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The new 15,000-square-foot-building will also be located on the campus of Sacred Heart University in Fairfield.
The new building, which will be an all-digital production and broadcast facility, will also include a 167-seat performance and meeting space, and the administrative offices as well as a watercooler to gather around.
Station General Manager George Lombardi will officially announce WSHU's capital campaign shortly. The plan is to begin construction later this year.
The facility they will leave behind is an old, overcrowded, outgrown and increasingly technologically dated house that has been expanded and renovated over the 30 years that WSHU has been a National Public Radio network affiliate.
Lombardi pointed out a wall with a "rat’s nest: of wires that connects this studio WSHU’s affiliates, which he said will be replaced by a single digital line in the new building.
Although it has served them well, Lombardi said that equipment and production space is “shoehorned” in. In its pre-NPR days it was a diocesan station, then Sacred Heart’s student radio station. Today, it has a professional staff and is home to its own network that gives WSHU a reach from Greenwich to Litchfield County, and from New London and to Suffolk County, Long Island, N.Y., and beyond.
The new building will, Lombardi said, “will upgrade the station to fully digital.” That means that classical music host Kate Remington will be able to upload the station's 14,000 classical CDs into the cloud.
That's not the only technological improvement. NPR must continue to adapt to its listeners’ constantly connected ubiquitous portable devices.
“Within 10 years, over one-half of the audience will listen on alternative devices — including in their smart cars,” Lombardi said.
The station is making everything Internet accessible as well as packaging all pre-recorded shows as podcasts so listeners can listen whenever they want.
Local news will be a growing emphasis in the future, as WSHU will “add value to national stories,” Lombardi said. And it will produce more local pieces, particularly investigative pieces.
News Director Dan Katz said WSHU’s “bread and butter is the daily newscast.” He added they do one “local long form piece — four to eight minutes — every hour."
But in the end, news reporter Mark Herz said, “Weather is the most important thing for most listeners — along with traffic during drive time.”
WSHU streams all of its programming atwww.wshu.org.
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