Jordan Bitz is Chief Engineer for Barefoot Media Ministries, a small Christian radio group headquartered in Boise, Idaho and operating 89.5 KTSY, the heritage Christian radio station in the Boise market, as well as Project 88.7, a Christian Hip Hop station, 88.1 The Bridge in Twin Falls, and a handful of other stations and translators across Idaho and Oregon. In short, Jordan is a busy engineer managing multiple sites over hundreds of square miles.

Before joining Barefoot 15 months ago, Jordan’s previous experience was as engineer and programmer at stations in North Dakota, where he hadn’t worked much with Audio over IP. While the adjustment to AoIP took some time, once he got the hang of things he’s been amazed by the simplicity and flexibility.

Ray Lenz is a Senior Radio Engineer for WHRV / WHRO, NPR affiliate stations in Norfolk, VA. With an extensive family of repeaters across the region, the stations serve Eastern Virginia with NPR programming and a variety of music on WHRV, and classical music on WHRO. A consortium of local school districts own and operate the stations, along with a TV station.

Sadly, not long after this interview was completed, the engineer featured in this story, Joe Huk, passed away suddenly. Joe was a talented engineer and will be greatly missed. We extend our condolences to his friends and family.

It's been a yearly tradition at WMUZ since the late ‘80s. During the first week in June,  Crawford Broadcasting's Detroit operation partners with Goodwin & Scieszka for the annual Law Day remote, where the client provides free legal advice and gives away safety helmets and bicycles to children in the community. It's an event that requires a lot of planning and preparation from chief engineer Joe Huk, along with a dedicated team at the station. It also involves the Telos Z/IP ONE broadcast IP codec.

Prior to the recent Republican National Convention, we featured a story with Steve Neumann at WINT in Willoughby, Ohio, about 15 miles east of Cleveland, where the convention was held.

As the convention neared, WINT staff planned to employ a Telos Z/IP ONE IP Codec to broadcast live from the event. We thought we’d check in with Steve for a post-mortem and find out how things worked out at the RNC.

Steve Neumann is Program Director at WINT in Willoughby, Ohio, about 15 miles to the east of Cleveland. When the station decided to broadcast live from the Republican National Convention in downtown Cleveland next week, they needed to know they’d be able to provide a stable remote feed back to their studios. Fortunately for WINT, Steve goes back a ways with Telos Alliance CEO Frank Foti.

“Frank and I go back more than just a ways,” Steve jokes. We met back in the early days of our broadcasting careers. Both of us worked at 1330 AM, which is now WINT. Back then it was WELW. We were both young pups in high school who had always been fans of radio, and we ended up working at the same station.”

Your STL is your lifeline. Everything you are travels over that STL. Ideally, the STL should be a “nailed up” connection, whether via microwave, or leased lines. It should be always there, always on.

But, because of the rising costs of leased lines and other “nailed up” lines such as a T-1, or switched lines such as ISDN BRI, some stations are looking for an alternate path for their STL. If the station is willing to accept the slight risk of audio (and sometimes control) interruption in STL usage, a connection from ISP to Internet, and back to ISP can be considered.