Pop Shield

We begin Volume Two of the chronicles of Pop Shield in a state of dysphoria.

It’s a Monday morning after our clocks have sprung forward into BST. I set my early morning alarm for 0345 (= 0245 Actual Mean Time). Upon arrival I slip in through the side doors into the corporate Mothership. This closely resembles the feel and scope of the Wobegon entrance, the cramped lifts with their steady and dull announcement tone, which brings with it a little comfort. And the added benefit of a reduced likelihood of having to face anyone…with this tired face.

I ride to the top floor. From the lift exit, it’s a short hop to the bathroom and, from there, a skip to the breakfast show Studio L. I pop into Studio H en route to check the desk and voice processor are set up correctly in the news studio, assuming – incorrectly – that it’s going to be the usual reader, Gina McNealy on the bulletins. It’s my first day after a week off, and I’ve not worked on The Nation’s Favourite Breakfast Show since mid-January. I’ve reduced my listening of late, and feel out of touch.

Arriving at the studio, I’m greeted by none other than than Top Operative at the production helm. “Morning. You’ll need to reset the desk” he says. “I had a go, but it looks all wrong.”

I take a glance and both the operational mode and the choice of desk snapshot are sound. “It looks pretty good!” I reply.

“But what about all those big red boxes with scary OVC error codes in them?”

I smile. I would agree, they do look a bit shouty. “Oh that’s actually normal” I say, “it’s to alert the user that a channel is overcontrolling the corresponding presenter’s desk source in the next door studio.

The studio-cubicle configuration in the new suite of studios built for The Nations Favourite is different to those in Wobegon House in several ways. Notably, there is no longer an adjoining door between the studio and cubicle. In order to get from the control room to the presenter position you need to pass out of a door into an inadequately soundproofed corridor and back in through another door.

The automatic mechanism on the door has a mind of its own. The opening button seems not to work if there is a person in front of the door waiting for it to open. Issues with the said automatic mechanism have incited more droll emails from Tony than all those for drinks left in studios, misuse of studio equipment and scheduled maintenance warnings, all put together.

As a result of this new layout, production teams no longer bring guests into the cubicle before and after interviews. Entourage and production staff still pass in as before, but it is with surprisingly regularity that I find myself looking up from my controls only to spot that Oliver James or similar has appeared. Sitting in front of a side fire microphone, he has irritatingly pulled the top end of it towards him to speak into it like it’s an end fire Korrekt podcast mic. Then you notice there is only twenty-six seconds left on the outro of “Walking In Sunlight” to go in there and point it in the right direction again. You decide that the odds of successfully winning ‘Open Or Not’ with the door within the timeframe is too slim.

As a result, the compensatory EQ work is stiff, and the role we have developed into feels a little less star-studded. Gone are the days of being introduced to guests as a member of the show team, and discovering that Len Emerald actually has a far limper handshake than you might have ever imagined.

The main reason for this new layout is that all four individual spaces constituting the two new studio-cubicle suites now self-operative as standalone flexibile recording spaces. This was technically possible in the old Wobegon studios but never happened in pracice. Now it does all the time. Most shows using the spaces no longer require the presence of a sound engineer, and on The Nations Favourite, operators like me are no longer the mainstay of the network.

When I started this blog it was a with a definite sense that I was mostly sitting still, in the eye of the tornado, with it all going on around me. Now I feel there is a disequilibrium where I am, like I’m sitting on a swing which has started to twist and I just can’t get it straight again.

Back to this morning and Top Operative says I will need to go and check everything on Boo-Boo’s side of the glass “Of course” I reply. Barry “Boo-Boo” Jones is sitting in for Elliot Boone. He is already is situ. This is another gradual change. It used to be that the engineer would go and set up the studio, test the mics and music and jingles on open faders, get everything ready, and then Jerry Wobegon or Top Cat would fly in with a few minutes to go.

The exception being Pop Pickering, who once arrived so early for his lunchtime show that he ended up sitting in for the presenter of the show before him, who had failed to turn up.

So, with presenters arriving earlier and earlier and engineers getting booked later and later it is easy to feel a little on the back foot. I step in to say hi to Boo-Boo and load his preset, check the voice processor and the monitors, ask him if it is all to his liking. We have a chat about the work I am doing around the exit from Maid Of Orleans, then I leave the room.

I return to my “seat” which is now a standing position, and am immediately winded by the site of a memorial photo frame that has appeared to my right depicting our dear friend Shabba helping to road test these studios which I worked so hard on the design of. He was desperate to be a part of it all and would message me regularly, late and often about it.

Shabba was a kindred fellow operative, a colleague and a friend. He was a giant within our niche orbits and a passionate lover of the medium. He rocked most of the roles that exist within radio – producer, engineer, broadcast engineer. But he also dared to disrupt. It’s quite a rare package to want be across it all, but something I can quietly relate to. Minus the disruption, unless you count vigilante EQ work at pub quizzes.

During lockdown, Shabba kept us united and entertained via the launch of his own internet station Oneman Band Radio. Of which he was DJ, presenter, and top special operative. He was a hugely funny and talented man, an avid reader of this blog. Until, shockingly, he passed away last week at the age of fourty five.

Shabba was a die hard superfan of Dave Wrong, of whom Top Operative was a lead producer on Dave Wrong In The Whenever and one of the key custodians of the language and history of that show. So to be flanked by Top Op on one side and Shabba on the other feels cosy on this particular morning. Until things start to unravel. Quickly.

Breakfast and Waylon Wine’s lunchtime news show have forever come together as a classic double bill in the day of an engineer at Nations Favourite. It’s the last surviving combo like this, for the reasons I explained earlier. Both shows are unusual in that the first content coming from our studio is the news bulletin, rather than following the usual format of the outgoing studio fading up the news before us starting on an opening jingle.

So I duly select the news studio (particular to Breakfast), and the on-air studio via my touchscreen. Daisy “Dotdot” Swimalot has already been to say hello to us, she is standing in for Dina today. I call out to Dotdot on the talkback to the news studio and ask her for a fews words for level. “Just a minute while I reset the desk” comes the reply. “Not exactly the words I had in mind!” quips Top Operative.

I ask Boo-Boo for a few words on an open fader and he plays some carts, albeit on prefade, and I take network from Cardiff. The outgoing studio fires the news jingle, I fade up Dotdot and we’re off. Headlines over, Boo-Boo plays the opening cart and nothing happens, silence. So he plays a record instead, closes the fader and says to me “What happened??“

I do some very quick thinking and realise that, because I hadn’t gone through the usual load up procedure, I had skipped the check of the submixer behind me carrying the DJ Jingle Group, and the fader is in a fault state, meaning that it played fine on prefade but didn’t make it to output. I quickly press the flashing blue button, apologise to Boo-Boo, explain the issue and we carry on. It’s rare something like this happens on my watch and I am of course irritated with myself.

The next issue is that Nam is having issues recording voice notes into her computer, and that someone else appears logged onto the DJ position screen that I don’t know how to switch away from on the KVM. I then realised all the production team have logged onto atypical desktops, again due to me arriving after them and not wanting to peform the full KVM reset which is studio protocol on arrival.

Then, in my attempt to move the studio source selector screen to give me good eyeline to Shabba, the HDMI keeps dropping out and the screen alarmingly going black. I know I’m not the only person to have experienced issues like this – Pop Pickering had so much grief of this ilk one Saturday morning that he ended up decanting from the studio. Ant kindly offers up solutions from his ever flowing fountain of advice about the voicenote routing, which is the result of the assistant producer accidentally using a machine which is usually fed with Aux 1 by default.

We get there. I explain to the production team about the KVM macro button and mention to Top Operative that he might want to pass on to Nigel about the audio routing should it happen again. “Don’t you mean Fish Paste?” he replies. I look puzzled. “Wrongy’s name for him of course. On account of the sandwiches.” I laugh. Wrongy had so many of these outrageous nicknames for special operatives – including Breakfast Face, Red Face, No Face, Rhymes With Table, Sweet John, Thin Hair, Special K, Scotch and Old Irish.

After the show, I reflect on the repercussions of having worked so hard on the design on these studios, only to disappear off on parental leave for a year as they were being being brought into service, and subsequently having worked in them fairly infrequently. It puts me in this weird space of having deep knowledge peppered with lacunas.

I take some time between bookings to pop to the soul-sapping Killing Station for food, encourage myself to step outside for five minutes, only to be pounded by a force seven gale, before heading back into reception to have a look at the Homunculi on display in reception. IYKYK.

Then I go and seek out Tony to enquire if the SlowCoe is working yet (it isn’t), and to acknowledge Shabba’s sad departure and to pass my thanks to Dan for leaving the photo frame.

We talk about how we both have Shabba’s booming voice going around our heads. The last time I heard this voice, a couple of weeks, it came disembodied through the Theatre PA, making the prerecorded safety announcement. The Voice Of God.

God, as we have previously established on this blog, enjoys a lot of compression and a lot of reverb. I’m not exactly sure where Shabba stood on the reverb front but I think it’s safe to say he enjoyed Wrongy levels of compression. In fact, famously, even Wrongy asked him to back it off a bit.

I walk back through the offices towards the studios for Waylon’s show. This time I’ve had the luxury to get everything tested to my normal, I would like to think exacting, standards.

Editor Tim is producing the show in the studio today, assisted by Maisie. We soon have the phone lines tested, I select Vinnie’s studio and cast an eye over the operational sheet.

I am just about to select the daytime news studio when Tim says “Oh that’s strange, The Shimmer are running a story about Elliot being sacked???” “That’s weird, I reply, but pinch of salt – it is The Shimmer.” Then follows “Oh now it’s running in The Courier!” shortly ensued by “Ah. It’s on the Corporation.”

I pause to check my work email and see confirmation of what has happened. There is then a flurry of activity – management faces appearing, Waylon seeking guidance, cohosts and colleagues looking ashen all around, as a wave of information flies around the suite. I try and ground myself.

I take network from Vinny’s studio, switch the snoop cam to the news studio to see if there is anyone in there yet, to find out whether they are planning to run with the story (of course they are).

News Guy appears on camera, and I realise to my horror that, in the flurry, I haven’t got the audio selected. We have ninety seconds to go when I pick up, and speak with News Guy, apologising for the late check. “Were you getting nervous?” he asks. I respond in guinea pig dialect, and fade up the studio. “Corporation News, it’s Twelve O’Clock…”

Top story. Nations Favourite Breakfast Turn Elliot Boone suddenly and inexplicably sacked. Unspecified dodgy business.

And so it unfolds all around me like all the other stressful events I’ve been in the midst of – the passing of DJ Reel, Rusty and Wonathan’s prank calls, the sacking and reinstatement of Pop Pickering, the passing of Jerry Wobegon.

The whole just-having-to-get-on-with-it, as I set my own shock and emotion aside once again. But underneath the shockwaves sending ripples through my heart. And then the loneliness of all the shocks which have happened over the years – the sudden passing of DJ Reel, Jerry Wobegon, Nick Waterfall, Dave Wrong, Yoda, and now Shabba.

Several of these people were the biggest advocates of my blog, along with my mother in law Sylvia. And the thought that none of them are around to read, question, quiz and quip with me about it makes me feel so empty. But this latest loss has put the fire in my belly to make the space in my saturated life to write again. Time for some new readers perhaps. It’s show business, and – always – the show must go on.

So thanks for reading. Once again, from the top…