Oregon Media Insiders

Today is Nutling LouLou's seventh birthday! You may remember Lou as the one of my daughters who, after touring KPTV, announced that when she grew up "I'm going to go work at Fox-12-Oregon-First-Live-Local, Mom, and be a reporter. And then I'll go to college." I said fine, as long as you're the reporter on 12 and not the story.

What's up, docs?

KOAC has had a presence in OSU's Covell Hall since the 1920s. Not any more. The staff email from Steve Bass had these particulars:

As you may know, some members of our staff work at our Corvallis
studios in Covell Hall on the Oregon State University campus,
including both radio programming and engineering staff. Earlier
today, we informed them of the decision to transition all radio
programming operations to our main studio in Portland, and to move
engineering staff to another location in Corvallis. These moves will
not happen right away and could take up to a year to fully complete. ...

[I]t has become apparent Covell Hall can no longer meet our
needs, particularly as our equipment becomes more complex and
sensitive to temperature. Covell Hall lacks air conditioning so it is
not a friendly environment for an increasingly IT-based broadcast
operation.

The cost to install air conditioning, power back-up and other
necessary upgrades amounted to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Although our long relationship with OSU is very strong we did not
think it reasonable to expect them to invest a significant amount of
money into this building on our behalf. In analyzing the significant
cost, we did not think that such an investment on our part would lead
to a better service to our listeners. And given that our systems have
gotten far more complex and the cost of maintaining duplicate
technology in two places is increasing, we believe OPB will be
stronger with one primary "hub" located in Portland.

This move will have no impact on listeners, the vast majority of whom
are unaware that OPB has a facility in Corvallis. It will still be
possible for us to talk with Bill Lunch every Friday on Morning
Edition, for example.

Engineering staff will be moving out to the transmitter building.