NBR: From Radio Studio to Television Studio

Overview

NBR has been New Zealand’s leading business publication since 1970. Over the past decade it has also become a broadcaster, first with NBR Radio and then with its own television output, and Southern Broadcast has built every one of its studios along the way.

It started with a small radio studio next to the newsroom in 2014. That studio gained cameras and became a television studio, a second studio followed in the Parliament Press Gallery in Wellington, and in 2023 we moved NBR into a larger, purpose-built television studio on Queen Street.

2014–2015: NBR Radio

In October 2014, NBR publisher Todd Scott asked us to help him build a radio studio. NBR wanted to record the content on its website so readers could choose to listen instead of read, and to add interviews and panel discussions.

The space was a small room of 2.6 by 4.3 metres beside the newsroom at 8 Commerce Street. We designed a compact studio around a custom desk, with an Audioarts Air-4 console, Yellowtec m!ka microphone arms for a presenter and two guests, a Telos phone system for phone interviews, and an equipment rack built into the desk.

To keep disruption in the newsroom to a minimum, we built and wired the whole studio in our own workshop and tested it there. In early January 2015 we packed it up, took it to site and connected it in. NBR Radio went to air on Monday 2 February 2015.

We stayed on as the station grew. We helped launch MyNBR Radio, NBR’s on-demand service for subscribers, in March 2015. When NBR Radio joined iHeartRadio later that year, we installed a dedicated streaming server on its own fibre connection, giving a big improvement in stream quality and reliability.

2017: Adding pictures

By 2016 NBR was filming its radio interviews on a single camera, and its audience was clearly keen to watch as well as listen. In 2017 we turned the radio studio into a television studio. We added three Panasonic PTZ (pan-tilt-zoom) cameras, a Blackmagic ATEM vision switcher and Smart Videohub router, HyperDeck recorders and video encoders for streaming, so NBR could go live from the studio with multiple camera angles. The radio desk stayed at the heart of the room, making it a true visual radio studio. The brief was simple: it had to look great on a smartphone.

At the same time, NBR wanted a presence where the political news happens. We built a second television studio in the Parliament Press Gallery in Wellington: a compact set built around a custom NBR news desk, with three Panasonic PTZ cameras, desk microphones for up to three people, studio lighting and an Audioarts Air-1 mixer. We linked it to the Auckland studio over a dedicated connection, with a digital audio link between the two, so NBR’s political journalists could join programmes live from Parliament.

2023: A new television studio on Queen Street

In 2023 NBR moved to a new home at 131 Queen Street. By then its output was all video, so the new studio was designed from the start as a television studio, with a new desk for interviews and panel debates.

The larger space allowed a proper television layout for the first time, with a separate studio, a control room looking into it through a window, and a line room for the technical equipment. Longer cable runs meant a new Blackmagic ATEM vision mixer with a hardware control panel, and a Soundcraft digital audio console with a stage box replaced a large amount of cabling. The control room also has a prompter, PTZ camera control and a multiview showing every source, including the cameras in Wellington. Brighter, remotely controlled lighting was added in the studio, and we re-established the link to the Parliament studio.

The office fit-out ran late, which left a very tight window for the technical move. We moved and rebuilt the studio over a single weekend in September 2023, ready for the newsroom to move in. The original radio console went on to a new home at a regional radio station.

The result

Over more than a decade, NBR has gone from a small radio booth beside the newsroom to a television operation with studios in Auckland and at Parliament. Southern Broadcast has been with them at every step, from the first radio studio to the Queen Street rebuild, and we continue to support the studios today.

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Southern Broadcast Ltd is a broadcast engineering company providing studio, RF and transmission design, installation and support to broadcasters across New Zealand and the Pacific.

Planning a television or visual radio studio? Get in touch and we’ll talk it through.