A new piece of equipment recently installed in the offices of the Dartmouth News Service now allows members of the College community to be interviewed on the radio from anywhere in the country with crisp, clean audio accuracy.
The new technology, an Integrated Services Data Network setup, makes it sound to radio listeners as if the interviewer and source are sitting in the same room as one another -- despite the fact they could be on opposite sides of the country.
Before the ISDN facility was added on Jan. 9, radio interviews required either the reporter or the source to travel to complete the interview.
Alternatively, the reporter could use a traditional telephone. But this way the interview often came out fuzzy, and "sounded like it was done through a soup can," said Acting Director of the News Service Roland Adams.
ISDN is a type of phone line that facilitates audio movement.
It digitizes sound and transfers it back into audio at the receiving end. Adams said it is the "audio parallel of fiber optics" and has allowed for a much clearer, cleaner sound.
Consisting of a microphone, headphones and several black boxes the size of compact stereo sets, the ISDN facility cost between $5,000 and $7,000, which Adams called a "very modest investment for such a facility."
"It's not a lot to look at, but it's a lot to listen to," he said.
Due to Dartmouth's relatively remote location, interviews before were inconvenient, putting the College at a disadvantage, Adams said.
Now, Adams said he feels the new facility should help Dartmouth "get out of its geographical well."
Adams said the added convenience and quality of sound should raise significantly more interest in radio interviews with members of the Dartmouth community.
Since its installation, Adams said approximately 10 radio interviews have been conducted using the new facility. The majority of the interviews have been broadcast on New Hampshire Public Radio, WEVO 91.3 FM.
Montgomery Fellow Wilma Mankiller, Amos Tuck School of Business Administration Professor Sydney Finkelstein, and Environmental Studies Professor Noel Perrin have all appeared on WEVO's "Perspectives", a taped program in the evening, while Tuck Business Professor Dennis Logue appeared on "The Exchange" a live call-in program in the morning.
Adams was at the offices of NHPR when Mankiller was being interviewed, and he said the connection was so clear that Mankiller sounded as if she was right there in the room with him.
Linda Fowler, director of the Rockefeller Center for the Social Sciences, recently used the ISDN facility to complete an interview with Boston's WBUR about the College's Republican primary polls.
She said the new technology is a great asset and that she has noticed an increased demand on her time since its installation.
She said the ISDN facility "increases the likelihood of radio stations using the expertise of the Dartmouth faculty," and it will make the views of Dartmouth faculty available to a wider audience.
Gene Lyons, acting director of the Dickey Center, who was recently interviewed by Monitor Radio said he was later told by other people that the sound quality came out "terrific."
Lyons said a great advantage of the new system over the crackly, regular telephone interviews is that sources are "sure that their words get across clearly and accurately."
Adams said there were a few motivating factors in his decision to pursue the new ISDN facility.
First, for more than a year, New Hampshire Public Radio, which often interviews Dartmouth figures, had been urging the College to invest in the new facility so that it would be able to access the faculty more easily.
When Adams visited Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., last summer, he said he saw the setup between an ISDN and a television studio. It was then that he decided that Dartmouth needed "at least half that, at least the radio."
Adams said strong support from the Dartmouth administration and faculty made it much easier to acquire the new technology. He said it took only a few months for the proposal to become a reality.
The possibility of a ISDN and television hookup is very real, Adams said, but this would be much more of an investment and would heavily depend on the type of television connection.
