Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 20:42 EDT
From: fybush@unixland.natick.ma.us (Scott Fybush)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Oops, Lost the Reporter
Organization: TELECOM Digest
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X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 12, Issue 698, Message 3 of 12

Carl Moore (VLD/VMB) <cmoore@BRL.MIL> writes:

> Friday morning (Sept. 4), I had KYW news-radio (1060 AM in
> Philadelphia) tuned in.  Al Novak was reporting live from Cherry Hill
> (nearby in New Jersey) and then I heard a dialtone for a few seconds.
> The woman who was the "anchor" back at the station then broke in and
> said "Oops, I think we lost Al Novak."  I guess Mr. Novak was using a
> telephone?  What kind of telephone could he have been using?

> [Moderator's Note: Apparently a regular dialup line, or perhaps a
> cellular phone on his end to a regular POTS line in the studio.   PAT] 

I work at one of KYW's sister stations, and I assume the equipment we
use is similar to what KYW uses.

At WBZ, reporters in the field usually file from bag phones.
Sometimes they do live shots from the bag phones, other times they
feed reports in advance.  When they do live shots, they dial into one
of two direct lines into the newsroom (as opposed to one of the
newsroom's four PBX extensions -- we've found the PBX doesn't deliver
sound quality quite as good as New England Tel service delivered
directly from the switch.) Each of the two dial-in lines is connected
to a pot on the anchor's board through a Gentner digital hybrid which
can feed station audio (pre-delay) back through the phone line.  I
should mention that most of the live reports actually are fed not from
the bag phones themselves, but from separate cellular phones mounted
in the station news cars.

Reports from the State House are fed back to the station through a
dedicated, high-quality 15kHz line.  Weather reports are fed by phone
from State College, PA using a two-line Comrex frequency extender to
give frequency response out to about 10 kHz or so.  Sometimes the
Comrex doesn't work properly and the audio sounds tinny and distorted.
This is a common problem.

Reports from other Group W stations in New York, Philadelphia,
Chicago, Pittsburgh, LA, and Sacramento arrive via a satellite hookup.
It's designed very oddly ... the station having something to feed
dials up a number in Washington DC via an ordinary POTS line, enters a
DTMF code to signal certain stations or all of the Group, then feeds
the audio.  It's a kludge that doesn't produce much better audio than
feeding the stations directly via POTS, but it is more expedient than
feeding each station individually.

As for reliability, if the cell phone sounds bad when the reporter
calls in to do a live shot (reporters always call in a minute or two
before air and talk to an editor before going on air), the editor may
decide not to go live after all.  Calls being dropped on air are rare.
It happens, though.  At one special event here, the Tall Ships Weekend
a few months back, all our cell phones in the field went dead.  It
turned out the cell phone company hadn't charged the batteries before
giving us the phones for the day :-( Fortunately, our reporters also
carry two-way radios, so they filed over those instead.  We've had
better days than that one :-)

All in all, it's a lot easier to get a report from a remote location
for radio than it is for TV, and for every time the cell phone goes
dead on the air, there's another time when rain fade or something else
gets in the way of a TV live shot (anyone remember the correspondents
for TV trying to send live pictures over Ku-band during Hurricane
Andrew?)


Scott Fybush -- fybush@unixland.natick.ma.us
These opinions are mine only and do not reflect those of WBZ or
of Group W Broadcasting.