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52-623: The PRSS is maintained by NPR's Distribution division at their Network Operations Center (NOC), located at NPR's headquarters in Washington, D.C. A backup NOC is located at Minnesota Public Radio 's facilities in St. Paul, Minnesota , in the event of a catastrophe or other situation that would occur at the main NOC's location in Washington. The NOC oversees and monitors all elements and operations of

104-426: A video wall , which typically shows details of highly significant alarms, ongoing incidents and general network performance; a corner of the wall is sometimes used for showing a news or weather TV channel, as this can keep the NOC technicians aware of current events which may affect the network or systems they are responsible for. The back wall of a NOC is sometimes glazed; there may be a room attached to this wall which

156-560: A "network management center", is one or more locations from which network monitoring and control, or network management , is exercised over a computer , telecommunication or satellite network. The earliest NOCs started during the 1960s. A Network Control Center was opened in New York by AT&T in 1962 which used status boards to display switch and routing information, in real-time, from AT&T's most important toll switches. AT&T later replaced this Network Control Center with

208-487: A General Electric transmitter built in 1939: power (4,100 watts), antenna height (268 feet), total signal radius (15 miles). 1961 - Moved to newly refurbished quarters in the Radio/Television building on Speedway, a site now occupied by Robert A. Welch Hall . 1965 - Reformatted to an arts and information program schedule following the demise of Austin's commercial classical music station ( KHFI ), and began

260-437: A NOC may also contain many or all of the primary servers and other equipment essential to running the network, although it is not uncommon for a single NOC to monitor and control a number of geographically dispersed sites. A NOC engineer has several duties in order to ensure the smooth running of the network. They deal with things such as DDoS attacks, power outages, network failures, and routing black-holes. There are of course

312-616: A commercial station, which is now KTRH in Houston. The University of Texas would not return to the airwaves until thirty years later, this time on the FM band. 1958 - Signed on as KUT-FM on November 10, licensed to the University of Texas as an Educational station broadcasting at 90.7 MHz from the School of Journalism (now Geography) building at Whitis Avenue & 24th Street, using

364-526: A dedicated PC). This system was known as the SOSS, or Satellite Operations Support System. Analog feeds were discontinued, and instead uplinked digitally (but still in SCPC fashion and on 2 satellite transponders) using Musicam encoding, and received using ComStream ABR-700 digital audio satellite demodulators, which tapped off the 70 MHz IF bus of a Satellite System Corporation Model 4421 downconverter, which

416-662: A dedicated demod, which could be any of the six installed. In 2007, the SOSS was retired for the newest and current system of the PRSS, the ContentDepot. The ContentDepot no longer uses linear feeds of SCPC-based digital audio bitstreams like the SOSS. Instead, it uses a dedicated TCP/IP -based one-way connection uplinked via satellite from PRSS, which is received by a storage receiver (a combination satellite data receiver & file server ) manufactured by International Datacasting [5] . Program feeds are requested and set up at

468-846: A five or six day rotation, working different shifts. KUT KUT (90.5 FM ) is a listener and community supported public radio station based in Austin, Texas . KUT is owned and operated by the University of Texas at Austin . It is the National Public Radio member station for central Texas . Its studio operations are located on campus at the Dealey Center for New Media. KUT is one of three radio outlets based on UT campus alongside student-run KVRX 91.7 FM and KUTX 98.9 FM. KUT's main transmitter broadcasts with an effective radiated power of 24,500 watts and

520-587: A modernized NOC in 1977, located in Bedminster, New Jersey . NOCs are implemented by business organizations , public utilities , universities , and government agencies that oversee complex networking environments that require high availability . NOC personnel are responsible for monitoring one or many networks for certain conditions that may require special attention to avoid degraded service. Organizations may operate more than one NOC, either to manage different networks or to provide geographic redundancy in

572-482: A network of broadcast-quality leased telephone lines furnished by AT&T , which were configured in a "round-robin" loop interconnecting the major NPR member stations at the time. Member stations invested in earth station receiving equipment to be a part of the new PRSS in the form of a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cover all costs with the stipulation that the radio station must be on

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624-503: A special internet-accessible web site (known as the ContentDepot Portal) that member stations can log on to, where they can subscribe to specific programs and live feeds. The subscribed programs are then delivered via satellite as a file transfer to the storage receiver in the form of MP2 -encoded ACM -based WAV files, which then can be imported into a station's automation and/or playback system. Live feeds are sent in

676-404: A state agriculture official needed a means to broadcast daily crop and weather reports . A deal between the official and UT's Extension Division allowed agriculture broadcasts for one hour per day in exchange for equipment maintenance. At other times of the day, the University would broadcast items of interest from the campus, including a number of faculty lecture series. But by the end of 1924,

728-499: A total signal radius of 97 miles—bringing to fruition the federal funding and extraordinarily lengthy regulatory application process that had been started in 1972. 1984 - Won the Texas Governor's Barbara Jordan Award for "excellence in the communication of the reality of disabled people" through the production of SoundSight, a weekly news-and-features program for blind and print-impaired listeners. 1986 - Won, jointly with

780-602: A week from 8 to 10 with no sponsors or commercials. There were concerts by the University Symphony and other Austin musical organizations as well as discussions, lectures, and speeches by faculty, state officials, and agriculture experts. Weekly services were broadcast from St. David's Episcopal Church and, during football season, fans could listen to play-by-play descriptions of the Longhorn games. KUT's early years were ambitious but, by 1927, ambition had outrun

832-645: Is located 8 miles west of Downtown Austin at the University of Texas Bee Cave Research Center. KUT is licensed to broadcast in the digital hybrid HD format. A second station, KUTX, serving San Angelo at 90.1 MHz , was sold to Texas Tech University in 2010 in part because Angelo State University had become part of the Texas Tech University System. The call letters were changed from KUTX to KNCH. The KUTX call letters were moved to KUT's repeater station in Somerville, broadcasting to

884-585: Is now independently produced. Former music shows that moved to KUTX include Eklektikos, hosted by John Aielli (with KUT since 1966); Left of the Dial ; and shows hosted by Jay Trachtenberg, and Jody Denberg. Like other public radio stations in the United States, KUT broadcasts on-air pledge drives in order to raise monetary contributions from listeners. Listener contributions and business sponsorship , termed "community support," account for roughly 80% of

936-403: Is used by members of the team responsible for dealing with serious incidents to meet while still able to watch events unfolding within the NOC. Individual desks are generally assigned to a specific network, technology or area. A technician may have several computer monitors on their desk, with the extra monitors used for monitoring the systems or networks covered from that desk. The location housing

988-945: The "Best Radio Station" in Austin by The Austin Chronicle's readers' poll. 1991 - Held a special one-day fundraiser to assist NPR in meeting emergency budget needs for news coverage of the Persian Gulf War. The $ 25,000 raised by KUT was the second highest amount raised among all of NPR's participating member-stations. 1992 - Presented the first of its continuing annual celebrations of the short story—Selected Shorts on Tour—a collaboration with New York City's Symphony Space, producer of NPR's weekly series Selected Shorts (now distributed by Public Radio International ). 1993 - Celebrated its 35th anniversary and—in partnership with UT Austin's Center for Mexican American Studies and with major initial grants from The Ford Foundation and

1040-624: The Bryan/College Station area on 88.1 FM. On August 23, 2012, the UT System Board of Regents voted to move forward to purchase KXBT-FM 98.9 FM (Leander/Austin) from Border Media Business Trust. On January 2, 2013, KXBT became KUTX , creating an Austin-based sister station for KUT. At that time, KUT adopted an all-news/talk format utilizing programming from NPR, the BBC, PRI and others. The music programming formerly heard on KUT

1092-694: The CPB qualification criteria. 1971 - Became a charter member of National Public Radio (NPR); contributed the first of, what would become in time, 14 of the station's employees to the NPR staff; and carried the first-ever NPR broadcast ( All Things Considered ) in May. 1974 - Moved to completely new, specially-designed quarters in the College of Communication complex at Guadalupe & 26th Street. 1975 - Hosted Bob Edwards , then co-anchoring All Things Considered , and

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1144-480: The ContentDepot system as streaming MP2 audio, sent over the same satellite transponder, but as an IP multicast stream (as opposed to a file transfer for pre-recorded programs) which is decoded by a special streaming audio receiver (called a stream decoder) set to the IP multicast addresses assigned for live audio streams on the satellite transponder used by ContentDepot. The newest generation of ContentDepot hardware for

1196-526: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting—launched the national radio series Latino USA at a "Cinco de Mayo" reception in Washington, D.C., with President Clinton in attendance along with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and cabinet secretaries Federico Peña and Henry Cisneros. 1994 - Completed the construction of a new on-air control room and library suite, using 50 percent federal matching funds to replace and upgrade

1248-535: The DSC demod (which was tuned to a fixed transponder and SCPC frequency), the software would automatically tune any one of the six audio demods to whatever program feeds the station would want to receive (the 1st generation analog PRSS receivers had to be tuned manually for each feed). DACS messaging functions were also integrated into the SOSS PC using its software and the DSC demod. The six audio demods were controlled by

1300-474: The NPR news production team during dedication week for the new Communication complex. The national All Things Considered broadcasts were transmitted each evening that week from the new KUT studio facilities. 1979 - Carried the November inaugural broadcast of NPR's Morning Edition , with Bob Edwards as host; in doing so, KUT joined 106 others of NPR's 157 member-stations in launching what has become one of

1352-474: The PRSS system, from outgoing feeds from NPR, APM and PRX, and incoming feeds from member stations. The Washington NOC is also a primary entry point station in the Emergency Alert System . The PRSS first made its debut in 1979, using the then-new technology (for broadcasting) of satellite distribution. Prior to the PRSS and starting from NPR's founding in 1971, NPR and its member stations used

1404-420: The PRSS, as of 2014 and also manufactured by International Datacasting, is a special version custom-manufactured for PRSS of their commercially available "Superflex Pro Audio" receiver. It combines both the stream decoder for live programming and storage receiver for pre-recorded programming in one rack-mounted system, in previous comparison to separate units for live decoding and program storage respectively with

1456-607: The Physics Department decided it wanted the station back, and with the approval of the Board of Regents , the Physics Department regained control in the summer of 1925. They had a new license granted on October 30 and it bore, for the first time, the call letters KUT . Professor Simpson L. Brown — in addition to his teaching and research work in the Physics Department — served simultaneously as general manager, technical director, and producer. Programs were aired 3 nights

1508-766: The SOSS PC via several RS-485 serial connections from a board installed in the PC called the ARTIC board (" A R eal- T ime I nterface C o-Processor"), with each demod respectively equipped with a RS-485 serial control interface. The SOSS not only provided high-quality digital audio for NPR and other program feeds, but provided automatic tuning, as well as recording control for audio servers in radio broadcast automation systems (and control for stand-alone audio recorders as well) of NPR programming feeds. The SOSS could also be configured via its control software to tune in live feeds (such as breaking news and live programs) and apply such to

1560-504: The UT McDonald Observatory , The Ohio State University Award for production of the astronomy radio series Star Date. The series was cited for "excellence in educational, informational, and public affairs broadcasting." 1988 - Celebrated its 30th anniversary with a series of special events, capped by "An Evening with Bob Edwards", NPR's Morning Edition host. 1990 - Was recognized, for the 10th consecutive year, as

1612-457: The administration to let him build the station in the first place. Beginning in 1923, though, funding concerns prompted a transfer of operational control to the University's Extension Division for extension teaching. One of the stipulations of the transfer agreement was that funds would be provided for operations and maintenance to put the station in a "first-class" condition. The funds, however, did not materialize and broadcasting suffered until

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1664-399: The air for a minimum of 18 hours per day and have at least 3 full-time employees. After a period of years the stipulations would cease and the earth station would become the property of the radio station. The equipment included a receiving dish and an analog audio receiver manufactured by network hardware manufacturer Coastcom [4] under the master contract held by Rockwell . The dish

1716-504: The analog PRSS predecessor to NPR's NOC) Washington uplink. Some of the first stations to have their own uplink facilities to PRSS were KUT in Austin, Texas , and Minnesota Public Radio, both in 1980, and KUSC, Los Angeles, who provided the bulk of the commercial radio revenue uplinks, at about the same time. Around 1994, the 1st generation analog PRSS system was upgraded to a new system using digital audio feeds instead of analog, and automated receiver selection and tuning of feeds (using

1768-576: The basic roles, such as remote hands, support, configuration of hardware (such as firewalls and routers, purchased by a client). NOC engineers also have to ensure the core network is stable. This can be done by configuring hardware in a way that makes the network more secure, but still has optimal performance. NOC engineers are also responsible for monitoring activity, such as network usage, temperatures etc. They would also have to install equipment, such as KVMs, rack installation, IP-PDU setup, running cabling. The majority of NOC engineers are also on call and have

1820-585: The best and most honored of public radio's national programs. 1980 - Installed its new public radio network satellite earth terminal and became NPR's southwestern regional uplink, one of only 17 network stations with the capability to transmit as well as receive satellite-delivered radio programs. Production of In Black America moved from Houston to KUT Austin. It is still hosted weekly by John L. Hanson Jr. 1982 - Call letters changed from KUT-FM to KUT . Began broadcasting in stereo at 90.5 MHz with 100,000 watts of power, antenna height at 1,595 feet, and

1872-409: The call sign 5XU — that was issued to the University on March 22, 1921. A year later, on March 22, 1922, a new AM band broadcasting station license was issued, bearing the randomly assigned call letters WCM . In its first years, the broadcasting station was used for a number of purposes, beginning as a demonstration project in the Physics Department, whose Professor Simpson L. Brown had persuaded

1924-615: The channels transmitted was a low-speed data channel that could be decoded with a leased-line telephone modem connected to the Coastcom receiver, called the DACS channel, or the Direct Access Communications System. It acted as a 1-way wire that provided NPR stations with text messages regarding programming and other information. Select NPR member stations were provided with satellite uplink equipment to meet

1976-771: The country were also to provide revenue from use by commercial entities who would pay for NPR to transmit its programming via its satellite system. Because NPR, at the time, had the only operational satellite network that could transmit in high quality, full fidelity, stereo sound, several music based commercial programs were distributed via NPR's satellite system such as Rockline, Hollywood Live, several live concerts, and some Westwood One content. These uplinks allowed producers of program to send pre-recorded or live material to an uplink in their region instead of having to send by mail or haul it by expensive telco lines to NPR's MOTC (Main Origination Technical Center,

2028-424: The dynamic range of the system. Typically this worked well but for some low frequencies the distortion exceeded 10 percent THD . Also the dBx modules varied in how they tracked the compressed audio so the expanded audio was not an exact representation of what was compressed at the uplink. Many of these problems were resolved when the PRSS moved to the digital-based SOSS system, mentioned later in this article. One of

2080-428: The equipment in this control room and in the production control room; total project cost was in excess of $ 100,000. 1995 - Achieved a listenership benchmark according to Arbitron research: more than 100,000 people were listening to the station each week. 1996 - Completed the installation of its second station (KUTX 90.1 FM) using 75 percent federal matching funds and, delivering its signal via satellite, initiated

2132-524: The event of one site becoming unavailable. In addition to monitoring internal and external networks of related infrastructure, NOCs can monitor social networks to get a head-start on disruptive events. Computer environments can range in size from one to millions of servers . In telecommunication environments, NOCs are responsible for monitoring power failures, communication line alarms (such as bit errors , framing errors, line coding errors, and circuits down) and other performance issues that may affect

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2184-596: The first live Saturday afternoon airings in Austin of the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts . 1970 - Station was qualified by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to receive financial assistance provided to noncommercial radio stations for the first time ever by the federal government. Of the some 600 noncommercial radio stations that were licensed by the FCC at the time, only KUT and 69 others met

2236-476: The funding. The expense of operating and maintaining the station had simply become too great for the Physics Department to sustain. University President Harry Benedict appointed a committee to study the matter, and the committee recommended that the project be discontinued. In 1929 The station equipment was dismantled and returned to the Physics labs for experimentation, and KUT's license was sold and converted to

2288-457: The introduction of ContentDepot. Some components of the previous SOSS still are in use in the ContentDepot era: one of the ABR-700 demods (as well as the downconverter) is still used by NPR as a "squawk box" for verbal announcements regarding programming to NPR stations. Network Operations Center A network operations center ( NOC , pronounced like the word knock ), also known as

2340-412: The mission of NPR to provide access to the satellite system by independent, 3rd parties who would enhance the programming of public radio beyond NPR's own programming as well as provide for back-hauls of news reports to be aired on NPR's news programs or feeds of promotional material and other not for broadcast or "closed circuit" content. These 15 strategically located uplinks located in regions throughout

2392-632: The network, and in telecom sector have to track details about the call flow. Satellite network environments process large amounts of voice and video data, in addition to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance information. Example organizations that manage this form of NOC includes Artel, a service provider of commercial satellite bandwidth to the United States Department of Defense , located in Herndon, Virginia . NOCs are frequently laid out with several rows of desks, all facing

2444-429: The service. Each transponder was labeled on the receiver as "NPR A" and "NPR B", with a red illuminated numeric LED display of the channel number on each receiver with each channel tunable to any desired IF -based SCPC frequency. This first generation analog PRSS system yielded about a 40 dB ratio of analog (recovered) signal to noise for each audio channel. dbx modules that were set for 3:1 were used to increase

2496-502: The station's budget . Sponsors are noted on-air in the form of abbreviated announcements called underwriting spots . The actual beginning date of radio transmissions on the UT-Austin campus has never been fully substantiated. There is an unofficial reference to an on-campus radio operation as early as 1912. But the most reliable information indicates that the first authorization was an experimental radio station license — bearing

2548-552: The upgrade of a microchip to the existing 12 channel demodulators already installed at the radio station. The additional channels were rented out to various programming including commercial content. Later, channels 13 and 14 were for a period leased to the CMSS (the Classical Music Satellite Service), a third party produced service outside of NPR, that was available to public radio stations who paid to air

2600-600: Was aimed to Westar 1 , the satellite used by PRSS at its debut, and later to Westar IV after the former satellite was retired in 1983. The receiver was able to tune into the several audio channels uplinked by NPR on two transponders on the satellite. The audio channels, transmitted in analog using frequency modulation, were multiplexed on each transponder using SCPC (Single Channel Per Carrier) transmission. The receivers were pre-programmed for 12 channels. There were additional channels that were available and accessible by special Coastcom receivers that were frequency agile or by

2652-668: Was in essence the main satellite receiver for the system, taking in the L-band input from the dish's LNB . There were seven ABR-700 demodulators (or "demods") used: six for audio program feeds (each demod was referred to as "NPR A" through "NPR F"), and a seventh for reception of data only (called the Downlink Service Channel, or DSC). The DSC demod was interfaced to the SOSS PC, which ran custom control software running under OS/2 Warp . Using SCPC frequency & satellite transponder data for program feeds received from

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2704-533: Was moved to KUTX to create a full-time music service, primarily an eclectic mix of alt pop/rock, folk, Americana, bluegrass, jazz, blues supplemented by specialty programs including Twine Time, Folkways, Across the Water (Celtic music), and Horizontes (Latin music). (An HD Radio is required for all HD stations.) Local productions include In Black America and Texas Standard (hosted by David Brown ). Latino USA with Maria Hinojosa also originated at KUT, but

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