Due to the large number of images in this presentation, full size pictures are available by clicking on the thumbnail.
The New Journal Broadcast Group Facility
In 2004, two significant events occurred in Omaha radio
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Journal Broadcast vacated their long time home in Suite 1-92 at 11128 John Galt Blvd.
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The former WOW "Radio Ranch" was brought into the 21st Century as the new home for the Journal Broadcast Group.
This isn’t your typical “studio at the tower site”. The transmitters aren’t next to the control room, separated by a sliding glass door. Inside this facility is a cluster of state of the art studio’s, sales and management office and an eye opening engineering plant.
No huge bundles of wires in the studios...just a single twisted CAT-6 Cable does the trick.
In the age of consolidation many stations undergo changes, generally resulting in a maze of remodeling and tacked on additions. In 2003, when Journal Broadcast finally acquired outright ownership of the land on 72nd Street plans to remodel the "ranch" were put into full swing. The lease on John Galt Blvd was to expire midway through 2004.
Bringing eight stations under one roof resulted in Omaha's best state of the art studios, with individual personality in each studio and flexibility for expansion. Production studios and fully automated studios (such as K-Help and Fox Sports) were placed between the groups Live studio's. All but one studio was places in the center hub of the original building where the WOW studio's had lived. The layout allowed non-live studios to act as production/voice tracking studios. The combination of Production and offline automated studio's act as secondary studios for the stations which have live announcers most of the day.
The original wing now houses all of the air studios and production rooms as well as programming management. A hallway connects them with the new Sales, business and management area.
In the Great Empire days, you would be standing in the lobby of WOW. This “green room” now acts as a gateway to the studio wing of Omaha’s Journal Broadcast Group.
Each station now has it’s own studio, complete with touch screens and a "control surface". You no longer need a 24 pot console with multiple switched inputs. Each pot can have a large number of ‘virtual’ selectable inputs. All of the audio is mixed digitally on the servers in the engineering plant. The task of cleaning tape heads has been replaced by polishing touch screens
It’s a big party at Channel 94.1. (Left To Right: Big Party, Jen-X, Hayden, Jeff Degan) Each studio is soundproofed with the specially designed material seen in the background.
With the steady and consistent growth of Lobo 97 7, Regional Mexican KBBX has become a regional favorite with listeners as far away as Columbus. Here is Jose waking up Southeast Nebraska from the new studio (no longer sharing with the Fox Sports Affiliate).
A station is not complete without a master production room reserved for the production guru’s for large-scale productions with clients. Here we see Sandy from Creative Services working on a Rod Kush spot. All audio is processed and mixed digitally using Adobe Audition (Formerly Cool Edit Pro).
Even with State of the art equipment, you still can’t hide all those mic booms!
The production facilities aren’t as busy as you might think. At any point, anybody can pull a spot up on the computer at their desk and put the finishing touches on a spot, phone call or other bit. This master production studio also serves as a backup studio for all of the Journal stations. Any single, combination, or entire group can broadcast from here.
Director of Operations, Tom Land displays a piece of vintage equipment used in the master production room. The silver box is some new fangled device that burns commercials on a small round shiny disc, instead of a cart. (Wonder how much that bulk eraser would sell for on E-Bay?)
Located in the former WOW conference room, Z-92’s studio includes an area for live performances, complete with a mixing console in the corner.
Z-92’s showcase studio includes a control room that allows the jock to stand up or sit down. This is where Z-92's original "twisted pair" play each weekday morning.
The heart of the facility is where the engineers play. Here's a link the the February 2005 Article about the new Journal facility with additional pictures, including the fascinating engineering plant.
Thanks to Tom Land and the staff of Journal Broadcast Group-Omaha.