This continues a series of guest columns on how technology is reshaping hobbies and passions – basket weaving, rugby – whatever.
This time it is Jim Berkowitz , CEO of CRM Mastery. Here he writes about his afternoon routine on many Saturdays.
“In addition to my regular gig as a CRM Technology Coach, I have the distinct pleasure of hosting “The Telluride Jazz Beat” radio show every other Saturday afternoon from 3 - 6 PM MST on one of the greatest radio stations in the land, KOTO Community Radio in beautiful Telluride, Colorado.
KOTO is a public, NPR Affiliate, station with the unique distinction of being the only independent radio station in the country that accepts no corporate underwriting; it's all listener supported!
KOTO went on the air in 1975 with a mere 10 watts of power from a small antenna at the top of the building next door. Today, KOTO blasts out its signal to Telluride and the surrounding mountain communities at 8900 watts in analog and 100 watts in digital from an antenna at the top of Coonskin (Lift 7). Not bad duty for the antenna as you can see in the photo on right.
My interest in Jazz started when I was in High School (in '70) and I had the opportunity to take tenor sax lessons at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. I started buying jazz records; the first of which was McCoy Tyner's "Fly With The Wind." I was just absolutely enthralled with the musicianship and the rhythms. After hearing McCoy on piano and Billy Cobham on drums I was hooked and almost immediately started my life-long collection of jazz music.
In college, one of my roommates (who was attending Emerson College in Boston MA) got a jazz radio show on the college station. I'd help him out with his play-list and gave him quite a few records from my collection to play on the air. It was fun and I secretly hoped that one day I would get a chance to have a radio show of my own.
My love for jazz led me to also become somewhat of an audiophile as well. My first stereo when I got out of college included (very large) electrostatic speakers with built in tube-based amps from a company call Acoustat. They were incredible. Back in 1973, I paid $2500 for them. I used them for 25 years and then sold them to a used stereo dealer for the same price that I paid for them.
Over the years, I gave up trying to play jazz and focused on collecting as much great jazz as I could. Back in the early '80s I started collecting the collections from a company called Mosaic Records. I'm happy to say that I have collected just about everything that they've ever produced.
When I moved to Telluride, it didn't take me long to realize that this town is a fantasy land - If you can dream it, you can have it! The local radio station, KOTO didn't have much of any jazz on it at the time so it didn't take much persuasion on my part to convince the General Manager to let me go on the air. Of course I didn't know how to operate any of the equipment so I got a 15 minute crash course before giving it a whirl. You could say that I learned how to operate the equipment under fire... Luckily I learned quickly from my mistakes.
Today, they call me “Jimmy Jazz” at the station and I get to develop my own play list for each show. It typically consists of tunes from my own (rather extensive) jazz library many of which were so kindly sent to me by my 500+ jazz artist friends on MySpace. Although many of the DJs “wing it” and let their showʼs content develop in a real time fashion. I prepare my showʼs play list in advance using i-Tunes.
Over the past several years KOTO has been in an ongoing process of converting from an analog station to HD (digital) Radio. Basically, digital radio works the same as conventional radio. Thereʼs a signal on one end and a receiver on the other. But there are a few key differences: (1) Instead of sending out one analog signal, the station can send out a bundled signal – both analog and digital; (2) because it is digital, textual data such as traffic, stock info and song titles can also be sent out; (3) the digital signal layer is compressed so KOTO can essentially have 2 digital radio stations each broadcasting their own material 24 hours a day (although only one station is in operation at the moment); and (4) for listeners to hear the digital broadcast, they must have an HD Radio receiver. Currently, this is sort of an issue because how many of us has such a device today?
Last year, KOTO invested in a Harris HDS IBOC Transmitter (the back-end) and this year it has invested in a Harris NetWave Digital Audio Console System (the front-end) (in photo below).
We currently have a variety of both analog and digital inputs connected to the new console, including several microphones, a computer, (3) CD players, a couple of record players, a DAT player, the telephone (for putting callers on the air) and more!
KOTO streams live over the internet so feel free to listen in a see what happens when you allow a bunch of “free spirits” to take to the airwaves.
Now comes the hard part of the migration from analog to digital; manually burning KOTOʼs 40,000 pieces of analog material to digital.
Wanna help?”
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