OSNABRÜCK, Germany — Show hosts and talent at Radio Osnabrück are telecommuting into work these days.
Covering the Osnabrück land region in Lower Saxony, Germany, Radio Osnabrück has one main studio, a network of transmitters, and now, several on-air personalities telecommuting from various locations throughout Germany.
SYSTEM SETUP
Talent run their shows from a custom user interface on their PCs that connects over the public internet with a VPN connection into the station’s WheatNet-IP audio networked studio in the city of Osnabrück.
Onscreen buttons enable remote talent to access sources, take listener call-ins, and do all the things they would otherwise do if they were physically in the studio. That includes talkbacks to other talent at various locations and triggering a local traffic announcement on the RDS encoder.
The UI was created with ScreenBuilder UI development application by Danny Teunissen of MRZ Broadcast in The Netherlands, who was the systems integrator for Radio Osnabrück’s new studios completed last year.
The system includes a Wheatstone split-frame LXE console in the main studio and IP-12 control surfaces in Studio 2 and Studio 3 with Tieline codec units, Proppfrexx automation and VoxPro recorder/editors all integrated into the WheatNet-IP audio network.
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The Wheatstone ACI protocol ties codecs and automation to SLIOs (software logic I/O) in the WheatNet-IP network for triggering events and elements.
Through the Proppfrexx automation, talent have access to utility mixers in each of the I/O BLADEs that make up the WheatNet-IP audio network for routing and segueing between program feeds during broadcasts.
It’s possible to trigger Tieline codecs remotely and status indicators are visible from the Proppfrexx automation as well.
Radio Osnabrück telecommuters are able to bring more local programming into the station and expand listenership as a result.
