Continental Electronics Corporation. Contact Muffin Steelman at 209-523-7505
SBE San Diego   Archives Calendar Contacts EAS Home Southern Cal Engineering Jobs Links Current Members List Headquarters Site Search/Index Sponsors Get on our e-mail list.

Clustering Comes to San Diego

KGTV to Set-up Out-of-Town Master Control

Gary Stigall, CSTE
Chairman, Chapter 36
KFMB-TV Staff Engineer

Details have not all been worked out, but Mike Biltucci, Director of Operations and Engineering at KGTV says that what you see on channel ten will soon largely be coming from somewhere else.

"'Clustering' tasks for multiple stations at one site is now underway at several station groups: N.Y. Times, Ackerley and other smaller enterprises. The McGraw-Hill stations are implementing at various times in the not too distant future that concept with areas such as Master Control, graphics, traffic, maybe others. Our first area is Master Control. Whether it's centralized in Denver, Indianapolis or San Diego is not finalized yet," he said.

According to other station insiders, that somewhere else is Denver. That's right--that Worthington Dodge in Car Country Carlsbad commercial will likely soon be playing from a hard disk drive at KMGH. Live news would presumably still come out of a San Diego studio.

Was this an outcome of their recent tough union talks? According to Biltucci, "It was not a result of recent NABET negotiations, although it was heavily discussed and agreed upon at the bargaining table. Actual operational procedures are still to be determined once our server and automation solutions are finalized. We have contracted Roscor (in Chicago) to integrate the systems for us."

The combination of inexpensive fiber transmission and inexpensive hard drive storage media have made the concept possible for a few years now. Tektronix likely made a few managers go to their white boards about five years ago when they made a promotional tape of their ProFile system showing a TV station in Portland playing station breaks for a station in Seattle.

The clustering idea is part of a larger trend of outsourcing. Radio station automation packages from remote cities have been available since the 1970's. Distant work-at-home voices for hire have replaced most staff radio and TV announcers since the advent of ISDN compressed audio circuits in the late 1980's.

Related item: "Making Waves" commentary about broadcast engineering employment.