Broadcasting From Anywhere
We take technology for granted. We talk to the screen when something, in our minds, is taking too long to load—forgetting that only a few years ago, we would start downloading a file, go to bed, and if we were lucky, it was finished when we got up the next morning. We’re pretty impatient nowadays, instead of grateful.
So it’s worthy of note that we can now broadcasting high quality network radio and television programs from anywhere. High speed data lines and better web cams make that possible…along with an audience that is used to glitch audio and video from their Zoom calls, so they are much more forgiving than was previously the case.
When I first came to KXEL nearly 10 years ago, hosts did their programs from radio studios in New York. There were a few exceptions; Rush Limbaugh built a studio so he could broadcast from Florida, but that was by far the exception and not the rule.
Now…virtually no one is in a radio studio in New York.
Glenn Beck is in Dallas…Sean Hannity has now moved to Florida…Mark Levin splits time between broadcasting from his home in Virginia and another in Florida…Todd Starnes does his show from Memphis, Tennessee at the radio station he owns there…Bill O’Reilly is in New York, sort of—he does his work from an office in his home on Long Island, not in the heart of the city. And the Red Eye Radio boys do their overnight show from Dallas.
Gordon Deal and the America’s First News team is in New York…but that’s literally it.
I have to marvel at this. Last Friday, in addition to doing the live radio show here, I did a live segment on KCRG-TV9…one with Todd Starnes on his Newsmax2 show…and one with Greta Van Susteren on her Newsmax program. Two of those were via Zoom, one via Skype. And today, I may do a segment with Fox News Channel…again, from my radio studio in Waterloo, via Skype or Zoom. Earlier this year, I did a pre-dawn interview on CNN from home, via Skype. And when I fill in for Todd on his radio show, it’s from here with a mobile unit that sends the signal down the Ethernet to Memphis and then to the satellite in New York.
Absolutely crazy. Of course, the question is whether all that leads us to do a better job, or if we were better off when television’s idea of images was to hold a newspaper up to the camera.
Sometimes it’s good to keep all that in perspective…especially the next time you rely on an app on your phone for driving directions and you lose the signal at an inopportune point.
