Monday Morning Coffee and Technical Notes

September 1, 2025 View as Webpage

Annual Licenses Fees

The FCC released its Order adopting the regulatory fees to be paid by broadcasters for 2025. The Public Notice indicated fees for radio stations generally decreased slightly from last year. The Commission slightly increased fees for TV stations by 1.2% from last year



Regulatory fee payments must be received by the Commission no later than 11:59 PM, Eastern Daylight Time, on September 25, 2025. You may submit payments at any time before the FY 2025 regulatory fees due date.

The Commission has discontinued the use of the Fee Filer system and incorporated this payment system into the Commission Registration System (CORES). To use CORES, you need to be registered with the FCC at https://apps2.fcc.gov/fccUserReg/pages/login.htm.

Once your FCC username is registered and verified, you can access CORES and select the option to associate your existing FRN to that username, if you have not already done so. To make a FY 2025 regulatory fee payment, login to the following website using your username and password: https://apps.fcc.gov/cores/userLogin.do.

ABA Engineering Academy Classes

We still have a few seats left for the ABA Engineering Academy’s Radio Class. This class is not only for beginners but seasoned engineers as well. It covers basic electronics, analog and digital audio, AM and FM transmitter theory, and basic station technical operation (FCC Rules, EAS, IP for broadcast operations, good engineering practices, etc.).

The Radio Class is scheduled the week of September 22^nd – 26^th. Classes are held at the ABA Training Center, 2180 Parkway Lake Drive in Hoover (Birmingham) AL. Class outlines, hotel information, and online registration are available at the Engineering Academy website.

Our Television Engineering Class will be held November 3rd – 7th.



 Remember these classes are offered to anyone around the country and at no cost, as a service to the engineering community by the Alabama Broadcaster Association’s Engineering Services. 

The Importance of Redundancy

In today’s world broadcast downtime is not an option, reliable broadcast operations are a must.

Broadcasters face pressures to remain operational at all times. When other platforms go down, broadcasters are expected to be the source of real-time information. If they’re down, too, the impact on the company’s reputation can be severe.

Redundancy in broadcast operations is crucial for ensuring uninterrupted service, maintaining audience trust, and protecting against significant financial losses. It involves duplicating critical systems and components to create backup mechanisms that automatically take over in the event of failure, preventing a “single point of failure” from causing a catastrophic outage.

Engineers are encouraged to review their stations program signal path, making sure that every device that the program goes through has either a redundant unit or at the least a way to patch around it in case of a failure.

Now that so many stations are adopting IP infrastructure as their main program stream, it is extremely important to ensure that there is a backup delivery path in case of a network failure.

Taking a page from the Pro Audio field, Live sound engineers are using dual fiber networks and even having an analog backup feed to the speaker system with auto fall over.



 I once visited a radio station that had four separate ways of delivering audio to the transmitter including a Marti RPU unit (which is legal to use in case of an emergency)

Tidy Up!

A clean and uncluttered transmitter building not only looks pleasing but makes it a safer and more pleasant place to do work. Making sure there are no cables or equipment sitting in places that would create tripping issues, proper lighting in the building, tools put away and trash cans emptied regularly.

Keep a broom handy to clean up the area. Keeping filters in the building HVAC or other air flow systems changed will aid in keeping dust down. Sealing any openings (cable ports or cracks around doors) not only cut down on outside dust but will help control unwanted insects for getting into the room.

For concrete block buildings, ensure surfaces are coated with suitable paint.   Unpainted concrete will continue to release dust particles for years.

Don’t forget to manage the grounds around the building as well. Keeping a weed eater around will make this job easier. Be proud of your site, keep it a clean and safe place to work.

ABA Engineering Webinar

Our next Engineering Webinar will be Tuesday September 16^th starting at 10:00 AM central time.  Special guest will be Jeff Weldon, Nautel, better known as “Mr. Grounding”. Jeff is well noted as a grounding expert in the industry. 

On this webinar we will be discussing how to work with copper straps, proper routing, bonding and how to attach a 4” copper strap to a 10-foot ground rod.

Make your plans to join us Tuesday September 16^th at 10:00 AM central time for this most informative webinar. Click here to register.ABA Engineering Webinar

Pro Audio – Creating The Monitor Mix

Some think that being a monitor mix engineer is secondary to the Front of House (FOH) mix engineer. I totally disagree. It actually could be more important than the FOH. If the artist cannot hear well, the performance will suffer.

In creating the monitor mix, the monitor engineer clearly has to consider any stated requirements of the band. But he or she also needs to work on his or her own initiative — the band may express certain requirements, but they are not engineers themselves and cannot be expected to understand the whole of the process.

The difference between the basic monitor mix and front-of-house mix is that the monitor mix must be effective. It doesn't need to be a wonderfully musical mix, but it must:

• Allow the musicians to play well together rhythmically.
• Tell the musicians where they are in the song.
• Allow singers to sing in tune, for which they need to hear themselves and harmony instruments.
• Allow string players (in particular) to play well and in tune, for which ideally they need to hear themselves, not just the whole string section.
• Keep the drummer in time with the backing track or click track, if necessary.

There are also artistic requirements:

• Band members should feel that they are performing well.
• The overall sound of the band has to be good for those performing on stage.
• If there is any spill into the front rows of the audience (which there will be), it should not spoil the experience for them.



Most importantly, schedule time to work with each member of the band to give them what they need to feel comfortable during the performance,

Earl, we have lost our satellite feed. go check the dish!