.

“In my time at Hubbard Radio, I think by far the most notable technical advancement that our company has done is the all-digital (MA3) AM conversion of WWFD,” Kolesar says. “It has really opened some eyes as to what the possibilities for the medium might be, especially regarding connected-car platforms and electric vehicles.

Before all-digital, the AM band would likely have been abandoned by both, and now field tests have

15

Shane Toven

Senior Broadcast Engineer Educational Media Foundation

It’s the No. 2 licensee of radio stations in the U.S. behind iHeartMedia, and it has a presence in markets large and small. Today, it’s hard not to find Educational Media Foundation’s KLOVE Christian Pop noncommercial network on the radio. KLOVE, along with Worship Music-focused Air1, dominates the CCM scene.

Helping with the rapid expansion of the networks over the past several years has been Shane Toven.

“My role is primarily to look at ‘big picture’ technology solutions that can be deployed in our broadcast network to best serve our listeners, while making the network as reliable and scalable as possible,” Toven says. “One of the most important elements of this is staying abreast of developments in a variety of fields that could potentially be applied to broadcast, now or in the future.”

Toven has been involved in the field of broadcast engineering for more than 30 years, starting as a volunteer

Dave Kolesar shown that digital AM meets or exceeds listener expectations in the dashboard, and is far superior to analog AM in EVs. There are a lot of AM stations out there, and our experience shows that many should seriously consider replicating what we’ve done.”

On the radio transmission side, Kolesar believes that stations can really benefit from using the middleware companies that handle metadata.

“There are multiple services out there that enrich the user experience with textual and visual messages (for both program content and advertising), and these will help stations compete for listeners and ad dollars in an era where such things are simply expected,” he says.

“With digital AM, stations in that band can use these services and compete in that arena as well.

The platforms such as DTS AutoStage and RadioDNS further enhance the experience while playing to a strength of terrestrial broadcast: using the one-to-many distribution model and giving the experience an ‘IP-like’ feel. It simply comes down to the better the user experience, the better off we are.”

for KAXE-FM in Grand Rapids, Minn., where he learned the trade and became the station’s first full-time engineer. In 2006, Toven joined Wyoming Public Media at the University of Wyoming as Director of Engineering. He has been associated with EMF since 2017.

Toven comments, “Broadcast radio as a transmission medium has been around for many years and is still quite successful in reaching the largest audience for the least cost per listener. That said, it is one of the last remaining holdouts of analog technology. HD Radio is the current standard for digital audio broadcast and allows multiple services on a single frequency, but media options available to the consumer are constantly evolving. We have invested heavily in online digital platforms, as well as HD Radio, to expand our services for the broadcast network, but it’s important to look toward the future as technologies such as ATSC 3.0 and new cellular capabilities are rolled out.

Ultimately, I see broadcast and other digital technologies complementing each other quite nicely.”

One of the biggest advancements for EMF has involved the standardizing of its transmission site rack designs.

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“This allows much more rapid deployment than was possible in the past,” Toven says. “We’re currently on the fifth generation of this design and looking toward the next versions. Future designs will incorporate on-prem virtualization to further standardize and streamline installations, while preparing for whatever may come next.”

With digital, SaaS, and cloud-based applications more available than ever, how has this favorably impacted EMF and Toven? Streamlined operations and the ability to quickly respond to changing conditions are what first come to mind for Toven. He says, “When much of the workforce started working from home, these solutions allowed business to continue as normal for the most part. Everyone from the business operations to the studios to engineering and transmission operations has been able to work uninterrupted, despite the numerous logistical challenges brought on by COVID. “Another impact will be in reducing the amount of hardware in our signal chains. Many broadcast vendors now have software-based solutions that are functionally equivalent to the dedicated hardware devices we have traditionally used.

Reducing hardware will help minimize any future effect on operations due to things such as chip shortages or other supply chain issues while increasing scalability.”

ABOUT BROADCAST MEDIA’S TOP TECH LEADERS: This inaugural Honor Roll is produced from RBR+TVBR reader nominations, which were gathered in December 2021. Rankings are based on nomination totals, in addition to research and analysis by the RBR+TVBR editorial department. © 2022 Streamline Publishing.

Shane Toven

A SPECIAL CONGRATULATIONS TO SENIOR BROADCAST ENGINEER

SHANE TOVEN

S N O I T A S L ’ A I U D T E A M R T RS! S G A DE N C D EA O A C O BR H L TO P TEC TO

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· WINTER 2022

TECHNOLOGY: EMPOWERING BROADCAST RADIO AND TV The 2021 NAB Show was cancelled. Then came IBC, in Amsterdam — also cancelled. By December 22, Twitter, T-Mobile, and the parent of Facebook had pulled out of CES 2022. Even with the dark clouds, there was no hard stop on product rollouts and big plans for the year ahead from broadcast media’s biggest technology partners.

That’s a much-needed positivity boost for companies that have now waited two years to show off their latest gadgetry and technological advancements in person, rather than via a virtual video platform.

Among the broadcast media tech players eager to meet and greet radio and TV engineers and C-Suite leaders at the 2022 NAB Show, scheduled for late April, is GatesAir. In October 2021, GatesAir added audio processing to its Intraplex IP and Cloud Transport products. For those asked to sign off on a purchase order, cost savings is certainly a big selling point when it comes to auxiliary equipment.

But how does CEO Bruce Swail explain what this means, in layman’s terms, to the C-Suite executive who may not understand what this technology advancement brings to broadcast?

Swail points to the two-year growth of the Ascent product line, which was officially introduced at the NAB Show in 2019 — the last Las Vegas gathering.

Intraplex Ascent is described by GatesAir as “a scalable, multichannel Audio over IP transport solution that addresses the convergence of broadcast operations with IT infrastructure.”

Who knew that across 2020, such a convergence would become a broadcasting-industry essential?

“It was a move from somewhat of a hardware-based, box-based implementation to more of a serverbased platform — a move that telecom has been pioneering for at least a decade,” Swail says. “This notion of functionally dedicated discreet boxes for every function in a network increasingly is going away and moving to the cloud as virtual elements. Our sense is this is

a step in that direction, where you go to a virtualized environment and have subengines running the function as a software function, as opposed to a dedicated box.”

The benefit to broadcasters? Fewer pieces of hardware.

It’s just the latest example of a movement in which everything appears to be moving to the cloud. “Increasingly, that’s a more familiar operational management methodology,” Swail notes. “The people are understanding better now. Everything from the studio out now is so software-hyperintensive that the notion of server farms and virtualized instances of function X, Y, and Z is now becoming pretty commonplace. That’s actually becoming the preferred usage model.”

Swail comes from the telecom industry. As such, he traversed “this bridge” 10 years ago. He says, “It was a good decision, and the obvious direction.”

The audio processing addition to Intraplex IP and cloud transport products that GatesAir offers is WINTER 2022

· R B R . C O M · 23

Brick Eksten

Kurt Heitmann

Bruce Swail

all about high-resolution audio processing. It was intended to be a front-and-center feature of the company’s efforts at the cancelled IBC 2021 show. Now, NAB 2022 attendees are poised to get an up-close look at how native LiveWire+ IP support is now within the Intraplex Ascent platform.

What does this mean for the radio industry?

“It’s a further endorsement of LiveWire as sort of the de facto standard for transport, and interconnecting studios and transmit sites for the reliable transport of the content,” Swail says. “We have supported it with adjunct processors in the past, and now we support it natively. It is a tighter integration. We like to think of ourselves as protocolagnostic, and we can transport anything, but it is pretty hard to mistake the importance of LiveWire to radio broadcasters.”

From the point of view of a market manager with a sales background, that local leader may not fully comprehend the potential benefits of such products and tools for their radio stations. For those watching their dollars, how does Swail best describe why Intraplex Ascent is something to consider?

He explains, “Budgets are tight, but you are simplifying your network by eliminating an adjunct processor. It may have been on your capex anyway and ready to be withdrawn from the network. Now you can deploy it as a software key in a system you already have. To the extent you are going to have to upgrade anyway, it provides you a tighter integrated path toward doing that, and a less expensive path.

And you’re on a current release of a product line, so any incremental improvements in the protocol and minor evolution and bug fixes are all going to be on the current path.”

MONITORING AND COMPLIANCE

What Qligent has witnessed is that neither solution is perfect, Eksten says. For one thing, a public cloud solution comes with myriad challenges, including education and operational expenses. “There is a lot of technology in the public cloud, but not a lot has really been built to fill this notion of broadcast,” Eksten says.

The alternatives are not very flexible, and not very dynamic, he adds. There

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Across 2021, broadcast monitoring and analysis-focused technology firm Qligent has seemingly been silent when it comes to product development and updates to its existing process.

“You’re right, we have been quiet,” says CEO Brick Eksten. “Part of that is a reflection of the industry as a whole and just thinking about the efficiency of how we reach our customers and

A NEXTGEN JUMP IN NATION’S CAPITAL

GatesAir is also an active player in the rollout of NEXTGEN TV, the ATSC 3.0-powered broadcast TV standard promising better picture and sound to viewers and new revenue-generation streams for station owners. It is working with Howard University-owned PBS Member station WHUT-32 in Washington, D.C., and CEO Bruce Swail is excited about the widespread deployment of NEXTGEN TV among the bigger broadcasters.

“These trials are sort of critically important in closing the loop on the discussion of the technology being ahead of the marketplace right now, but we’re pretty excited about the capabilities,” he says. “It’s a bit of an unknown as to whether or not this will be the dominant use model for this technology.” how we best service the market.” A lot of that has been happening in oneon-one conversations with customers or potential clients. “We just found that the only effective fallback position that we have, with the state of the trade shows and general communication, is just to put a renewed effort into direct outreach to our customers. That is not a reflection of our plan. That is a reflection of the state of the industry right now.”

That’s why NAB 2022 is the focal point of Qligent’s “pause,” one that serves as a way to look internally while reviewing the general transition of the market. Five years ago, the discussions about the cloud had just begun. Today, it is a near-essential, with a forced choice for remote access to control systems delivered in March 2020 courtesy of COVID-19.

is a high fixed cost. In Eksten’s view, and that of Qligent, a hybrid is what broadcasters will most realistically adopt in the coming years.

With Qligent focused on monitoring, Eksten has observed that a “huge gap” exists between getting a system to work and actively operating that system in a day-to-day scenario. Given costs, incorporating the public cloud into the mix is a given, he acknowledges. Thus, managing everything is a key task for broadcasters. “What occurs to us is that the reality of the supply chain is not on the vendor side … it is on the operational side,” Eksten says.

“With equipment that I can’t touch and the mix of equipment that is out there, and this new dynamic that the cloud brings to bear, how do I

orchestrate, monitor, and control what ends up being a very complex set of interactions between systems, signals, and networks, in order to recreate a broadcast air chain?”

Thus, Eksten believes Qligent’s future is in supply-chain monitoring, of which compliance is the last result — “a final audit of the entirety of the supply chain.” But when one starts to think about real end-to-end supply-chain monitoring, there are advantages to being present, and to being able to monitor earlier in the supply chain; with end-to-end encapsulation, one has “complete visibility,” says Eksten.

He offers up an example of this benefit. “With typical compliance monitoring, you’ve got loudness and picture availability, signal integrity — a mix of QoE — but the reality is that, on its own, it doesn’t tell you a lot about the end-to-end QoS of what you’re trying to accomplish in the business. If I am an overthe-air station and I want to freely mix the worlds of ATSC 3.0 and ATSC 1.0 and OTT and maybe some partner distribution, it is difficult to coordinate all of that and understand the root cause of a problem that may come up. What if the captions go missing?”

By extension, looking at failures in important functions, including advertising, becomes easier.

Looking ahead to the NAB 2022 show, Qligent will be devoting time to chat with attendees about its “Vision” product line. There’s an update that will be shared.

RF COORDINATION: STILL A KEY FOCUS

With the 2022 NAB Show marking the “big return” for many a broadcast media technology vendor, as key withdrawals from CES 2022 emerged heading into Christmas, CP Communications has perhaps emerged as one of the more active players of late.

CEO Kurt Heitmann is excited about what lies ahead for the company in 2022. That very much includes RF coordination, which CP has done, he says, “for many, many years.” CP started with Major League Baseball roughly 15 years ago, with shared resources. Heitmann

recalls, “We brought one truck in, and we were servicing five or six clients out of that truck — FOX, ESPN, NHK, MLB Network, and a bunch of local entities.”

The key takeaway from that experience: CP was the provider of the majority of the wireless equipment.

This meant that CP had to coordinate within itself, then move ahead with coordinating all of the outside ENT crews that were coming in.

“There was no coordination process for outside crews,” Heitmann says of that early experience. It called for interfrequency modulation, to prevent any disruption of services due to signal impairment. “That’s where we started,” Heitmann says. “We did it for ourselves, and then MLB approached us. The broadcasters were pretty upset because they were getting hits on air, but that’s because they didn’t have anyone controlling it.”

While CP has been engaged in RF coordination for quite some time, the pandemic brought new light to the need, thus bringing the subject to those who hadn’t previously known of its significance to a broadcast operation. “There’s not a lot of hardwire, and you’re not staying in one position,” Heitmann says. “During the pandemic we had a lot of wireless equipment out on sporting events, but no one was manning the equipment.

You’d have an interview mic that was standing by itself with an IFP return, all wireless. The talent was six, or 12, or 25 feet away from the interviewee, and

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it had to be right — you always had one shot at it. You can’t have a tech go down and fix it anymore. It really has to work the first time.”

Another issue: the spectrum has shrunk, and the industry will continue to lose spectrum availability.

“We’ve been working with Shure and Sennheiser for years on the digital transformation of equipment so we can now get more frequencies in a smaller space,” Heitmann says. “With a smaller spectrum, we have to have the ability to modulate in a smaller slice of the spectrum and get more channels in one TV channel. That’s why we are pushing to get people to understand that, for large-scale events, or any event, you’ve got to know what digital TV channels are there. With a squarewave, it is a hack. With analog, you could squeeze a channel in a valley. We cannot do that anymore in an all-digital world.”

THE VIRTUAL PRESS ROOM: STILL HERE

With continued uncertainty tied to the COVID-19 virus and its evolution heading into 2022, the need for a press room in the cloud will likely remain

vital for many news organizations, whether it involves its own operation or covering a press briefing organized by another entity.

The CP Communications Virtual Press Room uses its CamSTREAM product line. “We put that up into a cloud, and that CamSTREAM can talk to Zoom or any other platform, and we create the interaction there. It’s just like your laptop, except it is a professional camera with professional audio, controlled by our knock. With no man on site — he just puts it on a tripod and points it in the right direction — our system takes control of it.”

The City of Chicago and City of New York have used the technology for press conferences, Heitmann notes.

Another CP offering likely to remain in the spotlight in 2022 bears the name “Fast Return.” Heitmann says, “It allows you to take any signal, from any control room. For example, you have an announcer working from home, or an announcer is on-site but is controlled back at an off-site control room in a ‘REMI’ remote production environment. The announcer has to see the program cut. With ‘Fast Return,’ you just need to log in, and the content

is delivered with no delay. This allows him to call the play.”

As low-power TV stations grow their programming skein to include high school sporting events, while bigger local TV stations add local and regional sports and live events to their offerings, both products could prove of interest in the weeks ahead.

“We are working with Nexstar and we are working with LTN Global to develop products that allow their producers to quickly deploy a camera to talent or to a news event, and they control it from their control room,” Heitmann reveals.

While GatesAir, Qligent, and CP have little in common in terms of the products for consideration among broadcast media companies, there is one big theme among them: the cloud.

Another link involves the broadcast TV channels’ output, and what is seen by the consumer. That’s perhaps the most important aspect of the continued need to budget for internal infrastructure advancement — and why the C-Suite leader who must sign off on a purchase order likely has a better understanding of why each of these three companies’ wares are perhaps for the better.

WORLD’S BEST ANTENNAS ENGINEERED AND BUILT RIGHT HERE FOR 80 YEARS! As we mark our latest milestone, we celebrate the innovative engineers who design the world’s finest TV, FM and RF systems, and the expert production teams who build each component to the very highest spec, right here at Dielectric in Maine.

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PRODUCTS TO WATCH: A BROADCAST MEDIA EXECUTIVE’S TECH GUIDE Unsure of what your chief engineer wants your company to invest in? Can’t quite grasp the excitement about the latest tech product recommended by your IT team? You’re likely not alone. That’s why RBR+TVBR has put together this first-ever showcase of key products of interest to radio and TV industry leaders.

We’ve trimmed the tech-speak and deleted the marketing jargon so you can best understand the why behind some of the key tools and services now available from seven key vendors serving broadcast media.

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EMBRACING THE CLOUD

For more than three decades, Artel Video Systems has gained notice for its line of broadcast-quality media transport products for direct fiber, IP, and managed optical networks. The company is known for its development of the first commercially available video-over-fiber video transport platform.

As it is for many companies, shifting from hardware to software is a key focal point for Artel. Enter the company’s SMART Media Delivery Platform.

Artel VP of Product Management Rafael Fonseca comments, “If users wanted a certain function after a hardware-based solution was installed, they would have to buy and deploy a ‘box’ that was purposely built to accomplish that function. If they needed a different functionality in the future, such as going from uncompressed to compressed video, they had to replace boxes or modules to make it happen.”

That costly, complicated, and cumbersome process has largely transitioned to fiber-based and IP-based workflows.

For the launch of the SMART Media Delivery Platform, the “personality” of each module changes based on the software loaded into it by Artel. The result is a four-channel, auto-sensing, 3G/HD/SD-SDI-over-IP multifunction gateway with an integrated, nonblocking Layer 2/3 switch.

If you’re unsure of what that means, here is the biggest takeaway: This is a software-based application, making it more cost-efficient for a media company. Plus, it doesn’t take up precious real estate. “There’s no need to replace or purchase hardware to change functionality,” Fonseca says.

At one TV station on the East Coast of the U.S., a plan was put in place to 28 · R B R . C O M

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add HD video services. However, the engineering team couldn’t move the higher-resolution video to the station’s affiliate over its existing 1G station-toaffiliate link. The team attempted to use higher-speed links, but dispersion was both difficult and costly. “Rather than invest in building out further network capacity to support HD over IP, the station added Artel’s SMART J2K encoder,” Fonseca says. The encoder compresses HD video below 1G, and frees up additional bandwidth for other video and data transport needs.

EAS IN THE CLOUD

“Companies are running full-speed to the cloud, embracing virtualization for content aggregation, editing, and playout,” notes Bill Robertson, VP of Business Development at Digital Alert Systems. But, Robertson says, this fastpaced roadway has some operational realities that need addressing. Doing so will help broadcasters avoid a highspeed crash into a virtual wall.

The embrace of the cloud also requires broadcasters to adhere to the FCC’s Part 11 rules governing the Emergency Alert System, or EAS. The regulatory policy is simple: A radio or TV station must monitor at least two over-the-air radio stations and the FEMA IPAWS common alerting protocol (CAP) server via the internet.

As it is mandatory, the question many broadcasters face is this: How do we get EAS into the cloud?

“The quick, simple answer — ‘We’ll just monitor IPAWS’ — seems too easy ... and it is,” Robertson says.

Simply monitoring IPAWS fails to provide the two direct radio paths the FCC requires. “Local alerting authorities are not mandated to use IPAWS, therefore not all alerts are available over IPAWS,” he continues.

“Most importantly, alerts tend to be very

local in their impact. With the emphasis on cellphone alerting using Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), the continuing effort to get more local alerting agencies using IPAWS is underway, but it’s far from complete. Moreover, it seems folly for radio stations to dismiss using radio.

If you say you don’t want to monitor over-the-air stations, when in fact you are an over-the-air station, then you’re essentially saying OTA radio is irrelevant.

That’s not a good position to take.”

As Robertson and DAS see it, the cloud is ideal for computation, storage, and processing in a virtual environment; around the cloud’s periphery are special inputs and outputs that require hardware. This shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“While the final output of this process ends at the transmitter — a real-world hardware device — there are hardware systems at the inputs from the various content sources, including EAS. Just as with any other cloud implementation, the interfaces to the real world are hardware input and output elements on the edges of the network.”

Robertson goes on, “Following the rules means stations must receive these local EAS transmissions using an FCCcertified EAS decoder to process the alerting information, then load this data into the cloud. Fundamentally, you can’t virtualize RF reception.

Receiving and demodulating signals from the FCC-mandated monitoring stations requires hardware. Each market must have at least two receivers with their associated antennas, wiring power, and the like. Since there must be receivers in the local markets at the network’s edge, why not make them intelligent? By receiving the OTA signal and directly decoding the information, it can be presented as data — with the full message text, audio, and associated event metadata networked to the cloud.”

A BROADCAST COMPLIANCE OFFERING

Digital Nirvana, not to be confused with DAS, has gained a reputation for broadcast-compliance and mediamonitoring products. As 2022 begins, it has put its attention toward its MonitorIQ 8.0 product, which provides access to content and metadata. As Keith DesRosiers, the company’s Director of Sales Solutions and Product Management, notes, MonitorIQ 8.0 users “depend on it to find, review, clip, and monitor live or historic content more quickly and easily.”

Ensuring the content distribution and delivery chain runs smoothly remains a key need for broadcast TV in particular. The Digital Nirvana remote video monitoring product is suited for remote hub and headend sites.

DesRosiers says, “There is a critical need among the video distributors to replace the antiquated Slingbox and obsolete Volicon RPM, which provided remote edge video monitoring. This will eliminate any unnecessary truck rolls and provide live, centralized monitoring of high-profile events.”

While MonitorIQ is certainly a tool for use in the engineering department, DesRosiers is quick to note that access to live or historic video and all associated metadata means that different departments can leverage recorded content to monitor competitive channels, repurpose video clips to social media, provide full program transcripts, provide sales teams with viewer measurement data, or provide proof of advertisement playout. As such, the advertising team benefits from the tech tool, too.

THE ROUTER IS THE GATEWAY: HOW TO PROCESS SDI AND IP SIMULTANEOUSLY WITHOUT MULTIPLE CONVERSION DEVICES

By John R. Schilberg

The video production industry is once again in a state of transition in terms of signal formats. In the past we’ve gone from analog to standard definition serial digital (SD-SDI) and SD-SDI to HD-SDI in all its flavors. Now we’re going from SDI to internet protocol (IP)-based video transmission.

But we’re still a long way from end-to-end IP workflows, so more and more broadcasters are working in hybrid SDI/IP environments. Their facilities are still full of SDI equipment that is not designed for IP routing, so they must convert incoming SDI signals to IP in order to process and transmit the video in the IP portion of their workflow, and then convert some of the signals back to SDI before transmitting through SDI-only devices. That means broadcasters are forced to use a lot of gateway conversion devices outside the video and IP routing systems to accommodate the different types of signals flowing through the building.

All that conversion is expensive, repetitive, and inefficient, and it’s not a true hybrid solution. It leaves broadcasters looking for a way to get from baseband to IP (ST 2110 and ST 2022) and back to baseband more efficiently and without multiple gateways.

The new UTAH-400 Gateway Router is built to resolve those concerns.

It uses Utah Scientific’s PassThrough card, which can process SDI signals while simultaneously creating IP copies of any 3G/HD/SD SDI input and sending them to the IP switch. It allows operators to work in SDI and IP at the same time instead of having to convert back and forth.

The UTAH-400 Gateway Router is a stand-alone, preconfigured device. It acts as a facility’s gateway into IP. The router eliminates the need for external conversion gateways because the conversion capability is built into it.

The ability to create an IP copy of every input is a first for the industry.

Routers’ sizes have always been described as inputs x outputs. The UTAH400 Gateway router sizes are expressed as inputs x outputs x IP copies.

A UTAH-400 Gateway Router offers multiples of 12 inputs x 12 outputs x 12 IP copies. Depending on the size of the chassis, facilities can choose to install up to 1,056 inputs x 1,056 outputs x 1,506 IP copies.

How does it work? The UTAH-400 Gateway Router is installed at the point of ingest and serves as the heart of all signal processing and distribution. On the input side of the router, the Gateway Router can take in the SDI signal, pass it through to the SDI infrastructure and out to SDI-only destinations such as monitors or video recorders. At the same time, the UTAH-400 Gateway Router takes that same SDI signal, makes a copy of it, sends it through an internal conversion engine, and converts it to an IP signal that is compliant with SMPTE ST 2110, SMPTE ST 2022, and NMOS standards. From there the IP signal goes to the IP switch, which distributes it to the designated IP device.

The upshot is that you can exist in both SDI and IP signal realms at the same time. Conversion functionality is still there, but it’s not scattered around the facility. Instead, it all happens simultaneously within the router chassis. It’s a way to manage hybrid SDI/IP workflows in a small footprint. No need for an SDI frame plus a variety of external gateways to take you from SDI to IP, then back to SDI, and then over to IP. The router is the gateway.

John R. Schilberg is the Director of Product Development and Technical Marketing at Utah Scientific.

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SMOOTH WORKFLOWS

Lawo (pronounced “LA-voh”) is largely known for its live-sound mixing solutions and IP video infrastructure products. That said, the company got its start in radio, in 1970. “The bug has never left us!” jokes the company’s Radio Marketing Specialist, Clark Novak. “We’ve made our reputation by super-serving radio stations.”

Today, Lawo works with both radio and TV broadcasters, which equally desire their workflows to integrate smoothly. As such, they want their equipment to do the same. As physical and virtual user interfaces continue to move closer together, Lawo is putting its spotlight on “diamond,” an IP-native modular broadcast console.

Novak says, “It’s been 10 years since the first iPad, and everyone is now very comfortable using touchscreens; they’re great for interactive graphical control. But when you’re doing live broadcasts and things are moving fast, there’s no substitute for physical controls you can lay hands on at a

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moment’s notice.”

For diamond, a physical mixing surface is coupled with an optional integrated Virtual Extension that places information and contextsensitive touchscreen controls above every fader. “All of this makes running a show easier than ever before, and even though it’s designed for radio, many TV stations find it ideal for audio production too,” Novak says.

With the pandemic forcing broadcast companies to think differently about planning for the future, remote production has exploded. Lawo has responded, adding features designed to make remote production easier. “For example, our diamond console connects to its mixing core via IP, which means that broadcasters don’t have to locate the physical mixing surface in the main studio anymore — the mixing core can be in the central facility, while producers and DJs use a mixing surface at a secondary studio, a remote van, a home studio, or wherever there’s a LAN or WAN connection,” Novak says. “In fact, for some applications they don’t even need the physical console; they can remote-control the console and mix engine directly with a remote PC or laptop using Lawo’s virtual mixer interface, VisTool.”

Lawo also developed a way to commission a new equipment installation remotely when a customer needs it. “We can even perform factory acceptance tests remotely,” Novak adds.

“This really helps remove roadblocks for broadcasters who need that new equipment running but can’t allow visitors to their facilities.”

ENERGIZING A SALES GROWTH ENGINE

To say broadcast engineers play a critical role in both radio and TV operations is perhaps an understatement. They’re responsible for everything from scheduling to setup in the field to updating hardware and software. Thus when media companies find efficiencies through any technology, it directly benefits this group.

That’s why the adoption of technology that simplifies and streamlines is high. For Marketron, this was key to the development and rollout of its new Marketron REV platform — one the company says is designed to “operationalize and drive efficiencies in the sales process.”

Boosting revenue is also an end goal Marketron is touting.

The product offers radio and television companies features including proposal and order management. “It certainly makes the job of sales smoother,” says Jimshade Chaudhari, Marketron’s SVP of Product. “Broadcast engineers can appreciate this process upgrade as well, since they have responsibilities around content.”

Another core feature of Marketron REV is its ability to access reports on real-time sales and campaign performance. “It can enable better visibility into the pipeline of committed orders with visual dashboards,” Chaudhari says. “For sales leaders, they can compare against targets and identify trends that could

inform how and what they sell.”

Broadcast engineers may also find this to be appealing information.

“If they have more insight into the advertising content, it may assist them with their work in scheduling or the field,” Chaudhari adds. “In addition, they’ll likely appreciate this forecast so they can plan better for things within their wheelhouse.”

REV also offers dynamic pricing tools, which can help teams sell the same set of inventory at the most optimal price, leading to higher revenue opportunities. It can also fill the gaps in unsold inventory.

A PROMISE OF IMPROVED AUDIO

In recent months, broadcast audio processing specialist Orban released a new OPTIMOD XPN-Enterprise system. Company representatives are readying an NAB Show 2022 effort to tout the convenience of centralized processing to small and mediumsized groups, while improving their audio in the process.

XPN-Enterprise is a Linux-based customizable processing platform for broadcasters operating multiple stations in a given market or running streaming services. It provides a single user interface that’s extensible to hundreds of processing channels and provides upward of 16 processing channels in a single 1RU package using a “COTS” Dell blade.

Orban Nodes can provide everything from standard FM Composite to uMPX to DMPX to FM/ HD-1, HD-2, HD-3, HD-4, and HD-5, the company says; the nodes can locally generate RDS and provide Nielsen and Kantar encoding.

Additionally, many nodes are “Power over Ethernet” (PoE)-capable, making them easy to install.

XPN-Enterprise supports AES-67, SMPTE-2110-30, Dante, or Livewire+ with fully redundant AoIP networks and isolated management network ports.

Orban in 2021 gained Nielsen PPM certification for three FM processors.

What did this bring to the company compared to its competitors, and what benefits does this bring to radio stations?

“The old way of PPM encoding created some challenges for maintaining the integrity of the processing and could impact the transmitted audio,” an Orban representative says. “Our engineering team fixed this, bringing clean, effective encoding by optimizing its placement within the air chain.

Onboard encoding also eliminates the need for any external hardware PPM ‘enhancers,’ which improves reliability and makes much better audio.”

What are some of the other key takeaways from Orban as it navigates 2022? “We used the pandemic to focus up on new product development, and over the next 12 to 18 months you will see the results of those efforts,” the company says.

P R E S E R V I N G T H E PA S T REFLECTING THE PRESENT INFORMING THE FUTURE

libraryofamericanbroadcastingfoundation.org

C E L E B R AT I N G R A D I O ’ S 100 YEAR ANNIVERSARY WINTER 2022

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