The recent Colonial Pipeline computer network hack and ransomware could change the way you operate your studio automation. In fact, it absolutely should change the way you run your studio automation.
The Colonial Pipeline shutdown cost the company a bundle of cash. What would it cost you if your studio automation lost its connection to the outside world? Or maybe better said, what if the electronic pipeline (the Internet) that connects the outside world to your studio automation were shut down for a week. You and I know that if it happens, it’ll cost you!
Many if not most of our operations rely on voice-tracking from outside our studios and for program material delivery from anywhere in the country to us. What if you couldn’t voice-track from outside your studio or bring in program material from the outside world for a week? Even worse, for the stations that use the Internet to carry their signal from their studios to their transmitter, could you even be on the air?
With computer data we constantly talk about backups. With vital Internet connections we should be talking about backup connection pathways!
If you use the Internet as a program feed to your transmitter, try to find and old Marti or similar system as a backup. If you can have a wire-line telephone installed at your transmitter, be able to put that phone on the air at the transmitter. Your audio sure won’t sound great, but at least you’ll have some! I did a similar trick when many years ago when someone disconnected our sports broadcast equalized line from UNM Stadium to our studios. Quickly disassembling our telephone and clipping the mixer output wires to the telephone network inside the phone, we carried the entire Lobo game without a hitch. Of course, during half-time, a bunch of telephone company employees came down to our broadcast position to ask why the *#@%$ I had scattered telephone parts all over the broadcast position table and had run funny-looking wires into their telephone! This was back in the Mountain Bell Telephone Company days!
Less expensive than modern, full-featured STL equipment is unlicensed point-to-point digital radio, most often the Ubiquiti brand.
Got an FM translator at your studio that carries your AM station signal? Put an FM radio at your AM transmitter site so you can tune in the FM translator and get on the air without needing Internet or STL audio. I did something almost exactly like this once years ago when a forest fire melted the telephone cable that had our high-quality equalized program line to the AM transmitter in it.
And we haven’t even touched on what a prolonged Internet outage will mean if you have your logs prepared outside your studios and get them delivered via the Internet! Here’s another potential point of failure!!
There are a million great idea workarounds for what to do if you lose digital connectivity. When it happens isn’t the time to start thinking of them. That time, as Colonial Pipeline has shown us, is right now!