21 November 2001
BBC Southern Counties Radio is a local radio station which broadcasts on various frequencies. It's the voice of the people in Surrey and Sussex with views from experts, regular guests and the listeners themselves. It operates it's main programmes and news from studios at Guildford and also has facilities in Brighton.
One bright and early winter morning on 21 November 2001, I went and found out more behind the scenes on the breakfast show.
It was 5.20am and I arrived at the Beeb's Broadcasting Centre in Guildford with bags under my eyes. The reception was desolate with just the production team working hard in the office. First of all, I met up with Gareth Wakefield, who drives the desk on the Breakfast In Brighton show. Just to explain before I go any further, that there are three breakfast shows focusing individually on the immediate local area. Joanne Good, hosts Breakfast In Brighton, Ed Douglas presents Breakfast Live In Surrey and John Radford hosts Breakfast Live In Sussex.
Gareth had to play trails, jingles and a bigger task than many, to call up guests and ensure the programme is technically running smoothly. All the talk comes courtesy of a lady on the coast called Joanne and by instant messaging via ENPS (Electronic News Production System) and verbal link-up is made to communicate.
The amazing thing is that they rarely meet up but the great thing, possibly a bad thing, with radio is that its audio and not video. All shows include the main features such as news, weather, travel and sport along with all the local going-ons.
The Guildford complex is bigger than first expected with four studios: main studio, second studio, production and Brighton Breakfast studio and the news studio which is in constant use.
I sat in on the first hour of the Breakfast Live In Brighton which went relatively smoothly compared to some days.
The show is recorded on DAT (Digital Audio Tape) for legal reasons and various interviews with guests are digitally recorded on a machine called DAVE (Digital Audio Voice Editing) which will soon disappear to make way for a new system. This machine contains the playlist for the show which can be operated by the touch of a button. All the elements of the show are previously added and a lot of the features were not ready by the time the programme went to air at 6am.
At 7am I went into one of the main studios where Ed was presenting his Surrey show.
His first topic of the hour was the new terminal five which he had an expert in and listener on the telephone. It was a heated discussion which got everyone thinking about it. In this studio, the faders went from top to bottom instead of the inverse which confused me but was a breeze for Ed. With the news on this show, it was completely live from Ed Dickinson with the chance to have a laugh and a joke.
A resident 'zoo' guest called Steve popped in to tell all about the new gadgets making their way in our homes. He was one of the only guests who was actually in the studio with Ed and the rest out and about the area. He explained about new mobile phones that could send video messages instead of text messages and information about the new Windows XP.
It was back into the Breakfast Live In Brighton studio where Gareth had just had a catastrophe with dialing up the ISDN line to the roving radio car. It took him 15 minutes to get a good signal which involved changing the aerial and numerous phone calls.
Between 7.30am and 8.30am is the busiest time because of peak time listening and this problem made things harder.
The trails were being played and news on the notice board was about the up and coming Southern Counties pantomime. All the presenters and many more get involved in the first ever panto production of the classic Cinderella. It takes place at the Epsom Playhouse in Surrey to a live audience which then goes out as a radio play.
At the end of the three hour show, the red button got switched off and we were off air across Brighton and control was handed over to the main studio. A split three way system is used to play the various areas jingles so that only one presenter is needed for the rest of the day.
It was a great experience and taught me much more about the technology in radio. If I am lucky, I might get to come back as a guest and speak out on air to the 300,000 possible listeners. Many thanks go to all at BBC Southern Counties Radio for making me feel at home.
17 February 2002
It was back to BBC Southern Counties Radio on 17 February 2002 for an afternoon watching over the Ed Douglas Sunday afternoon show. Ed's pitch was from 1pm until 5pm with nothing special lined up in the schedule other than chit chat from listeners and a few old time records from the likes of Elton John and Daniel O'Donnell.
It was an interesting start to the show with jingles running slightly late leaving news, travel and weather reporters mystified. But once over the first hurdle it was all go as the telephones were red hot. Along with me in the Production Gallery to answer the telephones was Gareth Wakefield. He works during the week on Breakfast Live In Brighton as technical wizard and also he schedules and creates trails.
I hadn't realised how many people would call in on a Sunday afternoon, and most of them were regular batty people from an unknown planet. The issues raised in the show included a lady who added spices to malt vinegar which made it go cloudy and she wanted to know how to reverse it. An ongoing question was "what is the name for a 36th wedding anniversary?" We eventually got to the conclusion that we don't name each one after 15, but they do in America.
Ed asked the audience where they keep their possessions when they go on holiday. It sparked off anger with people believing it might cause burglaries but he later explained it couldn't happen because he wouldn't give out their address. One lady rang in saying she kept her valuables inside a brick built into her house.
Gareth was popping in and out of Studio 2 trying to get a tape sent in by listeners onto the airwaves. It wasn't possible because the technology was so old and out-of-date that it would sound awful.
I was split between answering the phones and sitting in the studio watching how Ed presented his show. When it was three o'clock, it was time for Questions and Queries, a little like Swap Shop from years ago. But instead of swapping toys, you swap questions for answers. One question came up about how to keep a bottle of fizzy drink fizzy after it had been opened. One caller suggested squeezing the bottle and tightening the lid really tight. Ed then asked what was my favourite drink to which I replied "milkshake" leading to an outburst of laughter from the team.
I was also updating the visual talkback which was like a version of Notepad. It is used to communicate to the presenter from the Production Gallery in the form of text rather than voice.
Since my last visit, DAVE had been replaced by Radioman, a straightforward system with two monitors. It allows the user to access their files, record over three channels and display the running order of any show.
It was an excellent experience and it was great to be involved. It just shows how a show can be made without it being planned, by spurring off comments from the listeners!
