nocomradio said:
The breaks are certainly long enough. You could have breakfast and get the car washed.
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Coffee Spill Fries Audio Board
- Thread starter DavidKaye
- Start date
The breaks are certainly long enough. You could have breakfast and get the car washed.
DavidEduardo said:
I think stations like KMPC and KSFO could have ended up tighter as combos (assuming the talent could/would adapt)...but something sound-intensive like Dr. Don Rose's show on KFRC...he needed a genius on the other side of the glass like George Zema to make that work.
michael hagerty said:
Good... and valid... example.
Today, with most things programmed and sequenced by computer and with things like the ShortCut to do spontaneous drops, there is really no need for a board op in most stations. And, any position that is so totally unnecessary is likely very boring, introducing a huge potential for error.
DavidEduardo said:
The other element of Rose's situation (and I know, this is 30 years ago)....was that the engineer was surprising DDR with most of the drops, thus cracking him up. Even if he could have handled the technicals himself, DDR consciously choosing to "put Lulubelle the Cow after this joke" wouldn't have been as funny.
More on the coffee spill, including pictures of the damaged console:
http://thejoint.98online.com/_Kerry-Talks-About-Sound-Board-Damage/video/1721271/13306.html
http://thejoint.98online.com/_Kerry-Talks-About-Sound-Board-Damage/video/1721271/13306.html
Lou_S said:
That console was built up pretty high from the desk surface. Wonder where the coffee was perched?
I don't know ,no matter what you say a good board op would have never made that happen . . . union or non-union.
There was a lot of equipment in that studio ,something a air personality could careless about while doing his or her show . . . Baltimore is no tiny market and the station isn't no tiny station.
I'd bet that the station could have easily afforded a board op ,wasn't this the morning show ,the money maker show ?
I grew up in NYC were there were board ops everywhere ( well almost everywhere ) and the stations sounded great and tight, look at WABC ,WMCA to name afew.
I know it is different now and board ops are not always needed but a morning show or show with many people in the studio ( as it sounded as that board fried ) should have a board op. Look at it this way if they had one they would not be fixing that board now.
Do you think this jocks show will sound as good as the past since he can't have his coffee in the studio anymore ?
Al
There was a lot of equipment in that studio ,something a air personality could careless about while doing his or her show . . . Baltimore is no tiny market and the station isn't no tiny station.
I'd bet that the station could have easily afforded a board op ,wasn't this the morning show ,the money maker show ?
I grew up in NYC were there were board ops everywhere ( well almost everywhere ) and the stations sounded great and tight, look at WABC ,WMCA to name afew.
I know it is different now and board ops are not always needed but a morning show or show with many people in the studio ( as it sounded as that board fried ) should have a board op. Look at it this way if they had one they would not be fixing that board now.
Do you think this jocks show will sound as good as the past since he can't have his coffee in the studio anymore ?
Al
alok said:
They can yank most boards today and replace them with new ones at a cost that, in a market like Baltimore, is about what a board-op makes in salary and benefits in about one year.
A board op is as likely to drink coffee in the studio as someone on the air... saying that having a board op would prevent spills is like saying that holding up your hand to the sun will prevent sunburn.
It's simple, the station should have a policy of no food or drink in the studio, or else the jock is personally responsible for the cost of a new board. How hard is it for a jock to walk a few feet to sip on a coffee during a song or commercial?
I wonder if there's accidental damage insurance for a board. It's possible to get insurance for an iPhone and they'll replace it even if you drop it from 20 feet into a puddle and it gets run over by a car.
If there is insurance for accidental damage to a board, then almost every commercial station should take it.
I wonder if there's accidental damage insurance for a board. It's possible to get insurance for an iPhone and they'll replace it even if you drop it from 20 feet into a puddle and it gets run over by a car.
If there is insurance for accidental damage to a board, then almost every commercial station should take it.
Nick said:
All stations have some kind of food and beverage policy. They are routinely violated. When you have people on the air for 4 to 6 hour shifts, you can't expect to have total compliance.
Most companies, particularly groups, are self insured for that kind of thing. In fact, except for liability and catastrophe coverage (a fire, earthquake, etc) groups will often self-insure the entire plant. It's cheaper than paying the insurance policy on individual items.
In any case, we are talking about a station that bills $10 million a year and has a budget for technical repairs. One month it will be a spill on the board, next month it will be a lightning hit on the tower that burns some coax or wipes a module in the transmitter (and the module costs a lot more than the backpane on the board, too).
Nick said:
In many states you cannot legally require employees to pay for accidental damage.
My whole point in starting this thread is to point out that people *will* bring drinks into control rooms and studios and they *will* spill them. In ye olden days when consoles were more vertical than horizontal, there were just as many spills, but because of the way the boards were built, the most damage you'd usually get from a spilled beverage was soggy copy because the liquid would tend to flow under the electronics of the console, not on top of it.
WRKO said:
What idiot? LOTS of idiots. I'm on an engineering mailing list and after the WBAL was originally posted there were dozens and dozens of engineers commenting about various liquids that had been spilled -- orange juice, coffee, milkshakes, water, Windex, and on and on.
My point was not to talk about keeping people from spilling, but how to reduce the damage WHEN they do, as they always will. I'm of the opinion that you can only tell people something so many times; after that you have to socially engineer so that the inevitable doesn't cause problems.
Designers do all kinds of things to make sure that the inevitable doesn't cause problems. For instance, in public restrooms the trash used to be located near the sink. Logical until you realize that so many people are germ-phobic that they open the door to leave the restroom using a piece of paper towel. Fine, except that the trash can wasn't near the door, it was near the sink, and janitors repeatedly had to clean up paper towels thrown on the floor near the door. SO THEY MOVED THE TRASH CAN TO THE DOOR AREA. This is far more effective than having a sign telling people not to throw towels on the floor.
Same thing with door closers. Closers were invented to automatically shut doors because people tend to leave them open, even when there's a sign telling them to close the door.
And in the 1960s that you talk about, boards were made differently so that spills didn't damage electronics. People spilled beverages all the time, even when told not to bring them into the control room. But today's board are built so that they're extremely easy to ruin. This was my whole point in talking about earlier consoles which tended to be upright, not flat as they are today. Little or no damage in the past; much damage today.
N
nocomradio
Guest
DavidKaye said:
I'd be sure I had a policy of no food or drink near the console. If they then spilled anything it wouldn't be accidental. Then send 'em a bill for it. You break it you bought it. Simple.
nocomradio said:
I've been an employer in Oregon and California. It doesn't quite work that way. Sure, you can make them pay if its a willful act, but usually not if it's an accident, even if you told them the rules. This is why I'm emphasizing the "social engineering" aspect. Just simply make it hard to cause accidental damage. Again, consoles didn't really have that problem until sliders became all the rage and the console was made flat instead of upright.
N
nocomradio
Guest
DavidKaye said:
I've been an employer for about 15 years now myself, and while an accident is an accident, letting an employee off the hook and standing there holding the bill after the fact can be a pretty hard thing to swallow. Sure, that can be a risk to take as a business owner, but still, slopping a drink into a very expensive piece of equipment really can't be explained away easily and is quite avoidable. I wouldn't even call it an accident in that case. Liquids and electronics don't mix. I'd bet that if the person at the console had bought it, he or she would quickly understand its value and go to the necessary lengths to keep it out of harms way.
nocomradio said:
But in most cases you can't do anything about it except swallow that loss. Too many employers in the past had docked employee pay for bogus "losses" and forced the government to protect workers. Even today, retail employers will sometimes claim that employees have stolen money from the register and then (illegally) dock their paychecks.
If it's any satisfaction you can fire the employee, which is often what companies do. But if they're a good employee you don't want to do that, and if they ARE good, you have to assume that it really WAS an accident.
N
nocomradio
Guest
David, I agree 100% that sometimes that stuff is taken advantage of. Arbitrarily charging an employee, or dumping them isn't smart business in any sense.
My point is though, that a cup of coffee isn't necessary during work, and would be hard for me as an employer to accept as a total accident. It'd be a tough call, depending on a lot of factors, including the employees' attitude over it and whether or not they were willing to voluntarily help correct it, not so much financially, but by maybe helping to repair the damage, or something like that.
My point is though, that a cup of coffee isn't necessary during work, and would be hard for me as an employer to accept as a total accident. It'd be a tough call, depending on a lot of factors, including the employees' attitude over it and whether or not they were willing to voluntarily help correct it, not so much financially, but by maybe helping to repair the damage, or something like that.
nocomradio said:
"You break it, you bought it" cannot be found in employment law. Some employers may get away with it, but they could also have a complaint filed against them with a government agency. I work for a transit company, and a driver or two will occasionally get inattentive and rip up the bus on a low hanging tree or a parked car. It can sometimes cost thousands of dollars. We can discipline them for having too many accidents, but that's it.
"You break it you bought it" is an old retail saying posted on signs by mean old fogeys who run little gift shops. Most retailers don't abide by that, because charging good custsomers for mechandise they accidentally broke pisses them off and they don't come back. They just consider it part of "shrinkage."
When my son was about 5, I let him push the shopping cart in Safeway. He pushed the cart into one of those annoying displays sticking out in the aisle that is meant to get customers' attention by being in the way. Probably a hundred dollars worth of cheap jug wine smashed open on the floor and the noise could be heard throughout the store, not to mention the cheap Chablis wine-smell wafting around. It was quite embarrasing, but Safeway did not make me pay.
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