Radio technology news updated as it happens.

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News

Harrisburg Gets IBOCSignals

Harrisburg, PA - Jan 16, 2003 - On Jan. 5 at 3:00 p.m. WWKL-FM began its IBOC operations. The station serves the Harrisburg/York/Lancaster area and stakes the claim as the first station in that market to transmit IBOC. Sister station WNNK-FM began IBOC transmissions a few days later.

WWKL uses a Harris Z-16 HD with the Harris HD Exciter running low level combining.

WNNK uses a Dielectric two-bay interleaved antenna. The antenna looks like a four-bay, half-wave, but the first and third bays transmit the analog signal at full-wave spacing. Bays two and four are reverse polarizedand transmit the digital signal. The digital antenna portion has its own RF feed. The transmitter was supplied by Harris and uses the Dexstar exciter.

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WHUR Commences IBOC Operations

Washington - Jan 16, 2004 - WHUR-FM (96.3), the Howard University-owned and operated radio station, will begin IBOC broadcasting on Jan. 21 at 11 a.m. The station will hold a press conference at the station's transmitter site to commemorate the event. WHUR will be the first commercial radio station in the Washington market to begin IBOC transmissions.

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Arbitron Looks at Houston forNext PPM Trial

New York - Jan 13, 2004 - As the next step in evaluating the Portable People Meter (PPM), Arbitron has begun its search to identify a second market to conduct test trials. The first trials in Philadelphia have shown positive results for Arbitron, but there was interest in evaluating the PPM in a market with a higher Hispanic audience.

The first step in selecting another test market is to contact radio, TV and cable operators in that market to assess their interest in participating. This has begun in Houston, but it is too early to tell if the city will officially be used as a PPM test bed. Arbitron reports that response so far has been positive.

If Houston is selected, the work will begin to install PPM encoders at stations and also to recruit consumer participants in the Summer of 2004. The schedule would then look to have two parallel panels of 500 participants each by January 2005 and two separate panels of 1,000 participants by April 2005. At that point, the PPM data can be compared to the traditional Arbitron and Nielsen ratings to evaluate the effectiveness of the PPM study.

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Business

Morris Taps BE for FMTransmitters

Quincy, IL - Jan 15, 2004 - Morris Communications ordered five Broadcast Electronics (BE) FM transmitters with new digital exciters to be delivered in 2004. The 27-station operation will start the year by replacing a vintage RCA FM transmitter at KBRJ-FM in Anchorage, AK. The country station will receive a Broadcast Electronics FM-35T transmitter and an FXI 250 FM digital exciter, as will two other Morris stations in Anchorage, KEAG-FM- and KWHL-FM.

All three stations are being readied to upgrade to 100kW ERP, pending the removal of an FCC monitoring station in Anchorage that has restricted C1 service to areas within the metropolitan area.

Increasing power is also behind the order for two BE transmitters to be delivered to Morris stations in the Palm Springs, CA, market. Morris has applied for a power upgrade for KCLB-FM there, and is expected to increase power from 26.5kW to 50kW ERP during 2004. On order for the upgrade are a Broadcast Electronics FM-25T transmitter and an FXI 250 FM digital exciter. KYOR-FM in the same market will receive a Broadcast Electronics FM-2C 2kW solid-state transmitter and an FXI 250 FM digital exciter to upgrade its booster signal from 500W to 2.7kW ERP.

Morris Communications is a privately held media company with holdings that include newspaper and magazine publishing, outdoor advertising, radio broadcasting, book publishing and distribution, and online services. Morris operates 27 stations and three networks in Alaska, California, Kansas, Texas, Washington and the Principality of Monaco.

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Steinberg Celebrates 20Years

Anaheim, CA - Jan 15 2004 - Founded 1984 in Hamburg, Germany, by Karl Steinberg and Manfred Ruerup, Steinberg began creating MIDI sequencing devices. Its first product was the Pro 16 sequencer for the Commodore 64 computer. This program became the Pro 24, which was ported to the Atari platform and used by the early pioneers of sequenced music. From these roots grew Cubase Atari in 1989, which established an accepted standard for user interface design with the Arrange Page and introduced real-time manipulation without stopping playback. Steinberg expanded Cubase to the Apple Macintosh platform in 1990 and the Microsoft Windows platform in 1992.

In 1994, Steinberg released Cubase Audio Falcon, which integrated audio, MIDI, scoring and real-time DSP. It utilized the onboard DSP of the Atari Falcon for effects, EQs and even a sampler track that allowed samples to be triggered from MIDI. Wavelab was released in 1995 and grew to become the first wave editor with integrated CD burning and remains a favorite today with its audio montage and full featured mastering and broadcast tools.

In 1996, Steinberg unveiled VST for Apple’s new Power Mac processor, creating the first professional native solution. Steinberg created the standards of VST plug-ins and ASIO drivers to provide complete studio solutions with the computer as the centerpiece. In 1998, VST was ported to the Windows platform and VST and ASIO technologies remain the most widely available and supported platforms for computer music today.

In 1999 Steinberg released a plug-in called Neon, the first software synthesizer to be integrated into an application.

Nuendo was released in 2000 as an audio and post-production program built upon an entirely new code base. It was written from the ground up and included unlimited undo/redo, editing and comprehensive surround support. Nuendo’s ease of use, powerful editing and 32-bit floating-point audio engine made it an instant hit with the surround music community as well as a growing number in post-production. In 2002, the new code base from Nuendo was applied to Cubase SX and SL, updating the powerful sequencing features with the latest audio technologies. Nuendo is now also used for radio production.

Today, Steinberg is the Audio Division of Pinnacle Systems.

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Krone Awarded TL 9000Certification

Centennial, CO - Jan 13, 2004 - The global headquarters of Krone, the manufacturer of wire, cable and connection devices, has received TL 9000 certification. In July, Krone's facilities in Marlton, NJ, and Toluca, Mexico, also received certification to TL 9000.

TL 9000 is a set of quality system requirements designed to improve and maintain the quality of products and services within the telecommunications industry. It is also the first collaborative quality requirement ever developed for the industry as a whole. TL 9000 is considered to be an extension to the ISO 9000 standard series, widely recognized throughout the world as the most established and commonplace quality standard.

The company's copper wire and cable plant in Sidney, NE, was the first Krone facility to receive TL 9000 certification.

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Sales Call Logitek Electronic Systems has shipped a console router system including two networked Audio Engines, two Numix-12 consoles and one Remora-4 to KWIT/KOJI, Western Iowa Tech Community College, Sioux City, IA. Telos has equipped the professional sports industry with several codecs. NFL Total Access, heard on the NFL Network uses a Zephyr Xport. The San Diego Chargers use a Zephyr Xstream and Zephyr Xport in their remote cases. The Arizona Diamondbacks recently ordered a Zephyr Xstream MXP remote codec with four-input mixer.

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People

NPR Names Holstein as CIO

Washington - Jan 15, 2004 - National Public Radio (NPR) has named Robert G. Holstein as its chief information officer. In his new role, Holstein will lead the transformation of NPR's information technology infrastructure and manage communications systems that support and enhance the work of the nonprofit radio service, and more than 700 employees in 36 locations around the world. His duties will include establishing formal processes and procedures that will guide technology investment, service delivery and sourcing. The end goal of this mission will be to establish an efficient, effective IT capability based on best practices and aligned with the values and business strategy of NPR.

Holstein's professional background spans 23 years in the communication and information technology fields. Most recently, he spent seven years as business information officer for Capitol One Financial. There, he built the technology infrastructure that enabled Capitol One's telecommunications businesses. His projects included the development and rollout of business-rules decision systems, customer relationship management systems and numerous Web-based and distributed applications.

Previous to his work at Capital One Financial, Holstein was director of information systems at Bell Atlantic Network Services (now a division of Verizon) where he led the strategic transformation from mainframe-oriented to a distributed, open systems infrastructure. Before that, he was a district manager for Bell Communications Research in Red Bank, NJ, and a member of the technical staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Holstein, a resident of Potomac, MD, earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

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Crown Appoints Baker as MarketDirector

Elkhart, IN - Jan 15, 2004 — Crown International has named Larry Baker as market director for portable PA, recording and broadcast. The appointment was announced by Mark Graham, Crown's vice president of marketing and product development.

Baker has more than a decade of business development and strategic marketing experience with major consumer and high tech B2B companies. He has spearheaded numerous go-to-market and product line strategies including re-establishing RCA audio products in the United States, launching the distribution and sale of GE Communication products internationally and establishing Unicru as the leading hiring management system in the United States. Larry received his BS Chemical Engineering and MBA from Purdue University.

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Andrew Corporation Names Leader ofWorldwide Sales

Orland Park, IL - Jan 12, 2004 — Andrew Corporation has named Roger J. Manka as group president of worldwide sales. In this position, Manka will lead the Andrew worldwide sales and service organization responsible for business growth, and customer relationships with telecommunications equipment manufacturers, service providers and distributors in all regions of the world.

Manka joins Andrew from Commworks, a 3Com company, where he was vice president of worldwide sales. He has nearly 20 years experience in selling systems, products and services in the wireless, wireline, voice applications and packet infrastructure markets. He is experienced in serving global telecommunications subsystem customers and in leading sales organizations. He will report to Andrew president and chief executive officer Ralph E. Faison and will be based at Andrew's headquarters in Orland Park, IL.

Prior to Commworks, Manka held positions of increasing sales management responsibilities at 3Com in Santa Clara, CA, and U.S. Robotics in Skokie, IL. He earned his bachelor of science degree in Marketing from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

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Internet Watch

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Products

Orban Releases aacPlusStreaming Audio Encoder

Tempe, AZ - Jan 14, 2003 - Orban is shipping the Opticodec-PC, an MPEG-4 aacPlus software encoder. The software lets streaming providers supply content encoded with the Coding Technologies aacPlus codec, which is gaining popularity. Media players such as Real Player 10 can now decode aacPlus streams.

Opticodec-PC is available for Windows 2000 and XP and supplies streams compatible with the free Darwin Streaming Server, which is available multiple platforms including Linux, Windows and Macintosh. Opticodec-PC is available in two versions, LE and PE. Opticodec-PC LE is compatible with all quality sound cards and encodes a single stream at bit rates between 8kb/s and 32kb/s. Opticodec-PC PE is offered solely in a premium package coupled with an Optimod-PC and can encode multiple simultaneous streams at bit rates from 8kb/s to 320kb/s. Both products are available immediately for evaluation.

In addition, Orban will soon launch a directory of Opticodec users at www.opticodec.net.

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