University of North Carolina Athletics
90.5 FM - Listen in the Smith Center WITHOUT DELAY!
December 27, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 27, 2005
For years loyal Carolina basketball fans had their own way of enjoying the Tar Heels. Whenever the games were televised, they turned down the sound and turned up Woody on the radio. Some even took their radios into Carmichael Auditorium and the Smith Center to follow the action.
However. in recent years various transmission delays made it difficult for those fans to maintain their favorite habit, but some new and timely technical assistance should be a big help.
A delay between the competing game signals first became noticeable when the various TV networks began relying on satellites for their coverage. The radio signal originated by the Tar Heel Sports Network requires only one satellite hop once the signal leaves the Smith Center via land line (telephone line) and goes to the control room at Learfield Communications in Jefferson City, Missouri. From there it goes up on satellite and comes back down to nearly 50 affiliates including WCHL (1360 AM) in Chapel Hill and WRDU (106.1 FM) in Raleigh-Durham. There was only a slight delay in the real-time description between what you see and what you hear in this process.
Most Carolina games--home and away--are televised, and the various networks use two and sometimes three satellite hops. This was the original extension of the four second delay between the radio signal and the TV coverage if you were trying to listen to the game on radio and watch on TV.
Then after the infamous Janet Jackson incident at the Super Bowl, a lot of TV networks, stations and even some cable distributors started building extra delays into their respective signals. This extended the delay to at least seven and sometimes as much as ten seconds.
The most vocal complaints came from those fans outside the Smith Center who were listening to Woody, but trying to follow the game on TV. So several affiliates--including WCHL-AM and WRDU-FM in the Triangle--were encouraged to try and match their audio to the TV signal. Then the delay in the Smith Center was extended to a point where those fans couldn't keep up because the game action was taking place well ahead of Woody's call.
So during the recent exam break, Ben Alexander, the Technical Director for the Tar Heel Sports Network, worked out a plan with Walter Sturdivant and Christy Dixon at WCHL in Chapel Hill to bring the station's real-time signal into the Smith Center via a digitized telephone line.
"We use a Tieline," Alexander explained, "to transmit the digital signal over a telephone line from WCHL to the Smith Center. It is accepted through a remote transmitter on the scorer's table, and then broadcast over an "in-house" frequency at 90.5 FM only throughout the Smith Center.
"There is still a slight delay of almost one second, but nothing like the lengthy delay which we worked to overcome."
So if you're bringing your radio to the Smith Center this winter, set it to 90.5 FM and do what loyal Tar Heel fans have been doing for years.
