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Oregon Is anyone home at Alpha Media?

B

bobdavcav

I've thought KXL seemed to have lots of problems, now KXTG also seems to have long standing issues. Here's what I've noticed:
1. KXL will occasionally play the wrong weather forecast. This hasn't been a frequent issue, but it did happen on Tuesday, where what appeared to be a Monday forecast played instead of one from the current morning. This was the last forecast of the morning news, so shouldn't the anchors be hearing that and wondering why it's still in the system? That forecast played again 10 minutes later.
2. This has been a consistent problem for months now. With the 9:30 update, a traffic report from the previous afternoon plays instead of a current one. If I heard this on one of my stations, I would make sure it was addressed within a week if not a couple of days. This really shouldn't happen. Of course, the day after I draft this it is addressed, but it seems to come and go.
3. Since I've moved, I've been listening to Mariners games via KXTG. The first time this happened I thought it might have been a technical glitch, but it keeps happening. When the network breaks for station identification, all you get on KXTG is dead air. Again, I'd try to have this addressed by the next game, but this happened across multiple nights.
 
bobdavcav said:
I've thought KXL seemed to have lots of problems, now KXTG also seems to have long standing issues. Here's what I've noticed:
1. KXL will occasionally play the wrong weather forecast. This hasn't been a frequent issue, but it did happen on Tuesday, where what appeared to be a Monday forecast played instead of one from the current morning. This was the last forecast of the morning news, so shouldn't the anchors be hearing that and wondering why it's still in the system? That forecast played again 10 minutes later.
2. This has been a consistent problem for months now. With the 9:30 update, a traffic report from the previous afternoon plays instead of a current one. If I heard this on one of my stations, I would make sure it was addressed within a week if not a couple of days. This really shouldn't happen. Of course, the day after I draft this it is addressed, but it seems to come and go.
3. Since I've moved, I've been listening to Mariners games via KXTG. The first time this happened I thought it might have been a technical glitch, but it keeps happening. When the network breaks for station identification, all you get on KXTG is dead air. Again, I'd try to have this addressed by the next game, but this happened across multiple nights.
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Everything you described is done by automatic ingest. Wether FTP or some internal network, the content is created somewhere else and is saved from off site, another studio in such a way that it auto ingests. Its very easy for this to go off the rails.

If the internet burps, if the internal company connection between Studio A and studio C on site or Studio C onsite and Studio xx off site gets gummed up, it wont update

With my station, show file segments transfer from my satellite reciever to my automation and an internal program ingests them and shoves them off to the automation folder tat they need to be in.

Sometimes, for whatever reason that INTERNAL network connection gets gummed up.. and they dont transfer until a reboot.

Some of this content is likely coming from outside the building, so some connection is going over the internet and that can cause issues.

Some stuff is coming from internal wether in the building or internal within the company but another location and that poses another set of issue.s

When i worked for a station that had brand new digital Axia consoles... every now and then.. once in a blue moon, the internal network.. a bunch of 0s, 1s and IT/IP voodoo would get clogged up and kill our audio ou of the studio so wed have to reboot.
 
Is it possible that there's a different path for live audio as opposed to the prerecorded stuff? I definitely have heard stations run an old report, but usually it's the one that ran half an hour ago, not 18 hours ago. I'm guessing there is more time to deal with such a hiccup on the weather side, as those prerecorded reports start running at 5:00 A.M. not 9:30. By the time I get up, if anything has gone wrong, they've probably fixed it. Do stations not usually record live reports for things like this though? I'm guessing the 9:05 report is done live, then reports for the rest of the morning are prerecorded. It would make sense to me to have some way of recording that report so that if something goes wrong with the network, you're running a report that's half an hour old, not 18 hours.
 
bobdavcav said:
Is it possible that there's a different path for live audio as opposed to the prerecorded stuff? I definitely have heard stations run an old report, but usually it's the one that ran half an hour ago, not 18 hours ago. I'm guessing there is more time to deal with such a hiccup on the weather side, as those prerecorded reports start running at 5:00 A.M. not 9:30. By the time I get up, if anything has gone wrong, they've probably fixed it. Do stations not usually record live reports for things like this though? I'm guessing the 9:05 report is done live, then reports for the rest of the morning are prerecorded. It would make sense to me to have some way of recording that report so that if something goes wrong with the network, you're running a report that's half an hour old, not 18 hours.
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a fair amount of news and weather on smaller to medium stations is recorded. But stuff thats recorded is not usually done live and they record that and use it later. If its recorded, it was recorded specifically with that intention in mind.

there would be a different path to automation for someone thats live, vs recorded, generally. these kinds of mistakes arent fun, but theyre easy to make and sometimes, hard to spot, yo ucant expect someone from the station to be listening all the time, BUT.. BUT... for a listener not to have told them.. is something else, but al;so.. ive had numerous listeners over 5 years here tell me about a problem days after i corrected it and im like "you shouldve told me" theyre like... well, you probably already knew or i was thinking someone else told you!.
 
So much for the "Live and Local" mantra from Alpha Media. After their bloodbaths in 2024, anything's possible. We'll see what happens after the Jeff Warshaw takeover.

My stations run very lean... with seven formats out of one building, a very good IT guy, we very seldom have a hiccup.
 
Not to shift gears too far off Alpha, but this is Portland-related. I heard a voice track for KZOK/Seattle go out over the air on 106.7 in Portland a couple of weekends ago. I thought it was kind of funny. My friends and I have both noticed that weekend radio in both Portland and Seattle really blow the last few, well.......decade. Audacy can barely bother to voice track anything in the middle of the day. I miss the old days (early 80's) of KGON, it was awesome.
 
We need to give Alpha Media a pass... they've been in trouble ever since Larry Wilson purchased the Digity stations and sold all the towers.
 
I spent the weekend in Portland and Eugene. I tuned in to KXL's FM feed at noon on Saturday. There were about five minutes of dead air where the CBS national news and possibly the local inserts were supposed to be!

Then on Sunday morning at 8 I streamed KXL (while in Eugene riding Amtrak up north) - also dead air, but then at 10am the FM feed did have the CBS national news.
 
Many who aren't actually in the business do assume that a disk jockey is sitting in a studio speaking live. This no longer common, even in larger markets. Voice-tracking is common, sometimes tracking just before on air playback, more often tracked earlier in the day or a day or more before. As SomeRadioGuy notes, most everything is automatically ingested. With several stations in a small market, there may be nobody home, or there may be a small staff, depending on time of day or day of week. Ten years ago, we had live jocks mornings and afternoons on two of our stations. Due to revenue levels, we now have a mix of live and tracked, depending on station and day part.
 
bossbill said:
Many who aren't actually in the business do assume that a disk jockey is sitting in a studio speaking live. This no longer common, even in larger markets. Voice-tracking is common, sometimes tracking just before on air playback, more often tracked earlier in the day or a day or more before. As SomeRadioGuy notes, most everything is automatically ingested. With several stations in a small market, there may be nobody home, or there may be a small staff, depending on time of day or day of week. Ten years ago, we had live jocks mornings and afternoons on two of our stations. Due to revenue levels, we now have a mix of live and tracked, depending on station and day part.
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So we've gone from management firing all the former employees to blaming the automation for all the problems. The deprioritization the quality of content that goes out over the air pretty much sums up why radio sucks now.
 
I guess it depends on the market and the operator. When I was a broadcast equipment peddler 30 years ago, driving through the Yellowstone area, listening to the local station, what I heard was a song being interrupted by a live remote broadcast, and then back to the middle of another song. Nowadays, we can insert a remote break between songs and it plays flawlessly. If there are no live on-air employees, then yes, we can blame the automation for a problem. As far as employee count, I'd always maintained that larger markets RIF employees because they can, and small rural markets do it because they have to.

The economics of broadcasting have changed dramatically over the years in revenues (down every year) due to other media choices, and in small markets due to the loss of locally-owed businesses, and the fact that the mega stores like Wal-Mart don't spend a penny on local radio. If they buy, it's remnant advertising with the national groups. So the Wal-Marts, Ross, Marshall's, Tractor Supply etc, and the drug chains come to town, basically cause the local retailers to shut their doors, and then don't replace the ad revenues lost.
 
One more thing... The industry has recently been handed a "new deal" with the folks that make music. Because of declining radio revenues, BMI and ASCAP have RAISED the fees we pay by 25% to make up for it! Yep, revenues down, artists are starving, so let's raise the rates! And we were suckered into it. Now we're dealing with BMI, ASCAP GMR, Sesac, oh... and Sound Exchange if we stream... all taking a piece of our diminishing pie. Add it up, close to 10% of our gross revenue now goes to those folks that make gazillions thanks to our support. Sorry I got off topic... I'm done for now!
 
bossbill said:
I guess it depends on the market and the operator. When I was a broadcast equipment peddler 30 years ago, driving through the Yellowstone area, listening to the local station, what I heard was a song being interrupted by a live remote broadcast, and then back to the middle of another song. Nowadays, we can insert a remote break between songs and it plays flawlessly. If there are no live on-air employees, then yes, we can blame the automation for a problem. As far as employee count, I'd always maintained that larger markets RIF employees because they can, and small rural markets do it because they have to.

The economics of broadcasting have changed dramatically over the years in revenues (down every year) due to other media choices, and in small markets due to the loss of locally-owed businesses, and the fact that the mega stores like Wal-Mart don't spend a penny on local radio. If they buy, it's remnant advertising with the national groups. So the Wal-Marts, Ross, Marshall's, Tractor Supply etc, and the drug chains come to town, basically cause the local retailers to shut their doors, and then don't replace the ad revenues lost.
Click to expand...

We use IMT at KSKO for automation, moving to Zetta soon. I've also used Enco, simian and Audio Vault

For being an older system and version of IMT, it works well.. "if it aint broke dont fix it" is one of my mantras but i also believe in upgrades and new when possible. IMT has needed to be updated for awhile but given where we are and our staff size, ive kept it as is because it works.

I say that to say this.. what ive learned about automation is that things go south with automation when you change things.. new permanent schedule, temp schedule.. one time change... occasional thing (like sports, etc)......ive done things wioth enco, imt and audio vault that are one time changes for a live remote, sporting event....... and if you miss one line of code or one particular command cart or one audio file.. it throws everything off.
 
Anyone using Skylla?
 


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