our history
DJB Radio: A History Of Innovation
Creating Award Winning Radio Software Is In Our DNA
Known by many as the ‘Godfather of Radio Automation’, Ron Paley has been at the forefront of broadcast innovation for more than 30 years. Building on his decades-long legacy with the groundbreaking Media Touch system, Ron took over operations of Digital JukeBox in 2011 and rolled up his sleeves once again. Over the years, Ron and his team have been responsible for many of the features you now find in all modern radio automation systems.
Where It All Began
1988 – Ron Paley proudly showing off an early Media Touch system built for Westinghouse Radio’s WBZ, 1010WINS, KYW & WCCO. This revolutionary touchscreen-based radio automation platform was also the first to use a computer-assigned audio router and no physical mixing console.
Under New Management
2012 – Ron Paley and a veteran team embark on their second radio automation venture with the purchase of the Digital JukeBox. With more than a century of combined experience in broadcast automation, DJB Radio was destined for great success.
The Digital JukeBox
2012 – The Digital JukeBox OnAir screen as it was at the time of the transition. The first release under Paley’s leadership was backward compatible with all previous releases of Digital JukeBox with the mission statement “No Customer Left Behind.”
Reaching New Heights
2019 – A mere seven years and three successful automation platform updates later, Ron Paley and Adam Robinson accept DJB Radio’s fourth NAB Best of Show award in six years for the flagship DJB Zone Automation system.
Ron Paley and DJB Radio have been in the forefront of innovating radio technical advances for over 3 DECADES!
Here are some of the highlights…
Early radio automation systems used dozens of oversized reel-to-reel players. MediaTouch Systems created the first modern radio automation system with a touch screen user interface, an on-off button panel instead of an audio console, serial interface to audio router/switcher/mixer - just like today's radio IP systems.
CKOK AM & FM: The first “Super Duopoly” radio site in North America with local AM & FM, 2 AM’s remote controlled sites all sharing audio from central Novell File Server audio database, 4000+ music titles using Dolby AC-2 format, developed by Ron Paley. Installed the OSG Radio Group stations in Osoyoos, Summerland & (2) in Penticton, British Columbia. OSG Management insisted that the CBSI traffic system also reside and operate off the same Novell server…. We made it work.
Ron Paley becomes President of MediaTouch Systems Inc, Salem, NH, and acquires world rights, technology, patents, customer base. He moves operations to Winnipeg. Ron & Ted Paley form OMT Technologies combining Oakwood Audio Labs and MediaTouch.
Our pioneering Sports-Remote interface allows fully automated Live or Satellite stations to run games with totally unattended control rooms. Developed for Telemedia Radio, this same system is used today in most sports syndicated programming.
A giant leap forward for radio stations that needed additional workstations. Ron Paley used embedded audio codecs in radio automation and eliminated proprietary sound cards. Suddenly PDs, MDs, and Traffic people could rip CDs, import audio files, record edit and play overlapped MP2, MP3, Windows Media WMA, ADPCM and WAV files at their desk. Our software ran fully on any Windows computer with a generic Soundblaster card.
In Canada, the CRTC (Canadian version of the FCC) mandated that all stations must retain an audio log for 30 days. Tapes drives were expensive, inefficient and hard to maintain at multi-station facilities. Ron Paley's multi-task logger software innovation is still in wide use.
When the union representing commercial voiceover talent demanded payment for both the broadcast AND the streaming performance of their work, advertising agencies balked. They told radio not to stream their commercials - or to pay the fees themselves. Ron Paley came up with a way to replace those streamed commercials in real time - preventing radio from abandoning the internet and winning the Cool Stuff Award.
THE BEAT, in Kitchener, Ontario becomes the first fully digital station in Canada. The most listened to station in SW Ontario, owned by CanWest Global Radio, goes completely digital - Microphones to the Transmitter with Ron Paley's assistance.
At the NAB in Las Vegas, Ron Paley and Wheatstone Corporation demonstrate the first automation system to run 8 channel stereo record and play-out using off-the-shelf OMT software with Audio Over IP drivers, "no audio cards." In addition, Digital Logger software used the 8 AoIP record channels for 24/7 recording - all products ran non-stop for the entire show.
Ron Paley and OMT were awarded one of its largest installations of iMediaTouch automation for American Forces Radio in Riverside, CA. OMT provided all broadcast automation software, hardware and custom developed KLOTZ audio consoles. AFRTS broadcasted 17 unique audio channels to American Forces serving around the world.
Ron Paley designed and developed a centralized Isilon 39TB Web Accessed Server to house a digital library of over 1 million tracks interfaced with the OMT On Air Automation System at CKUA Radio. Additional features were multi user archiving, multi user on demand music and metadata retrieval for play-out over the CKUA Radio Network and its Website. Each of the million tracks included metadata, album covers, artist trivia, and 3 audio versions: uncompressed wav stereo, 4:1 256 Kbps MP3, and mono 128 for online auditioning.
The Central Canada Broadcast Engineers named Ron Paley as it's Ambassador of the Year for his 40+ years of service to the Radio industry. You can read more about his story on his blog at Ron Paley Broadcast
The Paley Family, Ron, Ted and Carol, take over Digital Jukebox from founder Jim Barcus. Jim had started Digital Jukebox in 1995 with a DOS based radio automation system. DJB Radio has completely transformed the software while keeping the tradition of affordability that was the hallmark of Digital Jukebox.
We became the first Canadian and US radio automation company to win 3 of of RadioWorld's Cool Stuff Awards! The Cool Stuff Awards were given out at the NAB Convention after a select panel of engineers examined all the new products each year. Our original Radio Spider allows stations to capture programming from web sites, FTP sites and email accounts completely hands-free ending hours of busy work each week at most radio stations.
RadioWorld changed the name of the award, but we won it again with our new WEBSTREAM Radio Logging Software. Instead of expensive audio interfaces, our software lets stations capture up to 8 signals off their webstreams and it sounds off ALARMS and email WARNINGS if the stations stream is OFF AIR. How good is that?!
Internet radio broadcasters discovered our Button Broadcaster Pro software was almost perfect - except for one thing. They wanted to use iTunes®. We listened and came up with the innovative iBroadcaster for iTunes® Pro. When RadioWorld saw it at the NAB, they fell in love and gave it Best of Show!
DJB ZONE is a new software offering from DJB RADIO that evolved from 31 years of radio automation innovation and was officially released at NAB 2019 Las Vegas. DJB ZONE takes radio programming and daily operations to a new level with its many innovative, efficient & user-friendly features. As advertised, it’s RADIO. AUTOMATION. REIMAGINED.