Meeting Topic: Minnesota Public Radio - The Broadcast Media Ops Tour
Speaker Name: Doug Rowe, Eamon Coyne, Erik Stromstad, Elizabeth Iverson, and Jess Berg, (host)-Minnesota Public Radio
Meeting Location: Zoom
PNW Section was treated to a thorough inside look at the modern broadcasting entity that is Minnesota Public Radio for the February 2023 meeting. Guiding us were several key people in the MPR staff, including PNW expatriate Jess Berg, now Technical Supervisor for MPR News in St. Paul MN USA. About 35 persons attended the Zoom, 22 being AES members.
Jess Berg began by explaining the alphabet soup of U.S. public radio organizations and their relationships. In the U.S., the Corporation for Public Broadcasting qualifies public radio organizations. Notably, APMG (American Public Media Group) is the largest non-profit public radio entity that operates APM (American Public Media), MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) and even Southern California Public Radio, producing content and running broadcast networks. NPR (National Public Radio) is a different organization, based in Washington DC, which produces radio content that may be part of other public radio outlets such as APM stations.
Next, Doug Rowe, Broadcast Systems Architect at MPR, described some of the hardware that they use. Nowadays, everything is IT based. He spoke of his 2 major concerns: audio production infrastructure and content distribution infrastructure for their statewide operations. Most audio production is on an Axia network system, where no master clock is needed. A French firm called Dalet also provides a media assets system. He also described content distribution by IP and satellite.
Eamon Coyne, Broadcast Engineer at MPR, spoke next from the downtown MPR studios. He showed photos of transmitter sites, which covers most of Minnesota, as well as some of their studios, satellite dishes (for the Galaxy 16 sat), and spoke about maintenance and disasters like fires, floods, and copper thieves.
Erik Stromstad is Director, Broadcast Production & Operations at MPR, (working mostly on The Current), which is a modern music show not unlike KEXP in Seattle. YouTube is the big outlet for their productions. He started in audio, but now finds video is the driver. Where they might have formerly used 1 audio person and 1 video person for a shoot, now they want people with both skills. ProTools is used for most long-form audio production, but since moving to Black Magic Design's Davinci Resolve for video editing, they are finding that its audio tools are so good they may not need ProTools.
Next up was Elizabeth Iverson, MPR Manager, Broadcast Production & Operations (with a focus on their YourClassical program). She learned audio recording as a grad student in bassoon, then took an internship at MPR. YourClassical does a large number of live and recorded remote productions, and she also handles studio sessions, interviews and promos. She noted that during the pandemic, many venues like churches upgraded their internet and production gear, which makes things easier for them. They have been happy using Merging Technology's Hapi recording gear on remotes. They also prefer Riverside over Zoom for better sounding audio options.
Finally, Jess Berg, Technical Supervisor (MPR News), spoke about her role in the news operation. At MPR, local news is woven with NPR shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, but she had many descriptions of the frantic pace of the news operations. Many photos showed the studios and gear. She said that news gathering was getting back to speed after COVID restrictions, so training and troubleshooting are a big issue. Many Sound Devices MixPre 3s are in use for fieldwork. Axia networked audio boards are used in their studios, they still have "carts" but they are digital files instead of tape cartridges, and they always have the obscenity bleep button handy, called the DUMP button.
For Q&A, attendees could unmute and ask away. Many Q&As were done in Zoom Chat, but also discussed were broadcast delays, Axia processing, IP audio, computer networking skills now needed for audio, network security problems, disaster preparedness (they also have a backup facility for NPR), legacy gear still available for playback, and some radio production questions.
Lastly, self-introductions and comments took the reminder of the time. More information about the meeting will be on the PNW website Archive section;
https://www.aes-media.org/sections/pnw/pnwrecaps/
Written By: Gary Louie
