LINCOLN, Ill. — My list of fears includes clowns, spiders, heights and power outages.
Why power outages you may ask?
I used to be terrified of losing power before or during my two-hour talk show, “Illinois Watchdog Radio.” Then one day the worst happened. A backhoe bumped the power line and the entire block went dark — including my home. This occurred only 10 minutes before I was scheduled to be on the air from my home studio, and the other studio was a 45-minute drive.
Initially I started to worry about how to get on air, then I remembered I had Tieline’s Report-IT app on my iPhone.
I quickly set up a small four- channel board and mic at the dining room table and called up the Tieline Report-IT app to dial the studio.
My iPhone — specifically my Tieline Report-IT app — saved me. I was on the air on time, and didn’t have a glitch or a dropout once during the two hours I was live.
I ran the feed from the mixer through a line-in/line-out connector I bought from KV Connection that works perfectly with my iPhone 5. Our reporters use the same kind of cables with Report-IT.
Watchdog.org uses the Tieline Report-IT Enterprise app to connect our 20 reporters across the country. They love the app. It makes podcasts, newscasts and live coverage easy. I also use it to host my daily talk show when I am on the road, or when I am without power.
We use Tieline’s Merlin Plus codec to manage incoming IP connections at the studio end. The codec is reliable and it’s a fantastic piece of gear. Along with Tieline’s Report-IT app, it makes a neat solution and Report-IT provides studio-quality audio from just about anywhere you have a cellphone or Wi-Fi signal.
Now if Tieline could only do something about my fear of clowns …
For information, contact John Lackness at Tieline USA in Indiana at (317) 845-8000 or visit www.tieline.com.
