In an age when virtually any radio broadcast can be “remote,” the very definition of a studio is changing — if there’s a studio at all. This is one in a series of short features about how stations are creating and managing their audio from anywhere, thanks to virtualization, cloud, IP and other technologies.
Brian Giffin describes himself as a hybrid broadcast talent. He is the radio voice of athletics at The Citadel, calling football, basketball and baseball, and engineering those games.
He has worked with major and minor league baseball teams and networks including the Minnesota Twins and the Atlanta Braves, and done freelance engineering for a number of major sports teams.
Today he is also executive producer and co-host with Bobby Hartin of “ESPN Fantalk” on Kirkman Broadcasting’s WTMZ-FM in Charleston, S.C.
The migration from familiar ISDN technology to IP, he said, was clearly a big step in doing audio from elsewhere.
“Secure bandwidth is crucial to prevent buffering or latency,” he said. “I was a key player in getting Major League Baseball to transition from old-school ISDN and POTS connections to internet-based transmission. It also has enabled me to broadcast my show as well as games over the internet. And my home studio can be live pretty much to any station or stations I want to connect to.”
He said his Comrex Access-NX codec accommodates 5G MiFi and allows him to broadcast anywhere without a wired network connection. “I utilize Verizon 5G devices and if batteries are fully charged on both MiFi and the NX, I can even do it without any power.”
Giffin has done shows from various venues and was part of a Braves-Marlins game that was broadcast from Fort Bragg. He also broadcast the 2026 Charleston Air Show from the deck of the USS Yorktown.
“I also have broadcast my show from two different beach houses at the Outer Banks, sitting poolside,” he said.
“When The Citadel won the Southern Conference Championship back in late May, I finished the game in my booth at Fluor Field, then disconnected, took a three-minute break, and fired up my NX with MiFi to do an extended postgame show from the dugout.”
Read more on this topic in the free ebook “Audio Production (From Anywhere).”
