Now Ya’ Gotta Build It…Low Power FM (LPFM)

The filing window is closed; the commission has begun its review of Low Power FM (LPFM) applications. In short - or maybe not so short - order, construction permits will be granted. The first ones will probably be the "singletons" as some are referring to them...applications which satisfy all of the separation requirements and have no mutually exclusive applications.

 

Then comes the fun part: building the station. This is where smart thinking – and planning – can save some real money.  (Yes,  my group does these but regardless of who you work with, we can’t find a single reason for spending more than you have to in order to wind up with a functional studio/transmission system.)

 

Because of the nature of the LPFM service, cost is a major concern, but so is reliability and durability. After all, it has to stay on the air and many operators may have little or no experience handling radio gear. Here are some points to keep in mind:

 

When thinking through equipment, first plan your programming! If you're doing 24x7 live talk, you could get away with a couple of mics, a mixer, headphones, processor, transmitter and antenna. You could, but even with such a simple format you'll want to be able to pre-produce program intros and closings, station ID's, PSA's and information about donors and support. That will mean a separate production area with its own inputs like mics, music playback (CD, .mp3 players, a quality computer) and possibly a phone input/system to prerecord calls. And, in any case, you'll need to be EAS compliant. That means at least an EAS/CAP decoder.

 

About that phone, if you want to take live calls on air, you'll need a telephone interface – probably a hybrid, but not necessarily – for the air studio. Along those lines, you will probably want to protect yourself against fines with a program delay unit that allows you to terminate callers or other persons before their comments reach the transmitter should their words go outside the bounds of acceptability for the time of day.

 

Of course, it gets more complicated as you add programming types. A local concert will require remote equipment - mics, stands, mixer, headphones and a recorder. Want to do it live? Well, that means a way to get that concert back to the studio. What about live, in-studio music? That's a challenging format since it usually calls for a larger studio, multiple microphones, and a more sophisticated mixing console.

 

You may choose to automate part of the day. It may be voice-tracking by your own talent or by an outside feed. Programming may come from a digital line or satellite. It will need to be downlinked/downloaded and fed out over the air.

 

Each format has its own challenges - and costs. And that means working hard and working smart to keep those costs down. It means doing the research to find that a $200 XYZ box will do just as good a job as a $1500 unit. Quality is quality and LPFM shouldn't be shortchanged. But spending more than you need to is a waste.

 

Then you need to consider the transmission gear. The audio processor (yes, you'll need one to ensure compliance with FCC rules), the transmitter, studio-transmitter link and remote control (if the transmitter is separated from the studio), transmission line, tower and antenna. And don't forget to consider lightning and static discharge protection. Protection doesn't have to be costly and it's hard to dedicate funds to equipment that doesn't affect/improve the sound of your station. Of course, if spending the money on lightning elimination keeps the station on the air undamaged through lightning assaults, it actually does affect the sound.

 

Finally, add in security...to prevent theft and vandalism and to make sure the airwaves aren't accessed by unauthorized individuals.

 

Here, in a nutshell is a checklist for getting your station built:

• Iron out your programming plans
• Work through the equipment you'll need for each format
• Do a layout of studio, production room, meeting room, storage (Yes storage. You'll need more than you imagine)
• Plan your transmitter location and determine how the audio will be transmitted from the studio to the transmitter
• Summarize all of the equipment needed
• Seek a reputable service to specify equipment to meet your needs and satisfy your construction permit and provide you the most flexibility possible within your budget

LPFM is providing valuable services across the country. When you receive your CP you'll be on the road to becoming a part of it.

 

I Saw a Frame of Black Last Night!

It was intentional!  It looked like this:

 

 And it was preceded by the screen image gradually fading to it then back up again.
It was surprising, no, refreshing!
Have you ever listened to the average teen talking, ending each sentence on an upswing to tell you they had more to say, segue after segue. Today’s production and operations fit that personality well.  A constant barrage of semicolons and commas but never the period that a fade to black brings – that little breath your mind gets.
They now only to seem to exist in the theatrical world, smartly used as an emotional device.  (Although I don’t know what emotion some French films are trying to convey as they fade to black and stay there long enough for a cat nap.)  The same device was once used in the broadcast world, too – and for the same reason – change of thought, emotional impact, not cat nap.
I’m not talking about the “silent pullup” that was once commonplace.  (Trivia time:  what was a silent pullup and, for the prize, why was it employed?)  I’m talking about the good old transition of a FADE TO BLACK that was the punctuation mark on a scene.
Maybe it disappeared when early satellite relay was implemented.  Full screen black put a heavy load on the transponder – ate up power and contributed to higher heat “up there” – so directors, especially live feed folks like those who worked news and sports, were told not to go to black for significant periods.  Once sensitized to it, they began interpreting it as “never go to black.  Ever.”
But, even in television drama, I don’t see it much.   Certainly not in a commercial pod where every frame is filled.  Hey, if ya got nuttin’ else to say, stick up the URL or 800 number.  And I really think that’s part of the clutter.  Like running wind sprints but never being allowed to stop and take a breath.
Just for the heck of it, I went to YouTube and started looking at random clips.  I decided I’d make sure they were over 2 minutes in length figuring that anything shorter probably had a lesser chance of having an opportunity for a “dip” or fade to black.  Even with materials 2 minutes plus, I didn’t see any except at the open and close and, even then, they were few and far between.  I then jumped to some sites where the subject might include a video.  When I found them, I found the same display as I had seen on TV.  OK, full disclosure, I didn’t do a frame-by-frame analysis, but my recall told me it was the same.  Sure enough, wall-to-wall video.
So what, who cares?  Probably no one except me.  But it’s fun remembering that chance to settle for a fraction of a second – whether it’s watching the tube or listening to a teen.

 

 

News from the Net - or How I Learned to Love the Printed Word

Tell me again about getting news from the Internet.

 

I go to a lot of sources in trying to get well beneath the surface of news stories.  That includes checking out as many sources as possible to verify information in stories that interest me.  So as I Cerf around the net (trivia question: why the spelling of “Cerf”?) I find myself troubled – not about the information I find but about the presentation.

 

If I am to believe reports about our education system, today’s graduates – and those from the last 10 to 15 years – are deficient in reading and reading comprehension.

 

And it seems nearly all the sites I frequent are doing their best to “address” the issue.  I used the quotes because it may be coincidental that they now seem to write at a 6^th grade level.

 

Way back when I was taking some JO courses, we learned the difference between writing for print and writing for (then) TV and radio.  I remember the continuing admonishment that, “...you only have one crack at it with TV news.  The audience can’t back up a paragraph to gather context or reread what you said. [Hey, it was late 60’s.  It was carved in stone.  It had to be, that’s how we stored stuff – that or the papyrus and stylus that Timmy, that rich guy, had.]

 

Yeah.  That’s all changed.  You can back up if you want to.  Frankly, I may have done it a few times for news.  More often, it’s to replay a comedian’s line on Comedy Central.

 

OK, OK.  I’m getting there.  So the sites still write aimed at 6^th graders even though expanding the online vocabulary is easy if you figure in the access to online dictionaries.  We don’t expand anyone’s horizon, thinking, or even comprehension.  We stall them at 6^th grade.

 

Len, you Bozo.  50¢ words for the sake of 50¢ words.  Not so fast.  Any number of times certain words just work.  They’re the right word.  They don’t have to have the word like included.  But everything gets dumbed down.

 

Guess what.  I buried the lead.  It’s here:  Now, on a number of sites, especially those tied to broadcast outlets, the “story” consists of a one- or two-sentence written intro followed by a video.  I’m not talking a documentary.  No.  More often than not, these are either standups (“News 2, we got a release about the mayor.  Hi-tail it over to city hall and do a standup.”) or the anchor person, as a lift from a recent newscast. 

 

That’s it.  Nothing in-depth.  No references, no interviews or b-roll that actually depicts the scene.  And everything at a 6^th grade TV level. 

 

What’s wrong with that?  Aside from the cursory report?  Well, first, what can a standup really tell?  Why not post that release itself or how ‘bout the TelePrompter®  feed.  OK.  That’s a little far-fetched.  But consider something as simple comprehension. 

 

Human speech generally hangs around 120 to 180 words per minute and, if you have someone’s attention, comprehension is between 50 and 70 percent.¹ 

 

On the other hand, good readers clock in at 300-400 WPM (ignoring Evelyn Woods) and have comprehension between 70 and 85 percent.²   It was higher, on average, 25 years ago.  Maybe we had more practice. 

 

What does that reading speed mean?  It’s the equivalent of doubling or tripling your processor speed. 

 

Of course, that’s if we’re talking about print versus a standup reporter.  Certainly, written and produced properly, audiovisual media materials are capable of blowing away print.  Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re doing.  We’re simplifying.  Oversimplifying.  And in the process, telling less and less of the story.  Maybe that’s my real issue.  I don’t want to have to surf so much.

¹http://www.communicationcache.com/uploads/1/0/8/8/10887248/speed_of_speech_and_persuasion.pdf

²Recall of Thematically Relevant Material by Adolescent Good and Poor Readers as a Function of Written Versus Oral Presentation, Sandra Smiley et. al.

http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/usia/E-USIA/forum/acrobat/P2.pdf

 

More Apps! I Gotta Have More Apps!

Well, in the course of upgrading to a phone that doesn’t require tape to keep the battery cover on, I went with a major supplier’s leader.  (BTW, if you’re looking for me to say that I stayed with T-Mobile, forget it.  They continue to amaze me with their business prevention department.)

 

But that’s not the topic here.  If you haven't noticed, though the "...there's an app for that..." promo is over, there is no end to the number and variety of applications now available for just about every type of mobile device.

 

Today, I’m just getting the word out to a few folks who, like me, may have upgraded, or have loaded apps on their phone and allowed “automatic update.”  This applies to every OS I can think of and it’s pretty important.

 

Many new apps – and upgrades of older ones – now try to blow a high hard one past you like Ricky Vaughn.  They bury an acceptance in the “other” or “see all” category.  It’s worded a number of ways (after you drill down that deep) and may say “phone access” or “line access” or just phone…but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that the app can ask your phone for its serial number, its phone number and the numbers of anyone you may be talking to while that app is in use.

 

In other words, you download say, a YouTube viewer.  It’s custom and you love it because there are no additional ads, it has great controls, and, hey, maybe even the colors are your favorites.  But, when you open it, it will phone home with info you your phone and your number.  And if you get a call in the middle of a video, it’ll get that number too.

 

To be fair, they are telling us.  But you really have to look for it.

 

Frankly, not too cool.  This is especially true since updates can slip this info by you, especially if you’ve set any apps to update automatically.

 

So I’m taking a closer look at everything, and I went back and reviewed all on my phone.  Someone tell me why a game like backgammon has to know my phone’s serial number, my phone number and who I’m calling or who’s calling me.  I actually lucked out.  I saw this as I transferred data and apps to my new phone.

 

Now what concerns me is (are) all the folks out there calling me with these apps on their phones.  I guess it’s no big deal.  I don’t have a bookie; I don’t do billion dollar deals on a cell phone, and, what else, well, nothing blackmailable so I guess I shouldn’t worry.  But just the thought that some clown can page through his phone-homes and see who’s calling me is a bother.

 

Do as you wish – address or ignore.  But, if you ignore this, please tell me you did so the next time we talk.

The NOT Customer Service

Online commerce – ecommerce – call it what you want…it’s great, isn’t it?  Don’t you wish a few more companies actually understood it?

 

For all you great firms who are proud of your online store (or have been told by your IT and marketing folks that you should be proud of it), I once again invite you to buy something from your site.  Oh, and when you do, use your online chat.  Yeah.  Do that.  Pour two large glasses of liquid, one of water and one of your favorite alcoholic beverage.  You’ll need the former because you’ll get pretty thirsty during the long and arduous task of extracting information from your online chat folks.  The latter?  Well, figure it out.  When you realize how poorly your company – YOUR BRAND – interacts with your clientele, you’ll down the whole thing.

 

I’ve been part of some really interesting exchanges in online sales chats. Most recently, when I questioned why a product hadn’t been delivered as promised and was, in fact, two weeks late, I was told, “Sorry, we don’t actually carry that.  It is in our catalog but is drop shipped from the manufacturer.  They may have a problem or be out of the item temporarily.”

 

My smartass response was, “…and that affects me how?”  I went on to ask why I didn’t at least receive an email telling me about the delay.  It was a response like, “sorry, we can’t do that.”

 

Can’t, won’t, don’t actually carry, not ours…isn’t that fantastic?  

 

I went on to tell the chatter that it had been 4 years since I had ordered from them; that it took me that long to get up the nerve to try again after they had totally screwed up the last order.  Then I added that I’d think about them again in another four years, maybe.  Didn’t matter.  Didn’t affect them, not that I expected that it would.

 

I asked a couple more questions; neither was met with an acceptable answer.  I also asked about canceling the order.  The chatter again had no answer for the chatee.  Instead, she (I assume, it was a female name) asked, “Is there anything else I can help you with today?”

 

Again, the smartass kicked in and I responded with, “Else?  You haven’t helped me with anything yet.  You can’t tell me why the product is two weeks late, you can’t tell me when it will be delivered…you don’t even know if there are any in stock.  And you can’t even help me cancel the order.  So what’s with ‘else’?”  Then my usual angry signoff of.  Seeya.” [click]

 

So, once again, take the time to buy something from yourself.  That sugar-baked ham or teeth-whitener, or seatcovers.  Whatever.  Use your online chat and see what you have - or don't have - working for you.  But, please…no drunken dials to me about what you found.

That Clog Called Management

There was a show in prime time around 1970 called Arnie.  Herschel Bernardi (probably more famous as the voice of Charlie the Tuna than for his dramatic work) starred as a loading dock worker who had suddenly been promoted to “corporate.”  A real worker becomes management.

 

It was an interesting albeit short-lived concept that might be worth review today.

 

Geez, Len, where are you going with this?

 

Herschel Bernardi
Courtesy
starscolor.com

Keeping Arnie Nuvo in mind, step back and look at today’s management.  Clogged with lawyers, DBA;s and MBA’s – all trained to manage but few with knowledge of the business they’re in.  Now, with due respect to the JD and other degrees, let me say that the whole method of organization is wrong.

 

In the media world, the last thing we need is a manager who doesn’t know the specific business.  Or one who wants to put everything into discreet “silos” which are convenient for PowerPoints but, frankly, don’t work in the real world.

 

If you read any of the corporate “self-help” books, you find that the involvement of line folks in management is the exception rather than the rule.  Yet when you look at successful companies, you find that the ones that do have open relationships among everyone are the ones making it.  Go figure. 

 

When you’re making flanges as was Herschel Bernardi, you have a pretty controlled input-to-operation-to-output.  That’s just not the case in the media world.  It’s too broad, it changes too quickly, and it rests on that fickle thing called an audience.

 

So bringing in management folks who haven’t had contact with your particular business is usually a big mistake.  I’ve seen it too many times.  Decisions made by the Harvard- or Kellogg-book but which don’t work in the real world.  Best example:  broadcast station expansion.  That was fun watching the MBA’s and DBA’s running the numbers.  “Hey, it’s simple.  We take over 3 stations in a market.  We central-cast, cut a truckload of people, raise the ad rates, and make wheelbarrows (I already used 'truckload') of money."

 

Now in case you don’t see the flaws, raising ad rates isn’t that easy.  If you don’t have the numbers, you don’t get the orders.  In an agency world where you can’t even get to a buyer – and where most of them are paid to say no – you can’t just raise rates.  In fact, major advertisers are gutsy enough to say, “Here’s what I want, here’s what I’m going to pay.  Take it or leave it.”  Ouch.  That’s a little different from the world of flanges.  And cutting people?  Cool idea.  Then, looking at the payroll, they toss out folks who know the history…the ones who’ve already made the mistakes.  Ah, but a younger person – if they think they need a person at all – will come at half the price.  That is until you factor in a repeat of the mistakes the old lady you let go learned from.

 

And central-casting.  Think about it.  With more and still more modes of information or entertainment delivery, is producing your [for example] Louisville news out of Dallas a good idea?  If local is the real USP for a station, do you want the lead of a story left on the cutting room floor because that guy in Dallas doesn’t know the background?  So, sure, go ahead and put the folks who may be able to contribute most to the company’s success in an isolated location where the only interaction is the nightly critique coming out of programming, or the consultant telling the female anchor not to smile so much.

 

A lot of the problems come out of the chasm between “management” and “labor.”  Both have a lot to learn from the other.  If you’ve run across Cluetrain Manifesto, you’ll recall that Levine et. al. talk about the flattening of the corporate pyramid.  People at the bottom (I hate that term) know a lot of what people at the top (that one too) are doing.  Observation, filtration, email, and intranet let them find out.  But, sadly, management seems to think that they can orchestrate a one-way communication path.  And what’s worse?  They don’t think they necessarily have to tell the truth!

 

So they say that all’s well, that they’re not changing the news format, not letting anyone go, etc. then, out of nowhere, an anchor gets replaced.  Whatever morale or corporate equity they built up just vaporized.  And, if you trace it back, you find that those lettered management folks didn’t see the difference between a people business and a widget business.  A silo was a silo. 

 

So, the solution?  Bring some “little folks” (oh wow, that’s so much better than “people at the bottom”) along.  No, not a monthly lunch.  Put them on specific developmental or analytical projects.  They’ll ask questions you didn’t know needed to be asked.

 

I’ll give you an example:  A few years ago, we were having a discussion about offering vanity email addresses.  You can imagine it – you sign up and you get yourname@somegreatsuffix.com, where somegreatsuffix = a really neat address.  Maybe co-opting a celebrity’s name, or a professional sport.  A couple of folks had run the numbers and they turned out to be really big.  A 20-year-old ops guy asked a simple question, “How you gonna convince people to give up the email address they have?  I mean, when all their friends…”  After a little research the numbers fell like a rock.  Today, that’s a little different but, at the time, we were able to keep from stepping in it.

 

More importantly, work to collapse the pyramid.  Open the company up.  If the average coder doesn’t feel comfortable dropping a suggestion to you, if you don’t feel you can stop by a designer’s office and ask how they’d do something, you haven’t accomplished it.

 

You don’t have to put Arnie in the corporate suites, but you can have lots of Arnies out there, all with suggestions that may just save your backside.

Amateur Radio

There’s a group of people out there – men and women, both – who are more giving, more helpful during emergencies, and probably less appreciated than about any other collection of folks you could find.

 

Specifically, they’re amateur radio operators.

 

You probably don’t know much about them beyond those funny license plates that combine letters and numbers and, underneath say, “Amateur Radio” or “Ham Radio.”  Or they may be the group that you were blaming for interference with your television, though it’s far more likely that such interference was coming from a citizens’ band operator (an entirely different group, most of whom have no knowledge of radio technology).  The CB operator is interested solely in communicating with other CB operators – at their licensed or greatly-increased power.

 

Why am I writing about amateur radio operators?

 

Well, first, to say thanks.  You’ll find ham operators helping out in just about any emergency.  And the bigger the problem, the more they seem to offer.  Emergency radio traffic and messages, coordination of aid and relief, even first aid and delivery of medicine.  More than once, ham operators have been pressed into service as air traffic controllers operating at ad hoc air strips when airports have been closed.

 

In many places they’re still the backbone of the public’s side of emergency action.  

 

It’s for the money, right?  Uh, no.  Especially since operating on any of the amateur frequencies (bands) requires a license which explicitly forbids use of amateur radio for “pecuniary interest.”  No.  They do it for the service.  And they maintain readiness – regular meetings, field day operations (going out, setting up temporary operations and passing traffic on a regular basis), meetings with local, state and even federal emergency officials.

 

Quakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, lost children, just about any emergency you can imagine, you’ll find amateur radio operators mobilizing to help.

 

And you ask again, why am I writing about this?

 

Well, I spent a part of a recent weekend at a “hamfest”.  This is a convention of amateur radio operators.  It consists of learning sessions, FCC examinations, group meetings (like emergency operating groups), and an esoteric flea market offering items 99 percent of folks wouldn’t recognize, let alone want.  

 

If you have interest in radio technology – and by that I mean any sort of wireless communication – it’s a blast.  You can find everything from the latest computer and wifi gear to an iconoscope.  And if ever there were a place where one man’s junk is…well, this is it.

 

Cool.  And, yet one more time, why am I writing about this?  Well, by observation, I’ve established that the average age of a ham operator is somewhere between 60 and deceased.  There’s just been very little influx.  Nothing to interest the kiddies.  And that’s doubly disappointing since most amateurs acquired their first [usually “novice”] license in their early teens – or before!

 

So I got to thinking, why the lack of newbies?  Here’s what I’ve come up with 

·    The mystique is gone.  Once upon a time, you could tune up your homebrew rig into a homebrew antenna and “work” into any number of states and, depending on frequency, around the world.  You’d exchange QSL cards with the other party, noting the specifics of the contact.  Today, you boot up your factory-made computer using your factory-written OS into a factory-made modem and across a pair of wires (possibly through a factory-made wifi transmitter/receiver) to your Facebook page.  There, someone may have left a message wanting to contact you.  Afterward, you may even exchange emails.  There was a magic to waves leaving an antenna and delivering a message halfway around the world.  That’s been doused by the multitude of means by which we can achieve the same end.  For some, there’s a bigger mystery to data packets migrating from device to air to line to server to line to server to friend to deliver the message, “C U L8r.” 

There’s just no big deal to radio.

·    It’s a throwaway society.  Kids want the latest and the best.  Build something?  Nah.  Takes too long.  And, besides, I want the same xyz that everyone else has.

·    There’s not a lot of interest in helping others.  Wow!  Where’d that come from?  Well, with FEMA around along with a number of other government agencies, a lot of people feel that their taxes are taking care of paying for emergencies and for the help needed in the middle of them.  “Hey, I pay my taxes.  I shouldn’t have to do more than that,” seems to be the battle cry.  Worse, though, are the reports that some government agencies have become uncooperative – eschewing the help of dangerously suspect outsiders like ham operators.
 

The real loss is in the technology that’s not being developed.  If you look back through the history of radio and television, you’ll see so much of the development came from individuals applying for and operating experimental stations, or holding “ham” tickets.  2XG was Lee DeForest’s experimental radio station in New York.  If it weren’t for DeForest’s audion, we’d still be waiting for anything beyond Morse code. Charles Herrold’s 6XF became KQW which then became KCBS. There are many of others – launched by rugged individualists rather than corporations.  And Philo T. Farnsworth and his work with television changed the “face” of communication.  I call them rugged because you have to know that they were bitten by their power supplies once or twice.  No fun. 

 

Usually on their own, they develop circuits, write software, and spend their own time putting it all together to create a new product or service.  And they do it because they just want to.  Most realize that they’ll never see an ROI.  But that’s not what they’re about.  It’s that big smile when they break the distance record at 243gHz or do a moonbounce, or radio-control their lawnmower.  

 

And a lot of products have come from them – not all from the knowledge required for the license, itself, but from the analytical thinking that it brings about.  And we owe a lot more to ham operators than we admit.  For everything they’ve created, for the services they perform, and because, by a far greater percentage than the general population, they’re genuinely good people.

 

By the way, if you’re one of those genuinely good people and you’ve always wanted to figure out how things work, or build something electronic, an amateur radio ticket isn’t that hard to get.  You can ask around or check the web.  Arrl.org (American Radio Relay League) is a great place to start.  If you have a kid who’s interested in the subject, send him or her there, too.  In fact, it can be a pretty cool family pursuit.  For younger folk, besides the radio experience, a ham ticket today provides a good foundation for the IT world.  And, by the way, the converse – IT being a good foundation for radio/television – isn’t necessarily true!

 

So thanks, to all of you out there having fun helping.  

 

NB:  Just a few additional noteworthy hams:  Howard Hughes, Nolan Bushnell (Atari)  Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (first transmission of human voice), Robert Moog, Julian Hirsch, Luke Montgomery, Steve Wozniak, Joseph H. Taylor, Jack Kilby, Leo Fender, David Packard (the “P” in “HP”), Wilson Greatbatch (invented the pacemaker), Perry Spencer (inventor of the microwave oven)  Norio Ohga and Akio Morita (Chairman and Founder of Sony, respectively) and about half of all astronauts!

Everyone! Stay CALM! I'm in charge here. - Alexander Haig

The CALM Act. 

 

I really didn’t think I’d see a lot about it but it seems the CALM act is everywhere. Yes, today’s the deadline for implementation and, no doubt, tomorrow the Notices of Apparent Liability will start flying.

 

I’ll be up-front with you:  I’ve written about this before and about the futility of passing laws about anything that starts with “psycho”, in this case, psychoacoustics, especially when trying to rely on machines to control the outcome.  Might as well outlaw a disease; in a similar vein, it doesn’t matter since physics behaves as it does and doesn’t pay much attention to congress.

 

More on that later.  I want to discuss this little thing called compliance.  You see, not only must stations comply with the rules, they must document their compliance.  A number of operations maintain programming for 90 days after airing.  Others, as much as 2 years.

 

The 90 days is the minimum retention period and during that time, the station must be able to provide any segment of the broadcast day to an inspector or government representative should they request it.

 

That means that if a viewer challenges a telecast – maybe he/she heard a commercial that was too loud – the commission can come back and say, “Give us 5 minutes on either side of the commercial and the commercial, itself.  Oh, and send the log of the dialnorm on the audio.”  Huh?  Yep.  You have to be able to step up and provide the data/metadata that supports your claim that you were legal at the time.

 

Stations are keeping the logs for longer and longer periods because of the possibility of complaint.  But wait, there’s more.  It’s not just CALM compliance.  It’s everything else.  Closed captioning?  You don’t want to be challenged.  Political ads?  Same thing.  Contests and all else, too.  You really want to be able to pull up the goods, send ‘em off to the commission with a note like, “See?!”

 

That’s a “fur piece” as Bob Shreve used to say on the SchoenlingAll-Night Theater, from the old audio or VHS loggers.  It requires much more.  And, son of a gun, there are a couple of devices out there that’ll do it and more.

 

Last nite, a bunch of us got the inside scoop from Ken Dillard at Digital Nirvana, Inc.  Now I don’t know how they decided on that name – maybe it means somebody with all 1’s on their bank account number.  That aside, these guys make the Monitor IQ box.  Yes, there are others out there.   This box is particularly intriguing.  It can do it all.  And more.  Ken explained how it integrates with sales, programming, legal, and engineering.  First, you can watch all the stations in the market.  Then, as it archives, you can pull up any segment and look at it – content, captioning, CALM, and (in metered markets) ratings.  

 

You have to think about watching a sportscast running against other stations in the market and easily spotting what keeps folks around and what drives them away…overnight.  This is not a cheap box, but given all the new rules and the fines that can be incurred, it’s cheap insurance.

 

And now for my favorite topic:  the audio, itself.  Let’s all pick dialnorm -24.  Cool.  Our processors are going to take everything to -24.  That’s cool, too, but, first do they really know what’s going on around them?  When Martha and John are whispering sweet nothings on the porch swing, should the processing really take the following commercial down to that level?  As it brings it up, it creates a different mood.  Is that OK with the advertiser?  How does it change the spot?  And what happens to the louder one after it?  Oh, and did I pay for a particular level of modulation when I bought the commercial time?

 

Let’s go farther.  What if (as I’ve written about before) the mix has an overabundance of highs or lows?  What are you going to do?  The system says dialog is the benchmark.  Well,  just the simplest look at an oscilloscope while listening to dialog tells you that there isn’t a 1:1 relationship between the actual power in a piece of audio and the apparent loudness.  But that’s exactly what we’re asking a processor to look for and act upon.

 

So, when that 5.1 mix comes barreling through and totally masks the dialog, what’s going to give?  Well, as they say in the retirement home, “Depends.”

 

And that means that every mix is different and it’ll be the psychoacoustic elements that will cue the viewer as to whether the sound is balanced from scene to scene.  Once again, you can process it like crazy but until you can teach the machine to listen like a human, it’s going to get it wrong a good part of the time.  Check the link below.  Read it closely.  If you don’t see any problems, you didn’t read it closely!

 

And when you realize that most of the ATSC parameters for CALM and dialnorm are based on those developed in Europe (including France, the folks that gave us SECAM), you also know that it means stations will be compliant – and still sound bad.  How do I know?  Take a trip to London, Frankfurt or Rome.  Listen.   Case closed.

 

But, compliance is the goal so, congratulations to all the techs who have been slaving over the past months to get their stations to that point.  We’ll be listening...on receivers...all of which will vary and will interpret audio and its metadata differently, thereby creating a [vastly] different listening experience for each receiver owner.

 

ATSC’s CALM and DIALNORM

Give me an L-F-ing Break

This is a general request.  It goes out to all the folks mixing audio for television.  It's a simple request, too:  Listen to your product before it goes out the door.  I mean, really listen!

 

Eight thousand years ago, when we laid back a final track, we listened to it.  Yeah, yeah, everybody listens to their tracks.  But, at the time, before stereo, MTS, BTSC and all the other acronyms, we listened on the studio monitor, then on a four-inch Quam squaker atop the audio console.  (We also viewed release video on a mono monitor, too, but that’s for another day.)

 

Any number of times the great audio on the JBL or Altec sounded like garbage on the Quam…and far worse than just what the poor response of that midget caused. 

 

Often the problem was the desire to pump a lot of bass into the signal.  Cool idea.  And on a console TV system with some semblance of an audio reproduction system, it sounded pretty good.  But that bass, when pushed through the 5 watt amp to a small speaker suddenly suffered from A) heavy distortion from the amp and B) even worse distortion as the tiny voicecoil, now getting some nice square waves from the amp, bottomed and topped out, taking the midrange with it. 

 

So, you listened on the small speaker and you heard the problems…and you remixed so that folks could actually hear intelligible audio. 

FADE TO BLACK

 

FADE IN

It’s 35 years later.  We’ve jumped over stereo, forgotten about quad and moved into at least 5.1 sound.  And, hurray for the dot-one.  That is if you have the audio system for it.  No, wait.  Even if you do have the system for it, it’s not a hurray.

 

Why, you ask?  No, really, I just heard someone ask why.  

 

The thinking on the creative side is, “Now we have some real audio.  Let’s use it all.”  And the production guys try to give creative what they want.  So when that Hummer is thundering across the salt flat, they mix the LFE’s (the low frequency effects…the dot-one part of 5.1 content) hot – really hot.

 

But, guess what.  After they listen on the studio monitors – in 5.1 and properly adjusted – many apparently don’t listen in other formats.  And, as far as I can tell, no one in the studio is listening through a TV broadcast audio processor…and, get this…I’m revealing a big secret here…all broadcasters are using them.

 

I’m not going to go into a lot of technical detail here.  But let me offer one example…You’ve produced a “smokin’” (hey world, would you stop with that word!) make that “driving” audio track.  Lots of LFE information.  It hits the station’s audio processor.

 

More than likely, that unit is a multiband processor.  If so, depending upon on its settings, it may squash the dynamic range considerably and completely change the ratio of LFE to audio.  And, again, depending upon settings, if there is a “bass coupling” control, that driving bass will upset the reproduced levels of the midrange and high frequencies, usually reducing them considerably.  

 

So you dump in a thunderous series of 40Hz sfz notes and the track pulses wonderfully.  Then, it hits the processor which, when it sees those pulses, lowers the overall gain – and you lose the dialog!

 

Right.  The dot-one tail is wagging the 5 dog.

 

Now, these days, finding good dialog is hard enough.  But then, to have to dig it out of the mud because of the LFE channel, well, that's just not fun.  It means either backing up with the DVR and trying to pick out a few of the words or just changing channels.

 

Then, don’t forget to figure in processing to comply with the CALM Act.  I have earlier posts on that so I won’t rehash it…but that has to be figured in and should be in the monitor chain at the post house.

 

And to go one step further...most home units put out 2 channel stereo, relying on external audio amps to decode to 5.1.  Oh, and that stereo may pass through a set’s processing, offering EQ and even “audio leveling” which, in most cases, is compression.  If the station processing didn’t crunch your track and destroy the ratio of LFE to music and dialog, the receiver’s waiting like a safety in the game you’re watching, to step on your mix with cleats.

 

Now, let’s say the viewer has a nice LED screen – flanked with its internal 2x6” speakers.  They don’t even hear the LFE information.  It may get to the speakers but it may not even generate any sound at the speakers.  So what does the viewer/listener hear?  Nothing but the audio level dropping and, probably, the dialog disappearing.  And, frankly, as a consumer, I don’t particularly like that.

 

Hey creative folks:  try to remember as you mix that pushing the excitement envelope can, in some cases, render the audio unintelligible.  I won’t point fingers but listen critically to just about any one-hour crime drama.  It ain’t pretty.

 

If your finishing house doesn’t have at least some gear to simulate the broadcast transmission process, ask ‘em why they don’t.  And if they do, insist that they use it.  Listen in 5.1, stereo, stereo small speaker, mono small speaker, and 7.1 if you can.  And here’s a tip:  listen on computer speakers, too.  And, shortly, you’ll want to check it on your iPhone’s earbuds.  No  doubt, in short order, multiple mixes will be packaged in the transport stream and be keyed in automatically by the receiver.

 

IFor now, though, if you listen on a number of possible receiving devices, I’ll tell you this:  the audio you leave with won’t be the same as the super-hot mix you had in mind.  But viewers/listeners will get the content.  And wouldn’t that be pleasant.

http://www.orban.com/products/television/8685/

http://junger-audio.com/products/product-overview/digital-audio-processor-devices/tap-television-audio-processor/main-information/

http://omniaaudio.com/omnia-6ex-and-6exi-features-and-benefits

http://wheatstone-processing.com/