Radio Manchester are VCS too, it was cheaper to give them the same kit as 5Live when they moved to Salford. Radio London may be in the same position at NBH.
Yep. AIUI ViLor saves so much money that they can use some of the savings to deploy VCS (which is a little more expensive) as a result. ViLor does seem to be delivering pretty effectively by all accounts.
I guess VCS may be more suited to running 40 stations from one system than Radioman?
Don't think they are running them from one system are they ? They are co-siting the equipment, but not integrating it, though in some cases multiple VMs will be running on the same server.
Don't think they are running them from one system are they ? They are co-siting the equipment, but not integrating it, though in some cases multiple VMs will be running on the same server.
AIUI they'll all be running from VMs in centralised locations on shared servers with shared storage and other hardware. So they are integrated, though I assume multiple instances of VCS (one per studio?) running rather than one running multiple stations
EDIT: isn't this thread more appropriate for the Media and Tech forum?
I assumed some kind of sharing would be in place at least at regional level? So a regional weather hub can easily put recorded forecasts in the right place without needing to log in to each station separately
I assumed some kind of sharing would be in place at least at regional level? So a regional weather hub can easily put recorded forecasts in the right place without needing to log in to each station separately
I'd have thought so yes as things like music will be available to every station. So there's no reason why someone couldn't just save clips for multiple stations and they just choose the relevant one.
Of course with shared storage there's no reason why a studio at, say, BBC Radio Derby couldn't become one for BBC Radio Kent should the need arise - everything is ready on VCS
Recently there was an incident (fire I think) at Radio Lincolnshire meant programmes came from Radio Humberside, a joint programme initially but Lincs presenters travelled to Hull to present their next programme from there.
Recently there was an incident (fire I think) at Radio Lincolnshire meant programmes came from Radio Humberside, a joint programme initially but Lincs presenters travelled to Hull to present their next programme from there.
Radio York also camped out at Rado Humberside for a number of days around the new year due to flooding which took the York telephone exchange, and thus most of their connectivity, out. A Humberside presenter was due to do an overnight show from York to help out but ended up turning round and going back to Hull. I suspect York would normally have gone to Leeds as their disaster recovery location, but the state of transport and some flooding affecting part of Leeds made Hull an easier option.
None of those sites are ViLoR, but they seemed to have a full set of Radio York jingles available from Hull. I know there is usually a "grab bag" in studios with CDs etc and info to get on air from elsewhere, but I think in this case they handled it in a different way.
None of those sites are ViLoR, but they seemed to have a full set of Radio York jingles available from Hull. I know there is usually a "grab bag" in studios with CDs etc and info to get on air from elsewhere, but I think in this case they handled it in a different way.
I suspect that these days as long as you can login to the BBC's internal computer network (which you can from any local radio station) then you'll be able to download media to an alternative site (though there may be more formal plans in place this would be a reasonable approach to take in extremis)