How much did that cost?
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The Jet has no engineering department?
- Thread starter Cobra14
- Start date
Don't know. Came with the station.
Requires maintenance and eventual replacement.
Maintenance wasn't that expensive over 24 months. Because of the market size and ultimate revenue contribution of that particular station, I would have recommended not replacing the exiting building UPS. Instead, I'd opt for rack mounted UPS's for critical racks only.
Stand alone station with back up power sources. Minimal office space and likely few employees at any given time. Makes sense to save money on the cost of buying a generator. Individual UPS can be replaced as needed. If one goes down or quits than you can rely on multiple other ones.
While more and more groups have centralized logging and control functions, that is intended to save money and guarantee supervision 24/7.
They may have an auxiliary transmitter, but very likely they do not have an auxiliary site.
"Don't overspend when the ROI is not justifiable" is the axiom here.
That did not answer the question. You may have engineering experience, but your comments on management are not realistic now or "back in the day".
Most of us have systems that save or backup jobs frequently.
Even Microsoft Office has options for backup frequency. Things like traffic and music scheduling "save as they go" so the most you loose is a few minutes of work.
But the ideal situation at a smaller station is to have an over-the-counter UPS for the traffic and music logging system as well as the studio computer. You can get those in the well-under-$200 each range with controls that do automatic power off after a certain time. No need to have a great big gas or diesel generator when you only lose a few minutes every year. And the UPS gives a good degree of surge protection, too, if properly maintained.
In most stations and markets, anything else is overkill.
On the other hand, I spent many years where local power was unreliable and outages occurred several times a month and could last several to many hours. Oversized generators with at least a week's worth of fuel were justified, and they got 100 to 200 hours of use a year... around 5% of all airtime.
In those cases, it was not about lost revenue as makegoods are your friend. It was about losing audience too many times in prime dayparts, which could affect ratings. The cost of the generators far exceeded any lost revenue (which was minimal at the worst) but it was justified in keeping a top rated station in its hard-earned position.
Everyone knows the deal when they sign on.
What are your qualifications? We all know Ryan's. BTW Ryan is a contract employee, not at will. You know the difference?
And Ryan produces many times his pay in income. What do you provide to justify your salary?
I would hope that at least a few of us on this board have not just worked in a radio station, but actually put their life savings on the line and had to at least break even, and hopefully make a profit. My observation over the past 60+ years is that very few of those who work in the biz know anything about the actual costs of operation. I surmise that those NOT in the business know even less. The days of having a spare cart machine or turntable needle are long gone, and no matter how much backup we have, something can happen to take us down. And then there's the problem of finding anyone with the expertise that is willing to work in the broadcast industry, which now has to work with contract engineers due to 1) limited resources, and 2) lack of available personnel.
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