DC to White Light

The Dreaded Public File

2012-02-12T17:52:00.000-06:00

I’m choosing now to talk about broadcasters’ Public Files. Why? It’s renewal year for radio stations. Some are already way down the path to another eight year cycle. Others are busy trying to figure out the rules, some calling me to ask, “Now when do I run the renewal announcements?”

I’m not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV…and I don’t give legal advice. However, the programming, operations and tech sides of the business are closely intertwined with the legal world.

Let me say, first off, that broadcasting is the only business where companies have to help their competition. They even have to help their detractors put them out of business. What? C’mon. If you’re with a broadcast entity, you know the drill. If you’re not, check out the FCC’s publication, The Public and Broadcasting.

Everything you need to know – including how to find a “petition to deny” the renewal application of a station. Anyone can do it. Pick a station. Go in and ask to see the public file. Everyone has a right…you don’t have to identify yourself and you don’t need a reason. The station even has to make copies for you at a reasonable price. The public file has to contain all of the following (links are to the section of the publication that references the topic):

If you find any of the “folders” empty or lacking, you can go after the station for remediation – from fixing the problem to additional programming all the way to denial of a station’s license.

For many stations, the files coast quietly in a drawer somewhere, heavily guarded by the receptionist or possibly by the local librarian (under some conditions the files may be kept off site). Seldom does someone ask to see them. They’re most often checked by FCC field inspectors. In fact, violations are a major source of revenue for the commission. Many times the violations are for inaccessibility rather than lack of content. Witness this FCC Notice of Apparent Liability. (If you stop reading here, at least get a cup of coffee and click the preceding link. It’s great reading!)

Here are a couple more courtesy of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, with whom my company has NO relationship:

Three $10,000 fines

$10,000 to $14,000 fines

and $9000 more

So, at license renewal time, the public file becomes extremely important. And right about now, stations are scrambling to make sure everything’s in order – quarterly issues and programming reports, EEO materials, even the filing of records that you aired announcements telling people that they have the right to come see the records!

It becomes a little panicky and you see a lot of jumpy and tense station management and employees. In fact, walking into a radio station in the next couple of months and asking to see the public file is a sure way to send a GM to a cardiac specialist.

The public file is definitely integral in the license renewal process, both TV and radio. Beyond that, there are other elements related to renewal – they deal with whether the station is actually compliant with all the rules. Here are a few that are often found “out of tolerance” by inspectors:

Tower location! You have to be kidding, right? Nope. I’ve taken the trusty GPS to more than one station and found the actual location off by more than a few seconds. Yes, even being on the east pylon on Chicago’s Sears/Willis Tower is different from being on the west pylon. Time to file for a minor change.

Power. C’mon. If you’re licensed 10kw, run 10kw. If you do the math on 10.6kw, which is out of tolerance, you’ll see the increased coverage is almost immeasurable. If you’re running 20kw and licensed for 10, hey, you’re probably really interfering with another station.

Pattern. If you’re a directional AM, check the monitoring points.

EAS. With all the brouhaha about EAS in the past year, if a station’s system isn’t working at this point, they deserve the fines

Logs. Is there a designated chief operator and assistant? Is he/she reviewing the logs?

Tower lights. Duh.

Station ID’s. Again, we’re not lawyers here. But remember this: Call Letters & Location. That’s the legal ID. Not call letters then “Boise’s home for sports” then location. Check the rules or call your lawyer. Oh yeah – if you’re WXXX-FM, don’t ID WXXX!

If you’re having technical problems, more than likely you can file for an STA (special temporary authorization). Do it. It keeps you legal. You can operate “at variance” with the license till you get the problem fixed…and it’s legal. If someone checks the file – including an inspector – you’re legal.

Now a couple of parting comments about the public file: The whole idea of “…public interest, convenience and necessity…” in the broadcast licensing process is based on the scarcity of frequencies/channels available in the radio spectrum. Even though there are thousands of media outlets now, it’s still true that not everyone can have their own radio or television broadcast station.

Some pirates seem to think otherwise but, in fact, it’s physically impossible. As a consequence, a broadcaster does have some level of obligation to the rest of us who have abdicated our claim to any frequencies in order for them to be able to operate their station(s). Some may say that just playing music that listeners want is enough. The Nicholas Johnsons of the world will demand that entire dayparts be devoted to needs and problems of the community.

The public file does force stations to select some issues to deal with. It makes them think about what’s out there beyond the audio console and video switcher. In that respect, it’s a reasonable idea. Are there better approaches? Absolutely. Competition can go a long way. Stations which identify major problems in a community often lead other station to cover the same story or to do some level of investigative reporting on other topics.

Linked coverage, stations covering a topic superficially then carrying it over to an HD2 channel or to web pages or streams provide significant coverage while, at the same time, retaining their main channel for more general programming. Viewers can even sign up for RSS feeds on selected topics.

And about the file, itself: The FCC is considering requiring all stations to publish the public file online. It would allow anyone and everyone to access it via the web. I don’t see the problem. Sure, everyone can see it. So what? And there’s an upside. Scan an item and stuff it into an online file and it’s there. Barring crashes, it doesn’t get lost. There’s a log file that will tell everyone when the item was posted. Look, if the rule is there, compliance is mandatory. If there’s some set of steps or a procedure that helps you do that, what the heck. As for everyone seeing it? Let ‘em look. Give a staff member “ownership” of it and challenge them to shine.*

One last time, let me say that if you’re a station operator and you have legal questions, call a (your) communications lawyer. Call your tech consultants to get you “legal” on the operating side. One more thing: File on time. And, if you haven’t read Red Quinlan’s The Hundred Million Dollar Lunch, why not?

*While they’re shining – or not – remember that regardless who you give ownership to, it’s the station's ownership who is responsible as far as the FCC is concerned.

Writers in the Sky

2012-02-10T23:06:00.000-06:00

Huh? Isn’t it Riders?

Not this time. I’m writing…and I’m in the sky. Now, this is no big deal given the technology available. But here’s what is amazing: It’s a Southwest flight. You know – those “line up coz we ain’t got seat assignments/peanuts here, we gotcher peanuts” guys that ferry 737s around.

In the past month, I’ve been on two other airlines, neither offering WiFi service. Yet here I am on this little plane checking out the email and even talking to one of my servers…for five bucks.

Is it cable modem download speed? Nope? But it’s fast enough. At least it keeps up with my typing.

I guess what’s important here is that in the tradition of Herb Kelleher, Southwest gets it. Another carrier I travel on has embarked on a crusade to remove, cover, or change the plug of every outlet in the terminal. Wish I’da bought stock in Graybar or whatever company makes outlet caps. I’d be super rich from all the covered outlets. Southwest? I sat at the gate and plugged in as did about 20 other people. That’s a perk on a Friday night when you need to get a last minute order out – or in.

Did I mention that I checked a bag (49.5 pounds) and carried one on, along with a set of wheels. Didn’t pay a penny more.

And we left on time. Southwest has a habit of that. Somehow, they’re able to turn the plane around faster than the other guys, even the guys with the little RJ’s. Go figure. Let me add that there’s a blizzard going on in Chicago, our destination. But they managed to get this thing in the air as scheduled and we’re due in on time. I’ll let you know (if I don’t get this posted before we land).

I said earlier that Southwest “gets it.” By that, I mean they get it as to what’s really important to travelers. Then add to that the friendliness. I won’t go into detail. If you haven’t flown Southwest, you won’t understand. What you will understand, though, is the attitude of their marketing. Call Southwest for a reservation and you’ll hear, “You may be able to find a lower fare by booking online…” Call one of the competition and you hear the same thing, but worded negatively, “Telephone reservations are subject to additional charges compared to online booking.” Yes. Both say the same thing. So which camp has the smart people working for it?

Back to the WiFi. When you open it up, you can see inflight deals. This isn’t an onslaught of popups. It’s a carefully filtered list of offers and coupons, many of which are from establishments in the destination city. Discount at a steak house and similar offers…and they close the circle – the redemption is/can be through your mobile device. Yeah. You do the WiFi, computer or phone, and then show your phone at the establishment and you’re saving money. Yes, it’s a bolt-on from a third party provider. But, the doggoned thing works – for ME.

I have to say, I’m a pretty cynical. Not much impresses me. Certainly, very little in the tech world does. But this works. Sure, it’s good for them. But it’s good for me, too. You get the feeling that the marketing folks actually test this stuff before they put it out there. And one of the questions they ask is, “Is this helping YOU?”

I don’t see that with other carriers. In fact, the opposite is true. I’m sure they’d love it if we were all exactly the same height and weight, traveled with the same bags, had the same needs and, well, you get it. One of them has napkins that say, “Planes change. People don’t. Our values are your values.” Pure hype. With 200 people on board, that’s 200 sets of values and they can’t all be the same. The Southwest guys understand the differences. They understand wants and needs. Why, you’d think they were consumers, themselves.

So, Southwest, thanks! For paying attention. For letting me get some real work done on this trip. Oh. Gotta go. The flight attendant just gave me two bags of honey roasted peanuts. Time to stop writing and start eating. After all, I have my priorities.

Do you Care What's Comin' Out the Other End?

2012-02-05T13:05:00.000-06:00

Most of us in this crazy thing we try to call a business work on delivering video, audio, and their related emotions to remote locations. I’ve talked about production values and their influence on the overall message but I want to talk about receiver locations and guessing – guessing on those locations, the ones of our followers, then guessing on their moods, their friends, viewing/listening conditions, time of day, even their blood alcohol levels.

Yeah, you gotta guess about it all because, somehow, you have to use it to calibrate your thinking. What am I talking about here? OK, here’s the “duh” version. Valentine’s Day. What content do you offer. Go for the goulish? Ripping hearts out and roasting them on a Smokey Joe™? I don’t think so.

Now, if you start paring it down, you get more granular. (Is that the department of redundancy department?) You start asking about which love story to tell. Or about which love song to play. Then you ask about timing. You think about followers as individuals as opposed to this monolithic group, all with the same feelings.

The bottom line is, you can try to figure out your audience really is – make that are. You create an average and shoot for that. You can treat them as individuals, too. But if you don’t have separate channels to deliver different versions to each individual, you’re kinda stuck.

Sometimes you luck out. You can upload for Youtube, Hulu, Brightcove and others along with MP4, H264 and WMV players. Then you can offer additional versions for iPhones, Android phones, and, hey, if you wanna, broadcast TV. NBC Sports and The NFL are taking a big leap by offering the Superbowl online for the first time.

In doing so, they’ve recognized that they have different channels…and they’re delivering content tailored to each medium and, in some cases, to specific devices. Son-of-a-gun. They broke the code. The found out they could deliver different messages and they’re doing it. It caters directly to their audiences. Note the plural. The rabid fan will have multiple screens open alongside the broadcast. Heck, so will the rabid gambler, but you didn’t read that here. But the point is that they’re offering multiple angles, replays, facts, stats and sideline views – if you want them. Cannibalize the broadcast feed? No way.

Of course, not every event has all of those channels to the viewer. You can open them but the cost may be prohibitive. In these cases, you just have to guess at what’s out there because there’s only one medium and one channel reaching your audience.

Flashback: once upon a time, I had a phenomenal idea. I mean brilliant! I sure thought so and I convinced my boss and his boss that it was. We’d do research to find out what preferences viewers had in adjusting their television sets. (Yes. We called them television sets.) The plan was that we’d find out what they did to “misadjust” their sets and we’d predistort our audio and video in the other direction. That way, our products – these were commercials – would appear as they should on the screen.

Well, we actually did some research. At a fine little strip mall in Bloomingdale, IL, we found out that, at least in our slice of the world, people adjusted their television sets way around to the red and with much too much saturation. It may have been the “Hey, I paid for color, I’m watching color,” thinking along with the dislike of the green component in flesh tones (and that’s not just Caucasian…green seems to be objectionable to viewers in just about all skin colors. Martians, feel free to take issue) but that’s what we found. And on the audio side, we found what nearly anyone drawn to this writing would guess – the smiling equalizer…boosted lows and highs with the midrange down about 6-9dB compared to either end.

And the plan? Well, that should be pretty evident. Rotate all of our materials around to the green (we figured about 15 degrees.) Back down the saturation about 10 percent. Then re-EQ the audio to a frown so that the receiver’s “smile” yielded an overall flat line.

Anyone see the problem yet? Fortunately, my boss and I figured it out before we went any further…if people want more red, they want more red – in everything. Including their corn flakes package. Including their double cheeseburger. If they wanted lots of highs and lows in the audio, well, they wanted it.

So what do you do? You may have your own ideas…I’d love to hear them. Mine is, shoot it “normal”, edit it “normal”, distribute it “normal”. If Mary Elizabeth Dudenclaber decides she wants more red, let her add it. If she wants green, let her have that, too. It’s her call. At the same time, you still have to think. Old folks will remember “the day” when nothing went out without looking at it on a black & white monitor. And most places still listen to a mono mix before releasing the content. That translates to thinking ahead about viewer/listener conditions.

Bottom line is, you have to know your audience and know your channels. So many possibilities. You put it out there in 1080i, full bandwidth. Top notch quality. Twenty percent of the people are watching on receivers that can handle it, directly off air. Another 40 percent are watching on cable. Your 1080i is transcoded to 720i and is being pushed through a bunch of cable as a QAM signal where, at the receiver end, 80 percent of that 40 percent (32 percent for those of you in East Bumquat) feed the signal to a cable box and the rest feed to an integral receiver card or other processor. And don’t forget the issues created by writing to a DVR’s hard disc and then playing it back. Then there’s the group of satellite…and on I go covering all the ways of delivering. Downconverted, upconverted, 16:9, 4:3, limited, “calmed”, 8VSB, QAM, NTSC, you name it. Don’t forget cell phones, PDA’s and Youtube. And it’s not just the end format, it’s everything that goofy set of numbers had to go through to get to the viewing screen.

So give it all some thought. In many cases, You Don’t Know. But if you do a little digging and thinking, you might figure it out. If you know your audience, know their preferences and their preferred channels and modes, then you can try to match their preferences. But don’t leave the color bar chart at home.

That "New" Thing Called Social Media

2012-01-25T21:57:00.002-06:00

Social media. A new way of communicating, it’s heralded. Changing the way the world works. Different. Interactive. Earthshaking. Gotta have it. Gotta do it.

This is a new medium and nothing ever like it before. Wow. I have a single word: NOT!

Social media have been available since the beginning of civilization. Cave drawings in France? Don’t try to tell me that’s not a social medium. If 100 people lived in the cave and Jacques did half the drawings and Vincent the other, they were socializing and passing their thoughts along visually. Best thing was nobody had to log on and enter a password to see them. They just walked past.

Hey, I wonder if the LWxPJ I carved in a tree on Hewitt Avenue is still there. Definitely using social media. And I’m pretty sure it could be called interactive because as I recall, ole PJ saw it and had her brother scratch it out.

No…the social media rage isn’t new. Just the medium is. And the medium makes for broader dissemination and allows more interaction. But the emotions remain the same. I’m sure if you posted something on the board in the post office (hey…any connection there?) back in 1490 that said, “Isabella is a witch for not giving me the money to sail,” you’d get a broad range of responses from sympathy to, well maybe one of the queen’s guards asking if anyone knows where that guy Chris lives.

So the emotions, the feelings have always been there so what else? Brevity? No. Remember the tree? Or check out a bathroom wall. The longest I’ve seen is the 5 lines of a limerick. How ‘bout anonymity. Don’t think so – or police wouldn’t spend time trying to track down taggers.

It’s gotta be the immediacy and the breadth of the distribution.   My guess is that maybe 50 people knew that LW was sweet on PJ based on the number of people that walked down Hewitt Avenue and might have actually noticed. And it probably took weeks for them all to see it – if they even did, based on PJ’s rush to eradicate the posting.

Post it on the web and it’s out there NOW. Pretty much everywhere. Well, isn’t that special. The sarcasm is because I think that posters think that their words are the be all and end all…that the world hangs on them. They love the fact that the whole world can see their thoughts instantly. And somehow, that translates to a feeling of power. Of influence.

Well, as I write this, I know doggoned well that these words’ll be out there all right. But power? I don’t think so. Influence? Doubtful.

And why’s that? Well, one set of initials carved on one tree might get some attention. Carve 100 sets of initials on every tree on the block and what you get is, “Who cares?” And that’s where we are with social media.

Let me suggest that if you think your friends reeeeeally care that you just sat down with a bowl of ice cream and you’re tired, you’re wrong – unless you’re sharing the ice cream with Will-i-am or Angelina.

The “Marry Me” sign behind towed an airplane gets attention. Put one hundred of ‘em in the air (air traffic control be damned) and the meaning drops to nada.

So we’re all screaming as loud as possible, all vying for attention. And, given that we each have X hours a day for social activity, that means the more folks who enter the fray, the less time we have to spend with any one of them.

Let’s just take a different tack altogether. If you’ve read Robin Dunbar’s Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, you may recognize some similarities between his conclusions and the use of digital social media to broaden one’s trust of others. Yes, I can make that connection. If I have 1000 Facebook friends (I don’t. I once had someone offer to “friend” me because of the small number I did have), after a period of sharing info, posts and the digital equivalent of chatter, I begin to trust them and they begin to trust me. AND, I can weed out the ones that don’t live up to my expectations/needs or violate my trust.

Aha! Now we arrive at a reasonable explanation for the success of digital social media – building one’s circle of trust. That makes sense, certainly more sense than using the medium to outshout others on the topic de jour. An expansion of trust. An extension of the herd. McLuhan would be proud.

George Eastman - Where Are You When We Need You

2012-01-21T13:56:00.000-06:00

George Eastman
(courtesy infosociety.com)

There are eras and then there are eras. One of the latter has come to an end as, apparently, the Great Yellow Father’s suicide note prophesized…”My work is done, why wait?”

George Eastman’s short note speaks volumes about Eastman Kodak and its role in imaging today.

Here was a company continually on the cutting edge. Partly through shrewd vision on the part of its founder and his successors and partly from being pushed by industry demands, Kodak was the crusader for higher quality images.

Under George Eastman and folks like C. Kenneth Mees, films became faster and sharper on a regular basis, almost according to Andy Grove’s law. Anyone remember the fanfare behind Double-X and 4-X? (No, that doesn’t refer to adult films that may or not have been made on it). Tri-X? Plus-X? Panatomic-X? Kodachrome (the last roll of which was recently shot by Steve McCurry. And, by the way, that wasn’t Kodachrome 10.) Mr. and Mrs. Ektachrome and all their kids? Kodacolor and Ektacolor? The C22 and C41 processes that made that made those films possible and put processing everywhere and anywhere, including the basement darkroom.

And the timing...how about when 5247 and 7247 were introduced? They revolutionized low light motion pictures. Add in 7250 400T for TV newsgathering. It turned coverage on its head while getting rid of the talking head anchors. Or the whole CRI (color reversal intermediate) concept that 5249 brought, eliminating one, two, or even three generations between camera negative and release print?

Eastman Kodak brought it all. And cameras, too. From the Brownie to Hawkeye on through the Retina series and the Ektra – which made Leitz’ Leica look like a toy in comparison, Kodak led the way.

Unfortunately, the world has changed. I’m talking about the business world. Entrepreneurs – the visionaries – get to run a company just long enough for the VC’s to pull the plug on them if they veer off the business plan they funded. George Eastman probably wouldn’t have made it if he started today. However, if he were alive today and still running the company, I’d bet you a bag full of 828 Verichrome Pan it’d be a different operation.

Eastman probably would have embraced Edwin H. Land and his instant photography process. Land once said, “It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.” That’s right up Eastman’s alley. As important, Land also said, “The most important thing about power is to make sure you don't have to use it.” Maybe the Kodak of recent times should have noted that. Interesting to note that Kodak did do business with Land and Polaroid, well before Land’s invention of the Polaroid Land camera…but they didn’t embrace the instant photography concept. At least not until…

They violated 10 or more major Polaroid patents when they finally did get into the business. George Eastman would have known his patents inside out and would not have gotten hammered by the Polaroid suit which cost Kodak hundreds of millions of dollars and shut them out of instant photography after they spent other hundreds of millions getting in

Xerography was known about in the 30’s but the chest-thumpers in Rochester didn’t embrace that, either, choosing to pursue the Verifax photo method of copying instead. Sad when people tell you there’s another solution out there – that a selenium drum and some carbon can replace silver in imaging – especially when you just bought a bunch of silver mines.

He would have teamed up with others, as he did with Edison to pursue digital imaging and would have been a leader instead of foundering in right field trying to play catch-up ball.

Kinda hard to do when you have to make the “Q” every three months and stockholders big and small are waving their certificates clamoring for more. Just as hard when you’re so full of yourself, so arrogant, that you think you’re untouchable.

Remember that little company called Fuji? Kodak brushed them off until Fuji made significant inroads into both still and professional motion picture photography. Ilford and Agfa? Same thing. Even Ciba and Ansco, known more for their commercial dyes, made inroads though it’s probable that Kodak’s thinking was that keeping them around would keep the anti-trust wolves away.

But Kodak¹ really stepped in it with digital. You have to ask, was it arrogance? Did they think that brute force would keep the silver-based imaging world alive? Relying on Chinon rather than its own development people, Kodak got caught flat-footed as Canon and Nikon sensor development compounded quality. Over and over Kodak's “new models” were Canon and Nikon's “last year’s. Consumers – discriminate and non – well, got the picture. (Pun intended).

On the professional side, Nikon and Canon already had the market saturated with lenses and accessories for its film SLR’s. It made digital bodies easier to sell. After all, if you have 4 lenses, an array of filters, bellows or closeup lenses, integrated flash systems and the like, the upgrade to digital was a heckuva lot less than starting from scratch with a camera whose mount wouldn’t accept your current lenses.

Once they stepped in it there wasn’t a road to recovery. So their reward was the bankruptcy they entered this past week, even though they tried to sell off 1100 (count ‘em!) patents in the digital world. Sure. They held a bunch of them. But they held them too long and the value just wasn’t there.

And what are they looking at now? High end ink jet printers. It’s catch up ball, once again. I hope they’re successful. I really do. A lot folks are in it and Epson’s really good at it. As for you and me, it’s unlikely we’ll be buying anything with the Kodak logo unless it’s the backprinting on a huge inkjet print we order from someone else. Maybe Eastman's work really is [finally] done.

¹ It’s nobody’s name. It’s the sound George Eastman thought the first shutter made.

Production Values

2012-01-15T20:45:00.000-06:00

I’ve been giving presentations to various clients, organizations and civic groups for a number of years. When I talk about content, my stunner – the one I hope is the takeaway for attendees is – “Nobody cares what kind of car brings their pizza. They care about the taste of the pizza.”

And the translation? Pretty simple. Content is still king. Delivery method doesn’t matter. It’s that simple. But, just for a second, I want to take it one step further. I want to tie content to emotion. I’m kidding, right?

I can’t imagine why you’d think that. Content usually begets emotion. You see a news report about a theft or kidnapping and it evokes emotions. Will kisses Alicia in the office and you have feelings about it. Chris Rock lays a one-liner out there and everyone watching laughs. Content brings emotion. Uh, it’s not a McLuhanism. It just is a fact.

Please! Take one step backward and ask, as a producer/director/writer, what’s the goal? To tell a story and trigger the desired emotional response(s)? It’s true of fiction. True in a lot of other places, too. Not sports? You bet, it is. The excitement of a runback or two base hit into the vines; inbounding for a three-pointer with seconds left on the clock – all immediately generate feelings in the listener or viewer.

In fact, sometimes it’s all about emotion. I recall one sportscaster who couldn’t see Stuart Appleby on the screen without dredging up the tragedy that he experienced in his wife’s death. That went on for years.

However, what a lot of folks don’t realize is that it takes a lot of elements working together to bring about the intended feelings…and a number of things get in the way. Top of the list?   Production values.

Aw, Len, you’ve got to be kidding. Just objectively tell the story and let the feelings generate themselves. Oh yeah. Right. Just like pro sports expansions, the proliferation of video tools to just about everyone has diluted the production gene pool.

Now who’s kidding whom? Telling the story is an art and the sum total of the aural and visual content generates the feeling. Remember Mom or Dad telling a Halloween story…and their eyes got bigger, their voice became more urgent as the monster got closer?

Well, by and large, production values have been forsaken. Or have they just never been learned. When the cost of entry to the production world was high and therefore limited the number of producers, directors, editors, scorers and the rest, there was commitment to telling the story.   The limited number of stories, then, meant a higher number of viewers/users of any single show/film/event. Don’t agree? Just look at the difference in the definition of a network “hit” in 1992 and twenty years later. A six rating wouldn’t have lasted to the second commercial break in ’92.

The point here is that is that the fewer number of programs and greater number of viewers for each generated – or paid back – more production dollars. That, in turn allowed for better production values. NOT! The values are still around. They may be built into the switcher or step printer or the faders of an audio board. The problem is the paucity of people who know coax those values out of the gear. And that IS caused by the low cost of entry.

Anyone with a few, and I mean really few bucks can get a video camera of sorts and become a producer. With youtube.com and break.com, you’re even a distributor. But, by and large, you’re really not a producer.   You’re a, uh, let’s call you an “objective content generator.” Your camera looks at a scene or person and you press a button to capture it. The scene tells the story as best it can, with no help from you.   But you’re not creating or encouraging any emotions. You’re letting the field-of-view do that. And you’re doing nothing to help out.

Look. If you’re a news stringer, pay no attention to what I just said. We need more reporters who let the camera tell the story and don’t try to shoehorn in a political, religious or other emotional point of view. Tell the damn story with facts. Of course, even that can be tampered with. In the distant past of grad school, a partner and I took footage of a major riot and cut it two ways…one pro-police and one pro-demonstrator. Both were totally plausible and would have easily been broadcast as actualities. Both were lies.

And it’s troubling when I read quotes like SVP at Associated Press Daisy Veerasingham saying, “We are getting onto story-telling. Just turning the camera doesn’t work in the 21st century. Our subscribers and their viewers want informed narrative--and we will provide it.” What’s an informed narrative? Does that mean a slant, angle, or coloration? That’s for another blog.

Back to production values…I’ve seen a gang of content in the last couple of years. A lot of it, decent.   Some really good. The greatest percentage was just plain poor.

How so? Well, start with framing and camera moves. Let me be brief:

• What’s the center of interest? Make it the center of interest!
• Effects for effects’ sake? Why? Don’t you have a story to tell?
• Lighting has, by and large, become available light. Throw in the occasional LED on-camera lamp (don’t use the balancing filter indoors…it’s way too much fun watching someone’s face turn from red to blue as they move from the camera luminaire into the coverage of a house lamp) and you’re done.
• Enuf with the verite`. Handheld to be cool really isn’t. If it’s important to the situation, great but usually it’s not.
• Transitions? At least make them fit what you’re trying to do. Psychologically, a dissolve really does translate to a passage of time. Argue that it’s conditioning if you’d like, but it works.

Whines:

Center of interest? I frame everything just the way I want it. Center of interest doesn’t just mean framing. It’s contextual. From a framing standpoint, of course center of interest means to include what you want the audience to see in order to tell the visual story you want to tell. There’s more to center of interest. New Year’s Eve. The center of interest? C’mon. It ain’t tough. What’s the center of interest?

How ‘bout the countdown to the new year. Yet at least one production – a BIG one – dumped the countdown most of the time, choosing instead to show full screen promotions for their owned properties…vacation spots, television shows…plush animals…you name it. Between those and commercials, the countdown was on screen for less than seven minutes from 11:30 to Midnight. (Yeah – I put a clock on it. Don’t DVR’s really honk you off?) Oops. They missed the point of why they were there.

But I don’t have time for transitions. NFL playoff game. Fast cutting to keep up with the plays, the players, action on the sidelines. Suddenly, after a touchdown, there’s a closeup on the football resting on the tee. In a fast but absolutely beautiful move, there’s a defocus and dissolve to an MCU of the placekicker. It was perfect. Told a great story. More importantly, I didn’t even realize it. I was another 30 seconds into the game before I told myself that I needed to go back and look at it. A production element that added to the excitement and tension of the game, didn’t get in the way of it, and was executed under about as much production pressure as you’ll find.

Audio: I’ve long given up on a seamless network rejoin or backtimed audio up to the hour. Same with commercial breaks. Up- and down-cutting is now de rigueur and, I suppose advertisers understand. Maybe they just build it into the buy. They must because they’re allowing it to happen. Silly me – I think about the emotional carryover (wait…now he’s REALLY BSing me) of a down-cut. Does anyone think less of the Vegematic® because the spot was down cut? Maybe not. Does anyone think less of an expensive washer or dryer or automobile? Underneath it all, maybe! Hello, Kenmore…are you listening? And, apparently they accept loss of lip sync, too, though if they did any research on how loss of sync affects credibility, they’d be crowing to every network ops manager in the business.

And when was the last time the VU meter hit zero? I mean the “zero” on the left, not 0dBm. I watched a radio program guy fool with his automation system for over an hour trying to butt up his network news join with the local ID. He finally succeeded in smashing them together, no breaths, no nothing. A different PD gave me an explanation – they use so much heavy compression that if there’s any dead air (to him a few milliseconds was dead air) the recovery would bring the noise level up to unacceptable levels. Anyone else see the problem here?

Remember as you employ any of these that the production values you approve may get in the way of what you’re trying to say. That hurts advertisers. It may drive listeners or viewers away. That hurts YOU. And, more importantly, at least give passing thought to production values at all levels. Even with that little handicam, it’s possible to reposition, reframe or reblock and tell a better (meaning one that’s more like the one you want to tell) story. Move a light or turn one on…or off! It might just get your point across in a stronger way and to more of your viewers. Isn’t that what you’re after?

There’s Rain in Them-There Clouds

2011-12-30T09:48:00.000-06:00

“We’re running in the cloud.” “Cloud is the answer.” “Wow. It’s cloud computing.” It’s been a long time coming. But it may vanish pretty quickly.

I can hear the grumbling.

Where am I coming from on this? After all, what could be better than foisting off all of the technical infrastructure on someone else. Let them worry about the apps. Let ‘em worry about the storage. And the clincher: Let ‘em worry about the security.

Now call me crazy – Hey! I heard that! – but turning over data to “the cloud” is a lot like moving all your chickens onto another farmer’s land…one that’s even more attractive to foxes than your own.

“They’ll never get hit,” you say, “They know security…better than we do.” Wanna bet? Fact is, you’re putting your valuable data in the hands of someone outside your organization who has access only to the same security information and guidelines that you do. That YOU do.

Apple escaped malware and virus attack for years because the penetration was small; that changed as penetration grew and the Mac universe became attractive to hackers. The cloud is the same way.

And your operation is going in the opposite direction. By that, I mean that if they’re getting bigger at a faster rate than you are, “they” are a bigger target. So, unless you’re really big, you’re a smaller target than those cloud offerers. And, of course, if you are “really big”, well, shouldn’t you be looking at an in-house cloud. Of course, that’s tantamount to putting a diffuser in front of a snoot on a Fresnel luminaire then spotting it down.

You may argue that if they have access to the same security options, you expect them to use them and thereby keep you secure without you having to spend any time on it. Welllll. Remember one other thing. Your data has to get to them and back. A very vulnerable step in the process. It eliminates the Internet as an option. VPN’s? Not much better. That leaves truly private lines. I won’t call them networks because they shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t do anything but connect you and them.

Are you getting that – and paying for that – now? If not, wow! You’re laying it all out there for anyone who wants to watch your payroll figures, development ideas, emails, and patent applications parade past them in true TCP/IP style. Worse, in FTP, delivering your data in neat, fully functional files.

Yet we continue. Clients insist on the cloud, seeing it as a major cost saving – fixed costs and variable. Cut jobs, cut office space, cut electrical. Get a monthly bill that’s service rather than cap-ex. Couldn’t ask for more. Then, one day, you can’t get into your “system.” It’s “over there,” somewhere. But it’s gone. Or, a delivery of 100,000 rolls of paper towels you ostensibly ordered shows up, actually set up by a hacker, along with the invoice.

One company is bragging of their 99% uptime. Anyone do the math on that? It’s more than 85 hours of DOWN time a year. And if that comes in 10 minute increments, well, the old saying, “glued, screwed and tattooed” comes to mind as workers have to reconnect with the app or data.

There are a lot of ideas that are terrific on the surface. Then you look a little deeper…c’mon, it’s called due diligence and it’s what you’re expected to do…and find the pitfalls. If you know the risks – and your CEO knows them, too, what’s the Daniel Boone quote “…be sure you’re right, then go ahead….” But when you have 20 seats all vying for the same connection to get data they need to give to the CEO – your CEO, make sure you’re within reach of the phone because if the path or server fails, that phone’s gonna ring…and it won’t be a radio station cash call.

Thumbing Your Nose at Brand Contacts

2011-12-15T01:04:00.000-06:00

I was in a meeting last week – one of those consulting, “come sit and listen then tell me what you think” kind of meetings. Because much our work is confidential, these folks’ll remain anonymous.

The company offers a service, both online and via the phone. Their meeting was one of those infamous “rally” sessions about growing the business. Eye-opening is an understatement.

Let’s start with the top of the list. If you don’t mind, just read it and then ask yourself if you see anything wrong. You may have to think about it awhile. Here goes:

One of the folks in the session projected a path – or paths – for a prospect to follow to acquire the service. In typical PowerPoint™ style, the slide built different options. As path three “flew in” from the right in bright green type with a jagged accent cloud surrounding it, the presenter boasted, “…and now we have a way of offering [the service] and a prospect will never have to talk to any of our representatives.”

Applause followed and then a couple of questions after which the kudos fell upon the presenter.

Now that said – what’s the operative word in that scenario? “Flew in?” Maybe you think that those sorts of builds are distracting. How about “green?” Green type is seldom easy to read, especially over white. Or maybe it’s the distracting accent cloud that surrounded the fly-on.

Well, you may disagree, but the operative word to me is “have,” as in, “…never HAVE to talk to any of our representatives.”

These guys were proud of the fact that they had eliminated contact. Hearing them talk about eliminating mistakes, ensuring consistency, and, of course, one more time, “growing the database,” you’d think they were on to something. I prefer to think they were ON something.

Sales managers/DOS’s: are your line folks so bad that you’d rather have a javascript applet get your business for you? GM’s and CEO’s: What’s wrong with your sales department?

And the same for all other departments who think the panacea for them is removal of people from the process. Even internally – for example, some IT folks pride themselves in an automated help desk. Between an FAQ feature on their intranet and an automated phone tree that “guides” the caller to some semblance of the right answer, your time saving is their time wasted.

This is usually discovered when the CEO is under a crunch, with an assistant who is out ill. The CEO has a problem with his laptop so he calls the number that’s displayed prominently above the screen. I can promise you – he’ll press 2 buttons on the phone pad then the switch hook and, after he receives a dial tone, your number. Trust me. You really don’t want that.

Besides, isn’t it better for you, all the way around, to have contact with folks directly? People get mad at machines. People they don’t know are machines. “That jerk in IT” becomes Bill after Bill takes the call and offers help. And the next time there’s a contact, it’s on a person-to-person basis.

Now, back to the outside world. Let me give you the best worst example I can recall. A major airline lost a bag of mine. After the expected time in line I was given a receipt with both a phone number and web URL to track my bag. “Pretty cool,” I thought. Not so fast, Lennie boy.

I logged onto the website and was greeted to a parsing error. Couldn’t open the page in IE, Firefox or even Chrome. So I decided to call the number. On the telco dial pad I went through a number of keystrokes to tell them what I wanted to do (didn’t want to check my mileage balance, didn’t want to book a new flight, didn’t want to enter a flight number for a previous flight that didn’t credit me my miles and so on.) Now before you interrupt me, yes, I regularly pressed “0” in search of a human.

Finally it asked me if I wanted to check on a “misplaced” (they’ll never say “lost”) bag. I had to enter the flight number and press # then the bag claim number and press # after which (including a couple more presses of “0”) it agreed to transfer me to an agent. A real live agent. A couple of clicks in the earpiece. A little music. And then the busy signal. That’s it. That’s the customer service I was looking for.

According to Integrated Marketing 101, they missed a big chance to solidify their relationship with me rather than whittling it to nothing.

Then the opposite happened. It was a tech company. I was traveling and a station was having an STL problem. I had no manuals with me. The station’s local technician was away, and the box just quit. I got as much info from the operator on duty as I could then called the manufacturer. Got a live person. Hello? Live person. I was shocked, especially since, my index finger was already positioned over the 0 on the dial pad. And that live person, after they asked my name, referred to me by name as they asked what my problem was.

She told me who the contact person would be and said that he was on the phone. Could I hold. Yep. About 30 seconds later, the manufacturer’s tech worked through the problem with me and we arrived at the most logical source of the problem…and he asked if I wanted to conference with the station operator to get it done.

Now these guys make good stuff. And they charge for it. And maybe that’s why they can afford to give that kind of service. But I think it’s the other way around. They provide the service and, therefore, they can charge more for their product because they deliver this kind of what I thought was terrific support.

So as you move forward, ask yourself, “Do I really want to eliminate those contacts – those opportunities to make a prospect a customer and a customer a better one? Do I want to build a wall between my department and others instead of co-opting the relationship and building their reliance on my folks?”

If you answered yes to either of those, welcome to the year 2002. Otherwise, get in the Delorean, fire up the flux capacitors and get yourself into the 2012 world.

EAS - Take a Giant Step "Back to the Future"

2011-11-12T13:19:00.000-06:00

The national EAS test has come and gone. I’ve been through about 400 or so posts about what went right (the event did happen, it brought the tech community a lot closer together and spotlighted the common goal of success, a majority of decoders did trigger, there was no Mercury Theater of the Air panic by the citizenry and no actual attacks were initiated during the test period) and what went wrong (missed relays - including an entire state, daisy chains that looped back on themselves, cable and over-the-air test info either duplicated or non-existent, dropped audio, poor audio, reverb/echo/feedback audio and a few others).

The recommendations for moving forward are coming from every direction:

• Scrap the whole system and start over

• Keep the system as-is, the test went well

• Modify the system to (place your favorite verb here) and then ____ (about 50 different ideas)

• Make it smartphone-centric

• Make it satellite-centric

• Make it Internet-centric

• Increase the number of PEP’s

• Decrease the number of PEP’s

• Run more frequent national tests

• Take it away from the government

• Turn it all over to the government

After fielding calls from a number of clients – before, during and after the test – it becomes abundantly clear that KISS (keep it simple, stupid) was made for this.

First, stop and think of what the test was about. This wasn’t CAP. It wasn’t a series of chlorine tank cars on their sides in Omaha or Denver. It was national. It was to see how the system works when there’s an emergency that affects the entire country. That’s it. It sought the answer to a simple question: Can the POTUS (or his/her designate) get a message to all of us in case of emergency. This message may take 30 seconds or it could continue for days or even weeks. After all, we don’t know what the emergency might be and/or what instructions need to be given or citizen actions need to take place.

So now think about KISS. We’re certainly not doing that. The relays and daisy chains work – to a degree – but they take time and every level is subject to error. If you know that you’re going to have a 5% error factor in every layer of relay, which is better: 10 layers or 2? Doh!

So how do you do that. Whew-boy. Here’s where I get pummeled for talking about that positive step backward…to AM radio. To AM being the platform for launching all national alerts.

I must be kidding, right? Well would a kidder go one step further and suggest reexamining 500 kilowatt operation. Now I must really be kidding. Nope. Here’s the thinking:

As was proposed years ago, many of the clears could operate at 500kW. Yes, some may have to directionalize to protect neighbors to the north and south. A few would have to protect one another. But with a little study, we could get to a .5 mv/m or at least 100uv/m coverage* of the entire country with few – very few – facilities. Fewer facilities means fewer mistakes. Remember, this is for national alerts. Yes, the “PEP’s” (not so primary anymore) would be involved and each station would be part of a chain, but with all stations monitoring the 500kw operators, there’s be only two – count ‘em, two – links. Not bad.

Now, a couple of other advantages:

Contrary to using satellites, the web, or cellular as the base platform, 500 kW transmitters with tube modulators and finals are much less susceptible to EMP. Many AM towers are some distance away from cities’ population centers…less likely to be affected by nuclear or EMP attacks (wow – this IS going backwards). In fact, the only real danger would be if an enemy attacked us with CFL light bulbs.

Now the forgotten selling point: give me a little wire, let me unwrap a 1N34A from its lead-foil package and attach it to a crystal headphone and I’m listening to AM. No discriminator, no limiter, no D/A converter, NO BATTERY. Now someone’s going to say that I need a tuned circuit – and offer to sell me a 365mmf variable – but, believe it or not, in many cases, one station will dominate, at least enough for communication to take place. Yeah, if you live in Itasca, IL, halfway between the WBBM and WGN towers, I don’t want to hear from you. Go buy yourself a ferrite loop and tuning cap. And don’t bring up preemphasis. It’s not a factor here. The words will get heard.

Heck, you could even go digital! CW that is. I just don’t want to be the telegraph operator if they direct cathode-key the final.

Your counter to that argument should be, “Wait, you said national emergency and that AM’s should be the primary platform.” That’s true. The recommendation is that the super power AM’s provide the initial link. So the entire discussion of individuals and their 1N34a’s shouldn’t apply. Well, take the whole emergency thing one step further. It’s an actual emergency. EMP or other types of non-ionizing or, worse, ionizing radiation has limited or prevented travel while, at the same time, wiping out all those MOSFET gates, TWT’s, and maybe even good old bipolar transistors. Let’s hope it never gets to that point but if it does and my local FM’s and lower power AM’s are off the air, I’d sure like to unwrap the lead from around that little gem, hook it up, and find out if it’s safe to drive the heck out of town.

OK, back to EAS. High power AM can work. Because it’s just simple. Now – why won’t it happen? The filings and counterfilings, suits and countersuits that will ensue as stations seek upgrades, the jealousy of owners locked out of a power increase because of an overlap, and the thinking that complex is better than simple. Or the thinking that complex employs more people than simple.

But remember, to reach the entire country, the fewer hops the better. And this one has just 1. That’s probably its downfall. The president communicates to the 500 kilowatters and everyone monitors them. Just doesn’t sound complex enough to work.

Then I think of DaVinci’s words, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” If you do a study of 1400’s Italian you find the translation actually means KISS.

*Important to note that man made noise certainly has impact here. Power lines, ignition noise and those great compact fluorescents will definitely be a problem. But then, there’s a lot of this country where power lines and ignition noise aren’t problems…and CFL’s can at least be turned off – if there’s any electricity at all.

"Convenient" TV Mail

2011-09-17T12:15:00.000-05:00

If you remember Minority Report, you recall Cruise having advertising and promotion delivered to him at every turn. Retinal recognition, fingerprints, facial characteristics...they all triggered an ad of some sort.

I'm not the first person to talk about ad saturation, I know. But I do want to mention an interesting one. DirecTV. Seems they've implemented TVMail. They deliver emails to a DVR. In fact, they're waiting for you when you power up your box.

Well, that'd be mildly acceptable if one were asked and if there were anything but promotions in it. Yet a subscriber has to clean it out regularly - from every machine under his/her control.

Do we need another brand contact? Do we need the constant hammering about upgrades and PPV's?

I corresponded with DirecTV, first receiving canned responses but eventually a real human email which told me, "As such, Mr. ______, those customers not wishing to participate in, view or read messages and programming within these features may simply disregard them entirely. If you would like, please write back including the specific reason you choose to delete these items on each of your receivers so that, with the additional understanding, we may be able to offer more appropriate assistance."

This tells me two things. First, they don't realize the intrusion of the flag and, second, they don't get it when it comes to customers (they need additional "understanding"?).

And yet, they keep on truckin'.

Moral: If you're in it just for promotion, you're gonna honk off your customers. If you really HAVE to do it, put something in it for them. Something to make them want the communication. Otherwise, cut it out.

Being Smart with Databasing: Less Really IS More

2011-08-30T23:56:00.000-05:00

Ya’ know, I want this blog to be positive – to be helpful. There is no intent to convey anger. But…(there it is!) Yep. This one’s for the idiots managing web databases, the ones charged with gathering too much information about all of us, no matter what.

With plenty of experience in databasing, please let me give you a thought: You don’t need to know everything about me – nor do you deserve to – unless the quid of your quid pro quo is substantial!

I know you’ve convinced your management that you can squeeze the number and location of all birthmarks from site visitors but you’re doing your company no favors. And if your CEO ever gets hold of stats from competitors who aren’t hounding users for data, and he realizes how you’re actually damaging the corporate image, you may well be gone. But, meantime, you’ll continue your harm.

Case in point. (This is just one. It happens all the time but this is the latest). Pantone. They generate color products and services. In fact, just about everyone is familiar with “Pantone 100 C” description. Cool company. In fact, it is the standard for colorimetry.

I happen to own one of their Huey products. It’s used to calibrate monitors so that you know what you’re really getting. And, not to overuse “cool”, but that’s what the device is. It works flawlessly on XP Professional and on Macs.

And then, I upgraded to Windows 7. Aha. Needed a new driver. Loaded the disc that came with the Huey and, of course, nothing there. So I made my way to the manufacturer website. There the milking started. Seems some database guy/girl there is convinced they need to know everything about me in order to give me the driver. And he/she did his/her doggoned best to make sure they got it, with every data box asterisked as a required field.

First: I paid for the doggoned thing. That’s enough.

Second: You don’t need to know everything about me in order to support your product. More importantly, I don’t need nor do I want to join your “club”. I don’t want your emails, I really don’t need your forums. I just need the device to work.

Third: If you do manage to pull the wool over your CEO’s eyes and convince him/her that you’re entitled to all that information, at least do a decent web design so that the page functionality doesn’t make me repeatedly complete the page, e.g., if you have to have (a good page doesn’t, but…) a phone number in a particular format, tell me it’s “xxx-xxx-xxxx” instead of returning the page with a “violation” and, at the same time, wiping other info you forced me to enter. Guys, that’s just insulting. But again, apparently you’ve been able to buffalo your top management.

I did finally get the driver and that cute Huey stepped up and recalibrated the video card in the new 7 machine in about a minute, but now I feel I’m on intimate terms with their website – all for their enabling a device they sold me to continue working.

Now one of my big issues is people who complain without offering solutions. So, here you go.

• Weigh what you’re offering against what you’re asking for

• Ask if you really need those data or if it’s just so you can puff out your chest or, worse, sell it

• Consider incremental databasing. Don’t know what that is? Then you probably shouldn’t be in your job. But when a person comes to your site the first time, you can ask for a bit of info. On return, you might ask a bit more. One more return and maybe some more. And, of course, if you sell them something, you’ll be able to gather additional transactional information. Don’t think it’ll work? I’ve seen it and done it.

Again, the point here is the positive aspects – if you’re running a database, think about what you’re asking for. If you’re entitled to it, go for it. If not, leave it out. Hey! It may actually improve business.

Gone in Sixty Seconds

2011-08-01T17:46:00.000-05:00

The star of this one isn’t Nicolas Cage and the title really isn’t as above but rather, Obsolete in 18 Months.

Technology keeps marching, for sure but now it’s double time or better. Maybe it’s the technology or maybe it’s just churning the masses and generating new purchases.

Hey, I can understand true advances but the one I’m writing about is not. It’s an “upgrade” by what you want to think is one of the good guys. Google.

Google and T-Mobile launched the MyTouch and Android pairing. Pretty good competition for iPhone. Worked great. I bought one. The Android platform is open source and thousands of folks are developing apps. I’m amidst one right now.

Well I was – until awhile ago. The phone slowed to a crawl. Sometimes locked up, even rebooted on its own. But the biggest annoyance is that the touch screen runs slowly, often responding to a touch long after a finger has left it. And with that, slow screen changes including over a minute for the screen to rewrite itself after dialing a phone call or reading an email.

Calls to T-Mobile were a laugh with the first one beginning with, “Have you turned your phone on and off?” Well actually, it didn’t begin there. It began with them asking if I was aware of a certain promotion…I had to remind them that they shouldn’t be pushing anything on me while my phone was misbehaving.

At first, the person denied that it was a common issue – until I pointed to pages on T-Mobile’s own forums and all of the problems and complaints posted. Then she admitted that, well, there have been some other calls. Well, if the calls were like the posts, people aren’t happy. In fact, they’re angry at both T-Mobile and Google

There were no improvements after the first call. Reset a lot of things, turned off one app that had decided to run all the time, but no improvements.

I made a trip to the T-Mobile store. “You’re not alone,” the kind guy behind the counter said. “I probably had five or six others just today.”

“So what is it?” I hoped for an instant fix.

“Google.” Well, Android 2.2, to be specific,” he smiled.

I wasn’t smiling as he continued, “1.6 was fine but when they went to 2.2, the MyTouch 3G saw all sorts of problems. Looks like your phone has most of them.”

“How do I fix it?”

“Go back to 1.6,” he said. But you don’t have long on your contract…stick it out and get a different phone.”

That wasn’t the right answer. Especially when he said the alternative was to go back to 1.6 which meant wiping everything on the phone, reverting to the old version of Android and reloading it all. I asked if there was a patch coming for 2.2 which would fix the problems and he said it wasn’t likely.

OK, off to the web. The guy was right. Lots of folks getting burned by a non-caring Google. At least that’s how it seemed. Apparently, I was lucky. At least my alarm still worked and I could get text messages. But as I read the complaints and checked them out, I found I had even more issues. Battery life, for sure and keyboard freezes. Now I get the battery life issue – a newer OS may be running more items in the background and it’s all those cycles in CMOS that suck current – but keyboard freezes? C’mon, Google. A $600 stock price doesn’t give you the right to ignore your customers…unless your goal is a $300 stock price!

Next came another call to T-Mobile. “May I have your phone number?” he asked.

“You mean the one the automated system already had me type in?”

“Yes.”

“XXX XXX XXXX.”

“And the last four of your social…”

“And you mean the ones the automated system already me type in?”

“I’m sorry. That information doesn’t come over to us.”

“Why?”

“Uh…”

“Never mind. I know it’s not you. Let’s hope someone actually listens to the recording you’re making for ‘training’ purposes. Where do we start?”

“First, let’s turn your phone off and back on.”

I resisted the urge to stick my hand through the phone. “OK, but if you have any of my account history in front of you, you know this is going to take some time.

“That’s OK.”

So we waited…and waited. Did get to talk about weather.

“OK. We’re back up. I counted almost four minutes. How about you?”

“I’m sorry sir. How is it working? Can you open an app?”

The first one opened perfectly, as fast as I touched it. But when I closed it out and opened another, it slowed to its usual crawl. After some investigation, he was hard-pressed to believe that no one had told me that 2.2 allowed me do move apps from the phone to the SD card and that that should clear everything up.

The migration started…and stopped. “These apps have the “Move to SD Card” option greyed out,” I told him.

“Yeah. Some don’t work except on the phone.”

One after another gave me no option but to leave the app on the phone. But convinced that moving the apps would free up needed phone memory, I made a mistake. I told him that I could do these changes without holding him up and I’d call back if there were further problems. He thanked me, promised he had noted everything in my account history and hung up.

I moved another eight or 10 applications to the SD card then restarted the phone. The house of hope fell in on reboot. No better. I mean no better.

Another browse session just showed more disappointed users. I called T-Mobile customer care again and, as you would expect, went through the same restating of my information as before. I got to an unsympathetic lady who

• Read my account history

• Confirmed that a lot of people were having the problem

• Asked if I had turned the phone off and back on

• Disagreed when I asked her if she thought that Google and T-Mobile have rendered my phone obsolete (“…after all, you can revert to Android 1.6 and your phone will work…” she said.) – as if somehow asking me to spend hours fixing a problem brought about by an “upgrade” was fine with her

• Told me she didn’t know how to get my message (that Google and T-Mobile have to provide support for their products or say goodbye to consumers) to her supervisor or others in “management”

So, with an 18 month old phone, I’m on the make again. This time, though, it’s for a new service provider as well as new phone. I’d say, “Farewell, Android, [Aquarius] and we thank you,” but the astronauts on Apollo 13 were saved and Aquarius helped. Android burned up on reentry.

Working out of your Element

2011-07-29T15:34:00.000-05:00

Sometimes we get asked to perform tasks outside our job description – or outside our area of expertise. Most of us, smartly, investigate the job and, if we can do it, we just do. But what happens when you’re totally outside your area.

OK, friends…this one’s kinda political. Specifically about politicians and appointees who think that “just because it’s a good thought, it should be implemented.”

Now, I’m not against implementing good ideas. But when someone comes up with one of those “good ideas” which is outside their area of expertise, it spells danger. Case in point:

The FCC continues its push for reassignment of broadcast television spectrum to personal services like smart phones and PDA’s. “Everyone should have broadband,” is the thinking. And, yes, it’s admirable. And in support of it, Richard H. Thayer, professor at a major university, filed a story with the New York Times. Now, I do give him credit for his statement that it, “…sounds too good to be true…” because it is.

Professor Thayer makes the point that there are a lot of folks who aren’t on cable or satellite who could be converted – by forcing the systems to provide low cost service – thereby freeing the broadcast spectrum. He also tries to draw a picture of broadband being more efficient than broadcast.

This is a perfect example of someone working outside their area of expertise. And, yes, it’s dangerous.

First, think about the physics. It is evident that Professor Thayer doesn't understand the "economics" of spectrum allocation. (The Buried Treasure in Your TV Dial, New York Times, 2-27-10).

Do the math on the spectrum requirements for people in 1200 autos, 2 C&NW trains and two "El" trains on the Kennedy Expressway in his city and you will see that there isn't enough spectrum space available even including that currently allocated to broadcast TV.

Then do the math on efficiencies. In New York City, a program with a 5 rating is reaching about 550,000 households or (with an average VPVH of 1.5) 825,000 individuals. Divide that 6 megahertz TV channel by the 825,000 and you get a spectral "cost" of about 7.3 Hz*. Not kilohertz, just good old Hertz! Now stack that up against the multi-kilohertz to megahertz of bandwidth required PER PERSON under Professor Thayer's proposal and you'll quickly see his tremendous error.

*I’m being generous since the full six megahertz is only used in the 1080i HD mode.

Once again, good ideas need to be tempered with reality. Otherwise, you may be creating rules against the laws of physics. Hey, if that’s possible, let’s outlaw auto accidents and heart attacks, too.

We live through this regularly as legislators pass regulations without looking at the real world. Today, for example, automakers were informed that their new MPG target is 54. Think they’ll make it? It’s double what the rules are today. Might happen but the laws of physics say it has to be with small, light – and potentially unsafe – cars with fewer weight-adding amenities and no pickup. Or with electric cars, right? Infinite MPG – while they push the pollution caused by coal. Again, politicians think electricity is free…and they don’t realize that there’s actually a real live formula for converting horsepower to watts. That law against hurricanes must be just around the corner.

It’s a shame Professor Thayer didn’t run his idea past a truly distinguished professor from his same school, Prof. Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics. I doubt he would have let Thayer’s work out of the building.

The Amazing Transducer/Filter/Equalizer

2011-07-22T02:51:00.000-05:00

So I sat listening to Siegfried Idyll and tracking the first horn part. Even amidst a swelling tutti section, I was able to hear every note. ‘Bout an hour later, Buddy Rich was cranking away on Big Swing Face. Love his bass kicks and, again, it’s pretty easy to pick them out, separating them from the bass part, the piano left hand and the bari sax.

Revisiting the “How do it know?” punch line of the Thermos® bottle, you have to ask, “How?” After all, I’m talking about a pair of ears. That combination of membrane, bones, hair cells, nerves and brain interpretation that processes what we call sound.

Try this some time: Point a mic at a street corner and tell it to “pick out what the girl in the tank top is saying.” Good luck.

OK – so you cheat and use a hypercardioid mic to pick out what’s coming from her direction. But there’s plenty of noise. So you load up Adobe Audition and open the file. Now – tell Adobe, “Pick out what the girl in the tank top is saying.”

Guess what. We’re not there yet. Yes, you can open the equalizers – graphic and/or parametric or sample the noise and try to cancel it – items – items you have to operate…but think about the fact that ears do all that automatically and in real time. You decide you want to hear the lead guitar and that’s what you hear.

The craziest part is that these wild transducers inside our heads have a lot of problems. First, they’re nonlinear. It’s a good thing. If ears operated linearly, we’d be able to handle about 50dB (softest to loudest) before losing the ability to hear the sound or covering ears to relieve the pain. Yet, given a combination of mechanical operations including the outer hairs in cochlea, we get to around 120dB volume range. Remember that decibels are logs so 10dB higher = 10 times the level but 20dB higher is 100 times, and 30dB is 1000 times, etc. Woah, Bessie, pretty good range. In fact, better than a standard CD.

“But wait, there’s more!” as Billy May (a voice any ear could recognize) would say. In its nonlinearity, the ear is subject to intermodulation distortion. OK. I give. Either bring it down a notch or go away. No, it’s simple. When two tones hit an eardrum, additional frequencies can be created. Well – not created physically…if you were to use a mic to measure the tones, a spectrum analyzer would show only two tones…but the human ear (tin, golden and in between) will hear additional tones. For example, listen to a 500Hz tone. Then add a second tone – 600 Hz. Intermodulation products begin to form as the level of the 600Hz tone is increased. You will “hear” 1100Hz (600+500) and then 100Hz (600-500) and, possibly, 1600Hz (2x500 + 600) and 400Hz (2x500 – 600). There actually are nearly infinite “orders” of intermodulation products, of varying levels, depending upon the level of the original two tones.

So, imagine a full orchestra playing. All those notes impinging on ear drums. A lot of intermod going on…but our brain understands it. Listen closely and it’s there, but it doesn’t get in your way.

Think this is all bunk? One speaker company is working on a new way of transmitting audio: If you want to create a 50Hz tone in someone’s ear, just generate a 22,000Hz tone and a 22,050Hz tone. Both are above audible range but a number of people have ear drums which move at those frequencies and if they do, they’ll generate the intermod tone of 22,050 – 22,000 or 50Hz.

And if you want to experience intermodulation in its basest form, listen as two oboes tune. (Actually, the riddle asks, “How do you make two oboists play in tune?” “Shoot one.”) As they come close in frequency, you will hear a “beat” between the two. That beat will waver at the frequency equal to the difference in frequency between the two. So if the wavering (not one oboe’s vibrato but the beat between two oboes) is occurring at twice a second, the two are one-half Hertz off in frequency.

Then add harmonic distortion on top of that and you wonder how we hear anything beyond mumbling and the cacophony of a bad orchestra tuning up. Harmonic distortion occurs when the eardrum – or any of the other devices of the ear – begins to move at twice or three time the frequency exciting it. If a 1000Hz tone is played into a human ear, to varying degrees the ear will generate harmonics (2000, 3000, 4000Hz) along with the fundamental. These harmonics are only a percentage the loudness of the fundamental but they’re there. It’s why an oboe sounds a little brighter than its spectral print says it should.

If you’re still hanging in here, let’s jump to the ultimate insult to the ear – audio compression schemes. Digitizing an audio signal for a CD means sampling each channel 44.1 thousand times a second, giving each sample a 16 bit number (one for each channel) for each of those slices of a second, then recording each digital “number” representing the signal at that point in time. A lot of data…like 700MB for 74 minutes of music. Doesn’t take much to fill up an iPod.

So we get crafty. We analyze the music/speech/whatever. We look at human ear response curves, impulse response, fatigue and more. And we find that, wow. When there’s a loud note of a particular frequency, it tends to mask other information in a small sliver of the audio band on either side of it. We tell the recording program to toss out that other info. And it does.

And what do we get? Kind of a skeleton of the music. As you listen, you know it’s Stevie Ray Vaughan. But a rhythm guitar playing an e softly behind his much louder note will be dropped – discarded. And what does that mean? Well tell your ear to listen for the rhythm guitar when listening to the CD and you may well hear it. Tell your ear to listen for it in an MP3 and your ear will reach around and smack you, know that it can’t. It’s a trick because the note just ain’t there. The greater the compressing, the less music is left.

Yet millions of folks, most without realizing it, record in a compression mode, tossing notes into the drink without thought. mp3, wma and similar formats are very good at sending content to the great beyond but either the lack of knowledge or the desire to put every K-TEL recording ever made on their iPods drives them to give themselves less that quality listening experiences. And it seems that the younger the person is, the more intent they are on cramming the most onto their devices. And the saddest part there is that they’ll never be able to experience critical listening. The “critical” has been removed by a process that leaves only the boldest notes.

Noise to the rescue. Another part of listening surrendered. There’s more radio listening in cars than at home. Noise surrounds iPod listeners on the street or in a plane. That noise masks some of the other problems created by compression. So now, listening to compressed audio, masked by noise, I have an interesting experience. A good one? Not really. But it is interesting. And seldom will you find a place where there are low enough noise levels to actually experience and analyze the music. Besides, who wants that? You miss the phone ringing, your special “other” talking to you, or the announcement of the next stop on the Red Line.

About here is where I’m supposed to offer the solution. Well I don’t have one. With no one buying CD’s today (OK, not many or the industry’d be in a little better shape) there’s no one with the gear to listen critically. They’re stuck. Their kids are stuck. Instead, they get excited over separation – as if the fact that the bass is mixed far left and the vocal is mixed center is the major point of the music – or other effects. It’s just not the music anymore…because there aren’t any music listeners any more. Except me – and maybe you.

I'm Seeing Yellow

2011-05-03T13:15:00.000-05:00

I’m seeing yellow. No, really. Finally.

I’m talking television. Since 1953 we’ve been watching color television in NTSC and its compromised chroma modulation. Yellow suffered tremendously – the combination of chrominance and luminance on a bright yellow object would lead to overmodulation…so that whole sextant of the chroma topography was compromised, usually sent toward the darker shades. Nearly as bad, differential phase problems are most easily seen in the yellow areas.

Enter ATSC. The yellows are just another bunch of numbers as is any other color. And they get equal treatment. So the likelihood of yellow being yellow is a LOT greater. Of course, magenta (and all her sisters) is better, too, but that yellow thing really makes a difference. At least one manufacturer is bragging about better yellow through the addition of yellow LED’s but in reality, it’s the modulation scheme that makes the real difference.

So – all those better yellows. Now turn your attention to compression – not ATSC but the compression being applied to video signals over cable and DTH satellite. Well, so much for yellow…and red, blue, and green and all their buddies, too. Bit reduction and other compression along with conversion (in some cases) to QAM took that wonderful yellow away. Well actually it didn’t – it took away the range of yellows; packed them all into one convenient “yellow.” Same with the rest of the spectrum.

Wondering why faces look “cartoony” and the color gradation seems inconsistent at best? Put an ATSC over-the-air signal next to your cable or satellite version. Check it out.

The solution? Less compression, of course but is that going to happen? Doubtful given the channel proliferation and competition between cable and satellite suppliers. It points to other access methods that might allow download of the full digitized signal, maybe beyond ATSC. Hint: web services like Hulu and others. If these services provide full bandwidth digitized signals, as Americans see the difference, they will gravitate toward the better service. After all, with one-to-one delivery, number of channels is meaningless.

The only issue that affects the full bandwidth delivery will be the decision of ISP’s and alternate suppliers to move from “all you can eat” to metered bandwidth charges. In that case, maybe that beautiful range of yellows isn’t worth it after all.

In Memoriam: Broadcast Radio and Television

2011-03-27T20:02:00.000-05:00

It’s been almost a rule – every time a new technology comes along, older ones don’t die…they just morph into something else and coexist. Radio was supposed to destroy the phonograph, television would annihilate motion picture theaters - and radio on the way past. Seems like the same should be true for radio’s surviving its current onslaught from, wow, every direction.

Well, there’s a flaw in that morph theory. It really refers to types of entertainment – not the delivery mechanism. If that weren’t the case, we’d all still have players for 45’s and 8-tracks connected to our systems. And when was the last time you watched home movies?

The roadside of tech advances has dead formats everywhere – and homes and offices packed with media for it. Fact is, they’re not coming back and they didn’t morph into anything usable.

Today, broadcast – that’s-over-the-air – is facing its maker. True, radio and TV are forms of entertainment, but broadcast is a very definitely a delivery mechanism and one being rapidly displaced.

Looking at just the front line of offenders, there’s the iPod, then streaming, then XM and Sirius and Slingbox and even CD’s (which play .mp3’s, of course). Tough to fight a war on three or four fronts…especially when you look at the model.

First, it’s a WYWWYWI (what you want when you want it) world. Not many restaurants survive serving ham only between 6 and 6:30, pizza from 6:30 to 7, fish from 7 to, well, you get the picture. So hearing the song you want only when a station plays it, well, who’s kidding whom? Watching CSI at 9 isn’t convenient. Then there’s the sorting through the clutter. When commercial loads are as high as they are, existing viewers and listeners abandon in droves, knowing they have at least three minutes before they need to punch back in.

Add to that the disappearance of live talent. Hey. You may think you’re listening live but there’s a lot of voice tracking going on out there and even more music coming out of the sky from New York, Dallas, or Denver, picked by a PD that has never even been to Phoenix, let alone programmed to it.

And, on the TV side, more and more comes from a “network” or other central source. “Centralcasting” has taken hold. We now see the same news stories multiple times and, often, they incorporate – are you ready for it? – amateur cell phone footage.

Then there’s the quality issue. That one’s being skewered on two fronts of its own. First, faced with a choice of quality versus “now-lity”, now wins out. Witness the number of iPodders who choose to store thousands of songs at slightly better than AM quality versus hundred at higher quality. BTW: even at its highest quality, the coding dictates that out ≠ in. Hasn’t slowed sales. And streaming to 2½ inch cell phone screens is commonplace. Yet on another front radio, through the wonders of IBOC, is scrambling to improve quality. Who ordered that focus group? “Let’s see, we can only feed one song at a time, we’ve got a ton of commercials. I know. Let’s improve technical quality.”

So You Want to be a Broadcast Equipment Supplier with a Website

2011-03-25T12:22:00.000-05:00

Interesting: Two major pieces of gear faced our tech folks – both in need of specific parts to correct their failures. Went to the respective manufacturers' websites looking for in-depth information (translation: more than the user manual), latest software/firmware, and other tech-friendly materials. Nothing! One offered contact information to request the needed info; the other sent us into a wonderful loop, asking for the model number of the device, serial number, date of purchase and, I believe, the names of the capitals of all the states before going to a page asking if we wanted to subscribe to their newsletter which went back to the original request page.

Yes! The station should have maintained the service manuals, schematics, CD-ROMs. But they didn’t. And that brings us to the point of this article…not the stations’ errors but the manufacturers who purport to have equipment websites but really have only interactive equipment sales tools.

Broadcast is different from other electronics areas. It’s called 24/7 and when you’re down, you’re down. And you need to get back on the air.

While it’s understandable that some manufacturers can’t support a ‘round-the-clock engineer-on-call, if the company makes mission critical items (defined here as ones which, if they fail result in an off-the-air status) they need to provide every possible level of informational help on the website.

When the GM is looking over the engineer’s shoulder as minutes of commercial time tick by, the last thing one needs to see is a splash page for a new transmitter. Instead, he should be able to get to the “info and downloads” page for his piece of gear as directly and quickly as possible.

Once there, a service technician should be able to download the service manual without entering serial numbers, dates of purchase or other info that slows down the process. Attached to the manual should be a log of changes, adjustments, previous fixes and related information. Too often, after trying to implement a repair, one finds that, in fact, the gear was updated/upgraded without current owners being notified. Or – that the company is aware of a simple fix or a chronic failure that can be easily repaired. Neither of these needs to be discovered by waiting through the night until the factory or parts department opens at, “…eight o’clock central time…”

Then there’s the dreaded “email us” link. It may open your email client preaddressed to their info/service department. OR…it may open a form, again requiring way too much information (ever get the “Valid Zip Code Missing” return because you didn’t see the asterisk?) for the moment. NOT user-friendly.

Even if it opens your email, it may point you to their sales department. Nine times out of 10 that means it’s going to the wrong person. And by the time it gets to the right person, you’ve found some other solution or decided to “decommission” the gear with a Louisville Slugger.

Another note on emails: If you want to be a broadcast equipment manufacturer with a web page, respond to emails…promptly. Too many times we are charged with creating solutions to problems and, in the course of research, contact manufacturers with questions about their equipment. And almost just as many times, manufacturers fail to respond. I have one on my “bring up” file that has had four phone messages and five (count ‘em) emails to “info@” with a simple question. No answer. Nada. Not even a parting gift. You have to respond if you want to keep the business going.

Let me stop to give credit to a couple. 1) Broadcast Tools. Same day response to every email I’ve ever sent them. Courteous. And, in one case, the response was a recommendation that did the job better than I had asked…and for the same money. 2) Delta RF Technologies. Have a question about RF pallets used as power amplifiers? You get an answer. And, again, maybe “another way of doing it.” Thank you both for a breath of fresh air in the CO2 world of emails.

Bottom line: Broadcasting is 24/7. Manufacturers have to come as close to that as possible. It can be done – and for little money. Try it. Remember that consultants and contract engineers have a LOT of input into purchases. Give it a little time to win those guys over. Watch the business grow.

Voyager 1 Leaves the Solar System

2011-01-16T20:26:00.000-06:00

What phenomenal technology! Launching a rocket carrying a spacecraft that would eventually leave our solar system, our galaxy…onward forever. Well, not quite. What we really want is for someone – something – to find it. After all, that was the goal of the Voyager program which launched two unmanned probes, Voyager 1 & Voyager 2 (pretty smart naming by NASA, eh?) in 1977.

They flew past their initial goal, studying Jupiter and Saturn, collecting data and images of the solar system, then kept on going. Now, in January of 2011, it’s exited the solar system altogether – onward in the general direction of the Ophiuchus constellation – that new 13th constellation that's messing up astrologers – where lies AC+79 3888. And it’ll be there in only about 40,000 years!

Celebrate. Pop the cork! Our technology is “out there.”

Now…what technology did we put inside the spacecraft? Only the highest. Especially the “identifier” aboard. We sent out an LP!

We're hoping the probe would someday be discovered/captured/otherwise-examined by extraterrestrials.

Check out the photo of this very expensive pressing. This was gold plating on a copper disc. It contained sounds representative of life on Earth and images of earthlings (laid down in analog). Also included were sound effects worthy of the old Pepper-Tanner recordings…birds, whales, and a variety of other animals, wind, thunder, surf and musical selections covering a number of cultures and times.

I tried to make out details on the label - wouldn't it be ironic if it were Sony or Polygram? Oops. Back to the topic at hand.

There are greetings from Earth in over fifty languages and messages from then President Jimmy Carter and U.N. Secretary General Kurt Waldheim.

Interestingly, the record is recorded/encoded at 16 2/3 RPM (the 1970’s version of data compression.) There was compression – likely by reducing modulation to add additional groove space – to make room for 90 minutes of music and the 115 images

Smartly figuring that the finders of the record might not have a Shure or Benz Micro dealership nearby, the record was sent with cartridge and stylus. Further, written and symbolic instructions were included in the hopes that these extraterrestrials will “figure it out.”

And what will they figure out? Well, think about it.

“Hey, Glop, look what someone launched into space.”

“Yeah. Can’t believe it. And, from the pictures, it looks like we have to spin this thing then scratch this pointy thing against it to find out what’s in it.”

“Right. And how long has it been since we had anything that spun? A million years?”

“True enough. I mean, holy creator, these guys are really primitive. Things have to move to make sounds or pictures.”

“Oh, the farquar with it. I don’t care, do you?”

“Only if that disc says they’re close by.”

How far have we come in 40 years? What would we send today? DVD? Laptop complete with hard drive full of “Earth”? (And what battery will we send with that?).

To be fair, many very bright scientists contributed to the creation of this documentation of Earth. They employed the best methods of the time to convey us to the universe. And it’s a bang-up idea…provided the discoverers aren’t a bunch of Jedis with very fast space ships!

So after looking back. let’s look forward. What would we be able to include in the spacecraft if we launched in 2077, instead. Progress. It’s a good thing.

Who's Listening?

2011-01-15T11:53:00.000-06:00

Who’s Listening. No…I mean it. Who’s listening – as in nobody listens anymore. Want to prove it? Walk into a McDonald’s or Starbucks and tell them, “I’d like a large, black, decaf coffee.” “OK. And do you want room for cream?” “Large, black, decaf coffee.” “Right. Small or large?” “Large, black, decaf coffee.” “Sure. And did you want regular or decaf?” “Could I just have a glass of water?” And so it goes, more times than not. And it’s true in the rest of the world. “OK. Let’s patch around the processor.” “OK, I’ve got it into the processor” “Around the processor.” “Oh. Well, that explains the overload LED.” or… “Grab the tripod; leave the batteries in the van.” “Here ya go. I got the batteries.” So what’s the solution. Ah…solution. See, I’m not just ranting. Well the first part of the solution is to make sure you’re saying what you mean – and in the manner you intend the action to occur. Yes, the “other guy” isn’t the only responsible party. As your instructions become vague, the chances of a correct response become less. Then, be sure you have the other party’s attention. If it’s a person-to-person meeting, make eye contact throughout the entire instruction. Give instructions in easy-to-understand language and don’t rush through them. Make sure not to leave anything out. While that doesn’t mean, “OK, walk to the door. Grab the handle, turn the handle counterclockwise, push the door, walk through, close the door behind you,” it does mean you can’t leave anything germane out and expect the other party to fulfill your request. Finally, be exact. “The box below the green digitizer box – I think that’s it. Right hand knob, no, switch. Turn it on.” Now, there’s a good one. It may solve the problem or it could launch a cruise missile somewhere. Then, get the other party to repeat the instruction back to you. No big deal. Happens in air traffic control all the time and when a person feeds it back to you properly, you know you at least have half a shot of their getting it right. This is especially important if you’re communicating via phone or in some other remote manner. Yes! Even texts get misinterpreted. One last important point: better communication usually comes with more communication - the more you work with someone, the better the odds of getting your point across or understanding theirs. Take the personal time to get to know the folks you work with. It's makes things a lot easier!

Are you a “P” or an “L”?

2010-11-24T06:47:00.000-06:00

It's just about a universal truth, but certainly one in tougher economic times: Management looks at profit and loss statements when making decisions. Sometimes that doesn't jibe with the need for a new tube or rewiring of a studio But accept the premise and it’s a lot easier to * Relate to top management * Demonstrate your value and the value of your ideas * See your recommendations through top management’s eyes * Work with other departments for a common goal * Help them realize that you’re on the same team Wow! Remember one axiom - look at the profit or loss - and that’s it? Not really but it’s a heckuva start. If you think about it a little, you quickly realize that profitability is a top goal of management. After all, you may answer to an ubermanager, but he/she answers to the CEO and he/she’s God. No, wait, there’s that board of directors. They’re God. No, son of a gun, there’re those stockholders. Those are the folks everyone answers to. Hey, PBS-ers…there are taxpayers out there who write their congressmen…you know, those people that allocate tax dollars…so, somewhere along the line, everyone answers to someone else! So how do you find out if you’re a profit or a loss? Well, the simplest way is to look at your own balance sheet. How much money does your department receive from the company and how much money do you generate? How much money do I generate? Why, none. I just spend it. Salaries, equipment, repairs, power, telco. It goes out faster than I can track it. Not true. It’s how you look at it. And how you frame it. How ‘bout that transmitter? What a loss. Wait, though. Without it, you reach no one. So making sure it’s always there – at a hundred percent, keeps it generating money. You can even assign a figure to it. Then what about gear you recommend or design? Does that automatic tower light monitor save any money? Maybe it removes the need for someone to visually check. Or consider the remotes you plan and execute. Do they generate revenue? You’re helping get those dollars in the door. And don’t forget cost savings you may have instituted. Maybe you cut a bunch of spending through better management – or brought a job in-house at a rate cheaper than a consultant…or even outsourced a job rather than hiring someone (it can work both ways). Found a new source for MOSFETs that cuts costs by a third? Went together with another cluster to get a quantity discount on equipment? Maybe you did a couple of graphics for sales’ powerpoints. Take a little time and jot down all of the revenue and cost saving opportunities that you helped create. Do a spreadsheet and show it all. Then sum it up and see where you stand. What if it looks like I’m a real drain? Well, the easy answer is, fold your arms and realize that you’re a necessary evil. It’s also the wrong answer. A lot of engineers thought their “first phones” would give them a job for life…if nothing else, at a directional AM. So how’d that work out? Better is to make a two pronged commitment: 1. Find ways to generate revenue or cut expenses…without being told 2. Merchandise what you’ve found back to management Here are few examples: * Take a look at your people and staffing. If you’re the Lone Ranger, that’s one thing but if you have help, maybe you can schedule better, reprioritize activity, or reassign workers to help in other areas * Can you provide a way to deliver a cheaper remote? Sales can use the remotes to generate more revenue * Have you built a tower lamp surge reducer? If you cut the number of climbs in half, you’ve saved a lot of money * Did you find a way to cover spots or protected music for streams? That will save a LOT of money * Merchandise your people back to management, too. These are just some ideas but the bottom line is make sure your boss and their boss know what you’re doing. : * A weekly/biweekly/monthly newsletter about status * Taking time to explain what you’ve done and why it saved money * Initiate contacts with sales regarding help developing revenue (Email blasts? Streaming commercials? Special SCA uses?) You don’t have to be a braggadocio about it – just make sure folks are in the loop. It’ll help you, too. You’ll get a better handle on where the organization is heading. That’s definitely important – and it gives you the ability to plan appropriately…and show management how you’re a part of the team.

The Case for the “Proof”

2009-10-02T10:38:00.000-05:00

Primarily on the radio side, but applicable to TV, too, audio equipment performance tests (the “proof”) have gone the way of the west. About all that’s left now are the spectrum occupancy measurements required of AM stations to ensure that they are operating within the NRSC2 mask. Every time I write that, I envision a mask with two eyeholes and sidebands escaping through them. Regardless, there aren’t other measurements required. Or are there? Have you changed transmitters? Maybe other audio gear that would be in the signal chain for measurement during a proof? Change of transmitter or studio location or a new STL? Any of those actually imply the need for a new spectrum occupancy proof – AM, FM, or TV. (see reprint of applicable rules, below) That proof isn't the full-blown set of tests – frequency response, distortion, AM noise (AM and FM) FM noise (FM) stereo separation (FM), all of the crosstalk measurements and the other “lesser-knowns,” but running what used to be a full proof can really pay off.

The proof can be one heck of a tool for making sure you’re getting the most out of the station. All sorts of crazy things make themselves visible during a proof. True, most are undesirable and may well leave you scratching your head or mumbling but if it gives you a chance to ferret out the culprits and drive a stake through their collector, it’s worth it. A couple of examples: Once found a subsonic rumble that was making its way onto an AM. The doggoned thing actually tracked the audio in volume so that when audio was low, you really couldn’t hear it. But with higher levels, it was there, eating up modulation and standing out as a nonharmonic tone it whatever music was bellowing out. Threatening then changing the power supply caps in the audio console sent the tone packing. (by the way, this type of problem makes leaving all equipment in the chain a good idea. You’ll never see what that compressor is causing if you patch around it. Take it out for the real measurements if you want to but at least look at the mod monitor on a scope with all processing in. When you see that 120Hz floating on the audio, it’s a dead giveaway of a problem that’s affecting your sound. Another time, we saw a change in VSWR with modulation. This often is caused by poor bandwidth - AM or FM. This time, though, it was 100% modulation that a capacitor in one of the ATU’s on a DA didn’t like. It’d do a “soft breakdown” (if there is such a thing), meaning the value changed with 10 seconds or so of 100% modulation. The impedance of that tower’s ATU changed. Incidentally, that meant the pattern changed, too. Now, we didn’t see it in normal operation – heck, even Eddie and Alex didn’t hold a note at 100% for 10 seconds, but we at least got the problem out of the way. Yes, these are strange ones – unlikely to happen. But there are other equally challenging anomalies that will reveal themselves if you give them a chance. Don’t like the middle of the night? If you don’t have to run a proof, do it into a dummy – just to see. It won’t find things like that VSWR problem above but will allow you to spot a lot of others. Short cuts: There are a couple of so-called short cuts. 1) Use pink noise and a spectrum analyzer (you can use an audio spectrum analyzer on the output of the mod monitor) for frequency response. You’ll see the preemphasis plain as day. 2) Use the mod monitors for noise measurements. 3) Record short segments of distortion tones onto a computer with a good sound card. Afterward, there are a number of programs which can show you harmonic distortion in both level and percentage. 4) If you’re using a two-way line like a DS-1, you can turn the signal around at the transmitter and get good information sent back to you for some of the measurements. Don’t, however, try to measure AM or FM noise at the studio through an RF amp. Your AM noise will be beautiful because of the limiter in the RF amp. Your FM noise will vary based on the noise that may be added by the amp.

Current Rules:

Subpart H_Rules Applicable to All Broadcast Stations Sec. 73.1590

Equipment performance measurements.

(a) The licensee of each AM, FM, TV and Class A TV station, except licensees of Class D non-commercial educational FM stations authorized to operate with 10 watts or less output power, must make equipment performance measurements for each main transmitter as follows:[[Page 290]]

(1) Upon initial installation of a new or replacement main transmitter.

(2) Upon modification of an existing transmitter made under the provisions of Sec. 73.1690, Modification of transmission systems, and specified therein.

(3) Installation of AM stereophonic transmission equipment pursuant to Sec. 73.128.

(4) Installation of FM subcarrier or stereophonic transmission equipment pursuant to Sec. 73.295, Sec. 73.297, Sec. 73.593 or Sec. 73.597.

(5) Installation of TV stereophonic or subcarrier transmission equipment pursuant to Sec. Sec. 73.669 and 73.1690.

(6) Annually, for AM stations, with not more than 14 months between measurements.

(7) When required by other provisions of the rules or the station license.

(b) Measurements for spurious and harmonic emissions must be made to show compliance with the transmission system requirements of Sec. 73.44 for AM stations; Sec. 73.317 for FM stations and Sec. 73.687 for TV stations. Measurements must be made under all conditions of modulation expected to be encountered by the station whether transmitting monophonic or stereophonic programs and providing subsidiary communications services.

(c) TV visual equipment performance measurements must be made with the equipment adjusted for normal program operation at the transmitter antenna sampling port to yield the following information:

(1) Field strength or voltage of the lower side-band for a modulating frequency of 1.25 MHz or greater, (including 3.58 MHz for color), and of the upper side-band for a modulating frequency of 4.75 MHz or greater.

(2) Data showing that the waveform of the transmitted signal conforms to that specified by the standards for TV transmissions.

(3) Photographs of a test pattern taken from a receiver or monitor connected to the transmitter output.

(4) Data showing envelope delay characteristics of the radiated signal.

(5) Data showing the attenuation of spurious and harmonic radiation, if, after type acceptance, any changes have been made in the transmitter or associated equipment (filters, multiplexer, etc.) which could cause changes in its radiation products.

(d) The data required by paragraphs (b) and (c) of this section, together with a description of the equipment and procedure used in making the measurements, signed and dated by the qualified person(s) making the measurements, must be kept on file at the transmitter or remote control point for a period of 2 years, and on request must be made available during that time to duly authorized representatives of the FCC.[47 FR 8589, Mar. 1, 1982, as amended at 51 FR 18450, May 20, 1986; 65 FR 30004, May 10, 2000]

Where are the Leaders?

2009-09-09T14:33:00.000-05:00

Yes, the economy's bad. "Let's not make waves." Yes, many of us are far from top management. "Just keep my head down and fly under the radar." Wow! A great way to keep a job, maybe, but what does it really do for you or the company? Not much. Long before the economic downturn, leaders disappeared at alarming rates. Workers became more and more passive, carrying out orders from above. And those "above" were busy carrying out orders of the "top." No thinking, just robotic, rote performance. No wonder the business is stale. And no wonder there are no new ideas. It's not just fear of job loss or of being branded a renegade. It's that no one knows how to lead. So why's that? How about no one's really been given any responsibility. Home, school, work, everyone gets a pass. What I mean is that they get correction instead of guidance. Lists and procedures instead of goals and opportunities. They will look down on a new idea and promote conformity - their conformity - in the home, at school, and in the workplace. Worse still, they can't get to you fast enough with "help." Their help; their solutions; their thinking. Follow that with a reluctance to rate performance, and you have a couple of generations used to being bailed out...used to following. So, are you a leader? Are you willing to go out on a limb for a good idea? Ready to gather people around your thinking in order to produce a better product or sell more spots or cut the costs on a remote broadcast? Or do you wait for the thinking of others. It's a sad thing, going along day to day waiting for requests from above, below or to the side, offered along with suggestions on how to accomplish someone else's goals. Just as sad to be doing so out of fear. But there's a way out. Be a leader. Sounds simple enough. Get yourself a "Leader" button, pin it on and start marching around. Or you could try this:

Engage in conversation and think about what other people are saying
Listen to the problems
Evaluate your own problems or challenges
Devise a solution
Write it down, concisely, so you can explain it to others
Look at the solution logically. If it really works, great. If there are hitches, write them down, too
When you're talking to those that can "approve" your idea, work your way into it slowly. With luck, the subject will be brought up by the other party. Be ready with the :30 - the "elevator speech" that sells in your idea
You'll get asked for more. Be prepared with backup
Make that backup honest. Up front! If there are flaws or elements that need to be worked out, put them out there along with a solution.
Go back to others whose help you will need and sell the idea in. No doubt, the "approver" will seek counsel from at least one of them
When the go-ahead comes down, move! Have a plan of attack and execute
Keep people apprised of the status
Once executed, rate it fairly and make sure everyone knows
Do it all with enthusiasm

A lot of work? Sure, but that's leading. Once you get one in the bag, others come more easily and that easing is exponential. It becomes habit.

Leadership isn't being the loudest voice at the table. It's creating or recognizing good ideas, being willing to embrace them then taking the baton and running with it.

...it Makes Everyone a PRO.

2009-08-05T18:11:00.000-05:00

Today's gear - hardware and software - makes everyone a pro, right? At least that's what the marketing for manufacturers of most cameras, workflow systems, storage systems and editing software will tell you. My take is a little different: Today's gear makes everyone an amateur. Yeah, a pretty broad brush, but look around. Watch a network or cable channel - see if they can go a half hour with an on-air refocus, accidental zoom, jump cut, closed mic...good luck. I know, I know: look at what's going on on the screen. So much that it's impossible for a production team to manage it all. Well, nobody cares about that part. They care about the content. That's another interesting point: if it is about the content, the way it's presented, production warts and all, shouldn't matter. Maybe so, but does that mean we should all sink to the amateur level just because that clip fed via satellite phone has such poor resolution? Or should we be trying a little harder to up the quality of production. An industry friend called awhile back and asked me for a definition. "What does 'broadcast quality' mean?" I don't have an answer anymore. It is about the content and if that means a YouTube clip makes it to air, fine. But if that clip is surrounded by sloppiness, well, that's not quite so good. But how to define broadcast quality? It's impossible. What to do? How about paying a little more attention to quality. Many techs I know will bust their hump to wring an additional 2 kilohertz of audio response out of a device - if you let them. Most editors will gladly work through a jump cut if they can. They have the pride. It'd be great if that ethic were more pervasive. Then it might be true - the amateurs may really try to emulate the quality that pros put out. Hey! It could happen.

A Little Knowledge...

2009-07-31T12:37:00.000-05:00

I was forwarded a complaint by someone living in the blanket area of one of my client stations. Seems we were 5x9 on their $10 house phone. We constructed a small filter and sent it on to them. A couple of days later, a call was forwarded to me. Seems the wife had been told by the husband that she'd better not install it or she could get killed. According to her, he knew "...a lot about electricity and he noticed that the box had over a thousand volts in it, maybe two thousand." Well, he knew enough about opening a device but, apparently, didn't know much about reading capacitors. Those good old .01 @1000v discs would have done their job but may not get the chance. I tried to explain working voltage but don't know that I got through. It brought to mind the statement, "A Little Knowledge is Dangerous." We've all experienced some of these situations. In the "not so dangerous" category is the jock who decides that he can bring in a bunch of Y adapters and series them up so that 4 people can plug headphones into one board phones output. With luck, a fuse will blow or the chip will shut down and there's not a lot of damage done. Then again, they can get more dangerous - like the guys who want to adjust the audio processor on their own. I have seen some so far "gone" that the only way to correct the problem is to reset to the defaults and start over. One friend once very carefully built a gonculator (with respect to Hogan's Heroes). It had 4 pots and two screwdriver adjustments. He labeled it the (call letters) Audio Processor. It had Belden going in and out. The pots had calibrated scales and there were labels above the screwdriver adjustments...labels like: Male Voice Enhancer Depth, and Sibilance Compression. Others were labeled with even more esoteric names which slip my mind. He installed the box in a rack and put a plexiglas cover on it, held down with screws. Now, although the box wasn't in line and did nothing, it was regularly the object of adjustment. In fact, one jock in particular became irate when another one "misadjusted" the box, screwing up his air voice. It was weeks before my friend finally let them all know what they were - or weren't - doing. Actually, those adjustments did nothing and, therefore, the "little knowledge" had little danger. Then comes this one: The DA is out. The antenna monitor is fine but the monitoring points are off. After you examine and cross examine, someone, maybe even the GM, fesses up. The monitor was reading wrong and the started cranking till they got it close. Out at the tower, you replace the toroid with the shorted turn, return the phasor coils to their Sharpie positions and, son of a gun, it's back in tolerance. I don't need to go on. You can all add others - most probably more traumatic than these. Question is, how do you convince folks to call first? If you have the answer, open an office and just sell that answer. You'll make millions.

You Think that 7805 Will Heal Itself?

2009-07-17T23:25:00.000-05:00

They Never Heal! I seldom beg…but I have to this time. Anyone who’s doing field service…please...when you pull a bad component, throw it out – or at least find a bucket and clearly label it, “Bad Parts I’m Hoping Will Heal.” How many times have you entered a site for the first time to find drawers full of components with solder on them (as if they’ve been removed from a circuit) or labeled, “removed” or “E-B short” or just “bad”. Here’s what I’ve found. No bad part has ever healed. Fuses stay blown. Transistors stay shorted and open diodes are open forever. So get rid of them. And the ones that can be fixed…send the choke off and have it rewound or get rid of it. What a time waster to have to re-declare a MOSFET DOA so that you don’t install it and find that the same symptom prevails, or worse, new ones pop up. It’s a simple request. Throw them out. If you really want to keep them, put them in that bucket or nail them to a piece of wood or curl their leads to make cute little bugs. It’ll save the owner countless billed hours and you lots of headaches. One important note: If there’s a possibility of an insurance claim, document every part failure and replacement and hang on to all of the parts until the claim is settled. If you want to take things one step further, do a real inventory. Right. Count ‘em all. First, you’ll be surprised what you have for emergencies and second, it makes emergency repairs a lot easier and faster. Of course, it helps to sort and store everything so it can be found, otherwise, it’s all for nothing. Now, the problem with all of this is that there’s never enough time – and ask the average owner if he/she’ll approve overtime so that you can take inventory and catalog, and the answer probably will be no. Maybe you can play back the part above about saving money on future repairs. That might get you an OK. Then again, maybe not.

Music and Radio - Friends at War

2009-07-11T14:01:00.000-05:00

The music business continues in the doldrums as broadcast radio repeats its slide in listenership and revenue. One would think that two businesses whose relationship has been symbiotic for over 70 years would be all over one another to boost collective growth. Well, think again. First, the labels are becoming irrelevant. They’ve become terrific at marketing while totally looking past the content. In fact, today, most successes out there are due to great marketing rather than great – or even good – music…and there’s a public out there that’s tired of it. It cuts across all demos as listeners change their listening patterns to include more classics and fewer currents. A quick scan of most of today’s releases demonstrates the lack of writing and performing talent making their respective ways to the listener. So while the labels are busy marketing, they’re also busy screaming, “Pirate! Pirate!” instead of finding real talent. Younger demos are more sophisticated – or less easily fooled. Either way, most won’t pay for a CD with one good cut. And in the last few years, there haven’t even been many of those! Sure, go ahead and cite a couple of albums or tracks but, by and large, the music creative world is a mess. That mess “sticks” radio with short playlists and uninspiring music and the medium suffers greatly. Not even the synergies that the CBS’s and Warners of the world can bring will turn it around. You can use tracks from company labels in TV shows (subliminally or with the blatant display that CBS includes in shows like Numbers); you can offer teases or select free tracks, or parade artists in a never-ending column onto the sets of TV talk shows; you can license tracks for commercial use, hoping they’ll stoke sales. Fact is, if the content isn’t there, well, there’s not a lot of hope. At the same time, radio broadcasters, seeing revenue fall came up with the ideal solution: crank up the commercial load. That’s worked really well! Some, Clearchannel, the nation’s largest radio group owner, included, have returned to less nonprogram time. It hasn’t helped much though since the chase for listeners has shortened every station’s playlist. Instead of getting tired of commercials, listeners just become fatigued from listening to the same music over and over and over and… The combination of label and broadcaster errors is a recipe for disaster. As this problem spirals upward, another wrench was tossed into the works: the performers have stepped in, looking for more money, themselves. Again, what was a symbiotic relationship for the same 70 years is now becoming adversarial as the US House considers HR4789,1 the “Performance Rights Act.” The bill, now voted out of committee with a recommendation for passage by the full House, seeks pay for play – with performers on the receiving end. These payments would be above and beyond the ASCAP, BMI and SESAC payments. It disregards the fact that radio is the main outlet for release of new material and new artists. It forgets that radio is a nearly piracy-free medium where airplay is of full cuts rather than Amazon.com-type samples. The "Local Radio Freedom Act" recently introduced offers to defuse the issue but it won't keep a vote on the Performance Rights Act from coming to a vote. There are numerous arguments for the Performance Rights Act, “Other countries do it.” “We do all the work.” “We’re getting killed by online piracy” are among the top reasons. Nevermind that many of the other countries are, let’s say, less than capitalistic, that the broadcaster is still the main outlet for sampling of new music, and that it isn’t the broadcast music but digital originals that are copied and offered for download. The broadcasters have countered, arguing their position as a major force in music sales and ignoring the longer-term use of music on the air which may contribute little to additional disc sales. The disagreement – and the proposed bill – come at an interesting time. It’s not music tastes that make it so. It’s the technology. Forget peer-to-peer or other file sharing, neither are part of the scenario. The technology is “tagging” and Clearchannel is its biggest proponent…and it may well set the entire licensing structure on its ear. This technique is more than a new wind in technology. It may well become a tornado. Simplified, tagging allows radio listeners to mark or “tag” a particular song as they listen then receive it directly to an iPod – for a fee. Imagine – direct accountability and traceability. Broadcasters, performers and the public will know immediately and exactly what music works and what doesn’t. Wellllll. The proof of the pudding will be in the tasting. And the tasting will be measured in converted tags. Think about what the concept will expose: - How good’s the content? Simple enough. The more they like the cut, the more likely they are to pay to download it. It’s a pretty even playing field. Not flat but not bad - Who’re the hot (and cold) performers - Between the performers and the broadcasters, which is the dog and which is the tail That is what will be the taste of the pudding…and for some performers it may be bitter. After all, track and performer popularity will become very clear through directly traceable sales. If you don’t measure up in sales you don’t get any more play! Now imagine the impact. Imagine how long Clearchannel – and others adopting tagging – will keep playing performers whose music doesn’t generate tagging revenue. Imagine the shortened playlists, further reduction in formats, and boring repetitiveness that could occur. Then again, think about the control that Clearchannel could seize, playing what they see fit and, therefore, guaranteeing tags and sales only for those selections. That feeds right back to the labels – those guys ostensibly responsible for finding, developing and promoting talent. With tagging, who needs the label? In fact, you can look to Clearchannel to be a label. So if it all plays out, where’s the recovery to come from? It’s not in more-of-same. It’s not in bigger promotions. It’s in getting more decent music and getting it to market. That means radio, online, films, every outlet possible. Listeners are ready and willing to pay for music they really like. They’re not as willing to pay for poor quality. If the performers can produce quality content, the relationship with broadcasters works. If not, the tug o’ war will continue. This clearly will be a test of radio’s power. If Clearchannel succeeds, you can look for a gigantic swing in control. Labels will come crawling, hoping to talk Clearchannel out of creating its own label. Performers will rethink their demands for payment as stations begin to base their play on tagging sales, reducing or eliminating play from poor performers (pun intended). In fact, the money may start flowing in the other direction. Remember, it’s not payola if you tell people you’re getting paid! (317, Communications Act of 1934). BMI and ASCAP: take note. The final outcome? Will tagging underscore the need for good content? Can tagging shift the balance of music power to radio? Well, if radio had the slightest idea of what it’s doing, it would get on the stick with HD and with the implementation of tagging. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Clearchannel will give tagging a great run but everyone answers to the “Q” these days so if it doesn’t work in 89 days, performers may well be safe. OK, that’s hyperbole, to be sure, but probably not too far off. In the meantime, we can look forward to plenty of tracks being forced under TV action, bad matches between commercial beds and their video content, and the continuing parade of unsavory music and performers hawking their wares on talk shows. Here’s the originally introduced bill: Performance Rights Act (Introduced in House) HR 4789 IH 110th CONGRESS 1st Session H. R. 4789 To provide parity in radio performance rights under title 17, United States Code, and for other purposes. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES December 18, 2007 Mr. BERMAN (for himself, Mr. ISSA, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. SHADEGG, Ms. HARMAN, and Mrs. BLACKBURN) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary A BILL To provide parity in radio performance rights under title 17, United States Code, and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. This Act may be cited as the `Performance Rights Act'. SEC. 2. EQUITABLE TREATMENT FOR TERRESTRIAL BROADCASTS. (a) Performance Right Applicable to Radio Transmissions Generally- Section 106(6) of title 17, United States Code, is amended to read as follows: `(6) in the case of sound recordings, to perform the copyrighted work publicly by means of an audio transmission.'. (b) Inclusion of Terrestrial Broadcasts in Existing Performance Right- Section 114(d)(1) of title 17, United States Code, is amended-- (1) in the matter preceding subparagraph (A), by striking `a digital' and inserting `an'; and (2) by striking subparagraph (A). (c) Inclusion of Terrestrial Broadcasts in Existing Statutory License System- Section 114(j)(6) of title 17, United States Code, is amended by striking `digital'. SEC. 3. SPECIAL TREATMENT FOR SMALL, NONCOMMERCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND RELIGIOUS STATIONS AND CERTAIN USES. (a) Small, Noncommercial, Educational, and Religious Radio Stations- (1) IN GENERAL- Section 114(f)(2) of title 17, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: `(D) Notwithstanding the provisions of subparagraphs (A) through (C), each individual terrestrial broadcast station that has gross revenues in any calendar year of less than $1,250,000 may elect to pay for its over-the-air nonsubscription broadcast transmissions a royalty fee of $5,000 per year, in lieu of the amount such station would otherwise be required to pay under this paragraph. Such royalty fee shall not be taken into account in determining royalty rates in a proceeding under chapter 8, or in any other administrative, judicial, or other Federal Government proceeding. `(E) Notwithstanding the provisions of subparagraphs (A) through (C), each individual terrestrial broadcast station that is a public broadcasting entity as defined in section 118(f) may elect to pay for its over-the-air nonsubscription broadcast transmissions a royalty fee of $1,000 per year, in lieu of the amount such station would otherwise be required to pay under this paragraph. Such royalty fee shall not be taken into account in determining royalty rates in a proceeding under chapter 8, or in any other administrative, judicial, or other Federal Government proceeding.'. (2) PAYMENT DATE- A payment under subparagraph (D) or (E) of section 114(f)(2) of title 17, United States Code, as added by paragraph (1), shall not be due until the due date of the first royalty payments for nonsubscription broadcast transmissions that are determined, after the date of the enactment of this Act, under such section 114(f)(2) by reason of the amendment made by section 2(b)(2) of this Act. (b) Transmission of Religious Services; Incidental Uses of Music- Section 114(d)(1) of title 17, United States Code, as amended by section 2(b), is further amended by inserting the following before subparagraph (B): `(A) an eligible nonsubscription transmission of-- `(i) services at a place of worship or other religious assembly; and `(ii) an incidental use of a musical sound recording;'. SEC. 4. AVAILABILITY OF PER PROGRAM LICENSE. Section 114(f)(2)(B) of title 17, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the second sentence the following new sentence: `Such rates and terms shall include a per program license option for terrestrial broadcast stations that make limited feature uses of sound recordings.' SEC. 5. NO HARMFUL EFFECTS ON SONGWRITERS. (a) Preservation of Royalties on Underlying Works- Section 114(i) of title 17, United States Code, is amended in the second sentence by striking `It is the intent of Congress that royalties' and inserting `Royalties'. (b) Public Performance Rights and Royalties- Nothing in this Act shall adversely affect in any respect the public performance rights of or royalties payable to songwriters or copyright owners of musical works.

Safety and the Old Guys

2009-07-09T15:50:00.000-05:00

Just read an article about tech management dusting off the old skills - getting back into the troubleshooting business. Used to be (ah, the good old days) everything was troubleshot to the component level. Little hard to do now..."I'll change the 9th fet on that array of 12 switches"...but, nonetheless, there're a lot of problems that can be fixed on the bench instead of sending the box back to the manufacturer or ordering a whole new card. And the time is definitely right for anyone with those skills to assert them. A half hour working through that ARC-16 can save a $900 round trip for the unit. Couple that with the pressure to cut costs, and it makes bench servicing that much more attractive. For anyone who's been content sitting at a desk, or even in the field but managing others, hauling out the VOM and scope brings with it safety concerns - ones we all observed as second nature in those component days. Here're some thoughts on safety. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV. However, safety around electronic gear can get pretty complicated. I don't pretend to have all the bases covered here. Use logic! That said, these are some points we all need to remember. Yeah, some of the comments are tongue-in-cheek but it's only to make the rest of it stick. Dress the Part: What? Not the greenie...just remember to take off the watch, rings and all the gold chains. But it's low voltage only. Try this: make a "wedding ring" out of a piece of number 12 copper and lay it across a good sized 12 volt battery. As it's glowing, imagine your finger inside. Gloves...good enough for the Lone Ranger, good enough for me...especially the hand holding a probe. Shoes...something in a brown slip-on? Try a pair that provides some electrical insulation. I've heard that you can increase your body resistance by wearing a striped shirt - grey-white-green. Light up your Life: Play a little Debby Boone - or put some light on what you're doing. I know I've moved from working in the shadows to needing at least one light on the work, and a bright one, too! "I want every available light dumped out on that runway" - Lloyd Bridges, Airplane You Gotta Have Friends: Working alone isn't a good idea - even the low voltage jobs. Dead Circuits: If at all possible, only work on dead circuits. Takes a little longer to turn the power off, connect a clip lead, power up, read the meter and power back down, but it's a lot safer than probing a hot board. A) less of a chance of getting fried and B) no accidentally shorted traces that cause a transistor to blow in order to protect the fuse. When Ground isn't a Good Thing: When you're the low-Z load. Working on a cement floor or a damp one, or a metal workbench where you can make contact with it - all invite a little extra current that, frankly, no heart needs. When Ground shows up Uninvited: Most test gear is unbalanced (probably since most engineers are, too). That ground lead you're clipping somewhere could, under some circumstances, make the chassis of the test gear hot. Test this by grabbing a hot dog with a fuse puller and holding it between the chassis of the test gear and ground. If it starts to smell like you're grilling out, double check the gear. The One Hand Rule: Keep one hand in your pocket and only use one hand if you have to probe a live board or circuit. Short it Again: Check that filter cap (or other storage devices) - then short it - a second time - (leave it shorted if you can or at least check with a meter) before prowling around in a circuit. Don't Reach: If you can't see it, you can't really test it - and you don't know what charge that whatever-it-is is carrying. and Don't Point: OK. Seems silly, "Don't point." But you can draw an arc from an energized circuit. Once, again, even if you're 50+j0 ohms, you don't want to be the load. It's happened. and, if you're Tired: Don't be a hero. Pack it in. Nothing better than bopping in at 10 after working till 4 to get a piece of gear working and seeing all the smiles on the folks actually using it. But it's a heckuva lot easier to make mistakes at 4 than at 1. When that 5 mic capacitor you put in fails because you couldn't see that the original was 50 volts and not 35, your fans suddenly act like they're at a Phillies game and down 7 runs. Len Watson Scope+Focus, Inc. scopefocus.com