KTCK didn't Encode Signal ???

[zone_guy]

So, listening to The Ticket this morning, I heard the Musers announce that in there move to the new Victory Park Studios, their engineers DIDN'T ENCODE their signal for PPM. Apparently, it took them 2 weeks to realize the problem...UGH! So, for the first two weeks of the January 2012 book, they are going to have a 0.0! Yikes!

You can listen to the segment at The UnTicket:

http://www.theunticket.com/pulling-back-the-curtain-musers-explain-the-2012-encoding-snafu/

How in the world is that possible?

Well, I guess the good news is that The Fan or ESPN will FINALLY beat the Ticket.

Are they the first station in the PPM era to screw up that badly?

Surely, someone has been fired, right?

Does anyone know the "inside" story of the Cumulus Catastrophe at Victory Park?

 

[BBontheRadio]

WOW!!! That's greatness!

 

[davideduardo]

So, listening to The Ticket this morning, I heard the Musers announce that in there move to the new Victory Park Studios, their engineers DIDN'T ENCODE their signal for PPM. Apparently, it took them 2 weeks to realize the problem...UGH! So, for the first two weeks of the January 2012 book, they are going to have a 0.0! Yikes!

I checked the weeklies, which for January are 1/5 to 1/11 and 1/12 to 1/18, and the weeklies are "normal" within the range that this station wobbles. Further, the last week of Holida, ending the 4th of January, also has normal range numbers.

Sounds like they were encoded, but "making it seem" that they were not as an excuse to get listeners to "tell a friend" to listen and to openly discuss ratings.

Interesting. I'm going to check in with an Arbitron rep and see what they say.

 

[dawireless]

Fire the engineers or better yet give them a raise,for providing an excuse for potential bad book

 

[davideduardo]

Fire the engineers or better yet give them a raise,for providing an excuse for potential bad book

There is no evidence that they did not encode. January Week 1 and January Week 2 had normal numbers, not zeros (subscribers get weekly numbers).

 

[w9wi]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly?

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately. (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes) Do they not do that in radio?

 

[davideduardo]

Fire the engineers or better yet give them a raise,for providing an excuse for potential bad book

There is no evidence that they did not encode. January Week 1 and January Week 2 had normal numbers, not zeros (subscribers get weekly numbers).

The latest news is that the encoding... or lack of same... was affected in a five day period at the end of Week 3 and the beginning of Week 4. The dates mentioned by the station talent's post are off, but there really appears to have been a period where no encoding took place. As far as Arbitron is concerned, it's the same as being off the air.

 

[fybush]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly?

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately. (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes) Do they not do that in radio?

I don't think Arbitron does any sort of constant monitoring for PPM data in each market. But they provide both encoder boxes and decoder boxes to stations, and the decoders can (and should) be wired up to send an immediate alarm if PPM encoding isn't being detected. It's really hard to imagine that going unnoticed at a station owned by a major group in a top-10 market.

 

[davideduardo]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly?

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately. (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes) Do they not do that in radio?

The Nielsen system is wired, thus the ability to do overnight ratings. Any deviation from the norm can be seen... and here I am guessing... by means of an algorithm that sets off a warning for any unusual occurrence or from monitoring of the outlets themselves. The Nielsen "set top boxes" actually know what they are tuned to, and can send this data back very quickly. The PPMs are portable and only send data home each night if they are docked in a charger (although wireless ones are in development). Just in case, I am checking with Arbitron to see if they have any specific systems in place.

I do know of one nameless station that somehow took the encoder out of the audio chain, and the station did not know about it until the first weeklies came back with horrific numbers... they called Arbitron... and the first question was, "is your encoder working?"

 

[davideduardo]

Again showing my ignorance as a TV type what does Arbitron do if they realize a station isn't encoding properly?

I mean, if there's the slightest glitch with our encoding for TV, we hear from Nielsen almost immediately. (one day, one of our guys bumped the encoder offline & they were on the phone with me within ten minutes) Do they not do that in radio?

I don't think Arbitron does any sort of constant monitoring for PPM data in each market. But they provide both encoder boxes and decoder boxes to stations, and the decoders can (and should) be wired up to send an immediate alarm if PPM encoding isn't being detected. It's really hard to imagine that going unnoticed at a station owned by a major group in a top-10 market.

I've heard of a handful of cases when PPM was new where the alarm was either hooked to a lamp in engineering and not noticed for days. In several others, the alarm sent a text to the engineer, who said "I'll fix it Monday after the weekend." In all these cases, it took some training for everyone to realize that not encoding was about the same as being off the air.

 

[w9wi]

The Nielsen system is wired, thus the ability to do overnight ratings. Any deviation from the norm can be seen... and here I am guessing... by means of an algorithm that sets off a warning for any unusual occurrence or from monitoring of the outlets themselves. The Nielsen "set top boxes" actually know what they are tuned to, and can send this data back very quickly. The PPMs are portable and only send data home each night if they are docked in a charger (although wireless ones are in development). Just in case, I am checking with Arbitron to see if they have any specific systems in place.

I do know of one nameless station that somehow took the encoder out of the audio chain, and the station did not know about it until the first weeklies came back with horrific numbers... they called Arbitron... and the first question was, "is your encoder working?"

Nielsen has monitoring points of their own -- they don't have to hear from any of the boxes they've sent viewers to know there's a code problem.

I suppose the radio equivalent would be for Arbitron to put a bunch of the decoders Scott mentions in a room somewhere in the market & configure them to notify Arbitron if someone's encoding disappears.

(The decoders Scott mentions do also exist for TV)

 

[davideduardo]

I suppose the radio equivalent would be for Arbitron to put a bunch of the decoders Scott mentions in a room somewhere in the market & configure them to notify Arbitron if someone's encoding disappears.

The advantage Nielsen has is that they also have the Nielsen BDS monitoring points in the market; Arbitron has no equivalent.

Also, TV is relatively easy to monitor. With radio every market has many stations that, at any given location, can not be received or received reliably or received at night, etc. It would take multiple locations to check all the signals in most PPM markets. In the LA market, there are even multiple cases of the same AM or FM frequency being used twice within the market (94.3 FM and 1220 AM are two examples and there are several more).

The solution would seem to be an encoder alarm with "you have to see it" notification in the studio and engineering... but with so many stations unattended at certain times, even this is not perfect. Messaging for the key staff is another useful mechanism, but the staff has to know how important this is.

 

[w9wi]

Also, TV is relatively easy to monitor. With radio every market has many stations that, at any given location, can not be received or received reliably or received at night, etc. It would take multiple locations to check all the signals in most PPM markets. In the LA market, there are even multiple cases of the same AM or FM frequency being used twice within the market (94.3 FM and 1220 AM are two examples and there are several more).

Good point. Nielsen has several monitoring points (last time they called, it was because of a problem at a cable system at the eastern edge of the market -- Nashville itself was fine) but they don't need nearly as many points to monitor TV as they'd need for radio.

The solution would seem to be an encoder alarm with "you have to see it" notification in the studio and engineering... but with so many stations unattended at certain times, even this is not perfect. Messaging for the key staff is another useful mechanism, but the staff has to know how important this is.

In the end that kinda falls into the same category as having someone check the station's own decoder periodically -- us techies can provide every tool under the sun but we can't force the staff to use them

 

[BBontheRadio]

At CBS Radio Dallas we check hourly and call the engineers immediately if there are any issues.

 

[pickledfirefly]

At CBS Radio Dallas we check hourly and call the engineers immediately if there are any issues.

Really? REALLY?
The monitor(s) provided by arbitron will go into alarm state within three minutes of encoding loss (and reverse that state within three minutes of encoding return). At time of encoding loss a closure is provided on the DB connector on the rear of the unit. This should be connected directly to your remote control or another device capable of immediately texting, calling, or other means of contacting your engineers.
If one simply performs a visual check hourly, there could have very well been numerous encoding loss events missed during said hour, and the "Green Light" just happens to be on when you looked.
You need the monitor(s) properly installed sooner rather than later as your ratings depend on it. It's just two wires ......

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

The reality is big corporate broadcasters like Cumeless have done it to themselves. They have cut so many humans, especially higher paid ones, out of their payroll that no one is left to give a damn. What eng help they have left is probably overworked and under-appriciated. I've seen it before several times. Good people that are left are just doing damage control and that's about it....

 

[dfwupallnight]

What this really boils down to is one person who is either incompetent or just doesn't care. If you were listening to the Ticket the morning after the superbowl, you know what I'm talking about. Of course you'd have to be listening to the stream since everything else was off the air. My vote is for incompetence.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

"What this really boils down to is one person who is either incompetent or just doesn't care" Well, when you keep getting beat up by corporate clowns, at some point you just say to yourself "I don't give a damn". I suppose it's not right, but then again what corporate America does to their help, especially in radio it seems, isn't right either. The employee-employer relationship is poor, and that yeilds inferior results. In the mean time Lew Dickey, his relitives, and others just like him scrape all the cream off the top and leave the machine no oil to run. They are not alone, but they sure stand out as one of the worst of the worst big ones. The truth is the people left are probably just too damn beat up to watch everything they are supposed to watch. At some point it's about self-protection to keep from self-damage. You cannot be everything to everyone when those at the top simply do not care enough to cover the bases.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

So technically, you're 100 percent right. Someone screwed up big-time. The underline problem isn't likely just that though. The real problem is with a bunch of Dickeys.

 

[Triple Fake Jerry]

Five days of not encoding will result in what, a 0.1 dip in the Ticket's first-quarter numbers?

The only thing this will result in is some Barry Horn gloating on an upcoming Saturday.