WHAT’S BEHIND THESE STUDIO PODS?

The pods are freestanding in the middle of an office space and house two, fully self-contained studios. There is nothing but air behind these prefab studio pods. We’re told the modules were easy to put up (no wall attachments and bolted to the floor) and are surprisingly soundproof after Autex acoustic panels were applied.

The main studio has an IP-12 console and TS-1 talent stations for guest positions and the smaller backup studio has an L-8 console. The backup studio, which is also used for pre-records and client voicing, is connected into Mediaworks’ commercial production hub in Auckland using WheatNet IP Blade 4 codecs for remote client voicing.

Mediaworks operates easy listening The Breeze and eight other 24/7 radio formats on 190 frequencies throughout New Zealand. Its local studios up and down New Zealand are fed music programming by the group’s main uplink center in Auckland, and a few also feed local programming back to Auckland for distribution through the network.

Signal monitoring from anywhere in the facility, built with ScreenBuilder tools!

At the foundation is WheatNet IP audio networking. The group’s six main studios in Auckland are currently on one WheatNet IP audio networked campus along with the group’s distribution hub.

Mediaworks Senior Technical Engineer Rob Stewart began digitizing the backend of regional and local studios by replacing relay boxes and archaic routing with I/O Blades years ago. Upgrading the analog backend infrastructure with WheatNet IP Blades brought more autonomy to the group’s remote studio locations and made it practical to replace analog consoles with newer IP-12, L-12, L-8, LX-24 and Sideboard IP audio networked consoles when the time was right.

The new studios for The Breeze 97.5 serving Hawke’s Bay went live in November 2024 after months of planning and execution by Mediaworks engineers Jim Cowan, Christian Shearer, Rob Stewart, Mitchell Whaitiri, and Brad Wright.