FCCInfo's Google Earth Utility

Cavell, Mertz and Associates have hit a grand slam with their FCC Info's new Google Earth program.

I've been using the utility for about 3 weeks. Installation is easy. Just go to FCC Info and click on "FCC Info on Google Earth" link at the top right hand side of the page. Follow the installation instructions and download Google Earth if you don't already have it on your computer, and then download the FCCInfo KMZ file.

Once Google Earth and the FCCInfo KMZ file are on your computer, double click on the KMZ file and it will open Google Earth for you. Type a location in the search window. I just type in the city I'm interested in exploring. The program will take you to an aerial view of the city center. After you've arrived, go to the left hand side of the screen and select the box next to the FCC Info folder.

By expanding the folder (click the +), you will find more folders for AM Stations, FM Stations, TV Stations, ASR Towers and Broadcast Microwave. Further expanding will allow selection of FM translators, certain stations or ASR's or only certain microwave types.

I've explored the microwave section extensively. Because the tools is highly visual, it was easy for me to find discrepancies in some facility's geographic coordinates. The Google Earth tool uses NAD 83 (WGS 84) coordinates. If someone along the way miscalculated the conversion of NAD27 to NAD 83 it shows up visually. I've discovered a handful of mistakes in our locations and I've begun to work through them in frequency coordination.

It's been interesting to look at transmitter sites all over the country. Some of the aerial photographs ore very clear, others a quite grainy, but I'm sure as Google moves forward in this technology, it will be quite impressive.

By searching the city of choice and then selecting the station, a balloon will come up with the station's call sign labelled next to it. Clicking on the balloon will open a window with some basic information about the station. The information includes a link on the station's call sign that take you directly to the FCCInfo page for the station. It also includes basic information as follows:

WILLOW, AK
Power V: 0 kW H: 0.019 kW
104.5 MHz Ch. 283D
497 m (1630 ft.) AMSL
Facility ID 154372
ALASKA EDUCATIONAL RADIO SYSTEM, INC.

There are a lot of clickable links to find further information. This utility immediately became part of my arsenal for quickly locating information about radio stations. I've used it almost daily since I discovered it. It's a fantastic tool.

Things I'd love to see in the utility:

• FM Spacing circles
• VHF and UHF broadcast RPU's
• FAA Determinations
• Direction of Microwave link

Clear Channel Broadcasting Company?

There are two ways for a radio station to go.

One way is to serve it's community with local content tailored to serve their local communties.

The second is to provide large scale national programming tailored to a broader audience. An example of this type of programming is Ryan Seacrest who has been able to nationalize his radio program. It will take a special program to transcend locally, but nationally known figures like Seacrest, Adam Carolla, and the like have the best shot. While Adam Corolla didn't work out, I believe the concept has merit. It's already working in reverse for radio personalities like Sean Hannity, Dave Ramsey and Glen Beck have taken their branding to national television.

I believe Clear Channel is creating nationally branded entertainment shows to place in their vast local markets. This would be similar to television's network programming and affiliates. It allows them to push well recognized brands at the local level, not to mention the great power of monetizing nationally syndicated radio programming that reaches the majority of the US population. It could be quite attractive to a national advertiser to think that placing a flight with Clear Channel would reach a true national audience. Clear Channel nationally could enter into agreements with other radio companies to clear programming and inventory in markets not covered by Clear Channel.

They probably won't take all their stations national, at least right away, but I think we are seeing the start of it now. It saves the Clear Channel local markets great expense operationally and I hope they do it.

For all you non-Clear Channel stations. Local, compelling, content is your future. I'll write my thoughts on local radio and what I think we should be doing in the days to come.

RadioTime is Stealing Your Content

RadioTime is using your content to support its own earnings and I bet they didn't ask your permission to distribute your product, did they?

I can tell you will 100% certainty that RadioTime didn’t ask our permission to distribute our company’s content. When I went to RadioTime’s site, they claim,

“The new tuner can cross the globe to offer broadcasters a global market and users an infinite selection of new and exciting content.”

Right... Why do I care whether someone in any place other than my local market can hear my content? It does nothing but cost the company extra money in streaming bandwidth and royalties. Oh, and it also falsely runs up the page count.

We use the StreamAudio system to stream our radio stations. Their propriety stream protection effort keeps most hijackers from stealing and redistributing your stream. RadioTime scabs on to the StreamAudio client’s stream by linking directly to the player URL and completely ruins the look of the player and the experience for the listener.

RadioTime is a for profit company, so what’s in it for them? Lots of page views. They sell tile ads on their website and each page has one. That’s a lot of impressions. They’ve even got a button to donate to them using your PayPal account.
I suppose I shouldn’t be too critical, the industry’s own Radio Heard Here is using the RadioTime tuner at the top of their page, and yeah it’s pretty cool. Except it has a tendency to skip radio stations. I don’t think the Radio Heard Here people have figured it out.

I really don’t mind RadioTime linking to our sites and providing some basic information about the station, but providing a direct link to our stream without permission is unethical. Its tough for small to medium markets stations to justify providing online content and when you start to add up the cost of providing your local content to a worldwide audience, it becomes a little troubling. A local broadcaster just doesn’t need it and I think RadioTime knows that or they would have asked permission.

What do you think would happen if they decided to distribute NFL or MLB content without permission?

I am calling on RadioTime to ask permission to distribute radio’s content. I’ll grant permission if they’ll pay their fair share of our streaming fees. Otherwise, we’ll be just fine without them.

NAB Negotiating with Sound Exchange?

I had no idea NAB was negotiating on behalf of broadcasters RBR Story. I don't remember being asked our opinion as to what we, as broadcasters, thought the royalty should be.

I do appreciate that the NAB used the power of numbers to get the rates down over the next couple years, but because the rate continues to increase from $.0015 to $.0025 per song per listener from 2009 to 2015, it implies that the value for the right to play this music will increase. I predict that the value will actually decrease.

With the recent proliferation of websites like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, exposure to artist's music will increase over the coming years. New artists who cannot easily find representation by a record label will market themselves and allow their music to be used and shared for free. They will make their money on concerts and brand marketing. New artists will tell you that the labels take the lion's share of the record sales anyway. Especially early on. New artists don't need a label anymore and the computer allows them to create their music, do the artwork and showcase an image from their apartment. They will offer up their music product to promote their concert, and they'll do it for free.

Why would I consider paying increasing royalties when I can get cool new content for free? What is the point where radio as an industry says enough is enough and each station negotiates royalty rates directly with the artist? Or a radio station has the guts to play this cool new music that is given to them in exchange for exposure for the artist? Wait, isn't that how this started? Maybe radio knew more in the 50's.

Stream Hijacking

I saw an interesting statistic today. If a successful streaming effort were to yield 1000 listeners per hour at 14 songs per hour, the Sound Exchange royalty would total over $183,000 for one year at the new rate negotiated by the NAB. That number doesn’t include bandwidth fees.

I was criticized in comments about a press release that StreamAudio issued about a product they developed to stop stream hijacking Click Here. Stream hijacking is rampant on the internet. It means a third party grabs your stream, repackages it, and offers it to a visitor on their own website. In the article, I was quoted about the fact that in some instances when Morris turned on the stream protection filtering, our streaming costs dropped in half.

Most of the access to the hijacked streams were from zip codes (around the world) that mean nothing to a local radio station or local advertiser. The sales staff could boast the numbers, but the advertiser would have been being misled. It was also costing the company extra money in royalty and bandwidth fees to serve an audience we (honestly) didn’t care to serve. I know that sounds harsh, but a station’s stream should be meant to supplement the on air product by helping in weak signal areas, in office buildings and give an alternate audience for local advertisers to showcase their products. I couldn’t look an advertiser in the eye and tell him that only half of the page views that I’ve reported to him for his ad went to zip codes that are outside his (and the station’s) service area to people who would never use his product.

It’s a prudent and responsible practice to manage costs effectively for the station owner. Moreover, it’s of ethical importance to make sure the advertiser gets the value for which they actually paid.

How many websites does a cluster need?

I had an interesting conversation with one of the General Managers in our company last week. He attended a seminar at a state association convention whose subject was internet for radio. The question came up, "How many websites should my cluster have? 1 per station? 1 for all the stations?" The speaker thought for a moment and said you should have a website for each radio station, PLUS a news website for your local community.

Makes sense. Here's why.

In most markets (say 100+ like our stations are) a radio station's website does not generate enough traffic to monetize the page views. Besides, a radio station website should support the on air effort and enhance the listener's experience of the radio station. It's not so much about pushing products onto the listener although sponsored promotions have their place. In my opinion, if you are a 100+ market radio station, there's no reason to sell ads on the station website. If the ads are sold on a CPM model, the station won't make much money, and if the ads are sold not using the CPM model, but value added or sold outright, the station just wasted promotional space, or an advertiser just wasted their money.

Instead, use one extra news site to clear internet banner and tile ads. Promote the news site on your radio station, but drive the listener to your station website and then a click through to the news site. Make the link easy to find, above the fold. Funnel all the local station's traffic through the station site to the news site. Now you are driving listener's to your station website so they can see all the neat things you've included on the site to enhance their experience, and now each station website is driving traffic to the news site.

Jaye Albright talks about this topic here.

Hey, how about this?

If we think of our listeners and our advertisers as customers, it can change the way we interact with them. Remember even your advertisers think the jocks are stars. Why not have the morning show call the advertiser and thank them personally for advertising on their show.

It could go something like this, "We know you've got a choice, and we are honored that you would choose to advertise on our show. Thank you for supporting our radio station. If there's anything we can do for you, please let us know. My direct line here at the station is 555-555-5555 or here's my cell phone number..." Guess what? The advertiser is going to tell someone that Joe from The Morning Grind called him this morning and he was really a cool guy.

How powerful is that?

Let's take it a step further. Winners come into the station everyday to pick up their prizes. Anyone who enters a contest is a P1. You've got their contact information. Use it. The program director, or jock could call the prize winner (yes, all of them) and thank them for listening, ask them why they like the station, what they don't like, and invite them to call anytime with their opinions or oberservations to make the station better. Give them a direct number or cell number. Why wouldn't we want our P1's to tell us how we're doing? Do you think that P1 will tell someone about their experience? They certainly will if you screw up with them, but they won't say anything at all if you remain neutral.

I just promoted the IT guy to Chief Engineer... What am I thinking?

After advertising for a Chief Engineer position in one of our smaller markets and interviewing literally dozens of candidates, I did the unthinkable.

A few months ago, our Chief Engineer moved on to another market and I began to search for his replacement. There was a lot of interest in this position and received a ton of resume's. Between the local GM and me, we interviewed about 30 candidates and actually had 3 of them into the market for a face to face interview and site reviews.

The last time I filled a position in this market, it took me 6 months. I knew this would be a process and we decided to hire a contract engineer to do the heavy lifting and the IT/Assistant would cover the day to day duties. After 4 months, we were in better shape than when the old Chief left.

I had narrowed down the list of prospects to 4 candidates and had heard that the IT guy wanted a shot at the job. After all, he'd been doing it for 4 months with the contract engineer. The local GM liked the situation because his needs had been met, and his budget was intact over the last 4 months. While my experience told me otherwise, I decided to fly into the market and allow the IT guy to pitch the job.

He's a younger guy, early 30 something, who came to us from the newspaper industry a couple years ago. He had demonstrated a willingness to take on the responsibility of the postion and had seemed to find solutions to solving problems around the station. They staff was satisfied with his work, and as engineers go, he's pretty normal. Save the fact that he's working on a way to produce biodiesel on his own... but I digress.

I listened to his compelling pitch. I had come to the market fully expecting to allow him his time, and then offer the job to the candidate I had been talking to and who had 30 years of experience in all facets of radio engineering. My eyes usually begin to spin in my skull when the IT guy talks to me. Too many acronyms, but he spoke engineering. He talked about what he had found over the last few months, the ways he solved problems, and his comfort level in the position. I was quick to outline the needs of the position and the enormous responsibility it entails. While he doesn't know everything he needs to, he has the desire to do the job... and had basically been doing it - and doing it well.

Through the day, I discussed this with the local GM and a Chief Engineer who had been montoring him over the last couple months. While he wasn't qualified for the position, the situation was working and it allowed us to create an environment for him to learn on the job and achieve a level of competency we were all comfortable with. Here's what we did.

We offered him the job with the following stipulations. He would take a correspondence course in electronics. The course will take about 18 months and it would be on the company's dime. An investment in our future. I also set a couple benchmarks for him to achieve. Of course, a successful completion of the coursework was one, but I also insisted he be SBE certified as CBT as soon as possible, and a CBRE within 2 years. He eagerly accepted the offer.

A gamble? Absolutely. An investment? Definitely. How many 30 somethings do you know that want to be a radio engineer? I decided to farm our own. I'd had aspirations for other guys I'd brought into the company before, and for one reason or another, it didn't pan out. Some left, some just settled at a level where they were 'comfortable'. I pushed them and it didn't matter. The IT guy pushed me... he asked for the order.

SO... we've got a 2 year plan and by the time we're done, they'll be weaned off the contract engineer, have a completely competent Chief Engineer with an SBE Certification, and I'll have brought one more young person into radio. We need them. We've lost too many.