GremlinsInTheSystem demonstrate the nearly lost art of backtiming

Paul McLane is U.S. editor in chief. An event that many broadcast engineering folks look forward to after the dust settles from the Las Vegas NAB Show is the annual “Hamvention” held in Dayton, Ohio. This year’s event ran from May 20 through 22, attracting 20,000 people and 250 commercial venders. Radio World contributor James O’Neal was there and shared some fun pix.The show’s theme was “Global Friendship,” with groups from amateur radio clubs in Great Britain, German, China, Japan and Qatar manning information booths.Another feature was a visit by NASA astronaut Col. Douglas Wheelock, who served a six-month tour of duty aboard the International Space Station. In addition to his regular duties there, Wheelock operated its amateur radio equipment and communicated from space with numerous schools and ham operators. A special attraction was this tube-type Collins 20V-3 AM broadcast transmitter, which...

Paul McLane is U.S. editor in chief.

Broadcast industry leaders who defend TV spectrum and push for adoption of radio in mobile devices often make the case that the broadcast infrastructure is reliable, staying on the air in times of crisis, while other platforms often do not.

A paragraph in a story in the Kansas City Star this week reminds us again that cell coverage has a nasty habit of falling apart at the worst times. “Cellphone coverage in the Joplin area was spotty, so Sprint, AT&T and Verizon Wireless sent mobile cell towers to restore service. They also were using generators to restore power to cell towers and get them running again,” it states. Read it here.

Similarly, the text at the bottom of the accompanying image here tells the tale.

Bobby Adams of GSS, whose...

Paul McLane is editor in chief/U.S. I liked Meredith Attwell Baker as soon as I met her, briefly, at the NAB Show shortly after she came on as FCC commissioner. I found her warm, engaging and intelligent; and I liked what I perceived to be her moderate/conservative regulatory outlook. But she disappoints me with her decision to move so quickly into a job working for a company whose big merger she’d only recently voted on. She’ll become senior VP of government affairs at NBCUniversal. (“VP of government affairs” means “lobbyist.”) Baker recently voted in favor of letting Comcast acquire majority control of NBCUniversal from General Electric Co. The Los Angeles Times quoted Free Press President/CEO Craig Aaron calling her job switch “just the latest — though perhaps most blatant — example of a so-called public servant cashing in at a company she is supposed to be regulating.” Her move does make us want to re-read Baker’s recent speech in which she called for an overhaul in how the FCC reviews...

Brett Moss is gear & technology editor.Knowing my curmudgeon instincts, our editor Paul McLane thought it would be amusing (he’d describe it as something else …) to send me to the Library of Congress for its announcement of the National Jukebox project.Hah! The joke’s on him! (Sort of.)The National Jukebox is a co-op project with Sony Music Entertainment and the LOC. The concept is a website/streaming media portal, free to the general public. Think of it as a Pandora for the past.The first installment contains 10,300 recordings “donated” by Sony Music Entertainment. It consists of nearly full catalogs of Victor, Columbia and OKeh recordings from the beginnings of those labels to 1925. Sony owns those back catalogs.The iteration I saw at a press conference in Washington was quite impressive, not only in the breadth of recordings available but additional material. As the library recorded/digitized each record, it snapped a picture of the label. Bonus material was made available by the University of California at...

Brett Moss is gear & technology editor. So how does a guy known to many as “Silent Bob” get a radio gig? Well, it’s complicated yet simple. Silent Bob is the creation of comic, actor, writer, director, producer Kevin Smith. The ever-loquacious Smith is nothing if not creative (and almost omnipresent). He’s inked a deal with Stitcher Radio, an Internet radio aggregator, to make Stitcher’s SmartRadio app (Apple, Android, BlackBerry and Palm smartphones) the “official mobile partner” of Smith’s new venture SModcast Internet Radio (S.I.R.). That’s an Internet radio-powered version of Smith’s podcast warehouse website, SModcast. Smith and companions have been quite fruitful in creating podcasts — most with the same juvenile, drug-addled/sex-crazed low-rent (and low-cost) slacker humor that made Smith millions and famous. Rather than have them just lay there, Smith has decided to...

Brett Moss is gear and technology editor.This might surprise some readers, but Tennessee doesn’t have a hall of fame for radio broadcasters. Neighboring states do, but somehow Tennessee seems to have not gotten around to it.Considering that one of the highlights of the NAB Show was induction of Nashville’s Gerry House into the NAB Broadcasting Hall of Fame, and that WVVR(FM) of Clarksville snagged a Crystal Radio Award, the lack of an HOF is more noticeable. And those are just from this spring. Let’s not even mention country radio’s deep historical presence in Tennessee. (Oops, we mentioned it.)Now a few Tennesseans have decided to do something about that.Led by Lee Dorman, GM of WQKR(AM/FM) and author of the book, “Nashville Broadcasting,” the foundation for a Tennessee Radio Hall of Fame has been laid.Dorman started this ball rolling after attending ceremonies at the Georgia Radio Hall of Fame last year and wondering, “Why can’t we in Tennessee...