VAN NUYS, CALIF. – LED lighting designer and manufacturer, Litepanels said that a fourth Quincy Newspapers television station, WGEM-TV in Quincy, Ill., has converted its studios to Litepanels LED lighting fixtures.
“Flesh tones really pop. We’re very happy with how it looks on the air. At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing,” said Brady Dreasler, Quincy Newspapers’ director of Capital, Facilities and Engineering.
He added that WGEM’s news anchors have also seen a difference. “They know they look better because of the HD cameras and the lighting, and they’re happy with it.”
Dreasler noted that the cool operation of the Litepanels LED fixtures brought an added benefit to the talent. “Now they’re OK wearing a jacket in the summer time.” Previously, at each of the four stations that have undergone a Litepanels conversion, “we were running full air-conditioning at all these places, even when it was 20 degrees below zero outdoors.”
Litepanels said its fixtures add so little heat to the equation that at KTTC-TV, Quincy’s Rochester, Minn., station, engineers have installed small heaters under the anchor desk for those coldest of the cold days during the region’s brutal winters.
With well over a year’s experience with Litepanels at KTTC, Dreasler said the considerable energy savings, plus a healthy rebate from the local electrical power utility, has put them on track for a three-year payback on their Litepanels investment.
Lighting designer Steve Mulkey of Redwood Media Group, who lit WGEM’s news set, relied primarily on Litepanels’ Sola 4 daylight balance LED Fresnel fixtures, which combine the advantages of LED technology with the classic Fresnel fixture design. He also incorporated daylight balance Litepanels 1x1 Flood and 1x1 Spot fixtures in the studio, and used Litepanels Sola ENG daylight Fresnel fixtures in the newsroom.
In addition to WGEM and KTTC, Quincy has done Litepanels conversions at WVVA-TV in Bluefield, W.V., and WSJV-TV in Elkhart, Ind.
