User Reports
The Most Travelled Outside Broadcast Equipment
by Cliff Baker
The Radio Network of New Zealand (part of the Clear Channel Group of Companies) owns and operates a number of national networks throughout the country including, since 1998, a nationwide sports network, Radio Sport. The demands of programming a 24hour a day, 365 days of the year sports network, especially in a small country like New Zealand, mean that events in many locations other than the most populous need to be covered. Typically these venues do not have access to ISDN and similar facilities which are available in larger towns without the expense of custom installations by local telephone companies. Likewise overseas events of local interest often do not justify the cost of high bandwidth links but can be justified if a cheaper method of returning the commentary can be found. Almost all of these venues, small, large and overseas, do have a plain old telephone line!
Last year The Radio Network purchased some Comrex Vector telephone codecs. These units are able to provide a two way, 15kHz bandwidth audio circuit over standard dial up telephone lines, with minimal delay. They have rapidly become the most travelled broadcast gear that we have ever had. Besides the countless flights relocating the Vectors for broadcasts within NZ they have travelled to Australia, South Africa, Singapore, Zimbabwe, the U.K., France, Italy and the U.S.A.
Having the Vectors has changed our way of doing remote broadcasts. We have 4 portable Vectors and 2 rack mount base units. The Vector field units, which have three commentator positions and an auxiliary mic/line input, are flown to the city where the broadcast is to originate, taken to the venue and set up by the commentators. The uncomplicated operation of the Vector with its one touch dialling makes it a breeze to set up for even novice operators.
The convenience of using an ordinary telephone line means we can often broadcast from an existing telephone or fax line but if one doesn't exist we only have to give 2 days notice to get a temporary telephone circuit installed.
The benefits of the Vectors was never better demonstrated than during the Olympic games in Sydney, Australia. The host of our top rating Breakfast show for our Newstalk network broadcast his normal programme from his hotel room each morning using the Comrex Vector. With New Zealand time being two hours ahead of Sydney, the show's 5a.m. start in New Zealand meant a 3a.m. start for the host (who was also doing work for television in the evenings) so he found the hotel was a convenient place from which to broadcast. A direct telephone line was installed which bypassed the hotel's PABX (which would have limited the available data rate of the line). Making the dial up connection on the Vector we usually had a connection rate of 28000b.p.s. providing a very high quality voice feed.
As news is a feature of the programme, it was important that the host had immediately available local and international news. This was achieved by sending wire feeds to a laptop with the NewsBoss news program on it over the Vector's auxiliary data path from our NewsBoss server in New Zealand. Although this is only 300 Baud it allowed us to set up a queue (the NewsBoss term for a bin full of stories) and send weather forecasts, news headlines and other messages from NZ to Sydney without additional complication and at no additional cost.
All the Sydney end daily connection was done by the host allowing the rest of the crew to rest ready for the busy days racing around the venues!
In addition to their workload within New Zealand over the past year our Vectors have become quite experienced international travellers performing broadcasts from:
- The World Rugby League finals in the U.K.
- The All Blacks (New Zealand's national team) Rugby tour of France and Italy.
- The New Zealand Cricket tour Zimbabwe.
- The World Invitation Cricket Series in Singapore.
- The Tua v. Lewis Heavyweight Title fight in Las Vegas, U.S.A.
During the summer season we usually have two Vectors in use daily, broadcasting cricket commentaries from the various locations around New Zealand, with the others in transit to the next location. The combination of simple operation and reliable, high quality audio has made our Vectors indispensable outside broadcast tools.
Author (left) with commentator Allan McLaughlin at work with a Vector at a local cricket match.
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