The studio & control room, as it looked at ABC Radio
About the la radio studio
The LA Radio Studio is a business: The business of supplying a comfortable, acoustically sound and functional radio studio to radio shows, radio stations, radio developers, podcasters and other new media outlets.
The Birth of the LA Radio Studio
by
Mike Stark
In 2008, the ABC Radio Network shutdown it's Burbank studio.
This Pacific Recorders based studio setup had been meticulously maintained
by veteran broadcasters Dave Berges and John Price and represented what I felt
was one of the best radio facilities in Southern California.
The studio & control room, as it looked at ABC
Radio
Because
the west coast portion of the Tom Joyner Morning Show had come from the ABC
facility, I was sent, by the show, to tour various studios throughout LA to
find a replacement location to broadcast from on a daily basis. John Price,
another LA radio vet, and
myself visited most of the studio "rentals" that were available and found that
none came close to matching the facilities we had at ABC. After a couple months
of searching we found the only studio that could meet our needs was the
Burbank studios that are owned by legendary DJ Rick Dees. Ironically, they
ended up right around the corner from where the ABC studios had been.
The studio was small (a production room), but it was technically sound and
could handle the needs of an ISDN feed to the Joyner Dallas studios.
Radio Disney, who took over the ABC facility, was planning on gutting the
studios and rebuilding a digital complex to support their very high profile
radio needs. The old equipment and furniture housing the gear had to be
disposed of and there were deadlines in getting that equipment out, with plans
of sending most of it to the local landfill.
Thanks to his negotiations
with Disney and many hours of "spec" work from Dave Berges, arrangements were
made for myself and long time friend and business associate, Jayme Wilson, to acquire the gear that was
destine to be tossed out. Jayme and I, after my studio tours, had talked about
building a radio studio in the Ports O' Call Village in San Pedro. Now we had
the opportunity to get a "foundation" for that studio in the form of some very
good gear.
After a couple of "glitches" including a change in the
schedule by Disney for us to remove the gear, Dave, Jayme, myself and our crew
arrived on Labor Day 2008 with a huge flatbed truck and carefully loaded the
gear for transport to Ports O' Call.
The studio being moved to Ports O' Call
Originally, I had conceived our new studio to be
a combo, one room studio with microphones in the same room as the control
room. However, after Jayme saw pictures of the way the studio had been
configured - as a studio and control room operation, with a beautifully
designed triangular microphone console, he said that he would like to see us
"duplicate" what had been done at ABC. The studio included a small
on-site kitchen, restroom, attached to a comfortable lobby/green room area
that had a second story
view of the LA waterfront.
In 2018, we were evicted from Ports O' Call by the Port of LA. The studio was quickly and carefully "disassembled", put into temporary storage and later that year "assembling" began on a unique "moveable" studio designed to prevent a similar fate from happening again. The new studio is scheduled to open in the Summer of 2019, following it's reconstruction by the original team that assembled it at Ports O' Call and coordinated by the studio's original designer Dave Berges.
...........and the story continues in 2019 at a new location. Find out about our future here: http://laradiostudio.com/LARArticle.html
Contact: Mike Stark at mike@laradiostudio.com for more information.