Led by: Kirk Harnack & Shaun Dolan

Description: What started with “two weeks to stop the spread” is now “we must wait for a vaccine,” so staying on-the-air is an ever-changing challenge for radio broadcasters. During March, 2020, many broadcasters moved quickly from their familiar and busy corporate studios to individual home-based studios. And while the viral transmission ground rules change every week or two, our radio transmission goal is ever the same: Stay on the air with informative and entertaining content – and do so safely, often from our homes.

At the beginning of this rushed move to home-based broadcasting, engineers gathered mics, laptops, audio codecs, and mic-to-USB converters from remote kits, closets, mobile DJ equipment -wherever they could find it. Popular consumer and some professional audio gear sold out quickly. Engineers also provided remote access to station automation systems and remote audio connections for their live shows. Remote voice tracking also ramped up significantly.

As the working-from-home paradigm is extended even longer, what are engineers envisioning as longer-term solutions? What equipment, software, or workflows are rising to prominence as we’re settling into this work paradigm? How can radio broadcasters regain one hundred percent of their former operational capability, even if using different approaches?

In this presentation led by Telos Alliance’s Kirk Harnack and Shaun Dolan we’ll hear and see directly from broadcast engineers in large, medium, and small markets. We’ll see how their signal paths and workflows have morphed over time, and learn their predictions for the future of quality and timely content creation from home.