Hey, It’s Photo Friday!

Some weeks back, I shared a photo of one of our control rooms as it underwent renovation. Now the work is complete (or near as) and it looks like we have a spanking new(ish) control room.

This is the room where the director and assorted crew sit while recording many of our local in-studio programs. I can’t possibly tell you what all the buttons do because it’s been ages since I worked in production but I can say that on the surface it all looks very cool and technical. And that’s broadcasting in a nutshell, I think.

Hey, It’s Photo Friday!

If you’ve ever toured a television station, you may have been dazzled by all the equipment and monitors used to record and broadcast your favorite shows. But that’s only the surface. Here’s a shot of one of our control rooms currently undergoing renovation. As you can see, the floor is elevated, allowing the subfloor to be utilized for storing wires and cables. This keeps the area (when completed) free of all those nasty tripping hazards. I often wonder how many wires and cables are used to allow a broadcast facility like PBS North Carolina to function. I’m also constantly amazed and what percentage of those are hidden away beneath the surface. Hats off to our engineering and tech staff who make all this happen and keep us running!

Hey, It’s Photo Friday!

Inside a television studio, you’ll see many tools of the trade. Studios, design shops, production offices, audio booths, editing suites and the like. One of my personal favorite spaces is the control room. You’ll sometimes hear it referenced on live TV and occasionally even get a glimpse of the goings on therein. The control room is where the action gets direction, where the camera operators are told what to do and where the producers and technical folks see what is happening on set and decide what shots to use to make the final product you see at home. It can be a baffling sight to those who are familiar with how TV is put together – all the buttons and switches and dials (what do they all do?!). I half imagine the cockpit of a 747 might appear as daunting.

Here is a shot of one of the boards from one of our control rooms…

Hey, It’s Photo Friday!

Snapped a pic of this old piece of equipment in our storage area. It’s a switcher, probably used in one of our studio control rooms or remote trucks. No idea how old it is but it you look up broadcast switchers online it seems incredibly outdated compared to current technology. Still, that’s what makes it interesting – it’s part of UNC-TV history.

State of the art in its day. Now – eh, not so much.