ASIA

The New York Festivals® 2023 Radio Awards competition has announced the Shortlist and 36 entries from Asia have made it to the list.India leads with 17 shortlists, including six each for Radio Mirchi and Radio City, two each for Club FM and Bhopuwala Creative Solutions Private Limited and one for MnM Talkies.It is followed by Qatar with 10 entries by Al Jazeera being shortlisted. Radio Taiwan International from Taiwan and Singapore’s Mediacorp have three entries each. Energy Radio from Saudi Arabia has two and TBS from South Korea has one shortlist.

Other shortlisted entries from around the world include Bono On Q With Tom Power, Pink Card, The First Interview with Lionel Messi as World Champion, and Ka Pō Ka Ao – Rob Ruha and the Auckland Philharmonia.All Entries in the 2023 competition were screened online by NYF’s Radio Awards international Grand Jury of 200+ producers, directors, writers, and other creative media professionals from around the globe and judged on the following set of criteria: production values, creativity, content presentation, direction, writing, achievement of purpose and audience suitability.Shortlisted entries include audiobooks, podcasts, dramas, documentaries, breaking news coverage, entertainment, and music specials from radio stations, networks, prominent production companies and independent producers.For 2023, Podcasts dominated the Shortlist with the Grand Jury advancing 105 Podcast entries to the next round. Podcasts engaged listeners with entries in multiple categories including Drama, Comedy, Sports, Entertainment, Series, Technology, News Business, and Social Justice.New for 2023, the National Press Club Award will go to the highest scoring entry in these news program categories: Best Coverage Of Breaking News Story, Best Coverage Of Ongoing News Story, Best Nonfiction Series and News Podcast. The winner will be announced during the New York Festivals 2023 Storytellers Gala virtual event on April 18th.The New York Festivals Radio Awards 65-year legacy provides a showcase to celebrate world-class storytellers from around the globe. Since 1957 the competition has celebrated innovation and excellence in broadcast audio content across all genres and platforms keeping pace with industry developments and global trends.Award-winning entries will be announced during the New York Festivals 2023 Storytellers Gala virtual event on April 18th. All winners will be showcased on the Radio Awards winners gallery. […]

A Pakistan senate committee has approved adding a one-time Rs. 500 “radio fee” for vehicle registration to raise revenue for Radio Pakistan.The recommendation came from a sub-committee of the Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting.Senator Irfan Siddiqui chaired a meeting with the Senate Standing Committee on Information with Senator Fauzia Arshad and Senator Syed Waqar Mehdi, stating that more than three million cars are registered annually and all use the radio.

The sub-committee said the move would generate an additional Rs15 billion (US$54 million) annually for Radio Pakistan, which has long faced financial constraints.A similar proposal to add a radio fee to car registrations was proposed by a group of members of parliament early last year but failed to pass the National Assembly. […]

IP audio innovator Barix comes to NAB Show 2023 with Reflector EVO, its next-generation cloud service for audio contribution and distribution. Reflector EVO improves on the original Reflector service, introduced in 2010, by adding guaranteed absolute audio delay, improved stream redundancy, browser-based confidence monitoring and OPUS audio support. Barix will also introduce a new broadcast-specific hardware codec at NAB to pair with the Reflector EVO service.Same as the original service, StreamGuys will provide virtual cloud hosting and 24/7 back-end support, providing broadcasters with an accessible service for unidirectional STL connections, syndicated program distribution, and stream replication for rebroadcasts, retransmissions, and other audio services. The result is a reliable, scalable, and affordable alternative to satellite contribution and distribution with best-of-class service hosting and technical support.Reflector was a true groundbreaker upon introduction 13 years ago. Reflector made it simple for broadcasters to connect an encoder and decoder over the public internet to move high-quality audio. It removed the network configuration challenges of fixed IP address and firewalls, and brought tedious negotiations with network administrators and ISPs to a halt.

“IP networking was largely an unknown entity for broadcasters through the 2000s, and it was a complex undertaking for the early adopters,” reflects Reto Brader, CEO of Barix. “Reflector took the complexity out of the equation. A few clicks in the Reflector UI, a few settings on the hardware devices, and the audio started to flow. More than a decade later, the fundamental value of the original Reflector service remains; Reflector EVO tackles the modern IP networking challenges of larger networks while adding meaningful features for broadcasters.”OPUS audio is among those new features, giving broadcasters a high-quality, bandwidth-efficient option to uncompressed PCM streaming and other compressed audio codecs that Barix continues to support in Reflector EVO. Barix also takes longtime Reflector users into new territory by enabling fixed end-to-end audio delay for the first time. Customers can manually configure encoding quality and the desired audio delay level of the receiving decoder (between three and 30 seconds), with seamless communication between each device from any global location. Primary and backup streams optimize resiliency, recovering lost packets from network glitches through redundant paths and multi-source switchover capabilities.“Cloud adoption is moving ahead in the broadcast community, and Reflector EVO supports the high level of redundancy and scalability that customers expect from cloud services,” said Brader. “We have introduced redundancy to correct for short bursts of data loss and heal those losses in the stream, and expanded enabled fast switching from one encoder to another. That means more geographically distributed source locations, such as backup studios, to optimize redundancy. Scalability has always been a strength of Reflector, which is why it is popular for program syndication and multipoint STL distribution. A few clicks, and a new location is live.”The new corresponding hardware codec, developed specifically for Reflector EVO, can be configured as an encoder and decoder. The codecs feature the same embedded technologies under the hood and are quick to deploy once configured, with simple connections at the transmit (encoding) and receive (decoding) points. The codecs also provide flexible switching options (contact closures, UDP commands), relay support, and selectable input gain.Brader is grateful to continue its partnership with StreamGuys for the next generation of Reflector. “Barix understands radio broadcast requirements such as controlled audio delay through the system, the need for remote contact closures that synchronize with program audio, and so on. StreamGuys is a trusted service provider for live and on-demand broadcast streaming that excels in service reliability and 24/7 availability. The two companies together provide a complete cloud solution for radio broadcasters worldwide.” […]

Content from BPRThe new Netflix documentary, “Pepsi, Where’s My Jet”, is the story of a guy called John Leonard who sued Pepsi for false advertising. While the move backfired on John, the court case shaped advertising laws forever.In 1995, Leonard was a 20-year-old student in the United States, where he was coaching little league football and dreaming of having a successful business. But, a commercial from Pepsi changed the course of his life.

The 90s were all about the cola wars and in a bid to steer Gen Xers to choose Pepsi over Coca-Cola, Pepsi introduced Pepsi Points, which could be redeemed for Pepsi merchandise.What could Pepsi Points buy?In order to understand the difficulty of buying merchandise with points, basic maths needs to be applied. The amount of points a customer would receive was:
A fountain drink = one point
Two-litre bottle = two points
12 pack = five points
After months of saving for points customers would be able to buy the following:
Baseball caps = 60 points
T-shirts = 80 points
Mountain bikes = thousands
And the prize that took Leonard to court…. a military grade Harrier jet = a whopping 7 million points
Now, neither the radio or TV commercials contained any fine print, disclaimer or legal notice telling viewers it was a joke. There was no Harrier jet. But unaware of this, Leonard was on a mission to get the jet, and found five investors to help him achieve his goal.It was too expensive to buy all that Pepsi to get the 7 million points. So, Leonard found a loophole in the fine print. Pepsi Points could be purchased for ten cents a-piece. With the help of his investors, he sent off a $700,008.50 cheque – and sat back waiting for his Harrier jet to arrive.Weeks later, Pepsi responded saying the inclusion of the Harrier jet in the commercial was nothing more than a joke. But Leonard didn’t want to take no as an answer. After filing of legal suits and counter suits, Pepsi offered Leonard a settlement of $750,000, but he rejected it as he was still on a mission to claim the jet. The Pentagon even got involved. In September 1997, the Pentagon announced that Harrier jets were not for sale and would need to be “demilitarized” before being offered to the public, which included disabling their ability to conduct vertical take-offs and landings.Unfortunately, in 1999, the judge ruled in favour of Pepsi, saying no reasonable person would think a Harrier jet was attainable by claiming Pepsi reward points.Leonard might not have received his Harrier jet, but he made history as he changed the way advertising was presented, with disclaimers now an integral part of many commercials.Outside of April Fool’s pranks, duping your listeners with false statements or promises that might seem hilarious to you is a dangerous road to go down. Make sure EVERYONE is in on the joke. Remember the Hooters waitress who thought she’d won a Toyota but instead the restaurant chain gave her a Toy Yoda. She won enough money in the court case to buy any Toyota she wanted…. and then some!By David Kidd, BPR […]

Selling Radio Direct with Pat BrysonIn a recent training session that I did with one of my clients, we looked at attrition rates for the past year. If you haven’t done this lately, I suggest you do so, but get ready to be looking for the next bottle of your favorite adult beverage. We lose clients for a variety of reasons, some beyond our control. Someone closes, retires, sells, changes managers, changes marketing philosophies, gets upset with us.It’s the last reason I’d like to talk about today. The Internet for the most part has the customer experience done well. From start to finish, the buying process is seamless. This has spoiled consumers. Our clients are consumers also. The last few years have raised their expectations of doing business with us. Our customer process must be easy from start to finish.

Which brings me to the real subject of this newsletter: when I call you or your station, what do I hear?The other day I called a potential client and a real, LIVE person answered the phone. Wow! A receptionist, not a voice mail. That in itself was a reason to mark the day on my calendar. I didn’t have to listen to a litany of “Press one for X, Press 2 for Y, Press 3 for Z”. What happened next was even more unusual. Here’s what I heard: “Good morning. This is ____ with station ____. How may I make your day great?” I nearly fell out of my chair. I also broke into a wide smile and realized that this person HAD made my day great by that simple phrase.What do YOUR clients hear when they call you or your station? Do they get, “You’ve reached XYZ Company. If you know your person’s extension, you may dial it now. Or, hang on the line for an interminable list of extensions.” Or, my personal favorite, “Spell the person’s last name.” Or how about, “Our customer service representatives are all busy. Your wait time will be less than one hour.”I don’t know about you, but my blood pressure has gone up a few notches after dealing with these scenarios. As we talk with our clients about how to entice customers back into their stores, we might want to address making it easy to connect. What happens in that initial contact can make or break what follows.How about us? How is your station’s phone answered? The person who answers the phone is often the first contact potential clients or listeners have with us. Is it positive? Do we sound like we genuinely want to solve their problem? Does the person who encounters the problem follow it through to completion or hand it off to someone else and never think about it again?We have two sets of customers: our listeners and viewers and our advertisers. Both are important to our success.Some great opening lines I’ve heard on voice mail:“I’m so sorry I can’t answer your call right now. I’m out helping my clients to make 2023 the best year ever. I’d enjoy helping you as well. If you’ll leave your name and number, I’ll call you back quickly.”“Sorry I missed your call. I’m out discussing with my clients how to find good, qualified employees. If you’re recruiting, perhaps our stations might be of help. Leave your name and number and I’ll call you back.”“Hi! You’ve reached ___ _____ at XXXXX. Right now I’m out helping my clients create successful marketing campaigns to make 2023 their best year ever. Leave me your name and number and I’ll do the same for you.”Note that all of these focused on what the salesperson is doing for the clients. What problems are we helping them solve? We aren’t out “selling radio or TV” we are out working with our clients to raise their revenue, to help them to solve their ever-evolving business problems.I hope your first connection with customers will put a smile on their face. Be the ray of positivity in an uncertain world. Make it easy to connect with you. Don’t lose a customer at “hello”. […]

Dielectric’s new Apollo advanced analytics software platform will be introduced at NAB Show 2023. Apollo is designed to help radio and TV engineers take quick and decisive action on current problems, and take preventative actions that eliminate potentially disastrous situations in the future.Apollo, which Dielectric previewed at NAB Show 2022, accurately detects anomalies in RF systems for TV and FM broadcasters.

The advanced analytical software is an extension of RFHAWKEYE™, Dielectric’s IP-based remote RF monitoring solution. RFHAWKEYE’s software suite integrates Apollo to help users quickly analyse and formulate site data into actionable reports. These reports can be customized to prioritize important system information and performance trends over selectable time periods.Apollo brings a managed services offering to their portfolio. Dielectric will house Apollo in its new network operations centre (NOC) and provide reports to customers on a quarterly basis that offer performance insights, communicate alarm instances and actions taken, and provide maintenance suggestions intended to reduce system failures and increase performance. Dielectric customers are also provided remote access to Apollo to generate and review system and performance data at any time.Vice President of Sales, Jay Martin, says, “Apollo allows us to create a detailed performance record using the real-time data collected through RFHAWKEYE. With this information, we work with the customer to evaluate any degradation that has taken place over time and in some cases, recommend preventive maintenance to eliminate catastrophic failures and improve service. “We will provide insights into the problems we see and recommend specific actions to take, and also deliver this information within executive summaries that are quick to digest and easy to understand.”Martin notes that Apollo will bring strong value to customers with multiple transmitter and tower sites. One example is how Apollo will observe and capture VSWR measurements from multiple sites connected to RFHAWKEYE’s monitoring platform, and identify any degradation over a specific timeframe. That includes specific instances of when a problem crosses a threshold, and how these can be avoided in the future.He says, “Apollo shines in multi-site situations where customers can create a centralized Apollo experience. “Apollo will provide maps of multiple sites, and users can drill deeper into the data for any site on that map. The reduction in labor will be exceptional for these customers as Apollo removes the burden of manually visiting, inspecting and developing reports for each station. This is a very user-friendly tool for every customer from the single-site owner to networks with large, national footprints.”NAB Show 2023 takes place from April 16-19 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Dielectric exhibits at Booth W3601. […]