This is excerpted from the ebook “Sweet New Studios 2026.”
Last September, 89.7 WUWM “Milwaukee’s NPR” set out to replace an older TDM-based system with a Telos AoIP infrastructure to serve four studios. It also wanted to rework its technical core to support those rooms and to improve redundancy in its air chain.
WUWM was founded in 1964 and is licensed to the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents; it is operated by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Letters and Science. Its studios are in Chase Tower in downtown Milwaukee, Wis.
Studio Engineer Jason Rieve led the project for the station, with integration and system architecture by Summit Technology Group.
“We needed to modernize and reduce our old systems to a more reliable system that can be more easily accessed remotely, allowing the freedom to work from anywhere,” Rieve said.
The job included installing the Telos Axia StudioCore engine, Axia iQ consoles and Axia xNode2s.
WUWM opted to use its existing furniture, which was in excellent condition and had been customized to fit the rooms and workflows.
Summit deployed its own AirLux Studio Signaling product, which takes cues from Axia Pathfinder to signal the on-air or recording status of each studio. New EV RE320 mics and studio monitors are mounted gracefully on Yellowtec Mika arms, providing a fresh and modern look.
“The hard part was going to be how to completely remove ALL of our infrastructure and replace it, while still staying on air,” Rieve said. “I believe that was the biggest challenge. It was amazing how many boxes of wires were removed.”
We asked whether WUWM is seeing the kind of studio trends we’ve noted elsewhere.
“Yes,” Rieve said. “More and more our studios are used just for interviews. We no longer need to have tape decks, record players or DAT machines, since everything is online. Moving to an AoIP solution will allow us to be more fluid as things progress in our industry.”
The work was done while staff and air personalities were actively occupying the space. It was also overlaid by an automation upgrade and hardware refresh, said Summit President Paul Stewart.
“It was a lot of moving parts that all had to be coordinated with great precision to avoid any interruption to the air chain. We were successful in minimizing the downtime to a small window of downtime in the overnight hours to achieve the switchover,” Stewart said.
“In many ways this build embraces the advent of virtualization, with an emphasis on studio redundancy and the ability to quickly and easily go live from any studio room. The use of the Axia Studio Core hardware created an environment where any source can be called up on any console. This was particularly useful in Studio C, the station’s interview and performance space.”
A key goal was simplification.
“We reduced the number of equipment racks in the TOC from seven to five and decommissioned countless pieces of equipment. All this was done while preserving the redundant air chain to provide failover due to equipment failure or loss of network connectivity.”
The station’s transmitter facility is a few miles north of downtown in Estabrook Park; WUWM broadcasts from the only self-supported tower in the area. It uses a point-to-point fiber connection to the site, backed up by internet connectivity.
Read more project stories in the new Radio World ebook.
