TWiRT - Episode 4 - STL

Kirk Harnack, Tom Ray, Chris Tobin, Chris Tarr and special (surprise) guest, Rich Parker of Vermont Public Radio.

- How are the TWiRT co-hosts interconnect to produce and record the show?  We explain.  A little mic talk, too.

- Clearwire adds WiMax service in more cities

- TV Channel 6's going away, and how that impacts Non-Commercial Educational FM stations

- How do radio stations transport high-quality audio from studio to transmitter?  Many methods are available.  And where does the audio processing go?  Rich Parker of Vermont Public Radio joins us for that discussion.

Trivia question: Who invented Spread Spectrum technology?

And we note that Argentinians serve meat with their meat.

TWiRT - Episode 4 - STL

Comments

[Tom Dimeo]

I've really enjoyed listening to the first four installments of TWIRT and want to thank all participants for taking the time to do them. I do not work in radio but have always had a love for the broadcast industry.

I wonder if you might consider discussing streaming on the Internet sometime. In the last issue of your podcast you talked about audio processing. Do most stations use different processing for their Internet stream than they use for the STL, digital or analog signals? Do stations take their Internet stream very seriously?

I listen to John Gambling almost every morning on the WOR stream. There are a lot of silent periods, several times a month I get a message that the server is busy, the same commercial runs two or three times during the same break, and sometimes there are only three or four different commercials that run the entire morning.

I'm not being critical, I'm just curious if stations care much about their Internet stream. Are there just not enough listeners to the stream for stations to put a lot of time into programming them?

Thanks again for your program.

Tom

[Chris Tarr]

That's a great question, and a great idea for a topic! I can briefly tell you that most stations use an "overlay" system that replaces the commercials that play "on the air" with ones that are meant for the stream only.