I hear that! I'm in Master Control. We have 4 ENG trucks and 2 SAT trucks all capable of digital microwave (the conversion for our market is complete but the running list of major technical problems for us is about as long as my arm - those SAT trucks are using their satellite encoders to encode the video for the microwave transmission and this work-around goes down all the time, then there are the issues we're having with CodeRunner setting itself up correctly when the trucks are powered up, and the list goes on). I get to tune them all in to 6 recievers - DeLand & Ormond (Coastal near Daytona and Ormond Beaches), Titusville & Melbourne (Coastal near Kennedy Space Center and Cocoa Beach), Orlando & Winter Park (Inland on the SunTrust Bank High-Rise, both situated within about 5-10 miles of each other near our main plant). They all feed into the main plant via the old Time-Warner fibers left over when Time-Warner sold to Bright House Networks. I also coordinate feeds to and from Tampa and CNN through VYVX (since we don't have the facilities to do a proper satellite uplink from the main building).
You know the deal, stuff is always breaking, you always have to hop trucks around at the last second to get all the elements for your show and no one cares how you get it done just that it gets done. I always go very cut throat with the competition and have blown their microwave signals off the air before
evil
. WKMG CBS is the only one that has continually blown me off the air so I always like to repay the favor.
We run a station automation system from a European company called OmniBus. Currently we use their Columbus application on machines built to handle it's bigger brother called Colossus. Our Columbus is now 3 years old and has been discontinued by OmniBus, so we are considering upgrading to Colossus. The OmniBus systems all operate in conjunction with each other, our ENPS news production software, Our Pinnacle desktop editors, the Liquid full edit suites (5 of them - 1 has Liquid Blue), the Vertigo servers, the Deko graphics server, and eventually (maybe
) the new Isolon archive servers.
We had 9 terabytes of storage when we started 2 years ago, now just recently we hit the limit and started to lose everything. We purged all non essientials and are now back up to 1-2 terabytes and realize we have to upgrade real soon. The reason for hitting the limits is that we have added 2 big departments (Central Florida On Demand and Central Florida En Espanol) without adding any storage space to accommodate them.
In the end, my job is challenging and I love it, now pay me better damn it (I am pushing for that raise - I hope all the managers come back from NAB feeling better and in the mood to hand out a promotion)!
)
