[SBE] How long did it take you to move the studio [long]

[Bob Reite]

I've done several studio moves, all radio.  The easiest of course was 
buying all new equipment for the new location, but that was a long time 
ago in the Los Angeles market.

My two most recent moves involved keeping all of the old equipment and 
furniture in one case, the other involved adding new equipment, but 
still reusing all of the old as well. Both were stand alone AM stations 
at the time of the move.

For AM station #1:  A class D "unlimited operation".  The work involved 
one "on air" studio and one production studio.  The station is 
automated, except for a live morning show 6 AM to 9 AM. The STL was an 
ISDN link, but due to issues related below a point to point T-1 circuit 
was installed from the new location to the transmitter site and tested 
before work began. The new location was designed so that the air studio 
and production rooms would just "drop into place" without having to 
rearrange anything.  I have no data on the cost of remodeling the 
interior of the new building.

One MAJOR complication on this project:  The new building did not have a 
clear shot for the AMC-8 satellite (at our location AMC-8 is only 12 
degrees above the horizon) which the station picks up CBS news and a 
baseball game feed from. But the owner was going to get such a good deal 
on the new building that wanted to make it work "somehow".  The 
"somehow" was to install a C-band dish at the transmitter site and bring 
the audio back down over a Moseley "Star Link" T-1 system. This would 
allow us two return audios, plus a 4800 serial link to get cues for the 
Skyview ballgame system. We ordered the T-1 two months in advance of the 
move to allow for "gotchas" and "Oh by the ways", but to their credit 
Verizon did get it installed within the 1 month promise date, which 
allowed us to test the new STL before we had to depend on it. The owner 
hired an old TVRO guy to put in the dish for us, I don't have figures on 
that.

We did the actual move on two weekends.  The first weekend the 
production studio was moved and made operational.  During that week, if 
any production needed to be put on the air, we put the file on a thumb 
drive and drove it to the old site.  That Friday Night/Sat AM we put the 
production room automation system on the air via the new T-1 link.  We 
dismantled the control room on Saturday and reassembled it at the new 
location on Sunday.  Sunday Night/Monday AM the regular on air studio at 
the new location was put on the air, ready for the morning show on Monday.

We hired movers those two weekends to do the grunt work of moving the 
stuff.  I did all the disconnecting and reconnecting myself.

I don't have cost figures for the movers.  There were no equipment costs 
at the studio since we reused everything.  I don't know what the owner 
gave for the C-band dish installed at the transmitter site.  The 
Scientific Atlanta C-band dish at the old studio was abandoned in place, 
I did grab the LNB off of it to have for a spare.

Since then, we got rid of the T-1 and went back to the ISDN for the STL 
and the ballgame audio and data and installed a "dry pair" for the CBS 
news audio which we equalize ourselves. The ISDN and dry pair are a lot 
less money than the T-1 charges.

For AM station #2: This was a bit more complicated in some ways, and 
less complicated in others.  The station was/is a daytime only that got 
all of its programming (mostly EWTN catholic programming) over a T-1 
link from a distant city.  The studio was what I call a "pretend" 
studio, only there to meet the requirement for "main studio presence in 
the city of license" Yes, you could open the mike and put yourself on 
the air and play a CD, but that was it.  STL was/is a 950 MHz link. No 
production facilities. The new owners got a better deal on a new studio 
location and were able to break the lease at the old site because of the 
change in ownership.  No remodeling of the new space was necessary, 
since this operation is so simple. The new owners were going to do local 
breaks, but the majority of the programming would still be the EWTN 
network feed over C-band satellite. Yes, I did a site survey to make 
sure that we could see Galaxy 11 from the new site.  So a C-band dish 
had to be purchased and installed at the new site.  This got delayed 
because of permit issues, so it was decided to take the network feed 
over the Internet until the C-band was up and running.

This move also involved the purchase and setup of an automation computer 
for the local portion of the programming.  This was ordered, set up and 
bench tested well ahead of the move at my office, including taking the 
network feed over the Internet.  We purchased a computer with a fast 
enough processor so that a second instance of the automation system 
could be opened in "production mode" and the audition channel of the 
board could be used for production.  The audio editing software I 
installed for them is the freeware "Audacity" program. The STL move was 
made easier because the heading for the receive antenna was only 0.5 
degrees different, so no need to climb the tower at the transmitter site 
and re aim the receive antenna.

On the night before the move, a CD player and small mixer was taken to 
the transmitter site and a custom burned CD 60 minutes long with a legal 
ID, explanation that we were moving the studio, and some religious 
programming was set up, which would automatically be on the air when the 
sine system started the transmitter the next morning.

The day of the move, I took down the STL transmit antenna from the old 
building while two helpers dismantled the studio gear and loaded it into 
the truck.  At the new location, I installed the STL transmit antenna, 
and ran the feed line into the building while the helpers unloaded the 
truck and set up the inside equipment.  I then connected the automation 
computer and got the audio started, turned on the STL transmitter and 
drove to the AM transmitter site.  All the path calculations proved 
correct, strong STL at the receive site.  At top of the hour I switched 
the input of the Optimod from the CD player amp to the STL receiver for 
a clean changeover.  The whole operation took 9 hours, start to finish, 
although I had allowed for two days of "stunting" from the transmitter site.

We did have a lot of issues with losing the internet feed, which would 
die once or twice a day.  I installed UltraVNC on the automation 
computer so I could remote it from my home office and restart the feed, 
the issue seemed to be at the originating end.  We got the building 
permit and the C-band dish installed three weeks later and the C-band 
feed has worked fine.  The owner said that if he had to do it all over 
again, he would have filed for silent authority for the time it took to 
get the C-band system up and running. There were a fair number of 
listener complaints about being "off the air" during the time we were 
trying to rely on the EWTN Internet stream.  At least we know that 
people were actually listening to the station.

Equipment costs here were $1500 for a Simian automation program, around 
$1500 for the computer and Audio Sciences sound card, and the owner paid 
for the C-band dish, LNB and receiver directly, so I don't know what he 
gave for the C-band gear.  He hired a local contractor to install the 
mount for the C-band dish and fence enclosing it. I mounted the dish 
with two helpers and aimed it once the concrete for the pole had set.


Glenn Williams wrote:

> Hi,

> 

>  

> 

> For those of you that had the joy of relocating your studios at one time 

> or another:

> 

>  

> 

> How many Control Rooms/Production Rooms did you move?

> 

> How long did it take?

> 

> How many workers were involved?

> 

> What new equipment did you buy (new service tower, consoles, etc.)?

> 

> What did it all cost?

> 

>  

> 

> Any other comments would be welcome.

> 

>  

> 

> Thanks,

> 

>  

> 

> Glenn Williams

> 

> Chief Engineer, KLJC

> 

>  

> 

>  

> 

> 

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