Broadcasting Events

It’s billed as “The world’s most influential media, entertainment and technology show.” IBC 2019 is coming to Amsterdam September 13-17. Six leading international bodies are the partners behind IBC, which represents both exhibitors and visitors. The 2018 show attracted more than 55,000 attendees from 150 countries around the world, as well as over 1,700 exhibitors and more than 400 speakers. Needless to say, RCS will be one of those exhibitors.

IBC will be held at the RAI, one of Europe’s largest exhibition and convention venues. It’s just ten minutes by train from Schiphol international airport, which has direct flights to over 200 cities in 97 countries.

Be sure to visit us, we’ll be in Hall 8.C32. While you’re there, meet Revma, our new professional grade streaming solution.

2019 marks the 40th anniversary of the founding of RCS. Our roving birthday party that kicked off at the NAB Show in April continues at IBC. Be sure to grab some refreshments and join the conversation about the history and future of RCS. You’ll earn bonus points if you’ve been to any of our previous parties.

If you want to take a deeper dive into the business and social implications of emerging technologies, IBC offers the executive forums, an exclusive, invitation-only club bringing together a network of media and entertainment’s most eminent leaders to engage in open debate, discussion and problem solving. With no press permitted, delegates can speak freely, addressing critical issues and highlighting their concerns in a more open environment. Three programs will be presented in the Executive Forum – the Leaders’ Forum, Cyber Security Forum and Telco & Media Innovation Forum. All are scheduled for September 12.

There will be lots of other things to see and do at IBC. Awards that are presented at the show celebrate everything from exceptional booth design on the IBC Exhibition floor to innovative thinking and research in our technical papers to creative collaborations between technical partners and end users to outstanding achievement in the industry. It all takes place on awards night.

At RCS, not only do we operate sales offices around the globe, we’re also a part of the broadcasting communities that we serve. Sometimes that means sponsoring events or awards at professional trade organizations. RCS Australia is proud to be a Silver Partner with ACRA (Australian Commercial Radio Awards), and for over ten years, sponsor of the Best Music Presenter awards.

The ACRAs are the pinnacle event in the Awards weekend, which also includes the National Radio Conference. The Awards weekend is the only weekend of events in Australia dedicated to the commercial radio industry and is the largest gathering for commercial radio professionals in the southern hemisphere.

RCS always has a small booth at the CRA conference. It is located in the break out area and gives our staff a good chance to speak with clients in between the conference speakers.

The national Awards include 39 categories and cover all areas of radio broadcasting. Winners are awarded in each category across three divisions: metropolitan, provincial and country commercial radio stations.

Last year, the Best Music Presenter awards went to: Bryce Ruthven, Edge FM, Deniliquin NSW, ACE Radio Broadcasters – Country; in the Provincial division, Josh Olek,, K rock, Geelong VIC, Grant Broadcaster; Melissa Doyle, smoothfm, Sydney NSW, NOVA Entertainment in the Metropolitan division.

The ACRAs are held annually, and were previously known as the RAWARDS, first held by FARB in 1989. The ACRAs are held as part of the Awards weekend in either Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane or the Gold Coast.

The 2019 ACRAS will take place Saturday October 19th at the Royal International Convention Center in Brisbane.

While RCS sells software to customers worldwide, our commitment to the communities that we serve runs much deeper than that. We spoke with Max Davies, Managing Director, RCS(NZ) Ltd. about some of the awards that are sponsored by RCS to recognize those who toil in neglected segments of New Zealand’s broadcast community.

The New Zealand Radio Awards began in 1978, and were created with the aim of supporting and recognizing excellence in radio broadcasting in New Zealand. The Awards celebrate the very best of New Zealand radio, honoring personalities, programming, news and sports reporting, production and creativity within the industry. This year, the event was held at the SkyCity Theater in Auckland, with about 800 in attendance.

RCS is proud to sponsor the annual “Associated Craft Award” which recognizes those working behind the microphones. As Davis explains,”This award is made to individuals or teams who show the highest standards of overall professionalism in providing support services to radio broadcasting. e.g. schedules, administrative, accounts, public relations, office management, technical, training or research.”

This year, the award was presented to Alison Watt, the Content and Marketing Manager for The Radio Bureau (TRB). TRB is an industry-owned sales organization that provides a platform for national buying agencies to buy radio nationally without having to deal separately with multiple radio organizations. They also market radio as a national medium. Davies adds that TRB uses Aquira’s predecessor, Airwaves (and Airmail) to electronically broker bookings to radio stations across the country, and to provide reconciled post campaign reports to their advertiser clients.

“From our perspective, these awards are a key event in the calendar for our customers and give us a chance to catch up socially with many of our customers,” says Davies. “It also allows us to raise the profile of those who support the “Rock Stars” of radio.”

The other awards that RCS supports are the Maori Radio Awards, held once every two years. The Maori are the indigenous people of New Zealand, and they consist of many separate “Iwi” – or tribes. The majority of them are a part of the 20-plus station “Iwi Radio Network.” They are partially funded by the government, and part self-funded through advertising. They have to meet fairly stringent compliance rules in order to retain government funding. This event is a highlight of the Iwi network calendar.

here were 18 categories at the most recent awards ceremony held in October 2018. One of these categories looks at developing youth in the industry. Riria Dalton-Reedy, winner of the youth award representing Radio Ngāti Porou, says, “This is a surprise. I’m up with the best of Māori broadcasters and I’m still young so I am very lucky to win this award for best youth show.”

Tumeke FM was a finalist in nine categories. The station won the awards for Best Station Imaging, Best Current Affairs or Talk Show, Best Program Director, Best outside Broadcast and the supreme award of the night.

Davies and tech support manager Simon Tims were also asked to present two of the awards, which sounded like fun until they were told (after arriving) that they were also expected to make a small speech. Sounds like no big deal, except they were expected to deliver it in the indigenous language. Needless to say, Davies and Tims both hope to have mastered the fundamentals of Te Reo Maori before the next event in 2020!

BroadcastAsia is the region’s must-attend international convention for media, entertainment and technology professionals. This year, the event was held alongside CommunicAsia and the new NXTAsia under the ConnecTechAsia brand umbrella. BroadcastAsia was held June 18-20 at the also-new Suntec city venue in Singapore. Over 17,000 were in attendance, and it goes without saying that RCS was in the thick of it.

The RCS 40th birthday party, which began in April at NAB, continued at BroadcastAsia. Combined with the traditional RCS ‘Happy Hour’, the celebration included fellowship and conversations, beer on tap, lots of snacks and balloons.

And speaking of balloons, a trial balloon of sorts was launched at BroadcastAsia 2019. A media student with an interest in radio joined the RCS team at the show and acted as an assistant. Think of it as a short-term paid internship.

Competition for the position was intense, and the winner was a second-year communications student at Singapore’s Temasek Polytechnic College, Joey Lim. Joey made a great impression on the RCS team and visitors to our booth during the three days of the conference. That shouldn’t come as a surprise. Joey actually is actually a Zetta user, since she is one of the on-air team at Temasek’s campus radio station, Radio Active.

Based on the success of this experiment, we may make it a regular thing at future trade shows. We’d love to team up with college media departments and seek out bright and talented students interested in a career in radio broadcasting.

The observant among you may have noticed that we added an additional stripe to the design we have long used at the back of our booth at international trade shows. The new stripe is green – and shows Revma (our new streaming service) as a fifth major product category. For the extra observant, the colors run in order of the RCS logo (which features the colors of the rainbow, of course). So there are two colors still available for future ideas: red and indigo!

RCS is celebrating our 40th birthday this year and a kick off celebration was held during the NAB show in Las Vegas this past April. Enjoy the recap video and we look forward to celebrating with you all year.

By Michael Schein

It was just shy of a hundred years ago that the first National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Convention took place in New York City’s Commodore Hotel. It was attended by 23 people. Things have certainly changed. Today the Las Vegas-based NAB Show (as it is now called) attracts more than 100,000 attendees each year from around the world. In addition to myriad keynotes, panel discussions, and networking events, the conference’s exhibition hall spans more than a million square feet and multiple buildings.

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After months of preparation, anticipation and media hype, NAB 2019 is over, and quickly fading in the rear view mirror. During the second week in April, the Las Vegas Convention Center hosted over 1,400 exhibitors and 92,812 attendees. 24,096 of those attending were international visitors, representing 106 countries. Before too much time elapses, let’s recap some of the highlights.

For RCS, it was another great show. First, we received several accolades at NAB. Our cloud development team, led by Chip Jellison, spearheaded the Zetta Cloud Disaster Recovery rollout. For that, we received a Future Best of Show Award. Accepting the award were Jellison, CTO/EVP Technology & Development along with the President/CEO of RCS, Philippe Generali. The award was presented by Radio World’s Managing Director, Content, Paul McLane. Radio World said in part that Zetta Cloud was selected for its “design, features, cost efficiency and performance in serving professional users.”

Reflecting on the recognition for Zetta Cloud, Philippe Generali commented: “We are honored to receive this prestigious award and very encouraged that some of our largest customers around the world are enthused by our new cloud-based offerings, including Zetta Disaster Recovery. This award is also a great tribute to the leadership of Chip Jellison and his highly skilled team.”

The show also saw the world premiere of a professional radio automation system running inside a SOUND4 audio processing device. An instance of Zetta Cloud was installed and running happily on an internal CPU with storage provided by an SD card. For that achievement, we shared another Future/Radio World award with the SOUND4 team.

Rounding out the awards received at NAB, the new RCS pavilion itself earned some recognition. Radio World gave it a Best of Show award for Booth Design. And if you saw our booth, you’ll probably remember it as the one that looked like it arrived from 20 years in the future.
It occupies 900 square feet, stands 18 feet tall and takes about a week to assemble. This booth will be used exclusively for the NAB Show in Las Vegas. It was designed by Sr. Director of Marketing for RCS Diana Stokey and Exhibit Concepts.

Winning awards wasn’t the only good news at NAB. We also held our official 40th birthday celebration during Happy Hour on April 9th. Friends and customers gathered for cold drinks, chocolate chip cookies and to share stories about the past, present and future of RCS.

NAB was also where we officially welcomed the newest member of the RCS family, Athens, Greece-based online audio tech company, RCS Technology Greece. They’ve come on board to deliver a centralized, cloud-based audio playout platform that can cohesively combine the seamless elements of broadcast radio.

RCS won a Future Best of Show Award, presented by Radio World, for the revolutionary “Zetta Cloud”. The award was presented at the NAB show by Radio World’s Managing Director, Content, Paul McLane (left in our picture). Receiving the award on behalf of RCS is Chip Jellison, CTO/EVP Technology & Development (center) and the President/CEO of RCS, Philippe Generali (right).

RCS wins a second Future Best of Show Award on the final day of the 2019 NAB Show in Las Vegas! This award is for Booth Design and comes hot on the heels of the award we received yesterday for Zetta Cloud. Pictured below with the two awards are Neal Perchuk (SVP Sales, Americas) and Diana Stokey (Senior Director of Marketing).

Your feet hurt. All of your senses have been totally overstimulated. And your diet for the past several hours has consisted of hot dogs, cheese fries and soda. This can only mean one thing. You’re in Las Vegas attending another NAB Show.

How quickly the 12 months seem to go by. Soon it will be time to pack your bags, make the flight to Nevada, reconnect with old acquaintances, make new connections and ramp yourself up on the latest broadcast technology.

For RCS, this is a special event because at this year’s show we’re celebrating our 40th anniversary. Stop by and visit us as booth N2519. The birthday party will be taking place during Happy Hour on April 9th at 3 PM. But there’s more than cake and ice cream to be excited about.

A new member has joined the RCS family. Athens-based online audio tech company, Radiojar (now to become RCS Technologies Greece) has come onboard to deliver a centralized, cloud-based audio playout platform that can cohesively combine the seamless elements of broadcast radio and transition these listening experiences into other audio platforms.

Reflecting on the acquisition, Philippe Generali, RCS President/CEO said: “Complementing our recent announcements about our cloud-based scheduling, playout and disaster recovery services, this acquisition will help RCS bring an even wider range of sophisticated online broadcast tools to our customers. In the near future, using cloud-based technology, it will be possible to launch a brand-new radio service across broadcast and digital within minutes of the original idea. It’s the ultimate ‘pop-up’ radio station, if you will.”

RCS may be celebrating its 40th birthday, but its history of leadership and innovation is still forging ahead. We are thrilled to be sharing with our customers an incredible new way of giving your station the best possible low-cost disaster recovery insurance, and it’s based on our brand new service, Zetta Cloud.

Zetta Cloud’s Disaster Recovery system continuously backs up your database including audio and schedule, and then sends it to the Cloud. It’s an ongoing background process that never affects your normal workflow.

In the case of a serious event that disables your radio station, Zetta Cloud takes over, allowing you to stream your station audio directly from the Cloud to your transmitter, web stream or emergency studios. When your station is ready to resume normal service, it takes just a couple of minutes for Zetta Cloud to restore your database, with audio, to resume normal service.

Think of Zetta Cloud as a crucially important insurance policy. For while we sincerely hope that you never have to experience an event that severely disrupts your radio station, if something does go horribly wrong, you will be very glad that Zetta Cloud has your back.