Tech Roundup

After nearly a quarter century, Jim Roberts has decided to part ways with family — Mid-West Family Broadcasting, to be precise. Roberts, who has served as GM of the company's four-station South Bend, Ind., cluster, has accepted a key sales role at Futuri Media.

One of the world's top spoken word audio on-demand platforms has just made a major play for one of the globe's biggest streaming audio providers. In an announcement made this morning from its headquarters office just south of London's Tower Bridge in Southwark, Audioboom has offered to purchase Triton Digital for $185 million in an all-cash deal.

Video delivery and cable access virtualization company Harmonic has expanded its board of directors with the appointment of a strategic advisor to Roku. This individual is a former President/COO of Roku, and earlier in his career was a President/CEO of Avid Technology.

Comrex has released a new firmware version for Opal, the Massachusetts-based company's IP audio gateway. Opal firmware 1.1 includes native ​Safari support for macOS and iOS11.

Moving content from creation through distribution, while providing top-level monitoring and management, is a key desire of many media techies. Telestream hopes its media workflow orchestration, media streaming and delivery technologies are a top choice for 2018 NAB Show attendees.

The NAB is launching “Broadcast Innovation Stories,” a new campaign to highlight cutting-edge technological advancements in the broadcast television and radio industries. NAB’s innovation initiative, PILOT, will spearhead the campaign, which runs through April 2018.

Sonnet will showcase at the 2018 NAB Show its new eGFX Breakaway Box 650, a Thunderbolt 3 to eGPU PCI Express (PCIe) card expansion system designed and qualified specifically for large, power-hungry video graphics processing unit (GPU) cards, including the AMD Radeon RX Vega 64, Radeon Pro WX 9100, 9100 SSG and overclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 10 series-based cards.

For the past 18 years, Ken Wildgoose has led Ajax, Ontario-led ATX Networks, a provider of network infrastructure systems and commercial video solutions, as its President/CEO. He's just stepped down from the post, but will remain on the company's board of directors while becoming an advisor. Who is replacing Wildgoose? It's an individual who has long been associated with broadcast tower giant GatesAir

Here's a statistic that Germany's Rohde & Schwarz is boasting to potential consumers: Six out of seven national broadcasters have chosen to deploy its R&S®THU9evo digital transmitter for their primary broadcasts from One World Trade Center.

Are your radio stations looking for a "premium" fun and easy-to-use photo booth experience? Consider the HALO app and hardware associated with the newly launched Simple Booth, now available to radio through YEA Networks. 

Photography, video, audio, imaging and electronics retailer Adorama is further expanding its Adorama Business Solutions B2B sales division with the launch of a new subscription-based post-sales support program designed to deliver enterprise customers ongoing technical support after the initial point of purchase.

D2D Technologies has brought to market the D2Flex 3000, the latest full duplex IP/ASI Video Gateway that features the Secure Reliable Transport (SRT) protocol for reliable transmission of high quality video with low latency across the public internet.

Two former Tightrope Media Systems executives responsible for much of the success of a product known as ZEPLAY have taken ownership of the media tech tool. They have big plans for its future, and are scheduled to use the 2018 NAB Show as a big platform for sharing their vision.

When it comes to production libraries, Entercom had a choice to make as it continues to integrate the former CBS Radio stations and evaluate what's in use at its legacy stations. A decision has been made, and the company has inked a multi-year deal.

Here's something every FCC Commissioner can agree on: The Federal government has no business in leading the construction and operation of a nationwide 5G network for cellular communications. A visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who focuses on the impact of technology on the U.S. economy, telecommunications, and internet regulation agrees. Here's exactly how Bret Swanson feels about the government's role -- or wholesale lack of involvement -- in something that could greatly impact your business.