WSFA Goes IP For Its Capitol Connection

When Collin Gaston signed on as general manager of Raycom Media’s WSFA Montgomery, Ala. (DMA 118), nearly two years ago, he had big plans to shake-up its newscasts and bring viewers into the heart of downtown Montgomery.

Creating a downtown news bureau became his top priority.

“Anytime I can get out of the four walls of the studio, be it a live shot, or an adjacent studio, it just adds another layer of visual vibrancy. It adds another layer of visual interest,” Gaston says. “With my station doing 40 hours of news per week now, we wanted to differentiate between the newscasts with different studios.”

The NBC affiliate has been on the air in the new studio since December.

To make that downtown bureau successful, sending live video back to the station three miles south needed to be seamless. Chief Engineer Morris Pollock knew he couldn’t weave an HD signal between the tall downtown buildings, so he came up with a plan to transmit the signal to the station’s STL tower on two hops use a Trango IP microwave system that Raycom had in a warehouse.

The Trango system had a nominal data rate of 45 Mbps, but could handle just one 10 Mbps HD signal.

“But we need two cameras down there,” Pollock says. “We want our weather guy doing some shoots, so we needed a green screen. When we pushed that through, the system crashed.”

The station also needed a control signal and an Ethernet bridge to send data between the bureau and the station. All the demands put a strain on the Trango system.

So the station teamed up with Campbell, Calif.-based Exalt Communications and Cisco to create a powerful IP microwave system with a nominal data rate of 162 Mbps.

“The Exalt is a more recent, cutting-edge system,” says Eric Bergman, corporate engineering manager at Raycom. “We actually over-built the system on purpose for anything we might want to try out at that studio in the future.”

According to Pollock, the Exalt system can easily push 36 megabits of video one way — more than enough throughput for two HD video signals — with latency of only 800 milliseconds.

“We can easily get HD from the street outside of the studio, do weather reports from inside, really, anything. We’ve been on air with this setup since December, and it’s worked really well,” he says, adding if they previously wanted live footage downtown, they had to use a microwave truck.

The station is considering running a complete newscast, possibly at 4 p.m., from the downtown bureau. “I don’t need anyone else down there except the anchors,” says Gaston. “The cameras are remote controlled, all you have to do is flip the light switch, mic up and you’re ready to go.”

This low-cost microwave equipment was originally designed to connect cellular traffic between towers that run on unlicensed and licensed bands. After the FCC opened up the 6 GHz and 11 GHz bands for broadcast use, manufacturers like Exalt began looking at broadcasting.

“Our products are deployed across many different verticals, and as of recently, the broadcasting market has started to open up,” says Todd Ishee, a regional sales manager at Exalt. “After the FCC nullified those rulings, it has allowed TV broadcasters, as well as radio broadcasters, to deliver content in new, more efficient ways.”

Signals from WSFA’s cameras at the news bureau are encoded into IP, then transported over the microwave links using the unlicensed 5.8 GHz band. “This makes HD from the field more practical,” said Dave Folsom, chief technology officer of Raycom Media. “It’s going to speed everything up and cost significantly less.”

Cost is the top advantage of using IP.

Because WSFA needed to double-hop the signal, it bought two microwave radios at $6,000 each. The station used Exalt’s ExtendAir r5005 for the first hop, covering a quarter mile. For the three-mile-long second hop, it used the ExtendAir rc5005.

Both radios are identical, except the rc5005 allows for external antennas, which are needed for higher gains on longer paths.

The IP encoders and decoders needed for each HD camera cost about $25,000 total.

Using IP also allows users to plug in any kind of IP device into an Ethernet bridge, giving a two-way link between the main studio and the downtown bureau. “So if we needed to send some video from our main site to the downtown bureau, we could send them 30 megabits of data, and vice-versa, no problem,” Pollock says.

That capability will certainly be needed, as the news bureau will also serve as a hub for reporters to edit and file their day-to-day stories, he adds.

The station did admit, however, that because it’s using unlicensed bands, it runs the risk of someone else firing up a signal on the same band and causing interference.

“That’s a risk we were willing to take, though,” says Bergman. “But the risk of something like that happening isn’t very likely in a smaller market like Montgomery.”

Exalt sells microwave systems that use licensed bands, but the unlicensed versions are more affordable, according to Bergman.

It didn’t take long for WSFA News Director Scott Duff to see the advantages of the new downtown bureau, where the Alabama State Capitol building serves as the backdrop for anchors and Max Reiss, Raycom News Network’s political reporter.

“It’s a tremendous backdrop, especially in the morning when the sun is rising,” he says. “To see the majestic dark purples and all of the colors it creates is just amazing.”

More important, he says, it gives the station’s political coverage some cachet. “It shows we’re live in Montgomery and that’s the capitol behind you. It just gives the viewers a whole different sense. There’s a reason why CNN, NBC and the major networks have studios with a shot of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., in the background. It adds a bit of urgency to the story.”

GM Gaston has another reason for creating a downtown bureau. For the past five years, the city of Montgomery has been investing significant money to bring its historical districts back to life, including Dexter Avenue, which is anchored by the capitol building. A drop box was installed in front of the building, making it easy to plug in cameras and take live shots on the historic street, instead of using a separate microwave.

“I envision a Today show-esque type of show in the future,” Gaston says. “It would include local concerts and events that draw people to the heart of Montgomery.”

Melanie Golson, outreach coordinator for the Montgomery Department of Development, which is located one floor up from the WSFA downtown studio, says the city should benefit from having a TV station presence downtown. “It’s going to certainly help us get the word out even more about our various new developments,” she says. “But more importantly, it provides an opportunity to share our vision, just by the virtue of looking out the window and seeing Dexter Avenue.”

Golson added that the city is working to bring more retail shops, restaurants and downtown residential options as part of its master plan.

WSFA’s main competition, CBS affiliate WAKA is transitioning to HD in a new studio starting in February, adding some urgency to perfecting WSFA’s downtown bureau.

“That was certainly part of all of this,” Gaston says. “Being the leader in the market, these are the kind of big things that we should be doing. I’m throwing everything I can at this project. I want it to be great.”