The author is program director of Worship 24/7.
With a new studio comes a new console, and with a new console comes new furniture. Usually in that order.
After years of streaming Worship 24/7 and with a broadcast license finally in hand, we started construction in mid-2019 on our new broadcast studio in Wilsonville, Ore.
A generous donor had given us funding for one studio. We have a 24/7 Christian music station that we stream online and broadcast on KURT 93.7 MHz near Portland, KTDD 104.9 MHz near Seattle and more recently, KJOQ 100.9 MHz in Duluth, Minn.
We ordered a new Wheatstone Lightning analog/digital hybrid console and started mapping out where to put the automation PC, the monitors for automation and production software, and where we’d seat the occasional guests. We quickly realized that furniture from Staples wasn’t going to cut it. We needed a workspace that could hide the PC and various auxiliary boxes below the console, one that would have enough space on the surface for monitors and a console, not to mention a seating area for our guests.
Luckily, we found what we were looking for from the same place we ordered our console.
QuickLine furniture made by Wheatstone has five modular components that I’m told can be made into 32 different configurations. That’s important when you have one studio and there’s a good chance you’ll be moving things around over time.
The QuickLine desk was delivered to us as knock-down modules for shipping purposes. Modules are made of high-pressure laminate on all sides. It came with all the hardware and decent assembly instructions, which made it a simple matter to install the five modules the way we wanted them. We set it up so that the board op could easily see all our monitors to the side and center and with a large wing to the other side where we mounted a microphone for our guests.
Unlike furniture we might have picked up at an office store, we have standard equipment racks made specifically for broadcast and punch block holes where we needed them, which made it fairly easy to route the PC cabling for the monitors and the console cabling.
We are pleased with the rounded countertop corners and the flow of having a central workspace with the guest position off to the side. Concealed hinges were a bonus, and the fact that it was cost-effective was certainly a consideration.
We plan to add another studio at some future point but, for now, we are getting the most out of the studio we have and feel confident that as we grow into this studio, this desk will change with us.
Info: Contact Jay Tyler at Wheatstone at 1-252-638-7000 or visit www.wheatstone.com.
Radio World User Reports are testimonial articles intended to help readers understand why a colleague chose a particular product to solve a technical situation.
