Facilities

WTOP facilities are housed in the new Campus Center complex on the campus of SUNY Oswego in Oswego, New York. Once situated in the basement of the Hewitt Union, the WTOP-10 TV studio, control room, master control room, and office were relocated to the campus center in the spring of 2008 following the completion of the Swetman-Poucher renovations and studio infrastructure. The campus center itself is an example of how SUNY Oswego has laid the groundwork to support a multitude of media services with the ability to distribute content throughout the campus. WTOP’s master control room sends SD-SDI SMPTE 259M over fiber optic cable to the campus cable head-end and communication studies broadcasting facilities located in Lanigan Hall. All of WTOP’s digital camera CCU’s are also sent over fiber optic cable to Lanigan for distribution to classroom broadcast facilities for multi-studio productions. The studio program feed also transmits to the campus cable head-end which modulates WTOP 24/7 into CCTV channel 10 on campus. Select programming like sporting events, certain original student produced shows, and live nightly news are sent to Time Warner PEG channel 96 available throughout Oswego county. All original programming is broadcasted live online via Livestream off of a server in the master control room. Studio Room 140: The normal floor layout in place includes a 3 piece modular news set background and a news desk. Flats, seating, tables and other set pieces are kept in a storage room adjacent to the studio in room 140D. Also in the studio is a rolling staircase, a graphics computer primarily used for meteorology graphics during newscasts, a table for the light board, and a rolling LCD TV monitor. Some larger chairs and couches used for other shows are temporary stored along the wall of the studio that is in front of the control room. Power is distributed through 4 dim stick dimmers with 6 channels per stick. Lighting control is through a 24 channel 2 scene board. Light stock includes Source 4’s and Fluorescents. Accessories include cabling, clamps, and poles. Cables are brought from the control and master control room through two 4” troughs. The cable troughs terminate at two breakout boxes, one located on the north wall and one on south wall at the studio floor level. Connections include BNC male terminations traveling back to analog and digital video routers and patch bays, three XLR female mic ties per panel terminating into the control room sound mixer, two terminations of XLR male IFB per panel, two terminations of XLR male for A channel ClearCom per panel, and two triax females connectors per panel. All cables travel from the panels directly to the master control room except for the mic ties to the audio board. There are also 2 video tie lines with BNC male terminations and 6 of both XLR genders running between the WTOP master control room and the WTOP office located across the hall in campus center room 139. Ties to the campus center ice arena and convocation hall include 4 lines of triax, 5 lines of video cable with BNC male terminations, 4 lines of audio connected directly to the main control room board, 2 lines of B channel ClearCom and IFB channels C and D. In the arena, these signals can be distributed to and from eight breakout boxes, each with 2 BNC male terminations, a male and female XLR termination and a triax connection. The facility supports both NTSC analog and SD-SDI video along with traditional analog audio. All equipment supports both 4:3 and 16:9, though we are currently broadcasting in 4:3 480i. There are separate 32x32 routers for NTSC and SD-SDI video with audio following video and the ability to split away router levels. Most of the video lines in the facility pass though manual patch bays before reaching the routers. There are no audio patch bays. The majority of the analog equipment in the facility was still in good use upon moving from the Hewitt Union studio. Analog equipment still in use from Hewitt includes three SONY DVCAM playback decks, a bar/black generator, SONY 14” broadcast CRT monitors, Leightronix TCD/RP video server and TCD/IP system event controller, and a SONY UVW-1800 Betacam editor. In Summer 2011, WTOP installed some new master control equipment, including an HD-SDI Master Control Router with embedded audio and an AJA up/down converting framesync. The master control system is now HD-ready. Studio Equipment: Switching is completed through a Ross Synergy 2 system which supports 16 SDI inputs, 12 SD-SDI auxiliary outputs, over 1.5 MLE’s and 2 downstream keyers. Program and preview monitoring is viewed on 2 Samsung plasma screens. A third plasma screen with is fed by a Miranda Kaleido Alto which shows the 10 switcher auxiliary outputs. Graphics system in use is a Chyron LEX2 with 2 frame buffer channels of output. Audio mixing is done through a 24 input Mackie ONYX mixer. Mixer inputs 1-6 are connected to the studio floor ties, inputs 7-10 are tied to the campus center ice arena and convocation hall, inputs 10 and 11 are tied to camera CCU’s 1 and 3, and inputs 13-24 are audio router destinations. Color and shading is done though RCU’s mounted in front of 7 inch LCD NTSC Marshall monitors. Picture is proved by Sony DXC-D55W’s with CCU TX-50 connected to RCU RCP-D51. Marshall monitors are also provided for the 3 playback decks in the control room. Playback decks are SONY models: there is one DSR-45A, one DSR-DR1000A, and one DSR-1800A. The three CCU shading monitors have a B channel input showing program, the four playback deck preview monitors show a router destination. A teleprompting computer running EZ-News calls up scripts for display on studio camera prompters. Communication is run on a ClearCom MS-702 system consisting of two main base stations, 4 control room locations, 6 belt-packs which can be plugged into studio panels, and is integrated in the CCU’s for camera operation. The 4 channel ClearCom IFB system PIC-4704 distributes an A and B channel to each of the studio panels, and a C and D channel to Campus Center Ice Arena and Convocation Hall.