“TWiRT” This Week in Radio Tech is your go to show if you want to get behind the scenes on what makes broadcasting possible. The show addresses common issues as well as explaining past experiences from a wide array of hosts who each come from a different background in radio technology. This show is a must for any tech geek or for anyone who is interested in what goes on behind the boards and wires.
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Whenever former co-host, Tom Ray, sits down in the Guest Chair at the TWiRT Podcast, long-time broadcast engineers, who follow this Podcast, pour a cup of their favorite beverage and gather round to hear the very latest information that Tom has to offer. This Episode 713 is no exception.
Guests on Episode 712 of the TWiRT Podcast illustrate the old educational adage: “What’s learned with pleasure is learned full-measure.” This Episode 712 is yet another one of the exscellent educational and entertaining episodes that should appeal to all broadcast engineers, whose level of curiosity about so-called Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have been tickled by the changes that are very rapidly taking place in the technology that surrounds us.
I was an early user of Tim Valley's Audisk. I installed and used a few at stations in New England during the time Gentner owned it and later Jack and Larry Baley at DHK Group. Tim's code eventually became STORQ under a Windows platform and is still in use at a few stations I am involved with.
Amidst all of the daily tasks that broadcast engineers have to keep in mind, not to mention the quick response they must give to immediate problems that occur, there is always lurking, just below the surface of consciousness, a desire to know what innovative tools have arisen to solve problems that broadcast engineers must tackle. And, there is also the desire to serve as a valuable resource for station management that will enhance the broadcast engineers perceived contribution to the success of the venture. In this Episode 711 of the TWiRT Podcast, guest Paul Stewart from Summit Technology Group shares some of the highly innovative products his company has developed to enhance the operation values of broadcast facilities. This fascinating Episode is one that will whet the appetite of broadcast engineers and station owners alike.
I jumped on the recording Thursday evening and saw Marcos on there - thinking - face from the past, guess he's going to talk about LA Radio Stations and transmitters. What a surprise as I started to listen to the show - Colorado. He's young enough to adjust in life - welcome to broadcasting - so good for you Marcos!
Good morning our church was granted a LPFM construction license and we will like to know what is the best transmitter ( bulletproof) and best antenna to get the must and best results for our radio station..thanks for your help and insight
Good evening we just got approved for LPFM station can you recommend the best antenna and transmitter for this class of LPFM to be able to maximize the coverage area. Thanks
On the EEO Form: This is yet another one of Rosie's "feel good" initiatives'. I am all for DEI awareness (DEI does not mean quotas, it means not passing up someone solely because of their race or gender and being aware that there are diverse cultures in the workplace). The problem is that Rosie is right now hellbent on things to certain groups, not really taking into consideration who these changes will impact stations, especially small stations. Rosie is also hellbent on collecting information to give instant gratification to a small number of recipients of that data who will actually use it for something. This is why we have seen EEO come back and why we have the proposal for mandatory DIRS and god forbid, a new reporting requirement for NORS anytime a station goes off the air. I do agree that it is not in the FCC"s jurisdiction to monitor the workplace. This is not an anti-DEI statement, but more of a common sense approach to Congress' mandates that delegate authority to the FCC. We also have the "feel good" things that are intended to help diverse groups but put a huge burden on our industry. This whole nonsense about geotargeted boosters was pushed as a way "to increase minority ownership" to which I say bulltwinkies. I see it as the opposite. A station with geotargeted boosters could (if this technology really works, which hasn't been proven widespread), increase the value of the station thus outpricing it from the smaller minority owned entities. We saw this nonsense with the CAP Polling disaster. I have been a huge fan of Rosenworcel over the years, but lately, these proposed policies have had me calling her out more and more. On political advertising: Prior to the 2020 elections, Relevant Radio, a major owner of Catholic commercial stations, changed all of their stations to NCE so they did not have to take political ads. I do feel that AI deepfake advertising are not in the realm of the FCC, but instead should be in the wheelhouses of the FTC and FEC. I do feel that there is more FCC jurisdiction where it comes to deepfake telephone calls/robocalls.
“Hi! I’m from the government and I’m here to help you!” With that statement of greeting, fear, dread, and abject terror strikes in the hearts of broadcast station owners, managers, and engineers. On Episode 707 of the TWiRT Podcast, esteemed attorney, David Oxenford, and highly respected station owner, Larry Fuss, join hosts Kirk Harnack and Chris Tarr to discuss a wide range of regulatory topics that affect station operations and rules compliance.
Hmmmmm...I have worked at Electric Works (The Management), Radiotraffic and Marketron. I remember Allen creating Digital DJ, Lawrence creating Digital DJ II, Cory Smith of Shiny Stone Digital creating AXS, Little Pete and Cory creating the Production system that went along with AXS. These four men are programming gods and I glad to say they are my friends; though, I have not talked to Lawrence in a while. Allen I first met at Radioshack when I was working at Radioshack Business Marketing; if I remember right, I sold a laptop out from under him. (LOL)!
Let's be honest. This guy sells products that connect to the Internet. He's not going to diss it. Best practice, don't connect ALL your crap to the Internet! I've heard plenty of security people walk into a site and see a major issue caused by a user. Just a cat5 cable jumping across the protected network.
“Hey! Bisset’s on! Yes! That’s right! John Bisset’s on Episode 705 of the TWiRT Podcast!” Grab your pen and notebook. Lots of great info is coming our way!
The tubes are glowing as Larry Janus shares his expertise on Episode 704 of the TWiRT Podcast. Broadcast engineers will both learn from and enjoy Larry’s life story.
On Episode 703 of the TWiRT Podcast, three very knowledgeable guests provide a fascinating insight into putting a brand new LPFM on the air, just a few weeks ago.
what about the idea of having the EAS an active audio source in automation, but create a rather dramatic auto ducking so that when an EAS is present it would just squash audio in something like Wide Orbit? just brainstorming during the show.
Updating the reception of EAS alerts to the thoroughly modern digital format is a significant advancement that will improve the stress on many broadcast engineers. On this Episode 702 of the TWiRT Podcast, Bill Robertson explains his problem-solving and innovative approach.
I heard this rumer that mike drove to radio stations and sold 310 out of the trunk of his car ?, used a 310 at KUHL am in Santa Maria CA. it replaced a gates tube unit.
“Plan your work and work your plan.” That’s the watchword shared by Tim Berry on the Episode 701 of the TWiRT Podcast. When you have to manage an extensive network of radio stations, broadcasting sports content, planning is absolutely essential.
Kirk, like you I have/had a speech issue so I started a RU-vid channel to force myself to work on it. I figured doing live streams all by myself would force me to speak better and it has worked.
You’ve no doubt heard about the new trend to construct Tiny Homes. But, have you heard about the construction of sound-isolated Tiny Studios? In landmark Episode 700 of the TWiRT Podcast, Marc Haycock explains in detail the construction of his “furniture box” Tiny Studio. Broadcast engineers will enjoy this entertaining and instructive Episode.
WRT “Mitel” it was founded as mike and terrys electric lawnmowers. They never got to sell them allegedly so they made the Superswitches, SX50/100/200/2000 digital switches the 3300 IP based systems. The brand is so broad because they bought Aastra (formerly Nortel’s analog sets), Shoretel (the orange colored boxes), Toshiba’s Strata line ( just for support customers) and just recently the “Unify” brand that included Siemens and ol ROLM assets. They inched to buy Polycom but didn’t and married with Plantronics instead Oh and they bought Intertel at some point too. They’re the only on prem company left behind Cisco because CNN and CNBC is keeping Avaya alive (I only know two other companies in my area that using Avaya) and they ruined Nortel enterprise customers flocking to half baked Poly/cloud or Cisco’s Unicom offerings. The remark by Kirk with Asterisk is a passive statement and not fully true. Asterisk runs on any Unix or Linux systems and acts as a fancy daemon functioning as a strict PBX. Asterisk is not used by any big name company but their code could run on Linux. I use asterisk professionally but I do not like it personally. Polycom was great for analog conference phones… everything past 2005 stained their reputation.
In Episode 699 of the TWiRT Podcast, Mike Kernen, Market Chief Engineer at Crawford Broadcasting Detroit, joins hosts, Kirk Harnack and Chris Tarr, to discuss the installation of a new transmitter in a very challenging small space at a transmitter site. Broadcast engineers will enjoy Mike’s tale of woe and also find useful and helpful the solutions he used to facilitate this transmitter swap.
Lastly in this video, it needs it's own comment, a strong ah-ha selling point on containerization. I learned virtualization by using VMware Fusion in the late oughts to run BootCamp of Windows XP on Mac OS, then i graduated to VMware Server then to ESXi for over a decade. Learning the concept of virtualization thru Fusion taught me how powerful it can be. The "dockers", you'll have to sell me really hard on it. It's something I'm very skiddish as a 1/2 tech, 1/2 editorial type of guy.
This video is interesting. A few points. As much as I love to see Macs as a primary desktop, there's a lot of "I" in his IT experience and not a "we" from Information Services model. It was about taking a sledgehammer and destroying everything and instead of taking old elements, it was completely replaced. Because Chuck worked at MSPs, he's jaded and knows too much about the M$ tech to then impose it downstream. While that $12,000 telephone bill comes off very Centrex-y I wouldn't rely entirely on Google Voice, I'd still prefer a POTS line for emergency failover. From what I can tell in this interview, there isn't much stuff done live in studio, so I guess they don't have studio gear or a VoxPro equivalent on the Macs. The problem with IT is they are so dollar centric, and addicting to cutting (I think many should check into a clinic for psychosis analysis), they get obsessed and paranoid to nickel and dimiing. Given he's out in Sedona, ironically lots of IT professionals often throwing much tech away only because it's not Microsoft, Cisco or fully iP based devices. Imagine PCs that can't run Windows 11 or even TDM office phones are being piled up (and fun little fact, not everything that goes to e-waste gets fully recycled.) I didn't "hear" enough about redundancy and backup in the interview. I heard though about the community and how the radio station impacts them, however the methodology of IT is anti-human in the name of automation and lowering costs for the c-suite to maximize "profits" (that's the perception of many, whether its reality that's another's call). TBH there's conflicting logic this IT guy is doing things that are against the IT philosophy, if radio is a community experiment, then i <3 and others big chain IT can't provide that because IT is cutting jobs and lowering costs. I hope this made sense. I partially run IS in a very small media production operation with a couple Macs and Windows ThinkPads and VMware (flipping to something else) in the data center. The true "infrastructure" is creativity and content creation, which those machines are protected to only run apps related to that use-case through systems management (Group Policy or Profiles on the Macs). I do not call my staff "end-users" and I expect feedback from them instead of imposing certain IT viewpoints. It's not on the latest and greatest but we apply similar analogies of the "ten year old Windows security" ideas he mentioned about no IE and admin as a normal user login. Common sense and mitigation is word that most people don't even know what it means practically.
My Man! Thanks for listening would love to dive deep into the topic of redundancy, every system in this station has a backup, we leverage on prem, and multiple cloud providers for backups for example (Backblaze, Buffalo NAS in Raid 1, and iCloud). Two AM Transmitters (Nautel *current*, Collins *backup*) Two FM Transmitters (AAT 780w *current* , ELCA 500w *backup*) Two FM Processors (Optimod Trio *Current* Optimod 8200 *backup*) Two AM Processors (Orban XPN-AM *current*, Omina 3 *backup*)... Coming from IT backup and redundancy along with availability are of the utmost importance! My Digital Ocean Servers are behind a Load Balancers and depending on traffic and load on systems we automatically spin up new droplets and add them into rotation.... Its not redundancy exactly, more like dynamically scaling based on usage, but should a server drop out it will also rebuild a new one and add it back into the mix! My only other point is that I am not anti human at all, my argument with cutting costs in software is to be able to reinvest in stations and the talent within them, thats how we help the community. IT can help in so many ways, just for example with updating our systems we have cut cost on electric by like 600 dollars a month, i leverage apple homekit to turn off lights within the station etc... Check this out, i can remove a phasor that takes up a whole room because i attached homekit enabled button pushers to the transmitter itself leave set to local and power down based on time of day.
