Okay, it's not Bay Area, but these things do happen in Bay Area radio. A member of WBAL's morning team accidentally spilled a cup of coffee into the audio board, and the board hisses and catches fire while they're on the air: http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/tv/z-on-tv-blog/bal-98rock-mp3,0,7421933.mp3file
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Coffee Spill Fries Audio Board
- Thread starter DavidKaye
- Start date
Nice audio futzing from the board! I've never cared at all for flat layout board design.
Semiconductor designs have this lovely feature that minor DC changes from beverages result in massive current changes.
It changes their behavior in a detrimental way.
Smoke is when it starts getting fun. Who let the DC out? ;D
Semiconductor designs have this lovely feature that minor DC changes from beverages result in massive current changes.
It changes their behavior in a detrimental way.
Smoke is when it starts getting fun. Who let the DC out? ;D
Steven Roy said:That's why food and drink should never be allowed in the studio...ever!
You can't change human behavior, but you can change control board design. In ye olden days of the Gates Yard and similar consoles the console was too high so that a spilled drink wouldn't spill into it, and the top usually had vent holes so that people wouldn't put their cups on top, either. Today's boards are very thin and level or near level, tempting people to put their cups on them or right next to them.
I'd say it's faulty design.
See ,if there was a strong union there and a board op who is a member of that strong union that really knows the job with a glass window between him or her and the "think they are funny air people" , this would have never happened.
Blame management for letting these idiots "run the board " with coffee sitting on it. And for not having a real board op.
I'm guessing there was no real board op ,yet the station was saving money by not having one ,now they can spend some of that savings on a new board.
Management should be fired or at least get a letter in their file.
Al
Blame management for letting these idiots "run the board " with coffee sitting on it. And for not having a real board op.
I'm guessing there was no real board op ,yet the station was saving money by not having one ,now they can spend some of that savings on a new board.
Management should be fired or at least get a letter in their file.
Al
N
nocomradio
Guest
Why have coffee while working? Shouldn't they use the breaks for that stuff?
wpb1999 said:
If the broadcasting unions were strong there would still be jobs in broadcasting. The great growth in radio and TV happened WITH unionized stations. Every major station you could think of -- KNBR, KGO, KCBS, KNEW, KABL, KEEN, KSJO, KSFO -- were all unionized and paid living wages. The non-union stations also paid better because they were afraid to lose talent to the union stations if they didn't offer at least a somewhat comparable wage.
Today, without unions radio and TV wages suck. That's all there is to it.
DavidKaye said:
If union and non-union stations make the same wage, union shops actually make less (after subtracting union dues).
Gee! I wonder why movies and TV shows are now shot in Canada and elsewhere. Answer: no expense for 8 gazillion union requirements. Do a google search for "television union requirements". Instead of finding out what is required on each shoot, you will see dozens of links to TV unions: teamsters, SAG, editors union, etc.
Steven Roy said:
Union shops make less after subtracting union dues? Not in my experience. Even if your union dues are $100 a month, if you're making hundreds more per month due to collective bargaining, those dues are a small price to pay. I've been working in a union (public sector) environment for the last decade after decades of being in (non-union) private sector, though I am personally unrepresented management.
Bottom line is - it's a double-edged sword...unions are both good and bad. They bring their members living wages and good benefits - generally in excess of what equivalent workers in a non-union environment would receive. To prove this, all you have to do is compare average incomes in Northern states with those in the "Right-to-Work" states in the South. And David Kaye is right - if there are unions in your business where you live, YOU will receive better wages and benefits even if you're in a non-Union shop because your management will be afraid to lose good workers to the union shops.
But unions can also be a negative. Unions often manage to negotiate contracts that protect poor workers. We have an attendance policy where I work that is so "liberal," you can be absent almost half of the time and still keep your job. This drives big overtime costs to cover shifts, not to mention physical and mental burn-out for the conscientious workers who have to cover for the slackers. It's also much harder to terminate an employee for misconduct. They get a hearing, and even if they are then fired, they have the right to got to a neutral arbitrator, who just might bring them back with back pay.
I've seen it happen.
So do you blame the unions, or stupid past management that allowed their contracts to get out of hand?
alok said:
Board ops, like transmitter operators, are a class whose need ended long ago, while work rules prolonged the positions; the reduced flexibility that comes from running one's own board was made impossible by those rules.
Unless you can prove that board ops don't consume food and beverages, I'll have to take this for what it is: an accident anyone in a studio could have committed.
My experience has, uniformly, been that talent that runs its own board can do a faster paced, more spontaneous show. Having another person "in the middle" simply makes for a looser show... that might have worked for "Monitor" but not for radio since the 60's.
Equipment is more reliable and easier to use, too. If you can use a smartphone, you can learn a new board in a few minutes... literally.
Of course, I could tell you a few anecdotes about mess-ups by board ops. I'll limit it to mentioning that one Saturday I drove to the studio / transmitter of an LA radio station, and in the parking lot there was a big wire leading from the studio back door and ending under a car. Seems that the board op had rigged up a remote control and was working on his car's underside while firing off the carts... when I asked the jock, he told me the board op had said he would file a grievance if the practice was reported.
Wouldn't it be better if positions were created based on an actual need for a particular job, rather than outdated work rules? As has been mentioned, that's why half the movie production that used to be done in CA is now done in the "other CA"... Canada.
What would the letter say? "He didn't hire any unnecessary people?"
The note on mangement would ssy:
Penny wise, Pound foolish. Willing to forego full responsibilities and simply hope for the best.
Fot the people who have designed and popularized flat consoles, I'd simply ask
why they cannot accept that this will always happen?
A well designed console has NO PLACE where a coffee cup will balance.
Unions are good and bad, but help keep balance between labor and capital, which is the same
meeting ground between fear and greed, profit and explotaition. And it always goes back-n-forth.
Better that unions exist, but they too are prone to suffer all the same weakenesses that infect capital.
Penny wise, Pound foolish. Willing to forego full responsibilities and simply hope for the best.
Fot the people who have designed and popularized flat consoles, I'd simply ask
why they cannot accept that this will always happen?
A well designed console has NO PLACE where a coffee cup will balance.
Unions are good and bad, but help keep balance between labor and capital, which is the same
meeting ground between fear and greed, profit and explotaition. And it always goes back-n-forth.
Better that unions exist, but they too are prone to suffer all the same weakenesses that infect capital.
Board-Ops, or engineers as they used to be called are still somewhat of a necessity at stations that are talk or all-news, though many all-newsers are working combo now. . A lot of the larger morning shows in major markets still have board-ops as well, but it's a vanishing breed for sure... As for how this relates to the topic, board-op or jock, anyone can spill their coffee...
Better coffee than Coke or Pepsi. The high sugar content of soft drinks does a real number on anything it touches. Several years ago we had to completely disassemble a 3 month old console following a Pepsi spill and wound up replacing the backplane along with several channel cards due to acidic contamination of the PCB boards and traces.
Tom Wells said:
That's exactly my point. On a radio engineering mailing list I'm on I brought up the subject and the engineers kept saying that people just *shouldn't* bring beverages into the control room. But given that people are going to do this and it's not exactly rocket science to design consoles that aren't easy to wreck with spilled beverages, it seems odd that people aren't embracing the idea of redesigning consoles.
Someone on the list brought up the idea that since most of the mixing these days involves very few sources (computer, phone patch, a few mics for the morning zoo), that the console could easily be replaced by touch-screen icons and a program. Since the screen is vertical there is no place to put the beverage. And even if the screen is damaged, it's a few hundred dollars, not tens of thousands.
Lou_S said:
I'll see your Pepsi and raise you some urine.
Some years ago, a crosstown station fired a jock. The lockers were in the production room, and he was told to clear out his locker and leave. He went to clean his locker, and, while leaving, took a major wiz in the "lift top to open" style board.
As it was late on a Friday, nobody noticed until, yuchhhh, Monday. The board was a total loss, starting with the engineer's evaluation of "I ain't touching that!"
calguy said:
I have done a number of Talk stations and all news ones, ranging from KTNQ, KLAT and WIND to WUNO and WKAQ. The only ones with board ops were, as predictable, union.
In the cases where rules did not dictate a board op, the host or one of the co-hosts ran the board and we had far fewer problems in the use of jingles, buffers, and anything recorded.
Not always the case:
KCBS runs their own board...Union shop.
KFBK has a board op...Clear Channel, non-union.
One could argue running one's own board justifies the higher rate of pay and the union cost/protection.
Board op in Sac gets $7-10/hour if lucky.
What is more wasteful? Paying a low non-livable wage which likely requires said person to work another job on top of the board op gig. Or, just eliminating the position?
KCBS runs their own board...Union shop.
KFBK has a board op...Clear Channel, non-union.
One could argue running one's own board justifies the higher rate of pay and the union cost/protection.
Board op in Sac gets $7-10/hour if lucky.
What is more wasteful? Paying a low non-livable wage which likely requires said person to work another job on top of the board op gig. Or, just eliminating the position?
Interloper said:
This assumes that stations will pay more for combo than board op and announcer singly. This usually isn't the case. Meanwhile, unions have a remarkable way of getting businesses to mysteriously find enough money to pay people living wages, businesses that cry poor.
I remember when I worked in the warehoiuse of Williams Sonoma, the gourmet cookware mail order house in its early days. Oh, management was bitching a streak about how they couldn't afford to pay us more than $1 above minimum wage (for warehouse work, no less!) But we noticed that they had a well-heeled customer list and were able to sell them imported French onions and other extravagancies. So, we brought the Teamsters in. W-S became union and lo and behold, they were able to afford us after all! (This was short-lived however, as they grew and moved the warehouse from the Bay Area to Kentucky, an anti-union state.)
I'm aware that NBC has done similar with non-unionized CNBC located in some podunk non-union town. But this is why unions have to be made stronger, not weaker.
Without unions don't expect broadcasting to pay living wages.
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