ANTWERP, Belgium — As a part of the Stadsfeestzaal events hall and shopping mall’s radio advertising campaign, Belgian broadcaster TOPradio hosted six hours of live radio on Friday, Nov 29 — “Black Friday.”
“The organizers wanted to go beyond a traditional radio campaign and opted for a full Black Friday concept,” said Wouter De Vries, TOPradio DJ and producer. “So we set up the live broadcast alongside the commercial campaign and promoted it on the airwaves and on social media.”
De Vries added that, with TOPradio being awarded 15 FM frequencies in April 2018 the station now also has a dedicated frequency (104.2 MHz FM) for the greater Antwerp area.
“This was the perfect occasion to highlight TOPradio’s new FM frequency. We enjoy good reception and have gained many listeners,” he said.
“Although we also broadcast on DAB+, the majority of our audience still tunes into FM. And the Stadsfeestzaal is a beautiful venue, on the Meir, Antwerp’s prime shopping street.”
For the Black Friday show, Flexivent, a company specializing in mobile event solutions, supplied the FlexStudio mobile broadcast studio remote trailer, which has space for a presentation desk and all the needed technical equipment.
RadioStudio.be managed the technical integration of TOPradio’s broadcast bubble. “We put in place a Lawo ruby package with an eight-fader ruby mixing console,” said Tom Callebaut, manager of RadioStudio.be.
“For TOPradio’s Aeron playout system, a dump data PC, a copy of TOPradio’s music files databank, in the mobile studio provided the musical content. In addition, the Lawo Ember+ protocol ensured swift communication between the digital components in the studio.”
[Read About Qmusic and Joe’s New Studios]
The station used two Neumann KMS 105 condenser microphones for presenters and guests. The Lawo ruby’s AES signal was encoded by a DEVA Broadcast 9000TX audio encoder and transmitted via 4G to TOPradio’s main on-air studio in Ghent.
The station aired between 2 and 8 p.m. with three presenters and a social media editor, providing pictures and stories for Facebook and Instagram.
There was also a DJ station in the Stadsfeestzaal venue so DJs and media personalities could perform in front of an audience.
“The Black Friday mobile broadcast was a huge success, both for the organizers and TOPradio,” concluded De Vries. “This may be the start of future collaboration.
