– Reno’s Lotus
Radio Provides “Sirius coverage” of NCAA
Men’s Basketball Including
WAC Tournament and NCAA Tournament Nevada Wolfpack Games
–
Reno – (March 2006) – March Madness started
early for Reno broadcaster Lotus Radio and then ended
much too soon for the local network of stations that
carries the Nevada Wolfpack NCAA men’s basketball
games. Even before the popular NCAA postseason tournament
got underway, the Lotus Radio crew was busy broadcasting
the Western Athletic Conference Tournament which was
won by the host Wolf Pack and then it was off to Salt
Lake City for the first round of the NCAA Tournament
where Nevada made an early exit after being upset by
Montana.
Throughout it all, the good and the bad news for Wolf
Pack fans, Tieline codecs were in place helping Lotus,
which owns five stations in the Reno area including
the ESPN Radio affiliate, send the audio, not only back
to the station, but also to the Sirius Satellite Radio
network and its growing legion of sports-hungry subscribers.
On the traditional radio network alone, some nine million
potential fans from Truckee River region in the Sierra
Nevada’s to the San Francisco Bay area can listen
to the Wolf Pack games broadcast via the Tieline.
Lotus Radio Chief Engineer Mike Weaver, and Assistant
Chief Engineer Chad Owens, use the Tieline Commander
G3 field codec when the station can’t get a microwave
“shot” or good line-of-sight signal.
“The Tieline audio is always clean with no warble
in the audio,’’ Owens said. “It sounds
great, it sounds clean and it gives a nice strong signal.”
The Tieline codecs are the first to offer a choice
of high-quality, low-delay live audio and data transfer
over POTS analog telephone lines, ISDN, GSM wireless
and IP networks. A key component of the Commander G3
codecs is that before they are sent to the remote broadcast
site they can be configured by the engineers. This saves
valuable time for the Wolf Pack announcing crew of play-by-play
man Don Guistin (the “Voice of the Pack”)
and ESPN’s Radio Sports Director Don Marchand.
The Tieline was around when Nevada captured the WAC
tournament title with a 70-63 victory over Utah State
on March 11. And then again, when the Wolf Pack (27-6
and on the nation’s second-longest winning streak
at 14 games) stumbled in the first round, losing to
the No. 12 Grizzlies 87-79 on March 16.
While the stations in the Lotus Radio network had hoped
to use the Tieline longer this basketball postseason,
the unit will not collect dust the rest of the year
as they are utilized for other remote broadcasts. The
Tieline earns its keep, working on remotes by the popular
Reno morning team of “Rob, Arnie & Dawn”,
in addition to other client and sports remotes.
“We use the Tieline codec at remotes from bars,
the mall, anywhere they need be,” said Owens.
Owens said that once the morning team did an entire
show from a remote set-up and it sounded like just as
if they were all in the studio. Another time, the Tieline
was used for a remote broadcast that started at 4:30
a.m. and went to 7 p.m. without a single hitch during
the entire 14-hour plus connection.
“We will put the Tieline audio over POTS up against
ISDN any day because the audio is that good,”
said Owens.
Unfortunately the Tieline can only prevent chaos on
the remote broadcast but can not stop the craziness
on the court, a point driven home when the Reno coach
was interviewed after the NCAA loss.
"The madness of March - this year we're on the
wrong side of it," said Reno coach Mark Fox after
the game.
And that message was brought clear and clean back to
the fans in Reno who will now have to wait another year
in order to listen to their team fulfill their postseason
dreams. There is one guarantee and that is that the
Tieline will be ready to capture and broadcast it all.
About Tieline Technology
Tieline Technology (www.tieline.com)
is the world’s leading supplier of high-quality
remote broadcast digital audio codecs. In fact, Tieline
derives its name from the popularity of its award-winning
codec line as the company changed its corporate moniker
in 2001 from Audio Video Communications (AVC) to Tieline
Technology. Tieline Technology today is supported by
a global distribution network spanning the Americas,
Europe, UK, Africa, Asia, Middle East and Australasia.
Tieline Technology, Tieline Technology logo, Commander
G3, i-Mix G3 are trademarks of Tieline Technology. Other
trademarks may be property of their respective owners.
