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Remote Trailers

B

Brian Bowers

Summer remote broadcast season is here. Is there anyone that rents broadcast trailers in the Midwest area? I'm sure there isn't a lot of demand for this, so I wouldn't be surprised if one didn't exist. Equipment is not needed. The available footprint is 10' x 20'. No air conditioning is needed. I am fielding this question for a colleague, so I don't know every bit of info, but at this point, we are looking for any suggestions.
 
I don't know of any for rent, but why don't you just build one? We took a lightly used 22 foot travel trailer and converted it. There are some pictures on our web site www.kzqx.com under the "station tour" button. It wasn't that hard or expensive. You might even be able to a trade out with a local RV dealer.
 
Every time one of your KZQX pages load on my Mac, Quicktime opens with an alert that "the URL is not valid".
 
Incidentally, a couple of pictures of the trailer are located at the bottom of the home page. Interior shots are found on the "Station Tour" page.
 
That's a nice trailer, Chuck. A station I worked at in 1992 had a Winnebago! More recently they had a trailer that was painted like a giant boom box. How is that BE board working for you? I have a similar 8 pot board (8S250) in my home studio.
 
The BE board is a real nightmare. It picks up RF like it is going out of style. It looks cool, but I think its days in the trailer are numbered.
 
chuck,
i really enjoyed seeing your pages, especially the museum photos. i'd seen your dumont telecruiser pages before. great work!

i have a point to make about your vintage mic photos. the turner 999 has a WAYS charlotte mic flag. according to what i've read the turner 999 is a 1930s to 1950s vintage mic. the WAYS mic flag is circa 1973. http://www.thatwasradio.com/images/logo1973.gif.

in the 1970s WAYS had an EV-RE20 with its 309A shock mount in the main studio. it didn't, however, have a mic flag.

an appropriate mic for the flag could be something like a EV 635A or the like.

here's a youtube video from WAYS in 1982 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRKb8qB5sF0

-amos
 
WMDM-FM tried one of those BE boards back in 1976, about ten feet from the WPTX-AM transmitter. No luck ;) !

Have you thought of renting (trade-out) an RV, and using a WillBurt "Hurry-Up" mast for your antennas? Decorate the rig with some stick on signage, or even a "wrap", if the RV company will go along with it. An RV would give you plenty of room to work, and will have air conditioning and electrical power, too.
 
amos said:
i have a point to make about your vintage mic photos. the turner 999 has a WAYS charlotte mic flag. according to what i've read the turner 999 is a 1930s to 1950s vintage mic. the WAYS mic flag is circa 1973.
Click to expand...

Well, you are quite right. In my previous life, I was in the concert sound business. I got the WAYS flag at a Rare Earth concert we were doing in Charlotte. A very obnoxious DJ slapped it on one of my mics (probably a Shure SM-58) while he kept the crowd "entertained" during a set change. He never retreived the mic flag, and it ended up in one of our equipment trunks. That was probably 1973, maybe 1974. About 25 years later, it became affixed to that Turner mic. I'm not sure why, but is still there. In the interest of accuracy, I suppose I should move it to a different mic, but most people would never notice the difference. ;D
 
For a couple of years we had a motor home. We discoverd that the clients and those coming to the remote wanted to see the DJ in person rather than sitting in some ivory castle aloof and above the riff raff. We ditched the motor home and do our remotes either inside the business or under Easy Up tents outside. This is Las Vegas where our daytime temperatures are often well over 100 Degrees and our DJ's survive just fine as long as we have the shade. The personal touch of being right there with the audience and out where the client can see them interfacing is worth it and we rarely have complaints from the best of the DJ's and never from the clients. Music and spots are played from the studio, communication is by cell phone and the Marti or ISDN carries program material to the station. It's a little more trouble setting up, but we average 35 remotes a week with our 6 stations and are well paid for them.
 
Perhaps the impact depends on the market. Where I am, most stations do a "remote" with a station personality sitting at a folding table that is draped with a banner, and they are speaking into a cell phone. It isn't very interesting.

People seem to like our "Q-Mobile" because it is retro, and definitely something different in the market. We also give out lots of helium balloons, t-shirts and window stickers. People love free stuff, no matter how lame it is.

A very wise business man once advised me to “See what the other guy is doing, and address what he isn't doing.” Over the years, I've found that was pretty good advice. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that Lotus makes a lot more money from their stations than I do from mine. Maybe my priorities are a bit different. YMMV
 
Good input Chuck and valid for the most part. While we do not sit in a trailer we do sit at a large table, under an EzUp popup tent liberally sprinkled with rather fancy logos for whichever of our six stations is doing the remotes. We hang fancy vinyl banners, 2x5 feet, all over the place and run a full stereo PA system with speakers on stands. The gaudily painted station van is parked close. A remote that has to be run on a cell phone gets the client a refund or second remote for free. We use ISDN, Marti's, and codecs on POTS line as a final resort. A cell phone is used only to keep from scrubbing the remote entirely. It's not unusual on our sports stations to have double 5 foot tables with guest mics for 5 people. Those shows are usually full everything from the field sports talk with call ins handled from the field. We have even done dual remotes on seperate ISDN lines simultaneiously with the two main talents talking to each other. Thank God for the Comrex mix minus plus box! Just for fun try something we have done several times. A sports talent at a local casino, the second talent on the road with a sports team out of town, and a major sports player calling in and answering call in questions from the listeners. They all could talk to each other in real time. The in house board operator only had to handle the board, call screening and traffic reports. If you are ever in Vegas, drop by and see how we do it.
 
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