WPTV, the Scripps Television Station Group-owned NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, FL, has added a Solid State Logic C100 HD console to support audio for production of five hours of live news programming daily.
The 32-fader, 64-channel C100 HD console supports the audio throughput of on-air news personalities and server-based content while streamlining the production workflow of the station and delivering the digital pathway for the all-digital broadcast mandate in 2009. According to station senior audio engineer Paul Smircich, the C100 drives the station’s news broadcasts and everything else done in the main control room.
The C100 resides in an audio booth within the main control room, servicing both the live news set and an interview set. The recall capabilities of the C100 allow the WPTV engineering staff to move between shows and anchors. According to Smircich, different engineers capture the settings for each anchor and microphone, greatly streamlining the changeover process. For its recent election coverage, this capability proved to be invaluable, allowing Smircich to take over coverage when his shift began and reset the console to his preloaded settings in 10 seconds.
According to Smircich, news production for the station is entirely accomplished through nonlinear, server-based content where video stories ingested into the server are accompanied by audio with varying, usually low, levels. With the old setup, the gain was fixed in the server. With the digital throughput provided by the C100, each channel has a gain control allowing Smircich to gently optimize the levels on the fly. This provides a consistency between packaged and live audio portions of the programs that wasn’t possible in the past.
WPTV is the sixth Scripps Television Station Group station to acquire and install the C100.
For more information, visit www.solid-state-logic.com.
