Audacy’s Winning Formula with Detroit Lions and Tieline

By Ryan Sczomak, Engineer, Audacy Detroit

In the nearly 21 years I have been with Audacy, I have seen a variety of technology. I can say now, working with all six of our Audacy Detroit stations, Tieline is instrumental for us. We use Tieline as the backbone of the Detroit Lions Radio Network on 97.1 The Ticket (WXYT-FM), helping us ensure Detroit Lions listeners all over the state of Michigan can hear the Lions go all the way (hopefully) to winning a Super Bowl!

In our Game Day Tieline roster, we use a Gateway 16 at Ford Field to broadcast all home games. We do this by using several stereo streams including main program audio, a producer communication channel, a feed to the stadium that is distributed to the concourse, and a feed to the Audacy suite. The Gateway at the studio has a 5th stream which sends to our uplink provider. Having the functionality of multiple stereo channels on a single codec is extremely helpful, as the NFL is the most complicated to run of all four of the major sports. We utilize the ViA codec for our pregame remotes on 97.1 The Ticket (Lions radio flagship) and on the road we travel with a ViA for play-by-play coverage.

Though we rely on a LAN connection in stadiums, having the LTE as a backup is a great feature. The dual internal LTE cards in the ViA make it an invaluable piece of equipment for us. We use SmartStream PLUS redundant streaming for the stadium link to the studio and Fuse-IP data bonding from the studio to our uplink provider.

A Mackie VLZ mixer feeds the Gateway at Ford Field while on the road the ViA is fed from several types of mixers. We utilize the Gateway on the studio side with Livewire, and the Lions network studio has an Axia Quasar board.

For a typical Lions play-by-play broadcast, we encode using Music PLUS at 128kbps. On the return path, we use a mono mix minus feed and producer communication on the second channel. This allows us to integrate programs, mix minus and communications with a single codec.

We use the Cloud Codec Controller for every Lions road game. This allows me to remote in to configure the codec if the engineer is having any issues, something that happens as some road engineers are less familiar with the ViA. This gives both of us peace of mind knowing that I am able to check on the codec before the game to ensure that the send and receive numbers are appropriate and that both sides of the SmartStream PLUS redundant streaming are connected.

The ViA’s audio quality is top-notch and very low latency. Having shows that are very heavily caller-based makes low latency a must. Our market’s other two engineers have found the systems simple to configure, and the news and music personalities have made easy work of them, too. When I do have a question, Jacob Daniluck and the tech support staff at Tieline are always quick to help get us pointed in the right direction.

Other Station Remotes

104.3 WOMC (WOMC-FM) is the official station of The Woodward Dream Cruise, a highly anticipated one-day event that attracts over a million spectators and tens of thousands of classic cars from all over the world. 104.3 WOMC utilizes multiple ViAs and the Report-IT app up and down the 6-mile stretch of Woodward Avenue for The Cruise, during which we broadcast from at least six different locations throughout the day from 6am to midnight. Needless to say, this a high-intensity day for us, and we are happy that Tieline is up for the challenge.

We utilize LTE for the majority of our news and music station remotes. For our standard remotes with a ViA, we incorporate 2 to 3 mics, and the matrix editor is a great way to make sure the talkback is not sent to an output that feeds external speakers. Our news station, WWJ Newsradio 950 (WWJ-AM) utilizes the ViA on a regular basis for remotes. On those remotes, they rely heavily on the stereo line input to play back cuts from a laptop. WWJ reporters also use the Report-IT app daily to send back reports and even do live updates.

At the studio, apart from the Gateway 16 integrating with Axia Livewire, our three music stations share a Merlin PLUS and the news station uses a separate Merlin. The sports station also has a Bridge-IT for regular remotes, and we still have a Commander that is used as a backup for the music stations.