WTTW analog master control and associated tape room facility from the 1960s had undergone several rebuilds in the past, but it needed to be re-purposed for other operations and so the station decided to build a new broadcast facility. WTTW decided to use its employees in the electronic maintenance and design group and built the facility without the help of a systems integrator. Engineering managers researched equipment, tactics and budgets and developed an overall system design, while vendors selected equipment and furnished implementation ideas.

Fox News brought in The Systems Group to implement a “21^st century operations suite” as part of a turnkey production facility. The addition of the studio allowed Fox News to expand its current programming to include a live audience production. This suite of control and production operations rooms includes production control, audio control and voice-over booth, tape and server playback area, satellite equipment room, and a glass-walled street level studio in the Rockefeller Center district of New York City.

The facility incorporates some of the latest in multiviewer monitoring, hybrid audio mixing and network-connected production systems technology.

Key technology: Thomson Grass Valley Trinix SDI video router 256x256, Thomson Grass Valley Venus Analog audio router, Thomson Grass Valley 4000 M/E production switchers, Yamaha O2R digital audio mixer, Vinten Quattro studio pedestals, Telex intercom key panels KP32, Sony HDC950 cameras, PVM and BVM video monitors

Georgia Public Broadcasting by Silicon Graphics

Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) needed to transition their infrastructure to an open digital format. Therefore the Silicon Graphics architecture needed to meet not only broadcast playout requirements, but also the common data management, shared storage and archiving infrastructure that the station envisioned for both its broadcast and non-broadcast data. GPB also wanted to build a highly reliable centralized storage environment that would support both their Internet service and broadcast operation.

Key technology: SGI Media Server, SGI Origin 300 servers, SGI CXFS shared filesystem, Hitachi Data Systems 9980V storage, Masstech Group MassStore storage, Masstech Group Mass Proxy transcoder, ADIC Scalar robotic tape library, Harris automation, Brocade 2Gb Fibre Channel switches

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WGBH-TV maintains a full-duplex 7Ghz inter-city microwave link between WGBH in Boston and its sister station in WGBY-TV in Springfield, MA, 100 miles away. The link is used for program exchange and also handles network traffic such as e-mail and Web access for WGBY. In 2001, Microwave Radio Communications (MRC) upgraded these systems. The company proposed specified variable-rate modems at each end as the baseband interface and at each repeater site to re-clock the data. These modems met the bandwidth and interface requirements the station was looking for.

As one of the first German public broadcasting stations, SWR serves more than 14 million viewers from three broadcast sites in the cities of Mainz, BadenBaden and Stuttgart. SWR recently built a new studio and implemented a tapeless digital newsroom. This newsroom will allow the 50-person news team in Mainz to streamline its operations for distributed news production and play to air.

The new tapeless digital newsroom is based on IT technologies and centered on networking for computers and storage.

With five stations broadcasting from two different facilities within the city limits of Nashville, it was time for Cumulus Media to consolidate all of its operations under one roof. Cumulus built clusters, or “pods,” instead of linear rows of studios. Each air studio is grouped with its program director’s office. Keeping each station’s personnel together helped preserve its individual personality, and placing the program director in the cluster keeps him close to his people and the heart of the broadcast.

The facility also has a glass-enclosed live performance studio with its own separate control room. The room will serve as both a radio and a TV studio.

Key technology: Scott Studios automation, Wheatstone D-9 TV digital television console, Wheatstone G-5 digital audio radio console, Wheatstone BRIDGE digital audio network router, European Cabinetry furniture