WNUB goes digital & automated:

Norwich's 34-year-old radio station embraces new technology while also keeping student involvement

By Todd Mansfield
Norwith Guidon Staff Write

Todd Mansfield, a WNUB senior manager, transfers public service announcements and stqation identifications onto minidisks with the new automated digital system, which was installed this past summer. (Knox photo)

After 34 years of on-the-air service, Norwich University's radio station, WNUB, has upgraded its operations with $10,000 of digital equipment, allowing the station to broadcast 24-hours-a-day, seven days a week without a person ever setting foot inside the studio.

"WNUB was brought into the 21st century and now has the same capabilities of most modern radio stations,"said Ira Wilner, WNUB's broadcasting engineering consultant. "The station can now run 24-hours a day. Students can produce shows, voice track them quickly and not have to spend long hours in the studios to do so."

According to WNUB faculty advisor Professor Doug Smith, the new technology allows Norwich University students to enter the world of commercial radio with a better understanding of modern technologies, --better than they were gaining here just one year ago.

"We can actually send out students to go do an internship at a local station with a lot more ability to blend right in rather than having to be taught everything once they get there," Smith said.

In the past, WNUB has had to rely on students actually being in the studio in order for the station to be on the air. Now, with new digital technology the station can run almost completely automated.

Smith said the new technology is also a lot more "user-friendly."

"The new software, Wave Station, allows for the production of what goes on air," Smith said. "We can have some of the better students, with better voices, better delivery, and better dedication come in and record their voices for the twice-an-hour announcements, making the station sound live."

The new technology, "reduces the burden" on executive board members who run the station, according to Wilner. Smith indicated that the new computers have the capability to run the station for "at least a week" without human assistance when properly programmed.

For the new system to become truly automated, upgrades were also made in the transmitter control unit. The FCC requires radio stations to alter the strength of their transmission between day and night time hours so that changes in the atmosphere do not cause the transmission to reach outside its assigned broadcast area.

In the past, changes in transmission strength had to be preformed from inside the WNUB studio. According to Wilner, the new transmitter remote control system enables transmitter control from any location within reach of a telephone.

The new equipment is also a better option for the college station, because the cost of repairing computers is significantly cheaper than that of repairing the out-dated equipment the station had been using, according to Wilner.

"Electromechanical devices have high failure rates, high maintenance costs, and lower fidelity than digital audio systems utilizing modern computers," Wilner said.

Working together this past summer, Wilner and Smith determined what would be needed to make WNUB an appropriate laboratory for educating students in modern radio broadcasting.

"Wilner figured out what we needed, and he gave me a list," Smith said. "I went online and looked for computer parts. We bought the computers piece by piece and put them together, ourselves."

The process of assembling the two computers took a total of five days, according to Wilner.

Smith said that he spent almost every day last August learning how to use the new equipment and transferring music into the new system.

Along with the introduction of new computers and new software, WNUB has instituted a new music format.

According to WNUB executive board member Vladimir Gutierrez, 21, a senior communications major from Montvale, N.J., Smith tried to make the music in the daytime appeal to a wider variety of people rather than just the students on campus.

"I have decided to go with a quality rock format," Smith said. "I try not to be too loud or too soft or too poppy or too alternative. I just try to find a middle ground. I want to give the station a chance to become a community station without alienating the students."

WNUB programming will still include student-hosted specialty shows, according to Gutierrez. These are shows that are dedicated to certain types of music such as country, alternative, metal, etc.

According to Smith, WNUB is not solely a source for communications majors to learn the technology, but rather for anyone who wants to learn how radio stations are run.

"Anyone that wants to be on the radio is welcome, because there are some people who are not communications majors who have talent," Gutierrez said

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