Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., broke ground a dozen years ago on the Ed McMahon Mass Communications Center. Today the school, named after the sidekick of late talk show host Johnny Carson, is evolving into a major broadcast education facility for the Northeastern U.S.
Realizing how quickly "state-of-the-art" equipment can become passé within the typical four years between a college student's freshman and senior years, the school has constantly updated its curriculum and resources to try to reflect the real world of television as much as possible.
In an equipment renovation that began in 2002, Quinnipiac decided to go HD in a big way, and chose Sony to outfit the school's studio with three, Sony HDC-910 studio cameras, an HDW-730S HDCAM camcorder for field acquisition, an MVS-8000A switcher, a 2-M/E video production switcher with four channels of digital video effects, an HDSX-3600 HD routing switcher, and a DMX-R100 digital audio mixing board.
Quinnipiac also chose Fujinon HA22x7.2ESM lenses for studio cameras, and Fujinon HA17x7.8 lens for the field camera. Its media center also features 25 stations of Macintosh G-5 editing suites equipped with Final Cut Pro HD, five Avid editing suites, two audio suites, and a news technology center featuring an AP ENPS system.
