Harris Named Exclusive HD Radio Transmission Vendor for JPR

Jan 4, 2007 3:00 PM

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(l-r) Chris Pannell, national sales manager, radio broadcast systems, Harris; Ron Kramer, president WSPR and President Jefferson Public Radio, Ashland, OR; Deb Huttenburg, VP/GM radio broadcast systems, Harris; Hal Kneller, senior manager public radio initiatives, radio broadcast systems, Harris.

Cincinnati - Jan 4, 2007 - Jefferson Public Radio (JPR), owner of 21 public radio stations in Oregon and Northern California, will exclusively install Harris HD Radio transmitters and the Flexstar family of HD Radio products for its FM and AM stations. Harris Neustar SW4.0 precodec conditioners, powered by Neural Audio, will be installed at all the sites for HD Radio audio processing.

Jefferson Public Radio expects to take delivery of Harris equipment for its first conversions in January 2007 for KSYC-AM, Mt. Shasta, CA, and KSJK-AM and KSMF-FM, Ashland, OR. In preparation for these and other conversions, JPR, assisted by the Harris team, will upgrade JPR's network-wide analog microwave system to digital. The microwave system, which currently carries three public radio services shared between various stations, will be upgraded to carry as many as nine program services, which will equip each FM station to broadcast two supplementary channels. Harris will also assist JPR in installing Intraplex STL HD systems to stack multiple audio services over JPR's existing T1 lines. The conversions will be staggered over a 15-month period, with a target completion date of April 2008.

The JPR order marks the station group's first transmitter purchases since the early 1980s. The group previously had only one Harris analog transmitter installation between the group's network of 21 stations.

Harris will provide a mix of Z-Series high-power and ZX low-power FM transmitters and DAX AM transmitters to the 21 stations. Flexstar importing and exporting equipment at FM stations will multiplex and prepare audio at the studio for distribution to the transmitter, where the Flexstar HDX-FM exciter will prepare the HD Radio and analog signals for transmission. The Neustar SW4.0 codec pre-conditioner, a software version of the 4.0 stand-alone product, will monitor and process the multiple HD Radio channel audio prior to reaching the Flexstar platform. Neustar SW4.0 lives inside the Flexstar HDI-100 importer to digitally process and remove noisy artifacts from the highly compressed audio typical in an HD Radio multicasting system.

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