Two Belgian Broadcasters Adopt PPM

New York - Jan 29, 2003 - Arbitron's electronic audience measurement system, the Portable People Meter (PPM), has been selected by two Belgium broadcasting companies to measure the listening and viewing habits of the Flemish community.

Vlaamse Radio en Televisie (VRT) and Vlaamse Audiovisuele Regie (VAR), the marketing arm of VRT, have awarded a five-year contract to TNS Media, a member of the worldwide Taylor Nelsen Sofres group, to install a panel of 450 people equipped with Arbitron’s PPM system beginning in the second quarter of 2003. VRT and VAR will use the panel to gathering continuous information on the listening and viewing habits of VRT’s public broadcast audiences for the purpose of radio and television cross media analysis. TNS Media will provide the PPM system through a licensing and royalty agreement with Arbitron.

Arbitron’s Portable People Meter is a pager-sized device that automatically detects inaudible codes that are embedded in the audio portion of any electronic media. Its unique ability to measure radio and TV audiences from a single panel will enable VRT to identify opportunities to cross promote its radio and TV programs.

Belgium becomes the third country to use the PPM technology. The Television Corporation of Singapore has employed Arbitron’s audio encoding system in Taylor Nelson Sofres’ set-top people meters to identify what TV programs are being watched in 750 homes across Singapore since 2001. BBM Canada will begin measuring French-language TV audiences in Montreal and Quebec with the PPM beginning in the fourth quarter of 2003.

VRT operates five radio stations and three TV channels.

Library of Congress Adds 50 Recordings to National Recording Registry

New York - Jan 28, 2003 - On Jan. 27, Librarian of Congress James H. Billington announced his selection of the first 50 historic sound recordings to be added to the National Recording Registry in Washington, DC. The National Recording Registry was established by the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000 to draw attention to the need to preserve and restore America's recorded sound heritage. This heritage is threatened by the deterioration of most of the recording media invented in the last 100 years, including modern audio tape.

Congress has charged the Librarian of Congress with the responsibility for selecting recordings annually that are "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant." Nominations for the registry were garnered from members of the public and the National Recording Preservation Board, which is composed of leaders in the fields of music, recorded sound and preservation. The board also helped with the review of nominations.

Representing the AES on the board are Elizabeth Cohen, AES past president, and George Massenburg, renowned recording engineer and producer whose credits include Billy Joel, James Taylor, Randy Newman, Lyle Lovett, Aaron Neville, Little Feat and the Dixie Chicks. Cohen and Massenburg are members of AES Technical Committee on Archiving, Restoration and Digital Libraries and Cohen is founding chair of the AES Technical Committee on Network Audio Systems.

The selection of sound recordings that were chosen are significant either culturally, historically or aesthetically and include a wide range of styles and forms. Some of the recordings selected include famous broadcast events. A list of items from the 50 selected follows:

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TC Works and TC Electronic to Combine Brands

Hamburg, Germany and Risskov, Denmark - Jan 29, 2003 - The recording markets have changed rapidly in the last couple of years, with the computer assuming the key role in most production environments. In order to recognize this integration trend, the TC Group has decided to underline its dedication to this market by combining the TC Works and TC Electronic brands and assigning the main brand TC Electronic to this market segment.

As a result, Powercore and future TC Works products will be marketed under TC Electronic, with TC Works maintaining its key role as a technology and product development team.

All new products and joint projects developed by TC Works and TC Electronic will be marketed under the TC Electronic brand name, while existing ones will be rebranded over time. The development and management resources will remain at TC Works headquarters in Hamburg, while all distribution, support and marketing will be transferred to Denmark, the headquarters of TC Electronic effective March 1.

Ibiquity Adds Dan Mason to Team

Columbia, MD and Warren NJ - Jan 30, 2003 - Ibiquity Digital has retained Dan Mason as a consultant to the digital radio developer's management team. Dan Mason, a veteran of the radio broadcasting industry with nearly 30 years experience and former Infinity Radio president, will work with the broadcast industry to promote adoption of Ibiquity's HD Radio technology.

After retiring from Infinity Radio last September, Mason has been a consultant to companies in the radio broadcasting industry. For Ibiquity, he will consult with the management team in promoting the value of HD Radio technology and building broader relationships with broadcasters to drive HD Radio technology rollout.

Mason has a long and tenured track record of success in the radio industry. Besides Infinity, he has also served as past president of CBS Radio, Group W Radio and Cook Inlet Radio. A native of Louisville, KY, he holds a B.S. degree in broadcasting from Eastern Kentucky University.

TC Electronic U.S. Restructures Staff

Westlake Village, CA - Jan 27, 2003 - In a move designed to position the company for future growth, Mads Peter Lubeck, COO of TC Electronic Worldwide, announced that the company has named John Maier to the newly created post of vice president of sales, North America. Also announced as part of this new company structure, long-time TC Electronic U.S. managing director, Ed Simeone, has been appointed to the Board of Directors and now holds the title of president.
Maier is an 18-year veteran of the pro audio industry, and most recently was pro audio buyer for Guitar Center Management. Before that he held several positions at Alesis Studio Electronics including director of marketing communication and national accounts manager. The prior 14 years were spent as a retailer and an independent representative. Maier will be in charge of all operations of the U.S. office and will be responsible for sales results in the United States and Canada.

Ed Simeone founded TC's U.S. distribution company and is a 30-year veteran of the audio and music industries. He has toured with such groups as Journey, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt and Toto.

Also adding to the TC U.S. staff, Dave DeLeon joins the company as live/install market manager with a special focus on launching the Lab.gruppen line of power amps. DeLeon brings a wealth of industry experience to Lab.gruppen/TC-US, having served more than 15 years in the pro audio manufacturing industry in technical supervision, sales engineering, marketing, training and consultancy capacities. In his new position, DeLeon will be oversee all aspects of the sales, marketing and product development of Lab.gruppen branded products in North American markets.

Prior to joining Lab.gruppen/TC-US, credits to DeLeons' audio career include positions as sales/applications engineer for QSC Audio Products for the past 11 years, and technical supervisor for JBL Professional. In addition, DeLeon has an electrical engineering background, has national touring credits working as FOH sound mix engineer, stage monitor mix engineer, technician and roadie.

Broadcast Electronics Expands Onan's Responsibilities

Quincy, IL - Jan 27, 2003 - Broadcast Electronics has expanded the responsibilities of Criss Onan to a position of key accounts manager. Onan will represent Broadcast Electronics’ digital studio products that store, manage and play back audio, text and data. These include the company’s AudioVAULT, AV2 and VaultXpress, AirBoss, NewsBoss, WebVAULT, eStream and SoniXtream products.

Onan will continue his association with Technet Systems Group, which represents Broadcast Electronics HD and analog transmitters and associated products, as well as provides turnkey system installations.

As one of Broadcast Electronics’ first AudioVAULT salespeople, Onan returned to terrestrial broadcast sales following his work in developing strategic Internet products and services. Prior to Broadcast Electronics, he was the sales manager for Northeast Broadcast Lab and worked in a variety of radio engineering and management positions.

A resident of the Rochester, NY area, Onan is a graduate of the State University of NY.

Arbitron Appoints McDonald to VP and CSO

New York - Jan 27, 2003 - Arbitron has appointed Dr. William McDonald to the new position of vice president and chief statistical officer. In this role, McDonald will support Arbitron’s core business and initiatives in new and value-added services. He will be responsible for establishing and maintaining policies relating to statistics and data integrity within Arbitron, including new strategic initiatives for expanding and enhancing Arbitron’s measurement tools, such as the Portable People Meter (PPM) and its radio and outdoor audience services. McDonald reports to David Lapovsky, executive vice president, Worldwide Research, Arbitron.

Most recently, McDonald was the director of statistical consulting at Dun and Bradstreet. Previously, he served as the director of research and analysis at Winston Associates. McDonald has also taught marketing, advertising, research, statistics and computer science courses at Hofstra University, the University of Illinois and the University of San Francisco. He is also the author of three textbooks about marketing management, direct marketing and international business.

McDonald received his Ph.D. and M.A. in behavioral science from the University of Chicago and his M.B.A. in marketing from Northwestern University.

Audio-Technica Names Shannon as VP Sales

NAMM, Anaheim, CA - Jan 16, 2003 - Audio-Technica U.S. has appointed Marc Lee Shannon to the position of vice president, sales. Shannon has been with Audio-Technica since 1994, when he joined the company as regional sales manager. He went on to become A-T’s national sales manager in 1997.

Philips Intros New Car Radio Chip

San Jose, CA - Jan 28, 2003 - Royal Philips Electronics has introduced a car-radio enhanced-selectivity tuner called the TEF6860. The new chip reportedly alleviates many of the reception problems associated with car radios, such as adjacent-channel interference, AM signal fading, background interference and erratic channel-locking in poor reception areas.

The TEF6860 is the latest product in Philips' PACS (Precision Adjacent Channel Selectivity) family. Despite the development of digital transmission, companies such as Philips are inroducing improvements on current receiver designs. In a similar move, Motorola introduced its radio-receiver chipset called Symphony last year.

Terrasonde Ships Terralink ver 1.1

Boulder, CO - Jan 29, 2003 - Terrasonde is now shipping the Terralink software, the company's first software application for Audio Toolbox users. Terralink creates a link between the Audio Toolbox and any Mac or PC laptop or computer.

Terralink has two functions: Real-time display and enhanced data analysis. Data streams from the real-time analyzer, the FFT analyzer and the energy-time graph in the Audio Toolbox can be monitored dynamically as the measurements are being conducted. These can be run in a window or using the entire screen on any computer platform, allowing for excellent visibility and readability. The streamed results can be analyzed in real-time as well using a simple sweeping cursor interface.

This data, and all of the Toolbox memories, can be captured and saved instantly as individual Project Files, for comparison and additional calculations. The resulting reports can then be formatted with the technician's name and contact information to create a professionally formatted document for their clients.

All Terralink 1.1 users will be eligible for free software upgrades for one year from date of purchase. Contractors software version 3.18 is required, which is available for download along with Terralink on the Terrasonde website at www.Terrasonde.com.

HBC San Francisco Picks Neumann TLM103s

San Francisco - Jan 29, 2003 - During Raul Velez's career as a radio and TV live broadcast sound engineer, he has regularly relied on Neumann microphones. In his new position as chief engineer for Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation in San Francisco, he is active in the upgrades to the studios ofKSOL/KSQL and KEMR. Velez purchased seven new TLM 103 microphones, bringing the number of 103s the station now has on line to 14.

Velez, previously relied on Neumann KMS 105s when he worked with the San Francisco Giants radio broadcasts.

Radio magazine recently awarded awarded a Neumann TLM103 as the first prize in out annual Find the Mic Sweepstakes.

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