Welcome back from CBI in Kansas City!

I hope y'all had as much fun as I did out there this weekend!

If you're looking for my slides for these sessions:

• HD Radio: Practical Operational Concerns
• HD Radio: Engineering Issues
• Change is Coming: FEMA plus EAS & CAP
• How NPR+ISDN=Free Money for Your Station
• Radio Automation / Playback Control
• Play Ball! Sports Remote Gear Options for Radio Stations.

Check out this site: www.friedbagels.com/cbi/2008

You may also find these blog posts and articles, that I've written, interesting as well:

• Music Library Management: Part One and Part Two.
• How NPR+ISDN=Free Money for Your Station (expanded article)
• All of my articles for Radio World magazine (including several HD Radio reviews)
• How to Engineer a Show for Public Radio (note: in the process of being re-written)
  
• How to Produce a Show for Public Radio (note: in the process of being re-written)
• Staying On-Air When No One's There: Part One, Part Two, Prequel
  

CBI Conference in Kansas City

Next Wednesday night, myself and two HWS students will be heading west to Kansas City, where the annual College Broadcaster's Inc conference will be held in conjunction with the College Media Advisor's conference.

Yours truly will be presenting in six - count 'em, six! - sessions. What da hell was I thinking!?!? :-)

Details on the CBI website: www.askcbi.org

NAB: Back home

I have returned to the land down under...eight feet of snow. Heh, it DID actually snow in Geneva last Sunday, but it's a pleasant 75 degrees and sunny today.

To put a bit of a wrap on the NAB trip, I would say that there were really only three things that were interesting and "additive":

• Nautel's impressively small - yet high-powered - transmitters. They had a 44kW TPO FM that was perhaps the size of two or three refridgerators.
• Nautel again with their cool peak-smoothing of IBOC carriers. This could be really important if the FCC decides to allow more watts on the digital side.
• iZotope's ANR-B automatic noise reducer, which gets high "coolness" points and is remarkably useful, too.

In all fairness, both Logitek and Enco had interesting things, although Logitek's is more about announcing what's coming up in the future for their product line (a move more towards IP audio, similar to Axia's LiveWire) and Enco's product is ready now but is for a concept that is still more in the future than it is today (iTunes tagging and PADapult for HD Radio).

John Kean/NPR Labs' receiver interference report was fascinating but unfortunately short on details...I understand it has to pass through CPB first and will be released in about a month, which is good. It promises to give a FAR better idea of what pubradio stations' coverage really is.

And that really sums up the show in a nutshell: lots of interesting ideas tossed around, and a lot of learning what we don't know ("negative" info)...but not a lot of hard "additive" info to take home and use.

For example, in my case I've got to put in an order for a new transmitter in the next four weeks or so, and I have to decide whether to gamble that the FCC will not authorize IBOC carriers to be increased to -10dB (from -20dB), and thus get a lower-powered transmitter that is much cheaper....or gamble that they WILL authorize it, and thus pay for a much higher-powered transmitter that's much more expensive. The problem is that more digital watts cannot happen in a vacuum; you must also proportionally increase analog wattage, and that proportion is steep. As in, increasing our digital TPO by 10dB will require DOUBLING the analog. Eep!

Not Much to Say

Not much to say as of late...lots of late evenings at WEOS engineering live events and not much to talk about otherwise. Well, not on anything I feel I can add something useful to, anyways.

Two items of note: this Saturday I'm making a run for the border; seeing my beloved Red Sox play at Toronto. Next Wednesday I head out for Vegas to attend the Public Radio Engineering Conference and Nat'l Association of Broadcasters Conference for a week. If I see cool stuff, I'll blog about it.

Beyond Broadcast 2007

I've been remiss in blogging about the Beyond Broadcast conference back in late February.

First and foremost, kudos once again to Jake Shapiro and many others at PRX and the Berkman Center for pulling together an excellent conference.

Second, I noticed that the "problem" with the first BB conference was back in force with this year's. That is, there weren't many answers for a lot of really pressing questions. Everyone seems to know that there are significant needs for radio to diversify across additional media channels, but nobody really seems to know how to actually do it...or at least do it in a way that makes money. Even just enough money to break even, never mind turn a profit.

So these conference sessions are fascinating discussions...sometimes veering into bulls**t sessions (but that's okay)...but there's not a lot of the rubber meeting the road here. I suppose that's okay, too...you gotta start somewhere and it's not a bad thing to have a really high-level discussion at the conference that can then spark more mid-level planning back at your station (or comparable media organization).

On a snarky note, there were some definite technical glitches during the conference, too...especially in getting a presenter's videoconference to work. I don't mention this to blame anyone, but more to call attention to how web media has traded flexibility for robustness; your average AM or FM radio is very simple, and has a very well-known and defined set of expectations assigned to it. Not surprising given how radio has been around for more than five decades. Duplicating this remarkable reliability in the web has been frustratingly difficult.

Getting caught up

Yes I've been remiss in posting, but that's because I've been so damn busy! Well the remission ends now, no matter WHAT the doctor prescribes! Wait, that's not right... :-)

Okay, so here's what's been happening...

• Beyond Broadcast conference at MIT; much kudos to the Jake Shapiro, Steve Schultze and the other phine pholks at PRX...including a pic of me with the One Laptop Per Child!
  
• A review of the Directed Electronics DHHD1000 tabletop HD Radio receiver - with pics!
  
• WZLY's open house commemorating the (almost) completion of their new studios - with pics!
  

Lots of blog posts about this stuff to soon follow!

Who was that masked man?

I got to play Tech Director at Living on Earth today. They're a few stops up the Red Line subway from us, and their TD had jury duty today...poor bastard. :-)

Since my regular job had a slight problem with fire last Friday and is kinda shut down today, and since I already knew their setup, he asked if I could fill in for him. No problemo, my man.

It was kinda fun, actually. Not that I loathe my current job or anything, but it's always fun to see how other folks do the same thing you do...it's not unlike going to a conference. Speaking of which, if you're thinking of going to NAB in Vegas in April 2007 (and you damn well ought to be thinking of that!) then you'll want to book your flights and hotels right away. Even Vegas fills up amazing fast when there's 130,000 radio and TV geeks descending on it for a solid week...last year at this time NAB-reserved block was already booked at 53% capacity a full four months in advance!