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- PPM Works, But Spoken-Word Radio Needs a Bit More Help
Rob Bertrand is CEO of Inrush Broadcast Services. He gave a talk at the Public Radio Engineering Conference this spring about the Nielsen PPM and its impact on spoken-word stations. Radio World: Rob how did this talk come about? Rob Bertrand Rob Bertrand: I’ve spent 12 years or so focused on ratings watermarking as it pertains to spoken word. My work began with the primitive tools we had available not long after Arbitron released their new methodology in 2008 and continued to evolve as I noted patterns in failure alarms, audio distortion and ratings spikes and dips in the early days. It so fascinating to me that the audio chain had such a direct impact on our ratings. I loved partnering with folks around the industry to help improve this situation for my favorite radio format: all-news. RW: What did you do to perfect encodability at WAMU? Bertrand: Essentially, I took all I learned about ratings watermarking for all-news and sports at CBS and I brought it to WAMU. It made a big difference in ratings performance — for a number of years, consistently besting the ratings powerhouse of WTOP. For sure, this included adding supplemental audio processing like the 25-Seven Voltair, but it involved efforts that extended well beyond adding a single piece of hardware. I spent a great deal of time testing and modifying air chain designs and processing approaches for our spoken-word formats in New York. When I arrived at WAMU in 2016, that was still fresh in my mind. When I asked my new boss at WAMU, “Hey does public radio care about ratings?” he enthusiastically said “Yes!” I spent time analyzing our performance using a box that I may have been the only one to buy: the “Voltair M,” a monitor-only version of the Voltair that was a precursor to the TVC-15 analyzer. It confirmed my suspicion that public radio content, with its wide-open dynamics and frequent periods of silence, watermarks very poorly. Gaining that visibility into encoding performance via the Voltair-M and the TVC-15 was a game-changer in thinking about spoken-word watermarking performance. We spent several years working through multiple iterations of improvement. Ultimately the “productized” technology caught up, and we wound up with the “gold standard” of using the insert point on an Omnia.11 processor, Voltair and TVC-15 to tame the Voltair and help the audio during passages where it needed help the most.… [TheTopNews] Read More.5 hours ago - Why U.K. Socialism Could Soon Be America’s Problem
This week, editors Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch are joined by reporter Reem Ibrahim to discuss the resignation of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and what it reveals about the United Kingdom's economic stagnation. The panel examines the legacy of Brexit, the rise of the self-described "business-friendly socialist" Andy Burnham, and whether the U.K.'s growing embrace of big government policies offers a warning for the United States. Next, the editors discuss the growing influence of Democratic Socialists in major American cities, including New York, Washington, and Los Angeles. They then examine Trump's negotiations with Iran and debate whether the administration's deal represents a diplomatic success or a strategic retreat. The panel also discusses Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) decision to abandon plans for new migrant detention centers and what it reveals about the future of immigration enforcement. Finally, a listener asks whether Cuba's latest market reforms signal a genuine shift away from socialism or just another false start. 0:00—Starmer resigns 14:05—Democratic Socialists of America ascendant in blue cities 31:29—Iran negotiations and the Strait of Hormuz 39:12—Listener question on Cuba 45:09—ICE to sell off warehouses 55:03—Weekly cultural recommendations Mentioned in the podcast: "British Prime Minister Keir Starmer Has Resigned. His Replacement Will Likely Be More of the Same," by Reem Ibrahim "England Fans Warned Not To Chant 'Keir Starmer's a Wanker' at World Cup," by Reem Ibrahim "How Worried Should We Be About a Socialist Mayor in D.C.?" by Christian Britschgi "Graham Platner Signals a Problem for Democrats, and the Rest of Us," by J.D. Tuccille "Compromise With Iran Isn't 'Surrender,'" by Matthew Petti "Bibi Tearing Up the Deal," by Liz Wolfe "ICE Largely Abandons Plan To Turn Warehouses Into Migrant Detention Facilities," by Joe Lancaster "ICE Says It's Moved Detainees Out of 'Alligator Alcatraz' For Hurricane Season," by C.J. Ciaramella The post Why U.K. Socialism Could Soon Be America's Problem appeared first on Reason.com. [TheTopNews] Read More.5 hours ago - Second Note Sent to Media Said Nancy Guthrie Was Dead
The second note sent to media outlets in connection with the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie said that the 84-year-old mother of “Today” anchor Savannah Guthrie was dead, according to a recent report from NBC News. The Guthrie family received two notes shortly after Nancy’s disappearance. The first demanded a cryptocurrency ransom for Nancy’s safe return, […] [TheTopNews] Read More.5 hours ago - Suspect and a Civilian Are Among Three Killed in Montreal Shooting
A police officer and a civilian also died in a gun battle that prompted a citywide shelter-in-place alert. [TheTopNews] Read More.6 hours ago - Fox News Anchor Confronts GOP Senator On Only Voting With Trump 94% of the Time:...
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) joined Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum on her show, The Story, on Monday for Collins’s first national interview since Graham Platner officially became her general election opponent. MacCallum asked Collins to weigh in on Platner to start the interview, and Collins teed off on Platner’s Nazi-tattoo scandal while hyping her “steady” leadership. The interview eventually moved to more pointed questions about Collins’s own record. MacCallum noted Collins had voted with “President Trump about 94% of the time, which might sound high, but most people in your party have been with him 100% of the time, and he has pointed the finger at you several times over different issues.” “One of them was the fact that you held out for quite some time on your vote of support for now-Justice Kavanaugh. Is this an issue that you think is troublesome for you in this race, now that Roe v. Wade was overturned, in Maine, across the country?” MacCallum asked. “Well, first of all, let me make clear that I disagreed with the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but the fact is that whether Justice Kavanaugh were confirmed or not, Roe v. Wade would have been overturned, given the 6-to-3 vote,” Collins replied, adding: And also, I supported the justices like Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Justice Brown Jackson, who voted to sustain Roe v. Wade. I also joined with a bipartisan group of senators to codify Roe v. Wade and make it the law of the land. Regrettably, the then-leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer, refused to bring up our bill. “Let me ask you just a couple of quick questions, if I could get, you know, fairly quick answers on these. One is, in 1996, you said you would only run for two terms, and yet now you’re running again. Why is that, and did that break a promise that you once made?” MacCallum followed up. Collins conceded, “I did say that I would only run for two terms. I underestimated how much seniority, experience, and knowledge matters in the Senate. When I look at what I could do as a freshman senator versus what I can do as chair of the Appropriations Committee, the most powerful committee in the Senate, there’s a huge difference, and I note that it had been 92 years since a Maine senator had held the… [TheTopNews] Read More.6 hours ago - Trump Tussles With CBS’s Ed O’Keefe Over Exploding Cost of His Reflecting Po...President Donald Trump made some outlandish claims about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during an Oval Office executive order signing on Monday, as CBS News’s Ed O’Keefe pressed him on the exploding cost of the renovation. “We also fixed the reflecting pool. In fact, if you go over there right now, it looks very good,” Trump said about the algae-ridden water with a blue coated bottom that’s been peeling away since crews used hydrogen peroxide to try to clean it up. “It’s up,” Trump continued. “They put — somebody said fertilizer in the water. If you put fertilizer in the water you get algae. But somebody said they might have put fertilizer. They did something to create the algae. But that doesn’t matter because that’s been purified. Its dead. Laying at the bottom. They’re taking it out. They vacuum it out. They vacuum it very carefully out. And it will be back to health pretty soon. We’re going to have to let the water out to fix the one little — there’s two little areas — very little areas, where they were cut, and we’ll fix that. But it’s not leaking or anything, it’s got a base underneath.” “Part of what’s curious about this situation is, we stood here with you in April when you first revealed the plans,” began O’Keefe. “You said you had a guy who was gonna do it in a week for about a million dollars. It’s been two months, $16-and-a-half million.” “Well, okay, are you ready? Barack Hussein Obama. Have you ever heard of him?” Trump asked. When O’Keefe indicated that he had, in fact, heard of former President Obama, Trump continued: He spend two years and over $100 million on trying to fix it. You know what happened to it? It never opened. He took the water from the river. You know about that, right? It turned out to be putrid, and it destroyed the whole thing. Spent over $100 million. Him and [Joe] Biden together spent $147 million. You know what happened? Never opened. You don’t mention that, right? We spent about 10. Many of the — much of the money are park workers. They’re there whether they do this or not, as you know. They work in the park, and they’re very good workers. They did a great job. So, they were going to spend $300 to $400 million. You… [TheTopNews] Read More.6 hours ago
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