ABC Northern Tasmania is now on-air with a new Logitek system in its Launceston studios. It’s been a big year for the station, which recently celebrated it’s 70th anniversary of broadcasting to the region and got new studios as a birthday present.

The Launceston station replaced it’s aging PKE and MTE main studios with two Logitek Mosaic consoles. As the station interacts heavily with other studios and outposts in Tasmania, the new Logitek system has expanded mix-minus and talkback capabilities to external sites. Many programs include either remote guests or presenters in multiple locations, so a flexible and easy to use talkback/foldback system was a must.

The 12-channel Mosaic console provides 90 programmable buttons in the ABC configuration. Launceston uses nearly all of these, for tasks such as intercom, mix minus talkover, delay control, scene snapshots, monitoring, record remotes and on-air switching.

The smaller Logitek Remora 4-channel consoles are used in the Producer and News edit booths.

The flexibility and configurability of the Logitek systems allowed for the station’s intercom, network switching and talkback delay all to be integrated into the console, making life easier for both presenters and techs, removing the need for outboard gear and custom control systems.

On-air staff have noticed an improvement in quality when the cutover to the digital system happened in October. The upgrade was an important part of the station’s upcoming conversion to FM.

Paul Dengate from Dingbat Technology was on-site to commission the system and train users. He has told radioinfo: “The presenters were very quick to learn the Mosaic and Remora consoles, finding them very intuitive and easy to use. Everybody loved our one-button delay exit routine, which makes getting in and out of delay dead simple, even for new presenters who haven’t used delay before.”

The Launceston install was the 4th Logitek system for the ABC this year, with Port Pirie in South Australia being commissioned this week.