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BMM Staff

Radio.Cloud’s radio playout studio and programming suite is the technology driving New York’s newest radio station. A partnership between Radio.Cloud, United Stations Radio Networks (USRN) and the Emmis Corporation, ‘TJ98.7: A Pop-Up Station’ debuted on Saturday August 31st on the former home of ESPN Radio, WEPN-FM in New York City. The Radio.Cloud technology allowed for fast, unprecedented localization of all station content during the flip without any hardware expenses.

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“This was an amazingly collaborative project which came together in seven days or so, and included engineering, programming, imaging, music selection and marketing,” recalled COO of GeminiXIII Charles Steinhauer. “We have an amazing talent in TJ and the cast but also the Radio.Cloud team, Judy DeAngelis, Jai Kershner and Steve Kamer all rallied pretty hard and fast to get this up and running.”

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“I’ve been involved with many station launches in my career, but never one that launched at the absolute highest level with about a week to ramp up,” said consultant Mike McVay, President of McVay Media. “The time from when Emmis gave us the green light to literally days later we had built a radio station. Radio.Cloud enabled us to create the first ever “Pop Up” radio station using their cloud based technology. The ease of use has enabled me to program the station, including scheduling the music personally, from miles away.”

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TJ 98.7 is anchored in morning and afternoon drive by The TJ Show, in a return to NYC for host and Z100 alumni TJ Taormina. The pop-up station features an exciting mix of contemporary programming, a fresh blend of music and fun talk content, along with voices from YES Network and Inside Edition’s Steve Kamer, and dynamic on- air personality, Jai Kershner. 

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“When this pop-up station was first discussed, my immediate concern was how to get the technical side together with so little time,” said TJ Taormina, Host of The TJ Show. “The moment I connected with the Radio.Cloud team, I was convinced if anyone could do it…it was them. They were extremely detailed with every layer and the launch went smoothly.”

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“Deploying the Radio.Cloud platform was quick and simple,” detailed Emmis New York’s Chief Engineer Alex Roman. “The server is a small appliance that fits on a rack shelf and integrated easily into our network with minimal configuration required. The support team was ready to assist us with the launch and we were on the air in no time. This was a great solution for this project and is an innovative approach to broadcast playout and content delivery.”

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“When we were approached about this project, it was a no brainer. I knew this wouldn’t be possible to pull off on such a quick timeline without our agile and scalable platform,” Radio.Cloud account director Andrew Scaglione explained. “I grew up in New Jersey listening to 98.7 every morning and afternoon. The chance to have our cutting edge cloud-native technology powering one of the biggest signals in the country is a ‘pinch me’ moment.”

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“I’m just cracking the surface of all that Radio.Cloud can do, but I can’t wait to dig deeper into everything this system offers. So far, it seems to be an easy to use multi-tool built for radio people,” Taormina added.

Radio.Cloud is the #1 cloud platform for customizing network and local content. With more than 400 affiliates around the globe, the suite of tools is enhancing brands and empowering stations to serve their local communities daily.