RADIO’S FANTASTIC FACILITIES

While capital spending was down over the past year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, when you have to rebuild, you have to rebuild. We found several new fantastic-looking new facilities we had to share with you. These three were truly amazing.

Walmart Radio

Scott “Bo” Woloszyn in the brand-new studios at Walmart and Sam’s Club Radio in Bentonville, Arkansas, along with a closer look (left) at some of the top-flight digital gear

Thanks to Scott “Bo” Woloszyn of Walmart & Sam’s Club Radio for sharing the new studios for the company radio station. The brand-new studios for Walmart & Sam’s Club Radio are located in Bentonville, Arkansas, inside the Walmart home office. The studios feature Axia Telos gear, the automation is DAD Enco, and the video streaming is all via LiveStream Studio. The studios took about two months to build, and another two weeks to switch out to all-digital gear.

Woloszyn tells Radio Ink they have a full main studio and an Axia Fusion console that broadcasts coast-to-coast during live shows. Across from the main studio board is an interview or social media video spot. There’s also a production studio, as well as a video switcher studio for live video capture.

Walmart World Radio Network, which includes both Walmart and Sam’s Club Radio, broadcasts music across the entire U.S. to all Walmart & Sam’s Club locations, with an online stream at www.walmartworld.com. The live shows (Live with Antonio and The Bo Show) are sent via satellite, just like a syndicated show would be. When the live shows aren’t on, each store location acts as a local radio station, playing localized music.

Meruelo Media’s KLOS/Los Angeles

Meruelo Media VP Engineering/IT David Gray explains the upgrades at the new KLOS studios in Los Angeles: “I think we built an interesting mixture of radio and TV systems into a powerful multistudio, multi-media facility that is staying busy in this hybrid new world. “We have a full-sized Ross 4 MLE Octane video production switcher, Axia Fusion radio mixing consoles with AES67 audio-over-IP that interfaces with our traditional RTS intercom/IFB systems. We built a dozen PCs that we use for full-screen, full-resolution Zoom callers. We built other PCs that we use for our 2-channel graphics creation and playback. All of our productions are recorded onto Blackmagic HyperDeck recorders. “We have a mixture of ENG- and PTZ-style cameras spread across multiple studios. The studios have some pretty unique custom furniture that transforms to fit the needs of different shoots, as do the multiple 82-inch Samsung monitors that can be fed individually or fed as a single virtual skin in our studio A via our Matrox Mura video wall controller. Studio A is affectionately called the ‘OMG studio’ as it dramatically transforms within minutes to meet the next project’s objectives. This studio gets its name because many times the first thing that our clients say when they walk into Studio A is ‘OMG.’” In the photo above, we’re looking at Matt Pinfield doing his Sunday show on KLOS. Meruelo CEO Otto Padron points out, “Matt looks great, and the show sounds amazing on air — and on our YouTube channel.”

Room with a view: the new studios at Bonneville’s KOIT-FM/San Francisco Top 40 WMVQ (Now 99.7) also gets a new look in the Bonneville/S.F. makeover

The new sales and management workspace at Bonneville Bay Area A look at the lobby, rack room, and feature studio

Bonneville San Francisco

Director of Marketing, Promotions & Events for Bonneville San Francisco Carlos Pedraza shares that cluster’s brand-new facilities with us.

The new facilities were completed in mid2020, but because of the stay-at-home orders in California, there’s been limited staff in the building, and nobody from the public has been able to see the new digs yet. Pedraza says there are people who work for Bonneville who haven’t even been in the building yet. Jason Ornellas, regional director of engineering for Bonneville West Region, reports the equipment vendors in the build were: Wheatstone, RCS Zetta, Yellowtec, Mika, KRK for studio speakers, Omnirax furniture, Telos for VX Phone System, Gates Air for STL, Cielo Networks for Microwave links, Inovonics for Monitoring, and SCMS for equipment purchases.