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Communication department to open new media/broadcasting building |
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Thursday, 29 March 2007 |
by LILLIAN HOGAN
News Editor
Electronic media/broadcasting majors, the campus cable channel and WASU-FM will soon have a lot more room to breathe – 10,512 square feet more to be exact.
Renovations for the Appalachian Broadcasting Complex, coming soon to the university-owned building on the corner of Rivers and Depot streets, will begin this summer, Larry B. Cornelison, chief engineer
for WASU and Appalachian’s television facilities, said.
The building will house a classroom, a computer lab, television
studios, WASU headquarters, digital media labs and edit suites,
Cornelison, also a professor of television studio production classes,
said.
The projected completion time for the facility is fall 2008, “if
everything is perfectly on schedule,” Cornelison said. However, he
said, fall 2009 is a safer estimation.
The communication department will take over the building when the
education department – currently using the space– moves out at end of
this semester.
Approximately $2 million is needed to renovate the building to design
the Appalachian Broadcasting Complex and equip it with new digital
broadcasting equipment, Greg M. Langdon, director of development for
the college of fine and applied arts, said.
The university recently purchased $500,000 worth of new equipment in
order to convert Appalachian’s broadcasting devices from analog to
digital, Cornelison said.
The Federal Communications Commission mandated an analog to digital conversion for broadcasting by 2009.
The equipment is something Dr. Glenda Treadaway, communication department chair, said has been “needed for many years.”
With this upgraded equipment, the new communication facility will
provide a site for the nationally-recognized Kellar Radio Farm System
Summer Institute, which will begin July 2007.
In addition, the communication department, responsible for campus cable
channel 21 programming, will begin a regular news program in the new
facility, Cornelison said.
“The news will probably come out weekly and relate to Boone and Appalachian,” he said.
Communication is the second-largest major on Appalachian’s campus with over 800 students.
Beginning this fall, the department will require admission, Treadaway said.
“Faculty from each major within the department will determine the
number of majors that can be admitted based on resources available,”
she said. “Then the top applicants will be admitted into each major
based on cumulative [grade point average] and COM 1200 GPA.”
Appalachian purchased the soon-to-be Appalachian Broadcasting Complex
for $600,000 in 2000, Dr. Clyde D. Robbins, director of Design and
Construction, said.
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