MISHAWAKA — We've been getting tons of e-mails asking when we're moving to our new building, and when we'll offer tours.

Our first broadcast in high definition is this Sunday. As for a tour? It starts now!

After 53 years in South Bend, WSBT is moving to Mishawaka. In fact, most of the team has already moved in.

“I think when you look at our total viewing area, if you had to kind of pick the center of it, this is the place where you would have chosen to build a facility,” said WSBT-TV President and General Manager John Mann.

Sales is already here, and so is Radio.

“I would easily say that as a collective group this was certainly the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do,” said Jim Roberts, operations manager of WSBT Radio Group. “It’s all new systems, and all new equipment that everybody’s had to learn. It's been quite a process, but the whole staff has been great about it.”

Engineers have been working around the clock for months to get everything up and running.

“This area is called the Tech Core, and this is the backbone of the whole system,” said Chief Engineer Eugene Hale, describing an area of computers, servers and everything else, the heart of which is housed under the floor.

“Every wire is labeled on each end, and it's also in a wire book and in a computer — so if you give me a wire number, I can tell you where it goes and where it ends,” Hale explained.

Then there’s the new studio.

“We picked it by going to a bunch of websites and investigating some of the best set designers in the country,” said Operations Manager Bob Johnson.

The big change for anchors? We’ll be going from two cameras, sometimes three, to five.

“We're going to five robotic cameras. These cameras will make moves on their own,” Johnson added. “Actually the technology looks a little bit like the technology that you see at the automobile plants where the robotic arms are welding the cars together.”

Production has been working double shifts, coming to the new building in the morning to rehearse, then going back to the old building to get the news on the air.

“The equipment that we used before is similar, but of course you know with new software and all the innovations for HD — everything to make it crisper — you have to re-learn,” said Technical Director Rod Copley.

“This is the nicest, biggest newsroom I've ever seen and I've been in a lot of them,” said News Director Meg Sauer, about the room that will hold the South Bend Tribune’s Mishawaka bureau, WSBT Radio News, and WSBT-TV News. “We’re finally going to be converged under one roof — it's so exciting.”

“We've really spared no expense for this,” Sauer continued, "and we just got everything that we ever wanted in the last 20 years on a list, and this is what we got.”

That includes scanners on every desk, 15 big screens to monitor stations and the web, and a 24/7 desk for breaking news.

“There are a few things here and there that we're still kind of debugging and working things through, and we're going to ask the viewers at home to bear with us, but they'll be part of the process,” Mann said.

So we hope you join WSBT as it becomes the first station in the market to broadcast in high definition.

Our first broadcast in HD will be this Sunday at 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.

To see more of our tour of the new building — behind-the-scenes and uncut — click on the links in the Related Content box.