NPSTech

I used a system call DoPublicity which worked out very well when the machine we had failed and the original equipment vendor wanted more than $1000 to upgrade the software. The software is less than $200 and now they even offer a limited "free" version which may work in some settings. I used our on our district's educational access channel for a bulletin board display and it works quite well.

I discovered this thread rather late but I hope this contributed information will be of help the others. I was also charged with starting a radio station for the K-12 school district that I'm employed in as an audio/video/computer and electronics technician. One of our high schools were renovated not only with rooms designated for a future television / media center but with a two studio suite for a radio station. No plan was in place to put this all together. Having been lucky enough to become involved in my own community's high school radio station some 35+ years earlier along with the fact that I had gone on to engineer several local full power AM and FM stations I had the background to pull this off. It was up to me to develop a plan and become the guiding beacon. Being a stone's throw from New York City the radio spectrum is crowded to the point where it would be impossible to obtain a license for an LPFM station - the smallest licensed station grade available to date. I also wanted the students to have the opportunity to learn about "real" broadcast radio and not just webcasting. I decided to go with Part 15 radio broadcasting. The Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) Part 15 regulations allows the legal use of certain low power radio devices without the need for a license - one common device most anybody can relate to are the little FM transmitters used to broadcast an iPod to a car's FM radio. The radio station placed in our high school took a three-fold approach. I used a free radiating (i.e, antenna-based) AM transmitter on top of the school's roof. I also engineered an FM station using something called "radiating" or "leaky" coaxial cable strung in the ceiling of the building and connected to a special low-power FM transmitter. Both transmitter's signal are confined to the campus grounds but allows the station to be "on the radio." The third approach is that the station supplies audio to the school's video bulletin board channel on the building's television system. Lastly, the station will also webcast with limited hours due to budget constraints. For the more complex systems like the ones I've used you may have to find a local broadcast engineer to assist your school as most won't have the test and/or measurement equipment to insure your campus station's signals are within legal limits. While I had the knowledge to do all of this thanks to my extensive background in broadcast engineering I also sought out existing resources to assist me with this project. Unfortunately the resources I located mentioned nothing about implementing this type of project in an academic setting and of those resources I found they were either poorly organized or of questionable merit. My work with building the campus station allowed me to "roll my own" resources which I've shared to assist others in their quest. CampusBroadcaster.net is the site I started to compile all the various resources i compiled along the way to help other K-12, college and university educational institutions build a legal, low-power, Part 15 compliant campus-limited radio station. The site includes references not only for applicable FCC law but also equipment and program sources. There are station profiles demonstrating the various uses of Part 15 broadcasting for hobbyists and businesses in addition to campus radio applications. An online community forum allows members to share tips and tricks as well as ask for advice on building or improving their station. I've centralized all the resources together under the name HobbyBroadcaster.net but there's plenty of info for the campus broadcast enthusiast. Hopefully this information will be of use for the next person desiring to building a campus radio station.