Xtreme Radio

Xtreme Radio is a Student radio station society at Swansea University in Swansea, Wales, run by a team of elected volunteer executive members, and is located in Union House. Xtreme broadcasts on the station's website (previously on 1431AM), and can also be heard around the student village of Hendrefoilan, the University campus itself, and Swansea.
About
The station is primarily designed to be a communication medium for students at Swansea University, with the station also aiming to provide experience of radio broadcasting to its student volunteers. This not only includes presenting but production, playlisting and other aspects of radio as well.
Guests have included The Automatic, Scouting for Girls and Phill Jupitus, amongst others, and has also included outside interviews with Lenny Henry, Fightstar, Feeder, Bombay Bicycle Club, Ed Sheeran amongst others.
The station was opened in November 1968, (making it the second oldest student radio station in the UK after 1967's University Radio York and before 1971's University Radio Essex). Prior to becoming known as Xtreme Radio, the station had three previous incarnations - Action Radio, URA and C-Air.
As of 2011 Xtreme broadcasts programmes between 9am and 12pm Monday to Friday and 11am to midnight on weekends, with non-stop music and hourly news updates on air at all other times. Specialist pre-recorded shows are broadcast after 9pm on most days, and during the day live mainstream shows are broadcast.
Xtreme also broadcasts several speech-based programmes, including campus, local and national sports news and results on its live Saturday afternoon sport show 'The Dugout'. The station is also a part of the Student Radio Association, and syndicates the Student Radio Association Chart on Sundays.
Xtreme re-launched on 19 September 2008 with a brand new website, logo and also launched the Xtreme Lounge, part of the Union nightclub on campus.
The station was formerly part of The Student Broadcast Network. The station also has two advertising slots per hour, these are managed by BAM Student Marketing.
Over the 2010 Summer Holidays, as part of a new agreement between Xtreme and the SU, the Xtreme studios were given their first major facelift in many years.
As of November 2010, the station will no longer be broadcasting on AM due to lack of funds and listenership (on AM).
SU Elections
Xtreme covers the SU Elections live every year until after the final results are called. This has been known to be broadcast until 6AM on occasions, due to close calls and re-counts. Xtreme usually reaches peak listeners during this broadcast as it is usually first at breaking election results on the night. The University newspaper The Waterfront also maintains a live blog during the results.
Technical Information
There are two studios and a vast loft space at Xtreme Radio. Studio 1 is used as the main studio for live broadcasting, but can also be used for production purposes if needed. Studio 2 is mainly used as a production and recording studio, as well as being a backup facility in case of problems with Studio 1. There is also some office space in the adjacent Waterfront office (the student newspaper), for the Executive members to use.
The Waterfront office area also contains the audio distribution and processing units. The station feed is also distributed to speakers around the Students' Union buildings, namely the Level 2 Shop, Waterfront office, Events and Marketing office, Union House computer room, Cafe West and other eating areas. The Student Swansea Box Office also stream the webfeed outside their ticket-purchasing area, and The Wonky Sheep in the Student Village has also been known to stream Xtreme during the day.
Xtreme also links annually with Cardiff University's station Xpress Radio to present live coverage of the Welsh Varsity sporting events between the two institutions, including a full live commentary from the Men's Rugby match in the evening.
In March 2009 the Studios were upgraded to broadcast in Stereo on the web. The studios had previously only been wired for mono due to the station originally only broadcasting on mono AM/MW, and due to mainly a lack of funds the transition never occurred until March 2009, when the then current Chief Engineer headed the transition to stereo, and at the beginning of the Easter break, the studio was re-wired ready for stereo. Studio 1's Playout PC was upgraded to output four stereo outputs and one mono output, for use with mAirList, the live assist playout system. During this work a new streaming server was also installed, which Xtreme now has full control over.
During Summer 2009, Xtreme managed to, mainly due to the then Station Manager and Head of Engineering's respectively efforts, get funding for new equipment, being the first major equipment upgrade for a while.
In November 2009, the station was awarded silver for Best Technical Achievement at the Student Radio Awards for the Onair Loop System which was designed by the Chief Engineer at the time, Brett Jenkins,. In 2010 they won silver for the same award for the iPhone application (which was also designed by Brett), and they won bronze in 2011 for Station Manager a web based interface for Myriad, which was designed by the former Head of Engineering - Toby Hughes.

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