They Made It Look Easy

At a little before 10:30 this morning, the transition button on the new switcher was pressed and the Gavel to Gavel Alaska coverage of the special session began with new equipment from the rebuilt control facilities and re-wired capitol building.
If there were technical difficulties, they were transparent to spectators in the room and to the viewers watching the proceedings begin on the air.

In the above picture you see (L-R) John Kelly, Will Judy, David Waters and Mary Williams. John, David and Mary are control room directors who switch and coordinate the on-air signal and that of meetings being saved for later broadcast. Will is the Director of IT and Engineering for KTOO and supervised the integration and construction project for the station. He doesn't usually sit in the control room but was on hand in case of difficulties. We didn't see him do anything during the big launch, so he must have had everything under control all along. Will's associate, Carmelo D'Amico, was keeping an eye on things in the transmission room just out of sight.

Not shown are the entire crew up at the capitol building under the direction of Skip Gray. Randy Burton, Gavel to Gavel Alaska producer, was at another station programming the automation system, web streams, the web site, and working on the ever-changing schedule for the rest of the day and week.

They make this extensive and sometimes complicated coverage look easy.