Poppinjay

At least, radio here. Hopefully, they'll like me enough where I'm going to let me play around there, too. I love radio studios. Ugly, pretty, new, old.

I've been the news director/program director of this station for 5 years.

First: this is what it looked like when I started here:



If you think it looks like a pit, it is. In fact, this studio has always photographed well. What you don't see is the fact that there is no AC, stains all over the carpet, and two racks of equipment that represent 1983's best technology. The only thing new is the computer we put in for the cable service we gave the studio to.

Dust bunnies the size of buffalo. New York.

This is the studio that replaced that studio three years ago:




This is the master control for one station and a network of 4 other stations. They join and seperate throughout the day, with the help of the computer on the left. The pic is obscured looking into our talk studio due to folks in the pic. You can't tell from the pic that this studio is HUGE compared to our last.

This is the master control for the networked 4 stations:



This is our news network, that also airs triple A music 7-Midnight.

I wrote a grant to pay for about half of all the new equipment. Since adding the news network, we've won several of these:



Now comes the bragging.. before I took over, the number of these that decorated the walls was: 0. We have two more that I'm especially proud of.



The two blue plaques are for Outstanding News Operation, 2003, 2004, for the state of North Carolina. And this is in a state that has some heavy hitter in radio journalism. I used to work at two of the others who have won this award, WBT, and WFAE, both in Charlotte. I was a production grunt back then. But I did learn how to beat their asses.

Now for the real geeky stuff:



The stuff on the right stores our audio, the stuff on the left sends the news signal to our outlying stations. A frame relay system sends it inland, a T1 line sends it to our beach station.

As you can see, we have nowhere to go in this room but up.



Frame relay on top, T1 on bottom, silence sensor and tuner in the middle.

And our last project, "completed" this past May.



This is our all digital studio, though it still looks like a wreck. Carpet and window built in in 1983 out what appears to be raw timber. Speaker mounts are obviously not used, as one speaker sits on top of another broken speaker.

When I wrote the grant for the new studios, I found that as a grant writer, I make a pretty good program director. i didn't think about two things; microphones and chairs. Our GM found a great deal on microphones, and one of our salespeople traded spots for four beautiful hi-seat chairs, as seen in the third pic on the left.

My last day is Friday, I want to go hug the studios.

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I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Poppinjay

All fixed. Maybe a future feature for TFP could be to provide a person to slap my hands when I write bad html.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Jinn

That's insane.. how do you sit in a room like that for hours at a time talking without getting hellishly cramped?

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Poppinjay

The only studio that has people in it for extended period is the studio in the second pic. It's about 40X20. The old studio was 9X9. With the equipment in it, we actually had about 4X6 to operate in, again, no AC. It was insane.

I never photographed our old talk studio, which had an interview desk that was actually four metal student desks that our engineer welded together. Honest to god, it was shaped like a swastika. That was THE worst studio I've ever worked in. It became THE worst office I've ever worked in.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

canuckguy

That is some awesome stuff! thanks for sharing. oh and congrats on all the awards! Looks well deserved esp. with all your hard work making it grow!

paddyjoe

Great post Poppinjay! Nice to get a glimpse of your life, work or otherwise. One question though, is this you:

Poppinjay

No, that's the guy who founded the station and who our building is named after. He passed away four years ago. And that picture is from about 15 years ago.


In an unrelated note, he is also the man who invented the reclining dental chair.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Charlatan

Hey poppinjay... Reminds me of my days on college radio... The booth was pretty disgusting and quite out of date... All our news was on reel to reel, we were using Carts and had just acquired CD players (this was 1989 to 1991).

I visited the station a couple years ago with my son... they had gone completely digital. I was amazed at what they could do.


I am just amazed at how similar your place was to our campus station... stained carpets included.

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"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

Poppinjay

Those are the same years I did college radio, but we built a brand new studio the year I started. It was actually nicer than the studio I inherited here.

I've kind of ended up with a career as a station builder.

First job - state of the art top 40 station with a news/talk AM.
Second job - station from hell, radio shack clock as an air monitor, cleaned up with new/used equipment by the time I left
third job - decent station, just adding digital as I left.
fourth job - decent equipment, but all of it broken. After four years of hammering on the engineers we finally had good studios and were just adding digital as I left.
fifth job - this one. No news department. No digital. Carts and CDs. Not even a synched network clock. And a klepto overnight guy who is approximately 80.

One time, he stole all of the framed pictures upstairs, re-framed them in cheaper frames, and then returned them to the walls. He also made a baby on the bathroom floor, and the girl named the baby the same name as his son through marriage.

At least my tenure with the good stuff has been longer here. Three person news department, state of the art stuff. Oh, and I fired that guy because he stole a box of sound dampening material while we were building the new studios.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Konichiwaneko

I love broadcast equipment.

Suggestion in the future, if you don't want to make it look compressed get a wide angle lens converter for your camera. Because of the close focus and composistion what should be big makes us viewers think small.

Any hints on what I should do to get a bit part in the industry? I've been told by over thousands of people (literally, my job is a social one so exposure is extreme) that I should be in broadcast because of my diction and so called eloquance.

I respect a person who enjoys what they do, and it reflects squarely in your projected attitude and enthusiasm.

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Poppinjay

The compression came from shrinking the shots down in Paint Brush. I'm not gifted with Photoshop skills.

Start asking stations if they need a board op (board operator). That's the first step for any radio career. Listen and learn the format of that type of station you'd like to work at. Start recording yourself doing similar things to what you hear on air, but make sure you're doing it in your own personality. Check out web sites that sell automation software and download a demo to see how it works. Almost all radio is done with automation software.

Always remember, you may have an audience of thousands, but you're only talking to one person at a time. I used to keep a sign at the previous station I worked at that said, "Entertaining America - One Person At A Time". Keep it personal, be bright.

However, in 7 hours, I'll be an unemployed ex radio bum grad student. So take that for what it's worth.

__________________
I think the Apocalypse is happening all around us. We go on eating desserts and watching TV. I know I do. I wish we were more capable of sustained passion and sustained resistance. We should be screaming and what we do is gossip. -Lydia Millet

Konichiwaneko

Compression as in person point of view and not quality of image. I've been on the net too long, and dealt with too much image editing to be a "grammer nazi" about picture quality

Lol I guess the net does brand new evils.

Konichiwaneko is therefore upgraded to PIXEL NAZI!

first time I heard it, guess it works for me.

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