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By Paul Thurst, on January 19th, 2012
Yesterday, January 18, 2012, I blacked out engineeringradio.us for the day in protest of the internet censorship bill working its way through congress colloquially known as SOPA or PIPA. There were some 17,000 or more others that did the same.
 SOPA PIPA protest screen shot If the internet is indeed the new media, destined to replace the old media, then having in place draconian restrictions that allow the government to block websites and content with no due process for the website owner is censorship, plain and simple. Imagine a country where the government can come in and shut down any newspaper, TV station or Radio station, give no reason other than some weak statement about copy write laws. See also: China, North Korea, Cuba, Soviet Russia, etc.
It is important to check the corporate power in this country. It is widely reported that Congress has a 9% approval rating. It is also hard to imagine their approval rating is actually that high. While signing petitions and writing senators and congressman may provide some relief, the shortest path to ending this is to boycott the corporate sponsors of the legislation. Hitting companies bottom line will speak louder than any internet protest, petition, letter writing campaign, etc. Thus, if so inclined, here is a list of producer companies that like the idea of internet censorship.
By Paul Thurst, on September 23rd, 2011
In this blog post about the NAB radio show, Paul McLane (Radio World editor) discusses the reduction of technical people in attendance at the conference. Consolidation has brought about many changes in the broadcasting industry, engineering has not been immune to these changes.
Because of consolidation, engineering staffs have been reduced or completely replaced by contract engineering firms. Since the Great Recession of 2008-09 this trend has picked up speed. Expect it to continue to the point where large broadcasting companies employ one engineering staff administrator at the top, several regional engineering supervisors in the middle and the bulk of the work performed will be done by regional contract engineering firms.
There is no reason to expect the media consolidation process to stop any time soon. It will continue in fits and starts depending on the congressional mood and the awareness or lack thereof of the general public. The NAB itself seems bent on removing all ownership regulations and eventually, with enough money spent lobbying congress, they will get their way. Thus, the majority of radio stations will be owned by one company, the majority of TV stations will be owned by another company and the majority of newspapers will be owned by a third.
There will be some exceptions to that scenario; public radio and TV, privately owned religious broadcasters and single station consolidation holdouts. If funding for public radio and TV gets cut, which is very likely if the economy collapses further, they will be up for grabs too.
 Cloud based network diagram For the future of radio and radio engineering, I see the following trends developing:
- National formats will be introduced. Clear Channel already does this somewhat with it’s talk radio formats. Look for more standardization and national music formats for CHR, Country, Rock, Oldies, Nostalgia, etc. These were previously called “Satellite Radio” formats but I am sure that somebody will dust of and repackage the idea as something else. They will be somewhat like BBC Radio 1, where a single studio location is used with local markets having the ability to insert local commercials if needed. Some “local” niche formats will still exist and major markets where the majority of the money is, will continue to have localized radio.
- Audio distribution will move further into the Audio Over IP realm using private WANs for larger facilities, public networks with VPN for smaller facilities. AOIP consoles like the Wheatstone Vorsis and the Telos Axia will become the installation standard. These consoles are remote controllable and interface directly with existing IP networks for audio distribution and control. Satellite terminals will become backup distribution or become two way IP networked.
- Cloud based automation systems will evolve. File and data storage will be moved to cloud base servers using a Content Distribution Network topology. Peers and Nodes will be distributed around the country to facilitate backup and faster file serving.
- Continued movement of the technical operations into a corporate hierarchy. Technical NOC (Network Operations Center) will include all facets of facility monitoring including transmitters, STL’s, automation systems, office file servers, and satellite receivers via IP networks. The NOC operators will dispatch parts and technicians to the sites of equipment failures as needed.
- Regional contract engineering and maintenance firms will replace most staff engineers in all but the largest markets. Existing regional engineering firms will continue to grow or consolidate as demands for services rise. Those firms will employ one or two RF engineers, several computer/IT engineers and many low level technicians.
The most important skill set for broadcast engineers in the coming five to ten year period will be IP networking. Everything is moving in that direction and those that want to keep up will either learn or be left behind.
By Paul Thurst, on June 8th, 2011
 Data Center, courtesy Wikimedia Happy IPv6 day!
Today, June 8th is the day the major internet companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Verizon, Microsoft and a few others migrate to IPv6 for a 24 hour test. The migration to IPv6 will eventually be permanent as the number of addresses available for IPv4 is running low. Considering that there are about 4,000,000,000 IPv4 addresses, that is sort amazing.
IPv6 addresses will look substantially different than the IPv4 example used in the title of this post. A typical IPv6 address looks something like this: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334. In 32 bit, that format can generate 340 undecillion unique number sets, or 340,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 written in non-scientific notation. Most new routers and operating systems can handle IPv6 some routers may need a firmware upgrade, while older routers may need to be replaced.
From a user standpoint, the transition should be transparent. Even for IT guys, the change means typing in a few extra digits when configuring and outside IP address. Inside IP addresses will likely be IPv4 until servers and server software is upgraded. Even so, it is not necessary to change internal IP networks to IPv4 except in the interest of uniformity.
From the standpoint of IP streaming audio, IPv6 is more efficient than v4 in multicast operations. This will hopefully reduce latency somewhat in web streaming audio.
By Paul Thurst, on June 7th, 2011
 Several places have reported that The Voice of America will sunset it’s shortwave broadcasts in the not too distant future. Boing Boing reported yesterday, based on a paper titled “Broadcast Board of Governors 2010-2012 BBG Technology Strategic Plan and BBG Technology Update – 2009″ received via FOIA last January.
The 2009 study notes that the weekly audience for radio is 101.9 million listeners, TV is 81.5 million and the Internet 2.4 million weekly listeners. I don’t know how much that has changed in the last two years, but I’d imagine some shift towards the internet has taken place in light of recent shortwave transmitter site closings.
There are several interesting aspects of this report, notably the disparity between what is termed “Classic Engineering” and “Classic IT” fields. This is the concept that radio engineers toil on RF and transmitters, while the IT guys work with computers.
As the dependence on shortwave continues to wane and the distribution focus shifts to third party operations, satellite and other direct-to-consumer methodologies, the skill sets of some engineering personnel become less and less relevant to the agency.
This issue is further compounded by the relatively difficult transition from a traditional RF, antenna, transmitter design, and maintenance knowledge base to the technologies involved in digital satellite and IP-based networking systems.
Perhaps that is how it is done in government circles, but I have found in private sector, most radio engineers know at least the computer automation systems that run the stations. Of course, everyone has preferences and we tend to gravitate toward things we like to do, especially in a field as diverse as broadcast engineering. When I was in the military, somebody posted the “Eleven Rules of Success.” The only one that I can remember now is this: “Pick the thing that you hate and become proficient at it.”
In order to stay relevant, broadcast engineers have to keep up with the technology while remaining proficient with RF and audio skills. Computers and automation programs are not terribly hard to understand, but each one is different and operates differently. Most, if not all automation companies offer some type of training, which is fine. Nothing can beat hands on installation and trouble shooting for learning the important details, however.
The report also mentions that morale is an issue for several reasons. First, it is noted that:
Despite several recent high profile station closings, the organization continues to employ shortwave as the most important transmission mechanism to many of the target areas around the globe. Often surge activities are enabled byvadditional shortwave transmissions that end up as an integral part of the ongoing schedule. Effectively, this diminution of transmission resources accompanied by no reduction or even an increase of reliance on this transmission methodology creates overburdened schedules and often the deployment of less than optimal assets for transmission into target areas.
This additional operational burden likely extends to other disciplines within the agency where programming staff must expend substantial additional effort to produce or adapt content for a multiplicity of transmission methods.
In essence, the decision process for station closing does not appear to follow an overt decision and stated plan to reduce shortwave usage.
That is known as the “more with less” paradox. In the private sector, more with less has been going great guns since the first loosening of the FCC’s ownership rules in 1994. For those that are used to working in optimum conditions, anything less is a shock to the system.
The issue of low morale is palpable and often present in conversations that address historical perspectives on a particular station closing, transfer of technologies around the network and any other such topics. Precipitated by the long periods of employment that are relatively standard in the Engineering area and perfectly understandable, this grieving process is a natural consequence of the pride involved in creating a state-of-the-art technical facility only to see it being dissected piece by piece as technology continues its relentless creative destruction.
An interesting statement and it shines a light on several things heretofore unsaid in broadcast engineering. We love our transmitters, as strange as that may seem. We love our towers and antennas. Parting with something that has become an integral part of our working environment is difficult to say the least. Watching something be signed off for the last time and then hauled to the scrap heap is very disheartening, especially if there is no replacement.
On the IT side, things are not so good either. The main concern is the infrastructure of the IT backbone. Several deficiencies are noted in the cabling and router; the cabling is in serious disarray and there is only one router for the facility. There is also other problems noted with personnel and lack of project management experience and/or IT department goals.
Overall, moving into new media fields makes sense. There are, however, many places where new media is unknown or at best, mostly unavailable. Moving content delivery from over the air broadcast to IP based distribution may be far less expensive to operate, that is true. It is also far more susceptible to being disrupted by accident or design. In those areas where the internet is spotty, shortwave radios are abundant and relied upon. If the VOA is not on the air, then some other station will be.
By Paul Thurst, on March 30th, 2011
 I posted previously about how to listen to radio station streams on an Android phone. In the time between then and now, somebody has come up with a much better way to do it. TuneIn Radio is both a website for streaming and a mobile application for Android and iPhone users alike.
I have found that every local radio station that has a web stream is listed. The major overseas broadcasters like the BBC, CBC, Radio Netherlands, and so on as well as all of the non-government US owned shortwave stations are listed. As their website states:
With over 30,000 FM and AM radio stations from across the globe, TuneIn Radio makes radio local, no matter how far from home you might be.
Far easier than what I posted before. Further, this is exactly the type of service that terrestrial broadcasters needed the most; a concise consolidated listing broken down by genre and locality, to compete with Pandora, Slacker, Last.fm, et. al.
In order to download TuneIn Radio, point your mobile web browser to http://tunein.com and it will automatically direct you to the proper download source. Or one could search through the Apple store or Android Market to find the app.
By Paul Thurst, on January 28th, 2011
On Thursday, January 27th at 22:34 UTC (about 4:30 PM, NY time) Egypt cut off outside access to the internet. According to Renesys:
At 22:34 UTC (00:34am local time), Renesys observed the virtually simultaneous withdrawal of all routes to Egyptian networks in the Internet’s global routing table. Approximately 3,500 individual BGP routes were withdrawn, leaving no valid paths by which the rest of the world could continue to exchange Internet traffic with Egypt’s service providers.
Go and read the entire article. Notice how the government asked and the ISP corporations complied. This is in response to massive riots and uprisings in Cairo and other cities which may topple the government. Think that the internet and new media alone can keep our government honest and doing the people’s work? Think again. Net Neutrality is a pipe dream and would do nothing to stop this type of censorship regardless.
Free press is one of the critical legs of our democracy. The traditional broadcasting and media has been decimated in the last 15 years. They are not without fault, cutting staff, politically slanted reporting, profit taking have done there part. Fortunately, while staffs have disappeared, the infrastructure (networks, transmitters, printing presses) remain in place. They need to be revitalized and utilized. There is a trend that I and others have noticed where small operators, perhaps one or two stations at most, are providing excellent service to their respective communities and running circles around other, group owned stations in the same market.
By Paul Thurst, on November 17th, 2010
Wheatstone, Inc has sponsored a radio industry future technology study which brings into focus some of the connections between technology and radio business models. It appears to be very thorough, polling radio professionals on all aspects of technology development and management.
According to Josh Gordon:
While it is hard to predict which of the radio industry’s newest business models will succeed in generating new revenues, we can better anticipate the winners by measuring how fast the technologies that enable them are being adopted.
To find out, we surveyed the radio professionals involved in all aspects of technology management (engineers, and operations and technical management). The results reported in this study can serve as a benchmark for managers to evaluate their own organizations’ progress.
The first graph is telling:
 Wheatstone Technology Survey Results Almost everyone believes that the internet will play a greater role in radio (and all media). This goes against the “radio with its head in the sand” idea that can be found in some corners of the internet (I’d provide a link, but the site has turned on a paywall).
The question is, what are management type people doing about it. Some have good ideas on how to bridge the gap between making money the old fashioned way; selling spots, to making money the new way; brand imaging, media promotion and personal contact through new media. While it is generally agreed that radio stations should stream their audio, many, if not most, make little or no money on this. If radio is going to make some revenue on internet applications, obviously some new ideas are needed.
Unique local content seems to be the most sought after, things like local news podcasts, or new music, e.g. studio sessions with up and coming band and musicians, locally produced shows that are area specific, etc. Put a 10 second sponsorship in front of those and people will get the message. Other things like value added contests that can only be heard on the internet. Interactive radio station apps that have streaming, now playing, recently heard features that link to a .mp3 store for iPhone and Android operating systems. Text link adds on radio station web pages, etc.
On the flip side of this, huge, great amounts of bandwidth will be required if the internet streaming is going approach the same number of off the air listeners. Depending on the how the radio station has the stream set up, anywhere from 20 to 64 kbps of data transfer is needed for each listener. For a station in a large metropolitan area, multiply that by 500,000 to 4,000,000 listeners at any one time and data gridlock ensues.
 On the in house side, the red hot, cutting edge thing these days is AOIP (Audio over IP), which Wheatstone is heavily invested in with its E console series. While some might not think of AOIP as a traditional internet application, it none the less uses the same transport protocols as other internet applications. AOIP offers some great advantages over other routing systems, as both private (internal) and public (wide area) networking can be used to transfer audio in real time. Of course, this is not as easy as plugging the new computer into an ethernet jack, it takes more planning than that.
Wheatstone has published an excellent white paper on Network Design for Ethernet Audio. Well worth the read.
As AOIP technology develops more, web streams could come directly from the console and be customizable according to destination. Further, IP logging can create stream user profiles and customizable greetings, listening preferences and so on. This would require that the web streaming server be in house and the studio facility have enough bandwidth to handle all of the outgoing streams and other content.
Certainly an in house IT/Web developer will be needed to manage and maintain such a system.
You can download and read the entire studio at Alethea/Wheatstone Radio Survey. The cliff notes summary is this:
Finding #1: Almost all radio tech people believe the Internet will play a bigger part in the future of radio.
Finding #2:Of the new revenue generating technologies, streaming a station’s signal has the biggest earning potential.
Finding #3: Technologies that require little or no capital investment are being deployed at similar frequencies by both stand-alone and group owned stations.
Finding #4: A technology gap is emerging as stand-alone stations deploy revenue generating technologies requiring investment at only half the frequency as group owned stations.
Finding #5: The revenue generating technology that most group owned stations plan on deploying next is a mobile app, while for stand-alone stations, it is broadcasting in HD Radio, with mobile apps coming in a close second.
Finding #6: There is a big divide between radio stations that are now, or will soon be, making money from streaming their signal over the Internet, and those who likely never will.
Finding #7: The day will come slowly, but in 15 years a majority of radio stations expect they will have more online listeners than RF listeners.
Finding #8: Despite the expected decline in over the air listeners, few stations expect to turn off their transmitters.
Finding #9: Three years from now, radio station technology will be more IT centric with more automation, as well as more networking between stations, IT networks, and office and audio networks.
Finding #10: Three years from now, the stability of each radio station network will be more important, as will networks with no single point of failure.
Finding #11: Three years from now, more audio consoles will be networked together. Also, the bandwidth of those networks will be required to increase.
Finding #12: The top reason group owned stations bought an AoIP network was to reduce maintenance costs. The top reason for stand-alone stations: to share talent.
Finding #13: At stations that have installed an AoIP network, more than a third of stand-alone stations found installing it harder than anticipated, while only 16.7% of group owned stations found installation harder than anticipated.
Finding #14: At stations with an AoIP network, more than one in four stand-alone stations and one in three group owned stations report latency problems.
The study is a good indication of where technical managers see growth. One thing that internet sites like Pandora have shown, radio broadcasters cannot sit back and be content with the status quo. Without technical innovation and some outside of the lines thinking, radio will be bypassed by newer more interactive media services.
Something to ponder.
By Paul Thurst, on June 15th, 2010
 I read a very good and interesting post on James Critland’s blog. He is somewhat concerned about the trend for mobile wireless providers to no longer offer unlimited data service for a flat fee. I find it interesting that all of these companies seemed to have reached the same conclusions at the same time. But anyway…
The general surmise of James’ post is that the average person will not be able to afford online radio through a 3 or 4G device because of the limited minutes available and the additional charges incurred. (35 quid is about $50.00) To make that meaningful to a US audience, I decided to redo some of James’ math.
Iphones are primarily serviced through ATT. ATT has two different data plans that are coupled with voice plans in a bundle. For example, a 450 minute voice plan and a 200 Mb data plan will cost $55.00. At 900 minute voice plan with a 2 Gb data plan will run $85.00.
Here are a few interesting tid bits and some good math:
- A 64 kbps stream runs 7.68 kb per second, or 460 kb per minute (1 kilo bit per second = 0.12 kilo bytes)
- 1 hour of online listening equals 27,640 k bytes of data transfered
- The 200 Mb plan cost $15.00 with voice plan, the 2 Gb plan cost $25.00 with voice plan
- The 200 Mb plan would allow for 7 hours of listen time if no other data use occurred
- The 2 Gb plan would allow for 72 hours of listen time if no other data use occurred
- Beyond those data transfer amounts, extra charges are incurred
Almost 50% of the time spent listening to all radio source (terrestrial, satellite, online) is in the car. The average person in the US listens to radio about 3 hours per day, or 90 hours per month. Half of that time would be 45 hours or so.
Clearly, anyone who is more than a casual listener of online radio will need the 2 Gb plan. However, given the paucity of entertainment available from traditional radio sources, this is not an outlandish amount to pay. I remember in the 70′s when folks were saying cable TV would never catch on.
By Paul Thurst, on April 8th, 2010
 The DC circuit court struck a stinging blow to any thoughts about so called “Net Neutrality” when it overturned the FCC attempts to force Comcast the abide by its rules regarding internet access. The three judge panel ruled that the FCC does not have the authority to force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to give equal access to all its customers. In a nut shell, this means that companies like Comcast, ATT, Verizon, can filter search engine results and traffic, baning websites for no specific reasons.
So much for net neutrality. Say I type something here that is critical of one of those companies, or any ISP for that matter. With a few key strokes, my site will disappear. Gone. Just like that. For those that think the internet is this wonderful open global village thing that can spread the word and and as a sort of modern day check and balance system, think again. In this day and age, when corporations have the same rights as people, look for the large ISPs to spend significant lobbying dollars to keep the laws tilted in their favor. I would expect to also see quite a few campaign contributions to legislators that are friendly to large corporations.
There are several letter writing campaigns, urging the FCC to change its classification of ISP’s to a common carrier status, something that would put the ISP’s squarely under the FCC’s control. I look upon those with a jaundiced eye. Perhaps the FCC can be convinced to change the rules, this time. What will happen when a new FCC gets appointed? Will those changes stay in effect? The cynical side of me says no.
Independently run media outlets have traditionally acted as a backstop in our society. There are fewer and fewer of those left these days. I will readily acknowledge that the current crop of radio station owners, with some minor exceptions, have left the industry in a shambles. Their decision to place profit above all considerations, in spite of the license being granted in the public trust, has decimated news rooms, reduced staffing, and relegated community involvement to a minor paper work shuffle at license renewal time. All of this and more have conspired to make radio dull and uninformative. Bland canned formats created and programmed thousands of miles away have ruined local radio flavor. No wonder why people spend money to download from Itunes.
Yet, radio listenership is still high. Radio’s saving grace is it is nearly universal, everyone has a radio, most households have four or five radios. The technology is time tested and it works well. Almost every square mile of the US is covered by broadcast radio signals. Some areas are sparse, but there is at least one or two stations that come in. People are used to radio, there is no learning curve, no subscriber fees, no censorship from a huge faceless mega corporation. Well, that last part is in theory, anyway. It is almost too much of a coincidence that mega corporations also own the majority of radio stations too.
Television as a medium is almost gone. Very few people actually watch over the air TV, most people get their TV piped into their house via cable. Once again, as those in the NY metropolitan area know, there is no guarantee that the local cable operator will carry a broadcast station, vis a vis the WABC-7 Cablevision dispute from last month.
Newspapers are struggling to stay afloat, even the once mighty New York Times has seen better days.
That leaves us with Radio to fill in role of un-censored informer. Can they? Will they? It would be a radical departure from the current course and only time will tell.
By Paul Thurst, on December 9th, 2009
Internet Neutrality has become a big topic among some groups. The fear is that some ISPs will filter internet users content, arbitrarily excluding whatever items they want without explanation or disclosure. The temptation is too great for some ISPs (Verizon, Comcast, ATT, et. al.) not to block certain IP addresses, say for example, that of a competitor.
This amounts to corporate censorship. If I have a Verizon account and I want to research other telephone companies, will I get accurate results? What about some potential regulation change that the company didn’t want to have congress pass? How about adverse rulings about Verizon from the state public service commission?
In light of the NBC/Universal – Comcast deal announced last week, those concerns appear to carry even more weight. If the internet is going to replace radio, TV, and newspapers as some suggest, access must be unfettered. Any member of the public should be able to search through any ISPs infrastructure and find all relevant data.
There have been FCC hearings on the matter, there is a NPRM, a web site has been set up, there is a wikipedia entry. Recently, senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have come out against the idea of Net Neutrality, although I cannot imagine why.
I decided to do a little experiment myself. At my official job, we have to ISPs, each on a separate T-1 line. The first ISP is a local company, Best Web. The other ISP is Verizon. On the Best Web circuit, I did a Google search for some innocuous term, with safe search turned off. I then used the same search terms on the Verizon circuit. I was surprised to see different results for each search. I did specific searches for items based on a geographical location, e.g. “widgets, Washington DC.” In each case, the Verizon search results were missing some of the pages that the Best Web search results had. This is going through Google. I have Verizon at home also, and noted the same differences there.
By this relatively brief research, it would seem that Verizon is filtering out some pages they don’t like. It is difficult to say why, and if I didn’t go through the trouble of changing ISPs and repeating the search, I would have never known about it. Clearly most people don’t understand:
This is already happening!
This is one of the key problems with the “internet” future. Access to data can be very easily controlled by programming fire walls and gateways at the IPS’s data center. Users searching for items will never know what they are missing. Having a diverse broadcasting industry has fostered freedom of the press and advanced our democracy. Loosing that will put us on a slipper road to Corporatocracy, if we are not already there.
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Axiom
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
~1st amendment to the United States Constitution
Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
~Benjamin Franklin
...radio was discovered, and not invented, and that these frequencies and principles were always in existence long before man was aware of them. Therefore, no one owns them. They are there as free as sunlight, which is a higher frequency form of the same energy.
~Alan Weiner
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers
~Universal Declaration Of Human Rights, Article 19
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