This Week In Radio Tech (TWiRT)

What might the radio studios of tomorrow look like? What equipment is in them? What equipment is not in them? Could the studio’s future really be “cushions and daylight” as one radio futurist has said? We’re live at the Cleveland headquarters of the Telos Alliance, talking with colleagues about where our studio technologies are headed.

Tom Ray says his superpower is the ability to attract stupidity. But, being a clever engineer he deals with it swifty and moves on. Tom joins Chris Tobin and Kirk Harnack for this episode on stupidity - how to identify it, how to deal with it, and what we can learn from it.

Broadcast engineering is a rather small, niche career. How do we keep up with rapidly-changing technology and best practices? The answer is SBE Webinars. New SBE President, Jim Leifer, is here to fill us in on SBE MemberPlus, where SBE members can gain real expertise in their field.

Adopting new technologies in any profession can be stressful. John Schilberg is here to talk about adopting new tech with the right attitude - so it’s more fun than stress. In the process we’ll flash back to Miami Vice and Star Trek in stereo! Chris Tobin joins us on This Week in Radio Tech.

In HD Radio’s earlier days, a fixed architecture offered fixed time alignment between FM analog and its HD1 signal. Today’s HD transmission systems are far more flexible, but time alignment can vary resulting in a confusing listener experience. Alan Jurison with iHeart Radio is an expert on this topic. He joins us to talk about making sure FM/HD listeners get the best experience possible.

We keep running upon the subject of Virtual Radio, or Virtualizing Radio. Chris Tobin and I imagine both good consequences and unfortunate ones as broadcasters implement more virtualization strategies. Sure, saving money could be a motivator for virtualizing, but Chris asks, “How will you improve your broadcast product with the money saved?” Kirk points out the increased flexibility of virtual tech allows more localism with less effort.

With social media platforms catering to video, “Visual Radio” is more than just industry buzz. On the heels of a Washington, DC, symposium on the subject, Chris Tobin shows us the technical setup for a low-budget, yet effective video webcast from WBGO-FM in Newark, NJ. We look at the cameras, connections, interfaces, and software used to create a video version of a traditionally radio-only event.

Many skills required for broadcast engineering are directly applicable to podcast engineering and production. Chris Curran teaches broadcast and podcast engineering skills, including mixing, fixing, loudness, and using plugins.

Everyone starts somewhere, and Jim Armstrong started right near the top - in Boston radio! We’re talking early days of on-air traffic reporting, some technical perspectives from those days, and about Jim’s big switch to broadcast equipment sales; lessons here all of us engineers can learn from.

Radio industry experts are talking with each other, sharing ideas about “visual” radio. We’re asking a lot of questions, too. What are we trying to accomplish with video added to radio? Can we engage our audiences better and longer? What strategies seem to be working? Chris and Kirk attended the Visual Radio Symposium this week, and Al Reynolds of WAMU was there, too.