When was the last time someone told you that radio was an artform? 

If it’s been a while, we’ll understand if you need to take a moment to check the voltmeter. It hit us like a bolt of lightning too when Sharon Scott casually dropped that comment into our conversation recently. Scott is co-founder and GM of WXOX, a LPFM station in Louisville, Kentucky, that goes by the moniker of ART FM, and not just because the volunteers there use Audioarts consoles (Audioarts, get it?).

She started ART FM WXOX as a nonprofit for artists and members of the local community who wanted to tap into the “creative potential of radio.” According to its website, the station is unique to Louisville and distinct in the world as a LPFM that combines contemporary art practices with broadcasting.

We really look at radio as an artform. It’s so personal, your voice is so personal and it’s what comes across in radio. There’s nothing like it,” said Scott. Coming from a low-power FM operator especially, that’s one powerful statement…and probably true. Radio is the only form of expression that lets us explore the human voice—its languages, inflections, emotions, and many personalities. 

WXOX presents all of that and more on streaming channel www.artxfm.com, the WXOX mobile app, and 97.1 FM broadcasting at just under 100 watts in Louisville. Programming can shift from the 97-year-old WWII veteran who plays opera on Sundays to the Freedom Hour, a weekly program hosted by three local women from Iran reporting on what’s going on in their home country. 

To represent the entirety of the community, more than 100 volunteers help run WXOX (LP), each taking a turn at the Audioarts Air 1 or Air 5 console in a new, artistically renovated LPFM studio facility. These consoles are our small part in this artistic endeavor, and the reason for our call to Scott. Recently, Scott, her husband and their teenage son took advantage of the pandemic downtime to remodel WXOX LP’s Studio A and improve Studio B for production. With the remodel came a new 16-channel Audioarts console. “It was the perfect transition because after being remote during the pandemic, our volunteers were a little hesitant to come back into the studio and work on a different, bigger board. It didn’t help that I couldn’t be there with them, so they had to just figure it out. None of that turned out to be a problem, however,” commented Scott.

“This is just a nice, simple sound board …which happens to say “Audioarts” on it, and as a station all about local artists, we like that,” she added.

As Radio World reported a few months ago, the station is located in the heart of Louisville, in a 100- year-old building formerly used by a theater prop company and hair salon. Almost ten years later there was still hair dye everywhere left over from the former tenant. WXOX Chief Operator Sean Selby, Scott’s husband, and the couple’s teenage son, Max, did all the carpentry and installed new furniture. Outside, the building became a living artwork showcasing the LPFM’s artistic leanings with a mural by a local artist. They were able to do some interesting artwork inside, including Studio A with a new Audioarts console at the center and looking into a performance area through a custom window, as shown here.

In addition to co-founding WXOX LP, Sharon M. Scott is the author of Low Power FM for Dummies, which is published by Wiley and will be released in October (go to Amazon for a copy). If you are thinking about applying for an LPFM license, the FCC filing window for new applications opens November 1 and runs through November 8; it is the first filing window since 2013. For independent and community operators interested in attending, the annual 2023 Grassroots Radio Conference will be held in Charleston, West Virginia, October 19 to 22. Finally, you can visit our webpage Audio Gear for LPFM for everything you’ll need for your LPFM studio.

Quick. How many broadcaster engineers does it take to change a studio? The answer is none because (drum rimshot, please) the studio has to want to change.

Every broadcast facility today has to be able to switch studios and so much more without a broadcast engineer being there. It can be as basic as the right mix-minus and codec automatically materializing for a hurry-up remote. Or, it can be as intricate as the WheatNet IP monitoring fader position and mic on/off states so that when a presenter sits down to talk, the studio camera automatically turns on, pans to the correct chair, and begins recording.

We’re getting so much smarter about studios these days. All of our WheatNet IP studio projects involve cross connecting elements and making smart associations that automate much of the backend setup when places, times, studios, and plans change—and when you have to go with the flow, from a console surface one minute to, say, a tablet or laptop the next (or even an I/O Blade in the TOC ). With so much intelligence now built into AoIP, you no longer need to send a technician along with your presenters to remote venues or have a tech onsite every time you make a change.

Just about every broadcast facility today can benefit from intelligent AoIP networking. Consider our One Studio Wonder that does everything from a single studio: on-air, production, even syndication. An IP-12 console provides four event switches, which gives four completely independent console snapshots that can let you go from production to on-air without a lot of prep time. What that means in real operational terms is that this community station can do without a second studio and all the costs associated with it. 

If you’re planning your next studio, or if you want to get the most out of the one you have, be sure to download our Studio Project Planning Guide for ideas and tips on getting the most intelligence out of AoIP networks. 

Here’s another Blade, living and running continuously for two-and-a-half years at 91.9 SEA FM and 92.7 MIX FM, Sunshine Coast Radio, Queensland, Australia. Thanks, Tim Aquilina (CE for Sunshine Coast Radio) for sharing.