From the Radio World Who’s Buying What page: For a rapidly growing church, media is an important tool for sharing the message of transformation, empowerment, and praise. At Authentic Word Ministries, based in Kigali, Rwanda, this includes a robust social media strategy, a television channel, and Radio O.
Radio O, broadcasting on 92.8 MHz from Mount Jali north of the Rwandan capital, is the local radio voice of Authentic Word. Operating out of the ministry’s 5,000-person-capacity church building, Radio O broadcasts the ministry’s message of its services to listeners across the region, along with related news and entertainment programming.
Looking to upgrade its audio production capabilities, Radio O recently implemented a Lawo RƎLAY solution, which combines with standard PC hardware to create a more flexible production and broadcast workflow. Mediacity, a Lawo distributor in Rwanda, handled the sale and installation.
“We are excited … to offer our on-air talents a more flexible and scalable solution that allows them to curate more content, without having to worry about technical inefficiencies,” stated Jean de Dieu Rutabara, director of Radio O and TV O.
Rutabara noted that Radio O had needs Lawo systems at other stations and contacted Mediacity to learn more “This decision was taken to follow our overall strategy for modernizing our broadcast and production workflows and migrating to a purely IP based solution to be able to do more with less technical clutter.”
According to Mediacity Director Jesse Kiyingi Maxella and IT Media Systems Specialist Fred Martin Kiwalabye, Radio O is set up without a central equipment room. Instead standard PC hardware and IT infrastructure is used to route signals from an analog front-of-house mixing console in the church via a virtual patch bay to the RƎLAY VRX mixing software. The virtual patch bay provides audio outputs with different sound processing options — all routed via a simple Ethernet cable.
“The new system has made work very easy compared to the analog setups we had before. The new workflows we established now elevate the quality of our programs,” stated Evans Mwendwa, aka DJ Spin, head of programming for Radio O and TV O.
