Gone are the days of smelly broken lights, rickety broadcast sets and decades-old equipment stuffed into a small room with low ceilings and obtrusive metal beams that were always in the way.
These days, students in the University of Colorado at Boulder's School of Journalism and Mass Communication television news and production classes are seeing the future of broadcast television from under the bright lights of a state-of-the-art production studio in the new $31 million ATLAS Building.
"I have been here a long time, 30 years, and in the same studio" said Steve Jones, assistant dean of journalism and mass communication. "We only had two equipment changes in that time frame but now we have new equipment that is all digital, and it works."
The new 1,000-square-foot, high-tech production studio is located in the lower level of the ATLAS building. It replaces the antiquated 450-square-foot broadcast studio inside Folsom Stadium.
"The old studio was smaller and the equipment was old and out-of-date," said senior Mia Jayne Pascoe, a broadcast production major participating in the school's "NewsTeam" broadcast class. "I think I will learn a lot more in the new studio, and if I want to go into either news production or entertainment production, I'll know how to work the new technology."
Where the stadium broadcast studio had 1960s era black-and-white monitors and decades old video production equipment, the new production studio features the latest in Serial Digital Interface Standard Definition Television (SDI/SD-TV) equipment, which can be easily upgraded to high definition. Students also have access to a soundproofed audio recording studio featuring an Avid ProTools professional editing and sound design system to digitally record, "sweeten," edit and process all forms of audio content.
Students will control the production studio from a self-contained room equipped with a professional level 16-input EchoLab Nova switcher, Chyron character generator and a 24-input Mackie audio console.
"I would think it will help me find a job since I'll be working with equipment that you see in the real world," said Crane Lemon, a senior "NewsTeam" student majoring in broadcast news.
"This will give students a terrific opportunity to get professional quality audition tapes so that when they apply for a job they will look like they know what they are doing," said Lee Hood, assistant professor of journalism and mass communication who teaches broadcast news. "This will also give us a reputation of having state-of-the-art equipment, which will help with recruiting students to the school."
Hood also said the new facility will help the school of journalism to become a reliable news source for the campus.
"Eventually I hope we will be doing more newscasts so that we truly are covering the news of the campus more than twice a week, a few weeks out of the semester," she said. "It will help us become a news source on campus rather than just a lab where students can practice broadcasting news."
"The facility gives us a whole lot more flexibility in terms of the types of programs that we do," added Jones.
Twenty-six students from the "NewsTeam" and 55 students from four broadcast production classes will use the production studio during the fall semester.