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3. In fact, talent has le the studio
With talent no longer chained to one studio, or even the studio facility, it’s more important than ever that virtual mixing and other studio func ons are able to go wherever the ac on is. Need to voice track a segment from the airport? Record, edit and mix on a Windows tablet and send the result to the studio IP audio network from anywhere there’s a network connec on. The possibili es have been with us for a while, thanks to the advent of virtual mixers. Now, advanced virtual development pla orms with scriptable interface, control and monitoring give us unlimited possibili es. One engineer we know even scripted a WheatNet-IP “alarm clock” to alert the sta should the early morning guy hit the snooze bu on one too many mes.
4. Consolida on
The latest round of consolida ons involving iHeartMedia, Entercom, Beasley, and CBS serves as a reminder that sta ons are no longer islands unto themselves. With consolida on comes one of two challenges: having to cram more sta ons and their studios into one facility or having to manage more sta ons from one facility. Either way, virtualiza on solves all kinds of opera onal and logis cal issues related to consolida on. Smart virtual will no doubt play a cri cal role now that the FCC has abolished the main studio ruling and sta ons can more easily share talent, resources and programming through one large centralized studio opera on.
5. The accelera ng rate of change
The current eleven-month doubling rate of technology known as “The Law of Accelera ng Returns” is ge ng faster. We can’t expect hardware to keep up with the rate of change, although for prac cal reasons, hardware interfaces, panels, switches and other devices will be with us for some me. The solu on? Virtualizing hardware, which gives us the best of both worlds: the immediacy of so ware and the prac cality of hardware. Console surfaces are probably the best example of this unique combina on of hardware and so ware, from the use of simple touchscreens on the meter bridge to the en rely recon gurable bu ons and controls found on the LXE console. We will cover this in more detail later on in this ebook. l
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