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August 6, 2020 10:16 am  #1


The Local Broadcasters Who Aren’t Working From Home

Dave Trafford’s off-the-cuff remark on CFRB Thursday morning really surprised me. He talked about how most Newstalk 1010 hosts are working remotely from home – but almost none of those who toil on air at Bell’s local FM stations are, with most still in studio.
 
I can’t quite figure this one out. Wouldn’t it be easier to run a music show from outside of the station than a talk format? The former doesn’t need a producer or a screener and it seems to me that 95% of what’s happening is on computer – the music, the spots, etc. Why couldn’t all of that be triggered remotely?
 
If what Trafford said is true, it’s the exact opposite of what I would have expected.
 
Meanwhile, FYImusicnews.ca has an interesting story about broadcast legend Dave Charles and his engineering partner, who have come up with a remote broadcasting system that would allow a single operator to stage a complete radio show, with all the bells and whistles and great quality, from just about anywhere. The cost for each unit: just $8,000.
 
If it works as advertised, that’s about as cheap as it gets. More about it here.     


Photo courtesy FYImusicnews.ca

 

August 6, 2020 1:53 pm  #2


Re: The Local Broadcasters Who Aren’t Working From Home

Speaking of working from home, everything was going pretty smoothly for Bell's Evan Solomon, who's been doing the gig from his house for months. Until Thursday. 

At 12:11 PM, his audio died completely and there was about 15 seconds of dead air. That was followed by filler music (not something that works well during a talk show!) and then about 6 minutes of commercials and a traffic report. (Even for CFRB, 6 minutes of spots is a long time.) When he finally returned, he explained that his equipment, which had been working so well for so long, suddenly failed and he would have to do the rest of the show on his cell phone!

Not only did it sound terrible, but to add insult to injury, it was one of the shows that goes coast-to-coast, so every market heard the lousy quality that went on for almost two hours. And even the regularly scheduled breaks didn't work so well. When he went to the hard network out, NT1010 played his on mic intro of the news, the traffic etc., and it became obvious to even the least informed listener that it was all pre-taped. 

When it works, it works great. When it doesn't, you better hope the whole country doesn't get to hear it! Maybe they should spring for that $8,000 gizmo described above!
 

     Thread Starter
 

August 7, 2020 10:59 am  #3


Re: The Local Broadcasters Who Aren’t Working From Home

Dave Trafford admitted on his final fill-in day Friday that he'd been doing the entire 2 weeks on NT1010 from Halifax.

John Moore returns next week.

Presumably from his basement in Toronto. 

     Thread Starter
 

August 8, 2020 10:42 am  #4


Re: The Local Broadcasters Who Aren’t Working From Home

Sports broadcasting has been done remotely on the radio side lately with most doing their broadcasts from the press boxes of their empty home arenas..  It's hard to tell, except that Phoenix Coyotes radio team lost the feed from Edmonton completely the other day.  The color announcer suggested filling by recapping the period to that point but they quickly threw to commercial instead.  When they got back, the play-by-play announcer admitted that he was now using his producer's laptop to stream the game from NHL.com while the color announcer had nothing.  They got through the last several minutes of the period and everything was fine after the intermission.