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1550 WZUM

xm41 said:
Remember the days of Win98 or even worse WinME.
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I remember Win98 being fast and WinME as having a lot of "blue screen of death" error messages.

We try to use one of the UNIX distributions on servers in our data center that need to up 24 by 7. FreeBSD or CentOS Linux are our primary operating systems. Almost all of the Broadcast automation systems use Windows. The Simian will only work on the 32-bit version of XP or Windows 7. We had XP and elected on using it. During the old WURP and WLFP days, the old system crashed often enough that I got into the habit of rebooting the system once a week. It was easy to do when programming came off the satellite receiver. Now that all of the programming is local, a reboot during the day would cause about 5 minutes of dead air. Maybe I will dig out the old automation system and use it when I reboot the new system.
 
The good news WZUM is still on the air. Our Sunday mornings is producing revenue. The Per Inquiry spots generate some revenue but I am beginning to hate listening to them. We partnered with Riverside Sales to help market and sell ads. There are two groups in Riverside and we use the Urban Media group who in addition to sales is providing some production. They did the Black History moments we aired in February. A lot of the staff used to work at the old WAMO AM & FM before it was sold. It is nice to be able to pickup people who are familiar with radio sales in Pittsburgh.

We receive a fair number of comments from listeners. We gave away tickets to an event a couple of weeks ago and all of the tickets were gone in a short amount of time. We had a lot of disappointed callers but at least we know there is an audience.

I know a lot of people have made fun of our 4 watt signal at night. I can understand why. As the popularity of the station continues to increase, we are finding the night audience is growing too. The little 4 watt signal is serving a small community of people. One of the calls this week was from someone living in the East Liberty area close to Point Breeze who stated he listens on his radio until late at night.

WZUM is less than a year old. It is slowly building an audience as word spreads.
 
With respect to the four watts, I usually say "Blame the FCC; that's as much as they'll allow us to run."

If people can hear it, they'll listen to it. If not, there's always the stream (in stereo) and various apps.

I am happy to see the advent of Daylight Saving Time, which in March allows us to remain on daytime power until 7:30 p.m. Those hours will grow even longer as summer approaches.

C.
 
I "tuned in" via the internet. The technical audio quality was very good.
 
I walked into the Post Office in Bloomfield today. They had an AM radio somewhere in the back section playing WZUM. The audio was loud enough but I hear the station all day as background in my office so I wasn't thinking it was WZUM. When I heard Clarke announce Internet streaming it caused me to wake up to the fact this wasn't my office. I love when that happens.
 
Sometimes the best plans fall apart. Stephen and I went into the station on Sunday morning to work on the automation system. We have a live show from 11:30AM to 1PM so we planned to take the system down. Our plans were to upgrade the operating system, the automation software, and wanted to replace the simple sound card with a multi-channel card. At 11:30 the automation system ran the show's intro and switched to the remote feed. Nothing. The remote feed was dead. We postponed our server upgrade plans and Stephen drove to the remote site. He fixed the problem with the Internet connection and the show was on the air. Hopefully, we will be able to do the upgrade this week. The plan is to run and hour or two off of my Mac laptop. iTune will work but no where as good as our automation system. I'm hoping few will notice.
 
I'm just a tiny bit surprised that given how many fans there are of this kind of oldies music, and how many retired or semi-retired ex-DJs are there are floating around you folks don't have enough volunteer air talent to have mostly live DJs.
 
Avid Listener said:
I'm just a tiny bit surprised that given how many fans there are of this kind of oldies music, and how many retired or semi-retired ex-DJs are there are floating around you folks don't have enough volunteer air talent to have mostly live DJs.
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Most of the DJs who have offered their services have also wanted to play the music they love instead of the music on our playlist. We also do not have a stereo on-air studio that can handle a DJ. What we have was built in the old WURP days for a talk show in mono. One of the updates is a new multi-channel audio card and the software to support it. We didn't have the money to buy the audio board when WZUM was launched. Now that there is a very small cash flow, we can begin moving forward with our plans.

Once the new audio card and software upgrades are installed, we will be able to begin to voice tracking on the automation system or remotely using an iPad or Windows PC. You might begin to hear DJs soon. As for the on-air studio, a Saturday morning Sports talk show might be in the near future. This will require a new studio. We also need to find a place to build the studio as we are out of room in our building.

WZUM is growing. We are doing it one step at a time and not using bank loans or venture funding to make it happen. The audience is growing. I love walking into a store and hearing an AM radio playing the station. It will be interesting to see how much the station has grown on our one year anniversary this July the 4th.
 
The BSI Simian automation software has been updated. The new audio card has been installed. This ten minute project only took 2 hours. :-( The station ran off of an iMac playing the WZUM library using iTunes. No jingles, commercials, or PSAs during that time. I need to adjust the segue. With the new audio card, it is fading out items before I want them to fade and there is a slight pause between songs. Looks like I will be adjusting the system tonight around midnight. All of this for progress!
 
The last problem caused by the automation system upgrade has been solved. Segue now works again. The nice folks at BSI who make the Simian automation system we use explained the interaction between the new Audio Science audio card and the automation software. Three little box unchecked and three difference boxes checked fixed everything. Learning curves are a bitch. The next hardware project is an audio console for live DJs. This audio card will allow us to separate the three audio players into their own audio channel on the console. An Arrakis ARC-8 is affordable and would work for us. I wish I had a Gates Executive with 2014 insides. I like knobs and analog VU meters.

Now that the high-end audio is working, it is time to learn the voice tracking features.
 
Added more songs to the library on Friday. The newest is "You Dropped a Bomb On Me" by The Gap Band from 1982. While all of the new songs are in the system, I will add one a day to the Natural Music program so they blend in with the rest of the songs.
 
Now that May is here, WZUM is operating at full daytime power from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Streaming options are available at 1550wzum.com. Summer is right around the corner! Take WZUM along with you!

C.
 
If you ever worked at a small radio station, you might relate to this story. On Sunday mornings we carry a live remote broadcast from the Shiloh Baptist Church at 11:30AM. This past Sunday, the automation played the disclaimer at 11:30. The program's opener played. The system set the audio switch from mute to the correct channel for the remote audio feed. And then there was dead air. Nothing! I called the board op's cell phone, no answer. I made a few more telephone calls and was not able to find anyone. Due to the Pittsburgh Marathon, the Church was closed. No one told us. We are new to this stuff so we have a lesson to learn in order to keep it from happening again next year.
 
Rev. Ike said:
Trust me, you're the only one who noticed.
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A couple of years ago I would have agreed with you. It isn't something I wanted to hear on the radio. Since we added the church services, I am finding there are people who listen for a number reasons. The first caller was from South Carolina. She used to attend this church when she lived in Pittsburgh.

The three church services we carry do provide a community service so in that regard we are happy to carry the services. And contrary to what many people assume including myself at one time, there is an audience tuned to WZUM on Sunday mornings.
 
WZUM is that rarest of things, an AM station that had flatlined for decades and now has come back from the dead and has listeners. It's not going to make the Top 10, or maybe even the Top 20, but it's there and it serves a purpose and I'm proud to be a part of it.

C.
 
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