By Jo McCulty General Manager Dale Ouzts left National Public Radio to lead WOSU.

WOSU delivers programming close to home, across Ohio

A radio host sits in a small recording studio, firmly reciting into a microphone segments to be aired on her show later in the week. In a nearby hallway, volunteers huddle together in easy camaraderie, sipping coffee and snacking on donuts while waiting for phones at their elbows to ring. In the television master control center, a technician monitors the on-air signal while facing an imposing wall of television screens, blinking lights, and complicated-looking buttons and knobs.

Welcome to WOSU, home to Ohio State's public broadcasting stations. Tucked into tight quarters in the northwest corner of the Fawcett Center, WOSU oversees one AM radio news and information station, a network of five FM classical music stations, and two television stations featuring a wide variety of programs.

In 1922, WOSU's predecessor, WEAO, went on the air at a Neil and 17th avenue location. "We're one of the 10 oldest radio stations in the country," General Manager Dale Ouzts says with obvious pride, though he is quick to add, "during the last couple of months in 1922, 40 stations came on the air." WEAO, which stood for Willing Energetic Athletic Ohio, was renamed WOSU in 1933.

Ouzts came to WOSU in 1979 to serve as its third general manager. He left behind a Washington, D.C., position as senior vice president of National Public Radio to take the job, in large part because he wanted to be back in the environment that is the source of NPR's news and programs.

"The main thing I didn't like at NPR was that we didn't have a transmitter. Not a single word was delivered to a listener. We delivered to the stations," he said.

At WOSU, he delivers the goods to listeners in central and southern Ohio with the help of a team of approximately 100 full-time employees, 65 part-time and occasional employees, and between 1,500 and 2,000 volunteers. WOSU-AM, FM and TV deliver to Columbus, WOSV-FM to Mansfield, WOSE-FM to Coshocton, WOSP-FM to Portsmouth, WOSB-FM to Marion and WPBO-TV to Portsmouth.

Ouzts expressed excitement about a recent shift from a reporting line in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences to the Office of University Relations.

"It's a good first step," he said. "Being at a place where we're centrally located will put us in position to serve all parts of the University."

Since all of the television and radio stations operate 24 hours a day, it's an around-the-clock business, a fact made obvious throughout the studios and offices by numerous ticking mechanical clock faces staring out from the walls.

Television

On a recent Friday morning, the television master control center was receiving the satellite feed from the Public Broadcasting Service. The station was airing what the program schedule calls "Instructional Programs," which, at 10 a.m., was a show about insects. A technician was on hand to run station breaks between show segments.

"We can get up to four transmissions at a time," said Don Scott, director of marketing for WOSU. "We record anything we're not going to air at the time it is fed to us."

WOSU is scheduled to shift from its current use of analog technology to digital broadcast technology by May 1, 2003, in compliance with a federal mandate. "The transition to digital television will provide us with vastly increased services. With digital, we'll have multiple standard definition channels," Ouzts said.

That means that during the day, WOSU could broadcast on four channels, focusing content for particular demographics, such as schoolchildren or adults. One station, the Buckeye Channel, might broadcast only Ohio State-related programming. In the evenings, one high-definition signal could be used to air featured programs.

Before that happens, though, significant funding will need to be raised from federal, state and private sources to meet the estimated minimum cost of $20 million. Also, in order to house the additional equipment and staff needed for a digital station, WOSU will need more than twice the 40,000 square feet it currently occupies, Ouzts said.

Digital television will provide more of a chance to showcase WOSU's local programming, which is already a strong component of the station's schedule.

The station uses its two in-house television studios when producing several shows. The smaller of the two, Studio B, was quiet on Friday morning. The set for Viewpoint, a weekly public affairs series, was still in place from taping the previous day. Next door in Studio A, a crew was at work taping a program for the Pharmaceutical Education Network. The Ohio Council of Ohio Colleges of Pharmacy distributes the hour-long programs to 76 cable systems in three states.

WOSU also produces In the Know, a quiz program for high school students, events like Ohio State commencement and President William E. Kirwan's State of the University address, as well as short features like Buckeye Moments and Jazz Minutes, which run between longer programs.

The station is known for its quality documentaries. "We do three to four documentaries a year," Ouzts said. Past documentaries include The Birth of Ohio Stadium, The Man Who Had Everything and Drawing Opinions, all of which drew on University faculty and staff expertise.

"We look at the University as this great big intellectual resource. We just look across the river and there's an expert," Ouzts said.

Their efforts have not gone unnoticed. "We win several national and regional awards a year," Ouzts said. "We've won so many we can't display them all." As it is, one of the station's hallways is lined with seven display cases filled primarily with awards received just in the latter half of the 1990s.

Radio

The radio operations of WOSU also produce a lot of local material for the airwaves. At mid-morning, the station's news room was empty while reporters were out seeking stories for WOSU-AM's frequent local news breaks.

Past reporters have gone on to become national correspondents for NPR, including Lynn Neary, religion correspondent, and Brian Naylor, congressional correspondent.

"They (NPR) seem to look here and take our people," Ouzts said. Don Quayle, the first president of NPR, also came from WOSU, Ouzts said, and so did the idea for the evening newscast All Things Considered, borrowed from a WOSU production called On the Way Home.

In the radio master control room, Kevin Petrilla, production supervisor, was doing some editing work. "I have a B.S. in zoology, but I worked here as a student," Petrilla said. "I'm electronically inclined and it all came about pretty naturally."

Added Ouzts, "We've had a couple of people work as students for us, then graduate and take full-time employment." He estimated that at any one time, there might be between a dozen and 50 students working at the stations. "We have interns, undergraduates, grad students and volunteers, and we need all of them. Students fill an important role here," he said.

Petrilla's current job responsibilities include attending local music performances, like ProMusica, the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Opera Columbus, and recording them for later broadcasts.

Next door to Petrilla, visible through a glass window, Linda Ebright, host of WOSU-FM's Saturday at the Movies, was pre-recording portions of the show in radio Studio A.

The radio stations use four studios to broadcast local programming, such as Open Line on WOSU-AM, hosted by Fred Andrle in the afternoon and Tom Wiebell in the evening. Andrle's program has included interviews with many national guests, while Wiebell regularly draws on local expertise to cover topics ranging from agriculture to car repair to travel. Programs on bluegrass music, technology and black studies help to round out the AM station's schedule. The station began broadcasting around the clock on Feb. 1, filling the evening and overnight hours with mainstream jazz.

WOSU-FM is one of only a handful of stations nationwide with an all-classical-music format. Nearly all of its programs are hosted locally.

Boyce Lancaster has hosted his morning show for 14 years. He finished his on-air shift at 10 a.m., after being on the air since 5:30 a.m. He planned to spend the afternoon researching the next day's show.

He and the other hosts make their musical selections from the WOSU music library's collection of 22,500 CDs. "We can never get it all on the air," said Lancaster, who keeps up with the industry through conferences and Web browsing.

Well-connected

Elsewhere in the WOSU web of offices, marketers work to get the word out about WOSU's many programs, volunteers answer phones for a WOSU-AM fund drive, and auction staff prepare for the annual WOSU-TV Auction 34, which will take place April 25-28 and May 2-5.

The storage area for the auction is just a few steps away from the auction staff offices, in a quiet, dark corner of the building. Behind the chain-link fence, only a few of the donated items have arrived to date. Among them, a gigantic teddy bear is situated, oblivious to the ticking of clocks, the humming of microphones and the hustle and bustle of the people working nearby.

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