Status Update: Loyola Television Studio

The Fall, 2009 timeframe came and went, but Loyola University's streetfront studio inside The Clare at Water Tower (55 East Pearson) looks like it's finally ready to go.

We first told you about the $400,000 project back in November as part of an article about Chicago's Seven Storefront Studios.

The Loyola setup seems like a nice little studio.  The cameras are a bit small, so I don't think they're professional grade.  More like "prosumer."  And the orange-and-gray color scheme reminds me of the studios of KHOU television in Houston where I worked back in the 1990's.  And the monitor wall is, of course, just for show for visitors and people walking by.  They're too far away to be used as preview or program monitors for the people on the set.

There also appears to be a little area off to the side to do radio interviews and chat shows.  It would be nice if Loyola would start its own radio station.  So many of the city's college radio stations are so low power that they're worthless where I live.  In fact, the only one I can receive reliably is WDCB out of Glen Ellyn.

If there are any forward-thinking people at Loyola reading this, here's a tip for you -- Start your college station on an HD subchannel of full-power FM station.  That way you get full market coverage without the expense and responsibilities of launching a full radio station, and the host station can write off the expense of carrying your signal as a charitable donation.  Just a thought.

Update: January 29, 2010:

Just got a Twitter message from one of our readers letting me know that Loyola already has a radio station.  WLUW is on 88.7, and comes in pretty good here on top of the John Hancock Center.  Here's a helpful diagram to see if you can get WLUW where you are:

Still, it would be nice to hear Loyola student radio on a full-power station.  Something like this:

Even though WLUW is only 100 watts, it still has a much better signal than the scatter-and-splatter 200-watt directional mess that was my college radio station:

Clare Flashing Her Downtown Neighbors (with video)

Although it's open and people are living there, the finishing touches are still being put on The Clare at Water Tower.  The shiny new East Pearson Street skyscraper is home to the Loyola School of Communication downstairs and a retirement community upstairs.

But on the roof there is something new -- obstruction lighting.

The aircraft warning devices were switched on yesterday afternoon (January 20, 2009).  There's four white strobe lights during the day that switch to red blinking beacons at night.  It's a nice addition to the skyline -- if you happen to be viewing the skyline from the suburbs.

But the fact is that The Clare is only 589 feet tall.  That means its strobe lights flash into the homes of hundreds of its neighbors who happen to live in taller structures.  The Park Tower is the closest, but the Residences at the John Hancock Center, the Olympia Centre, Water Tower Place, and the Residences at 900 North Michigan are all seeing the glare.

Here's a video showing the lighting by both day and night (better quality links below).  In the video you can see that the beacons are at a height that's only about half that of The Clare's neighbors.  So why does the new building need the lights at all?

Maybe it has to do with the new Children's Memorial Hospital being built down the street.   The hospital plans to fly medical helicopters into the neighborhood, which is crowded with skyscrapers.  But why does The Clare deserve four strobes, when the Park Tower and others lack daytime illumination, yet are hundreds of feet taller, and hundreds of feet closer to the new hospital?

Our guess is that more aggressive beacons will be coming to those buildings, and others, in the future. 

What would be nice is if a feature could be installed where the pilot phones ahead, and an automation system activates the beacons only when they're needed.  Such systems are in common use at small airports across the country.  It could be a way to reach a compromise between the safety of the emergency flights and neighbors living with what looks like an all-night disco outside their windows.

Higher quality: YouTube version of the video .

Highest quality: .Me version of the video .