While working with Salem Communications, Paravel Systems co-founders Fred Gleason and Scott Spillers were tasked with finding a radio automation system that would be suitable for use with all of Salem's diverse formats. They were looking for a cost effective system that would provide all of the required functionality along with the stability needed for mission-critical operations. Some of the products available handled some of their formats well, but none were flexible enough to handle all formats with precision without extraordinary operator involvement. Particularly problematic were the content acquisition demands of Salem's long-form formats. Virtually all of the available systems ran on a Windows platform, which was subject to viruses and did not provide the needed stability. It soon became apparent that none of the products available at the time provided all of the functionality needed to adequately serve this need.
Together, Fred and Scott have pooled their years of experience and unique backgrounds to help create an entirely new type of audio delivery system - Rivendell Radio Automation. Rivendell went through extensive on-air testing during its development. It's first on-air deployment was in November of 2004. Since then, Rivendell has been deployed and placed on-air at hundreds of radio facilities around the world. It has proven through rigorous real world testing to be one of the most user friendly and robust audio delivery systems available today.
With popular products like Rivendell, the WallTime NTP Clock and Notification System and iRoute Selector Monitor for Axia Livewire, Paravel Systems has grown to become the leading provider of open source tools and innovative hardware solutions for the broadcast industry.
Fred Gleason, President and Chief Developer
As a broadcast engineer since the 1970s, Fred Gleason has been developing custom applications for the broadcast industry for years. He saw Salem's need as a prime opportunity to develop a new type of audio delivery system designed to work as a broadcast appliance, that would handle long-form formats as elegantly as music formats. Fred determined that developing this application on a Linux platform using the open source software model would be ideal. Linux is ideally suited because of its stability, security and legendary reliability. Opening the source code allowed for some of the top broadcast software developers worldwide to contribute to this project, while at the same time keeping development costs at a minimum.
Scott Spillers, Co-Founder and Vice-President
Scott Spillers has been working with radio automation systems since 1984, both as a user and as a system integrator deploying systems at numerous radio facilities across the country. Scott has worked with many different automation systems, from Schafer systems with cart carousels through today's modern digital systems. Scott's experience and extensive interaction with users of automation systems from many different manufacturers has given him unique insight into how operators use these tools.