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Home > News > EsPRSS-O > InterviewsEsPRSS-O: The Interviews
  Dustin Hapli, Operations Manager WUSF Tampa, FL What is your station and does it have a particular focus/specialty/mission? WUSF serves west central Florida including Tampa Bay and Sarasota. We provide a mix of NPR news, classical music and jazz on our main channel and all news and talk programming on our HD2 channel. What do you do there? As Operations Manager, I coordinate the various computer systems like ContentDepot®, our NexGen automation system and Logitek audio consoles. I also supervise the board operators who work with the News Department to engineer the local portions of Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Can you tell us a few cool/interesting things about your station? WUSF was the first public radio station to broadcast HD Radio. We were also the first station in the world to broadcast Condition Access HD Radio. Approximately how long have you been using ContentDepot? WUSF was a beta test station for the ContentDepot starting in January of 2005. I joined the station in April of 2006 and implemented the transition to ContentDepot as the primary transmission system. How has it changed your operations, whether for good or bad? (Be honest!) ContentDepot has made things easier for us overall. The file transfer function is especially handy for shows that we time shift. For many years, WUSF had a rigorous recording schedule for these programs that we have since abandoned. It’s also nice, for the sake of consistency, to have more of the content played out locally instead of relying on the live satellite feed so heavily. Although it was a little scary to relinquish the ability to easily manually tune the receivers locally, we’ve had no problems with the system. If you could see one thing changed or improved with CD, what would it be? I would like to see the web portal improved. The website is notoriously slow and I’ve often received error messages when clicking around. I also find the subscription process somewhat cumbersome. For example, when choosing to audition a show you should not be required to give an air date and time because you don’t know when that might be until after you audition the program. Most importantly, I believe there should be strict standards enforced on producers who upload content. Better yet, I think all files uploaded should go through some sort of conversion process that ensures everything comes out the same. Finally, I would like to see the messaging function fully activated and the retirement of the WebDACS. Have you developed or heard of any particularly creative work-arounds for issues or challenges in ContentDepot? I’ve seen a few work-arounds discussed on Pubtech, but haven’t had to implement any of them. Most of the issues are minor enough that it doesn’t stop me from doing my day to day work. We did have some initial issues getting our automation system to auto load the files, but we were able to get it resolved. The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? I think the future of public radio is particularly bright. We provide niche programming as well as local content that listeners just can’t get anywhere else. As long as we keep giving people what they want, we should be able to withstand the ever rising tide of ubiquitous media content.   Jeff Smith, Operations Coordinator Nebraska Public Radio Network Lincoln, NE What is your station and does it have a particular focus/specialty/mission? Nebraska Public Radio Network is focused on serving the state of Nebraska with not only great public radio and television programming with a commitment to localism and journalism but also distance-learning services with 300 downlink sites and 29 uplink/downlink sites across the state. We also have extensive online and multimedia services including streaming the Nebraska State Legislature and Nebraska Supreme Court. What do you do there? It seems like every public radio station has a different set of job responsibilities for the “traffic-continuity person.” I work primarily as a coordinator between the departments of Programming, Fund-Raising and Sales. I see that everyone gets what they need each day on-air. I produce the program log and manage all program acquisition and on-air promotion. I spend a good deal of time around fund drives, from creating pre-drive promotions to writing pitch copy for national hosts. I review the underwriting copy to see that it meets both our in-house style and is legal. One of the things that makes me a bit of an odd-ball in this job is I’m not an announcer. My background is audio engineering, so I do a lot of music recording of local music from string quartets to symphonies and even a little jazz from time to time. I also work with our news department, helping them with recording and editing their daily reports and features. Can you tell us a few cool/interesting things about your station? I think one of the most interesting things about NET Radio is that it started as an NPR station on a small Adventist college serving just the city of Lincoln. And for the last 20 years, it has been a flagship station of a state-wide network with nine transmitters. We’re now co-located with NET Television, so radio is part of a large, dynamic production center that produces nationally recognized programming. The entire building is filled with people doing amazing work in both technical and creative areas. Our television service is broadcasting three different program streams, and on the radio side, we brought HD to Lincoln about three years ago with three more HD sites ready to go live this year. Radio’s FM/HD1 service is classical and NPR news and our new HD2 stream is news and jazz at night. Approximately how long have you been using ContentDepot®? I can’t remember! We were on the late side of adoption, as I recall. I was pleased with SOSS, so we weren’t in a huge hurry to make the switch from a stable system into the great unknown. I’m a cautious sort, I suppose, so I don’t mind watching others cut themselves on the “bleeding edge” while I took notes on their success and failures. Perhaps as a consequence, our migration went pretty well and the teething pains were only a few weeks as I recall. How has it changed your operations, whether for good or bad? (be honest!) In the beginning, I was skeptical of the new-fangled way of ingesting program content into the servers. In the early days of ContentDepot’s roll out, just finding and managing the enormous number of cryptically labeled sound files was nightmarish. One-off specials and promos were especially problematic; just finding and getting them where they needed to be was rough in the beginning. It was very frustrating, and I had strong words for ContentDepot in its early days. But, I was gratified to find PRSS was keen to work with stations and the problems we were having - especially with promos. I was glad to participate with their task force to work on station-identified problems. The end result was that over the years, PRSS, with station input, was able to address and solve most of the key issues related to the new systems design and functions. Today ContentDepot has completely removed many onerous weekly tasks from my work. I think one of the most powerful solutions ContentDepot has offered is handling NPR news credits. Where I used to have to download spreadsheets of the credit schedule, find what we needed for the week, locate the audio on a two-hour credit feed and finally load the credit audio into our server by hand, it’s now all completely automated! Updates to credits or any other program segment that needs to be made-good can be done seamlessly in the background with no station intervention required. That’s a huge improvement. If you could see one thing changed or improved with CD, what would it be? Just one? My biggest concern with ContentDepot is something we’ve not suffered from and may never. But I do worry about off-site channel switching. The single point-of-failure architecture makes me nervous. I’d feel more secure if a system schedule could be downloaded to stations and an application could do switching locally. Sounds strangely familiar, I know. Tops for small improvements to the system would be: a resource conflict indicator, a more clear and concise “What’s Happening in My System Now” view, and a bulk-subscribe function for those shows with more than six segments. Have you developed or heard of any particularly creative work-arounds for issues or challenges in ContentDepot? There were some very clever computer-based work-arounds for promo migration schemes before that problem was dealt with at PRSS, but I’m a rotten computer programmer so I was just happy to be able to finally get our Audio Vault CDI ini file set just right. John Cypher’s very handy remote control application for changing stream channels sits on our on-air computer just in case. It has barely been touched, but I like knowing it’s there. The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? Bright. The talent, enthusiasm and integrity of the people working in public radio at the local and national level are our crown jewels. For the time being, over-the-air broadcasting is still the most convenient and cost effective method of delivering our product. In 20 years time, who knows how most of our audience will be consuming what we have to offer, but people who are dedicated to non-commercial news and entertainment will still be out there making one-on-one connections with their audience and that’s making great “radio”.  Noah Waxman, Regional Manager for North America Radio Netherlands New York, New York Can you tell us a bit about Radio Netherlands? Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) is the international public broadcaster from Holland. We produce and distribute radio, TV, and multi-media programming in more than 10 languages for broadcast across the globe. We have regional hubs in North and South America, Africa, Europe, India, and Asia. Our programming focuses on providing news and information in Dutch to Dutch-speakers around the world, and providing independent news and cultural programming to audiences in international languages. We recently launched two new English programs: a weekly round-up for TV and the Web, called "This Week in the Netherlands," and a weekly radio show on environmental issues, called "Earth Beat," which can be accessed via ContentDepot. What do you do there? I am our Regional Manger for North America, which is a very interesting and challenging job. I oversee our program distribution and station relations efforts in the USA and Canada, and I develop new co-production partnerships for RNW. For example, we co-produce a weekly radio program with WAMU, in Washington, DC, called "The State We're In." Within this program, which deals with human rights issues around the world, both broadcasters are able to produce content. This allows us to make a program that's more compelling, and, paradoxically, more international and more local at once. Approximately how long have you been using ContentDepot? We at RNW have been using ContentDepot right from the start of the system. Our first program in ContentDepot, "Live! at the Concertgebouw" -- our weekly live concert series from Amsterdam's great hall -- used to go out over the old satellite system that predated ContentDepot. How has it changed your operations, whether for good or bad? Obviously, ContentDepot is more sophisticated than the old distribution system and allows for so much more functionality. So in that respect, it’s a great improvement. Of course, with any new system that has new bells and whistles, comes new challenges. At first, ContentDepot required more work for our staff. We were able to make adjustments to our workflow, but the fact is, the system can sometimes move very slowly. We also had to make adjustments due to the demands of the ContentDepot. This means getting shows ready in a certain format and in segments because that’s the way the system runs. Before, it was put a program on a disc and mail it out. But we definitely see the benefits, primarily of tracking program usage by stations. We can see who is subscribing to programs, and we can confirm people are getting what they want and when they need it. It also helps that stations can see what other programs we have. If you could see one thing changed or improved with CD, what would it be? It would be great to be able to upload files for our programs automatically, perhaps via an RSS feed, rather than to have to have staff doing this manually. Have you developed or heard of any particularly creative work-arounds for issues or challenges in ContentDepot? We are currently distributing our promos as separate programs, rather than as metadata within each program episode. This seems to work best for stations, but has caused confusion on our end, and seems to be a workaround rather than a proper solution to promos. And although we did struggle at first with the segment process, we do like this for one particular reason. Let’s say we have a weekly show in the can that we’ve uploaded and will be held for a certain amount of time. But then there’s some kind of breaking news that could change the content of the show. When this happens, we can easily reproduce one of the segments and re-feed it. If stations haven’t yet aired the program, they can now take a more current version of the show. The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? I'm bullish on public radio's future. I think we've got a unique and relevant offering, and I'm proud to contribute to making US public radio stronger and more diverse.   Mike Pappas Director of Engineering KUVO, Denver Tell me a bit about KUVO. Does it have a particular focus / specialty / mission? What are some cool/interesting things about your station or your community? KUVO is celebrating its 25th year of broadcasting this year and our commitment to our listeners and delivering programming that has a high local content has never been stronger. Our live performance studio is being warmed up right now for our pledge drive and we will have seven live broadcasts in seven days featuring a wide range of performances from local and national acts encompassing genres from jazz to R&B to Tejano. What do you do there? How long have you been there? I have been head of engineering at KUVO since 1994. I think that makes me about 300-years old in radio years... Approximately how long have you been using ContentDepot? Since the day it went live. How has it changed your operations, whether for good or bad? The automatic download of program files to our automation system is light years better than the old system where we had to record things on reel to reel, DAT tape and Mini Disk and then play them back!! And the system runs pretty much by itself these days and it allows KUVO to provide HD-2 and HD-3 programming to our listeners with little intervention from station personnel. It can get dicey when we have issues with the live streaming decoders and thankfully those problems seem to have become less and less frequent as the systems matures. This is a very welcome development and we do much less hair pulling and head banging these days. If you could see one thing changed or improved with CD, what would it be? We are always on the warpath about audio quality and we would really like to see the CD system move from L-2 dual mono to a stereo codec and to one that offers significantly better audio quality.. Have you developed or heard of any particularly creative work-arounds for issues or challenges in ContentDepot? I think every implementation of CD has its "very creative" solutions. We drop in live NPR news to prerecorded shows on our HD-2 channel and have it override the "old news". We also do slate records and tape delay/time shift of our weekend specialty shows and the implementation of the IP control of our Logitek plant to our ENCO automation system was particularly creative. The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? The news of public radio's death is premature. I recall when XM and Sirius were going to render not only public radio but all radio to the footnotes of history and that certainly hasn't worked out that way. Now streaming, WiFi and WiMax are supposed to bury radio and I just don't see it. I think public radio that has local content and addresses the listeners needs has a very bright future.   Michael Sakarias Radio Operations Manager KTOO / KRNN / KXLL What is your station and does it have a particular focus/specialty/mission? KTOO began life as a community-run station 35+ years ago. It had everything in its program schedule: news, public events and music of all genres. Up until three years ago, the fall of 2006, that was the format, totally eclectic. In late 2006, at the same time ContentDepot® was about to go live, we purchased two additional station licenses with the plan to expand to three air signals. KTOO became, essentially, an NPR station, airing all the best news, talk and public affairs programming available. The new station, KRNN, took all of the locally hosted music programs and network music shows we used to air on the old KTOO, and added more of each. The third station, KXLL, took a different direction. After tossing around an all-classical or all-jazz format, we decided on a young adult contemporary format aimed at bringing new, young listeners to public radio. Since its inception, KTOO, and now all three stations, are very much intertwined with the community, and we go to great length to nurture this interconnectedness, not only providing radio, but events that bring people together. What do you do there? I am the Radio Operations Manager, the automation "guru" responsible for keeping programming on the air on all three stations. In late 2006 into early 2007, the transition from one station to three and the simultaneous transition to ContentDepot added up to an intense few months. I went from worrying about 168 hours of air signal a week to 504 hours. In the old-days of pre-ContentDepot, we’d air around 50 different program files a week, most of those net-delayed from live streams coming through the ComStreams demods. After the transitions, we were airing 500 different program files each week from many more different producers. Can you tell us a few cool/interesting things about your station? Of our three stations, KRNN is essentially volunteer-powered. All of the live programming is hosted by volunteer DJs, accounting for more than 80 hours programming each week, from jazz to classical to world to blues to traditional folk to various genres of pop/rock. A totally eclectic mix of music, but it is what listeners here want. We frequently hear from supporters after they have traveled down to the “Lower 48” (the term we Alaskans give to the rest of the U.S.). They have found and listened to public radio there and realize how much they appreciate the variety on their public radio stations back home in Juneau. KTOO evolved from being THE public radio station in Juneau with a totally eclectic NPR news and locally hosted music mix when it was one station to focus on just news, talk and public affairs. It is largely automated, with only 5 1/2 hours of live programming a week, not counting local newscasts during Morning Edition and All Things Considered. But this extra time allowed us to start airing programs we simply did not have room for under our former, one-station format – Talk of the Nation, Fresh Air, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, for example. KXLL is an experiment in public radio – music aimed at an 18-35 demographic, and minimizing the normal public radio sound for something a bit more hip. A large part of the programming is generated by the PD (aiming to keep the programming flavor focused and consistent) and either voice-tracked by him or volunteers. But, increasingly, volunteer DJs run their own shows. A big part of the station’s activities are frequent themed dance events, an R&B band, a Halloween dance with prizes for costumes, etc. In three years, the station has built a solid community of young listeners. And the on-the-air fundraising has been successful in a demographic not necessarily aware of public radio before this. All this: three stations, three air studios, all under one roof, run by a small staff -- kind of amazing to be a part of. Approximately how long have you been using ContentDepot? We started using ContentDepot as soon as it was made available to stations outside the test pool, so around three years. We could not do what we do, running three stations, without ContentDepot. How has it changed your operations, whether for good or bad? All to the good. With a small staff, and the demands of filling so much new air time, the ability to have new program episodes simply arrive each week and automatically air, without having to do anything extra makes it all possible. We simply could not do what we are doing with three stations without ContentDepot. If you could see one thing changed or improved with CD, what would it be? There are several things that I'd like to see different. In choosing one, I'd like for producers to be constantly reminded about (i.e. forced to pay attention to) the end users' needs, how what producers do and don’t do can affect stations to their benefit, or give them headaches and cause extra work. We recently had a program where they had a couple long program segments, so they shrank the others too much because they did not understand that a file that is too short could cause station-automation system problems and, at worst, dead air. These technical things, along with producers leaving dead program listings on the Portal, are continuing annoyances – those that could cause dead air are most important, though. Have you developed or heard of any particularly creative work-arounds for issues or challenges in ContentDepot? Not sure how creative, but one tip I heard that saves me time getting into the Portal is to click on the “My Programs” link as soon as the opportunity offers. This bypasses the lengthy wait for the main “Stations” page to load. By doing this, I miss seeing the “Latest Programs” list, but the speed is worth it. The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? Bright. In Juneau, KTOO is at the top of our market for listenership. Collectively, the three stations dominate. We’re making our fund-raising goals. We receive more kudos than complaints. Our listeners appreciate the community orientation and want public radio in Juneau to continue to succeed. This all makes it worth coming to work. Top of page 
 Daniel Mansergh Director of Engineering KQED What is your station and does it have a particular focus/specialty/mission? This is a milestone year for KQED-FM, since we're celebrating our 40th anniversary. We've been a full-time news and information station since 1987 and actually were the first FM station in the country to run that format. It's worked very well for us in this market, and we're always ranked at the top of the national audience ratings along with WNYC. Since we're in a smaller market, it speaks volumes about the loyalty and support of our Bay Area listeners. We're located in the Mission District in San Francisco and are a joint licensee with KQED-TV. There are a total of 5 broadcast stations that we run out of this facility: three TV stations, KQED-FM in San Francisco and KQEI-FM in Sacramento. What do you do there? I'm the Director of Engineering for the KQED Public Radio. Our department is in charge of all the equipment and systems that support broadcast operations and news production. So anything involving hardware, from the microphones to the transmitters, is our bailiwick. We have a separate Operations department that staffs the production engineers and on-air announcers. They use the systems, but we design them, install them, train the users, and troubleshoot and fix problems. Training is a fairly significant ongoing function. How are you involved with ContentDepot? We rolled it out in the background while our legacy system was still operating. We were very involved as the system was developed and rolled out. We weren't one of the pilot stations (which was just as well since we were finishing up the last phase of a major rebuild at the time), but as soon as we got the equipment we had it racked up and fully configured. We got familiar with the system, did the initial configuration, and trained the operators. Approximately how long have you been using ContentDepot? Since around 2006. When the first shipments of gear went out, we got it and put it in right away. How has it changed your operations, whether for good or bad? Definitely positive, in a big way. Although most of our programming during the weekdays is live, we have a large number of programs that we use as files, especially on the weekends and overnights, When we have the choice, we prefer to have files because the amount of manual intervention that has to be done to get a program into our system and loaded for playback is so much less. As long as everything is working as it should, the file appears and you don't have to think about it. So our total recording load has gone down a lot. It's also dramatically reduced the amount of time that on-air operators have to spend doing trims cuing. With a file, you don't have to worry about the top and tail. ContentDepot came during the latter part of a fairly big redesign of our broadcast operations facilities, where we went fully automated. Before that, we'd done everything on tape. All of our program recordings were scheduled in the SOSS-based legacy system and then taped on Studer reel-to-reel machines. We had six machines in Master Control and the same ones were used for recording and playing programs back. On Fridays, there was so much juggling, and any tape delayed broadcasts of hearings were a nightmare. So, one big improvement was getting people to think about managing programs and schedules within a computer system. They knew SOSS, but it was really just a front-end to an old-style manual recording system. So introducing ContentDepot was a natural step in the progression to computer-based playout and it meant we had one less mechanical function - managing the recording list - to worry about. We still take a lot of programs live from the receiver, but the number that we have to record and tape-delay is much less. Overall, aside from some early bumps, learning how to use it during the transition process and especially learning about proper network architecture, the ContentDepot rollout went well. All of the interconnected stations learned how to make the most of the system as a community, through Pubtech, the ContentDepot Users Summits, and Basecamp, all of which were really helpful. It was a good community effort based on best practices, and we learned from each other's experiences. I'd say on the whole, the system has performed well. We've had a piece of equipment here and there that had to go back, but that's not a surprise. It would be nice to see metadata come through the system, and I would urge that going forward. And improving the messaging system and portal performance is still a big issue. It takes a long time for that site to load and do fairly simple tasks, like scheduling a program. Some ways that the system could be improved are by streamlining the data and information flow among producers and stations. If you look at the industry as a whole, large station groups like Clear Channel take a system-wide approach to technology and services. Having a scale like they have is an advantage, since they can spread the cost over so many stations. They're all connected on a big network, they're managing info across stations, so they can have consistent metadata across platforms even if programs are airing at different times. But they had to build that system from scratch. Having an interconnection system like PRSS is a huge advantage for the public radio community, since it's already built. Not many groups of stations that have that, and it gives us a big advantage. But we have to do a better job of working together as a system to really maximize the capabilities of this asset and realize the benefits at the station level. Have you developed or heard of any particularly creative work-arounds for issues or challenges in ContentDepot? For messaging, we default to Webdacs, which was designed as an archiving system and therefore is fairly limited in its capabilities. We produce The California Report, which airs on most California radio stations, so we're essentially running a big regional network. We have to manage the messaging to that group separate from PRSS. If the messaging and Content Exchange capabilities were improved, we'd prefer to move a lot of these functions into ContentDepot, but there's not enough benefit there for us to do it yet.. For portal performance, there's no way around that, you just have to wait. For searching, often it's just easier to go through the directory and search by name. I will say audio levels continue to be an issue, in terms of consistency, and its something we deal with daily. Most producers have pretty much standardized their way of doing things and are responsive to concerns, but there are a few out there that continue to be inconsistent. The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? I'm bullish. Public radio, from both a content and business perspective, is in very good position in the media landscape. I'm more concerned about the effect that declining traditional radio listening overall may have on our broadcast audiences in the long term. We have to remember that public radio is just a small percentage of the number of outlets that people have in their markets. The majority of the band is made up of commercial stations that are challenged by high debt service and operating costs, while their revenues are being squeezed as businesses reduce or reallocate their advertising dollars in a down economy. Any cost savings they may have planned on as they consolidated in the wake of the 1996 Telecom Act have already been realized, so they're choosing to reduce their production costs and under-invest in content. Which means they're switching to more national-based content or juggling music-only formats, reducing DJ air shifts and getting rid of localism, and giving up on what makes radio so valuable to the listener- that engagement and sense of shared experience that keeps them tuned in. This means that many stations are actively giving listeners reasons not to listen to the jukebox radio format of the week and instead get in the habit of listening to their iPod, or Pandora, or something else. This is what's happening to the younger demographics, and it should be of concern as we look at our long-range plans as stations and as a system. If we want to see the radio medium thrive, we need to be the ones investing in localism. A lot of people's concerns are local, and the reduction of local content on other stations gives us a prime opportunity to grow audiences and support for our programming. Public radio is better positioned to do this than commercial because by definition we're focused on our local communities. It's why we exist. It's an advantage to have this as our mission, but we can't rest on our laurels because where the radio industry as a whole goes, so will we. We should be finding ways to give the listeners more of what they want when they come to us, and giving them more reasons to keep tuning in. The key is the local connection, local personalities, the guests you have. In our case, with news and info, we have a built-in hook since its live news. But we can't sit idly by and say, "there's always going to be news so we don't have to worry about our future." We need to be everywhere where listeners are, and that means exploring all potential audio, and non-audio, vehicles for delivering our content. Top of page   Roger Karwoski Assistant General Manager and Chief Engineer KBIA, Columbia, Mo. This month, EsPRSS-O speaks with Roger Karwoski, Assistant General Manager and Chief Engineer of KBIA, headquartered at the University of Missouri in Columbia-Jefferson City, Missouri. Roger is also known as the unofficial station historian, having been a member of the staff since the station first went on the air in 1972. Whether it's the quality of the "sound" of KBIA, or the maintenance of the various pieces of broadcast equipment it takes to run the station, Roger is the guy called to make it all work. Roger also teaches audio production for the Department of Communication at MU. Say a bit about KBIA and its mission? KBIA is located on the University of Missouri Columbia campus. It started in 1972 as part of a university-wide goal of getting public radio stations fully operational on all of its four different campuses. The station here began full-time broadcast in May 1972, which is when I joined the staff. Originally the station was designed to be a student-training facility, involving primarily students, along with a fulltime radio station. So we do have a staff, three and a half full-timers that work in news, but we try to involve a lot of students. We have about 100 students per semester that go through the newsroom. Some of them have won awards like the Murrow Award. What do you do there? I was originally hired as the station’s chief engineer. I had quite a few tape recorders and audio equipment. My job has developed over the years and now I’m both the engineer and the assistant manager of the station, plus I teach a course in communications at the university. I design the systems we use and maintain them. Everything is computers now, so I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. I may not know the answer but I know where to get it. How are you involved with ContentDepot? I oversee the maintenance of it and the folks who use it. I was involved with it from the beginning. Actually, I was around here when NPR distributed its programs by telephone line. I sat in on the panels when satellite operations came in. For ContentDepot, I served as a trainer at seminars around the country, teaching people about the system itself, the concept of what it would be, how it would be different. Before CD, the satellite system did everything in real-time. If you wanted an orchestra, you were taking things live, as opposed to the two-tier approach of file delivery and live streams. This was a different way of thinking about it. So as a trainer, it was easier for us to implement here because I myself had to be trained on the ins and outs of it. From a technical standpoint of where we were going to put it and how we were going to use it, I had a good handle on it. Has ContentDepot’s potential been realized? For the most part, yes. I spoke with our Ops director and he said overall, it’s been an incredible improvement over what we had. The significance is in looking back. A long time ago, we got tapes in the mail and our broadcasts were low-fidelity. The first satellite generation was an improvement because it increased fidelity and the number of programs available. Then CDs came along, and then for five or six years, we lived with DAT machines. Now, with ContentDepot and automation, receiving audio, editing the audio, scheduling it, all of this is much easier to do. For my job, when I come in the morning, I open my browser and am able to look at all of my file servers and access a status report on what’s going. I sign in to the ContentDepot receiver to see receiver strength and digital quality, and I check other servers to see if everything is health, all from my desktop. That’s a nice thing to be able to do. How do you feel about the future of public radio? If we remain relevant to our listeners, as opposed to, what’s the cheapest way to pass on information, the future is bright. That’s a big ‘if’ though. Radio has a good future if we remain relevant to our listeners. I like to say that we’re not a radio station. Obviously we are, but it’s a different way of thinking. We’re in the content production business of news, info and entertainment programming. How we get it to a listener is analog broadcasts, HD, over the Web, through podcasts, iPod apps. If someone with a can and a string wants KBIU, we’ll deliver to them. The delivery may change, but the content remains. If it’s good, people will want it and we’ll get it to them. Top of page   Burt Poley Network Manager Native Voice One Tell us a bit about Native Voice One. Native Voice One started in 2006 when it took over the Native American radio distribution system from American Indian Radio On Satellite, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting awarded us grant money to start it up. Our mission is to educate people and promote Native American interests and dispel a lot of stereotypes through radio. For example, one program we distribute is National Native News, which has been around now for 22 years. It’s a daily five-minute program that carries news and information from a Native perspective. We also provide a live daily call-in show known as Native America Calling heard Monday through Friday at 1pm Eastern time. What kinds of stations pick up National Native News? We have stations around the country that pick it up. It’s broadcast in New York, Washington, California, Florida, and a lot of other places. And its not just about Native American issues. It covers ‘Native’ topics that are going on throughout the world, such as indigenous issues in Canada, South America, New Zealand and Australia. We also have all the programs and specials we distribute available via our live Webstream at www.nv1.org . How many stations are a part of Native Voice One? We have 28 stations that are called ‘full affiliates’. That means you’re entitled to all programs we distribute, which includes the various specials produced throughout the year. We have other stations as well, up to 200 associate stations, which can pick from an a la carte menu of shows. These associate stations pick up anywhere from nearly all programs we have to just a couple per year. What does your job as Network Manager involve? I’m the liaison between the stations and producers and PRSS. My big thing right now is bringing in more Native American programs to provide to these stations that are getting to know us. I went to PRPD this month to build relationships with those stations that don’t know a whole lot about Native America or NV1. I’m here to provide those avenues for them to provide for their listeners. I also provide a service to the stations, letting them know where to get the programs, providing descriptions, presenting options for stations that are not interconnected and don’t use ContentDepot. We’ve set up FTP sites on our end so that these smaller stations can still have access to these programs. Do you use ContentDepot? Yes, I have a live 24-7 stream so I’m fully connected. My job involves subscribing, unsubscribing, uploading new programs, checking programs. I will say that the folks at the NOC (Network Operations Center in Washington, D.C.) are awesome. They contact me if there’s a problem, even if its 2:00 am (which they’ve done). When things were put in place, we worked hand in hand to make sure it fit our requirements. Now it’s moving along smoothly. I don’t get a lot of calls from stations or producers like in the early days. I’ve also been a part of the ContentDepot® Users Summit and that really helped to see what other stations were doing, and I was able to provide some insight into what our stations were going through. Implementing ContentDepot was a big learning curve for a lot of people. But seeing what some of the big stations are doing with ContentDepot has really opened my eyes to what it can do. Now we need to see how we can help our Native stations take advantage of that. The fact is, a lot of Native stations are not using ContentDepot to its fullest potential because most of these stations are understaffed; they don’t have the money to hire someone to do those daily activities that you need to have. How has ContentDepot changed your operations? For the stations, I would say 75 percent are very happy with it. It has made things a lot easier. I worked at KNAU, which is a classical and talk station in Northern Arizona. Every time something would happen, we’d get calls in the middle of the night and someone would have to go to the station. But a file-based download system has just made things easier, ever since they worked out the kinks. I see it as just a big plus, particularly the whole automation aspect of it. How are the native stations and producers finding ContentDepot? Some stations can’t use it at all. It’s still an issue of getting the infrastructure put in place for some reservations just to get them out of dial-up mode. But we’re working on informing the different nations that there’s some money out there to help them put this whole internet infrastructure in place so they can have access to radio, digital TV, everything out there. We want them to be connected to the news, the world, and even provide to their own people on a local level, what’s going on in their own communities. If you could see one improvement to ContentDepot, what would it be? Keep plugging away, keep doing what you’re doing. Maybe more outreach to the stations on a different level than the standard outlets. Not all stations are hooked up to the Pubradio ListServ®. I’ve seen the outreach improve over the years, but it’s still something that could be more dynamic. The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? I still believe that public radio has a lot more to offer than commercial radio because of the informational aspect of it. As far as Native radio, I really believe that we can provide more insight into not just Native American lives, but non-Natives and people all over the world. In every Native community, there’s a need to get the word out, whether it’s a health issue, tribal council issue, an event coming up, our traditional music, non-traditional music, even birthdays. People love birthday announcements, they love to hear their name on the radio, its exciting. Native radio gives these people an outlet. Top of page  Spotlight: Jon Cyphers, KMUW, Wichita, KansasThis month, EsPRSS-O speaks with Jon Cyphers, Director of
Engineering for KMUW, Wichita Public Radio. Jon has served in this role
since 2006, though his first encounter with the station was in 1994 as
a Wichita State University student, when he co-hosted New Counterpoint.
He also helped start New Settlers’ Radio Hour with Lu Anne Stephens
almost 15 years ago. Jon has participated in PRSS ContentDepot Users
Summits and is a frequent contributor to Pubtech discussions.
What is your station and does it have a particular focus/specialty/mission? KMUW Wichita Public Radio. We have the most diverse programming
of any station in our area. Our mission statement: Wichita Public Radio
is a trusted source of local, national and world news, providing its
audience with a broad discussion of ideas, and a distinctive blend of
diverse music and entertainment, while operating as a significant
public service of Wichita State University. If both audio outputs could be on the same stream at the same
time, there would no longer be a need for detuning between hours of a
show, reducing the data overhead of the system and the chance that a
decoder might not retune. It's really amazing how much programming has
been done to work around this, and it works well 99% of the time. But I
think the only path to solid live-stream reliability is to somehow
reduce the amount of detuning.   Victoria St. John Operations Director, VPR- Colchester, Vermont
With a mission to enrich the mind, nourish the spirit, and connect the community through distinctive radio programming, it broadcasts two programming services on nine full-power transmitters throughout the state. VPR features primarily news and information programming, while VPR Classical airs classical music programming 24 hours a day. Vermont Public Radio is Vermont's only statewide news source. Our award-winning news team and the daily newsmagazine program Vermont Edition keeps listeners connected with and informed about the issues and topics that affect the region. VPR Classical has locally-hosted classical music programming throughout the day and for Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on the weekends. As a statewide institution we believe it’s also important for VPR to be a positive force in the community in other ways. During our March membership drive this year, we collaborated with the Vermont Community Foundation so that every pledge to VPR benefited the Vermont Foodbank, which distributes meals to more than 66,000 Vermonters in need every year.
As Operations Director, I am the bridge between VPR’s engineering and programming departments. I oversee traffic, build and maintain VPR's automation system, AudioVault, train and schedule board operators, and oversee automation production. I often joke that if it isn’t human error, it is probably my fault! Put simply, I make sure that all of VPR’s “moving parts” fit together so that all listeners hear is great programming.
Approximately how long have you been using ContentDepot? VPR was a BETA station, so we have been involved since 2004. A lot of really smart people put ContentDepot together, but it was the BETA stations that tested it for real world use. I made a lot of contacts (many of whom are now friends) in the public radio community thanks to VPR's involvement with ContentDepot.
The old DACS and DEMOD world was around for many years. A lot of work-arounds had been developed by the brightest engineers and operations staff nationwide to make it work. When ContentDepot launched all those old ways went out the window and we were all forced to do things differently…and begin developing new work-arounds! Change is always difficult, but overall it is a much better system. It makes automation simpler and it can be manipulated remotely.
Performance (error messages, speed) of the site, better reports, and messaging. Oops! That’s three things!
There are several automation systems used nationally, and there are tricks that work for each. The way we do things at VPR is unique. DUBNET a great immediate response tool that we in operations use to share tricks and get advice from each other. ContentDepot Base Camp is also a great resource for scripts, tips, and discussions.
Given how fast the media landscape – and everything else – is
evolving these days, it’s hard to say for sure. But if I were to
venture a guess, I would say the future of public radio is bright. I
think the definition of public radio will continue to change. It no
longer means just the broadcast coming out of your radio. Public radio
has come to stand for the characteristics the broadcast embodies:
quality, integrity, intelligence, and curiosity. These qualities carry
across the media landscape, both in the content we produce and the way
in which we interact with the communities we serve. If we embrace this
shift, continue our commitment to producing quality content, and
listeners continue understanding its value and supporting it, then I
think the future for public radio is very bright.   Mike LeClair Chief Engineer WBUR-FM Boston
WBUR is Boston’s NPR News and Information station. Our programming is news and information 24 hours/day and 7 days/week. We have a very strong local news department that integrates nicely with the national news programs from NPR and other sources.
2) What do you do there? I am the Chief Engineer for WBUR-AM (West Yarmouth, MA) and WBUR-FM (Boston, MA). As Chief Engineer I am involved in all the infrastructure used for production of radio programming and its transmission directly to listeners or for uplink. In a typical year that means I am doing everything from rewiring sections of our Master Control to planning the technical details of remote broadcasts around the US or as far away as China.
3) Can you tell us a few cool or interesting things about your station? WBUR first went on the air in 1952 as an experimental FM station that was owned and operated by the School of Communications at Boston University. In the early 1990’s we changed our format to one that is based primarily on news and information. Since then our audience has grown rapidly and we are now the number 3 rated station in the highly competitive Boston radio market. WBUR also produces a number of programs that are carried by stations all over the country, such as On Point, Only a Game and we are co-producers of Car Talk.
4) Approximately how long have you been using the ContentDepot? It was my responsibility to shepherd the transition from the SOSS downlink system to the new ContentDepot. Engineering handled the physical installation of the new equipment and its initial testing. When the time came to transition to the ContentDepot, I handled all the program subscription and scheduling so that we would have a seamless changeover from SOSS. We needed to replicate in ContentDepot all the previous functions and automation that we had been using in SOSS for about 10 years while adding in the new features and capabilities of ContentDepot.
5) How has it changed your operation for good or for bad? On the good side we are now completely automated for playback of programs that are not aired in real time. We used to use the SOSS automation to start and stop DAT recorders to capture these time delayed feeds. Later we converted the recording devices to CD recorders when the DAT machines were phased out. Each of these approaches required that the operations staff handled a lot of media on a daily basis to get the shows on air. Now, everything goes direct to file server for automated playout. By automating all these playbacks we have reduced the work load for our air staff so they no longer have to dig through shelves looking for the correct CD to play back. This has reduced the frequency of errors and breakdowns greatly. DAT tapes in particular were subject to reliability problems but even CD’s would fail on a regular basis and cause us to have to substitute a different program than scheduled to keep our station on the air. I don’t really have any ways in which I feel that ContentDepot has changed our operations for the worse but I will mention another good aspect of the system. We use the download capability of the portal regularly to preview programs at someone’s desk or to create an emergency copy of a show on CD. There is always a way for us to get a program even if the decision to carry it is made fairly late in the day. All of our operations staff have their own portal logins and are familiar with how to pull in programs when needed.
6) If you could see one thing changed or improved with the ContentDepot what would it be? I would like to see the streaming decoder programming have warnings to prevent one of our operations staff from incorrectly assigning a live program. We use a shadow system to track streaming decoder programming but if the system warned you before changing an active streaming decoder it would be very slick. Right now all streaming decoder programming has to be done by Engineering so that we can track decoder usage which limits the flexibility of the system and our ability to respond quickly.
7) Have you developed or hear of any work-arounds for issues or challenges in the ContentDepot? The most important work-around that we use is to fix tune the streaming decoders for feeds that we take on a daily basis, such as the main news channels with Morning Edition and the BBC World Service. By forcing these decoder ports to stay on channel we have avoided a regular number of tuning failures that disable the channels. We also try to make sure that we have redundancy in all of our systems. When we converted to ContentDepot, we built up a small spare Audiovault server for almost no money from parts that we had lying around. We built this extra server so that we could automate the playback on two independent computers. Each of our Audiovault servers connects to an individual storage receiver so that if one receiver or server fails the other will still capture the desired show. Automation playlists are automatically copied from one server to the other so that we only update automation once. This system has saved us a few times over the last couple of years when a computer needed to reboot at just the wrong time (like any time on the weekend!).
8) The future of public radio: bright or cloudy? I happen to be very optimistic about public radio’s future, even though the radio industry as a whole is under considerable challenge. The kind of news programming that we provide, with the local focus to our market provided by our large news staff, has demonstrated clearly that there is a large and supportive audience for high quality news. At the same time that we have been growing our news operations, most other commercial operations have been cutting back. This has driven our growth in the ratings in Boston and our listener support. Public radio has a distinct advantage compared to most
commercial radio operators: on average we have less debt and a very
loyal audience base. We can continue to invest in our programming and
signals during this recession. As we exit the advertising downturn
sometime late this year I expect a period of excellent growth for
public radio stations that have been able to maintain and even grow
their services over the last year or two. |
Jon Cyphers© 2010 NPR, Inc. · Distribution Division 635 Massachusetts Avenue, NW · Washington, DC 20001-3753  |
