Always have a plan "B"

(by Trevor Beck)

I was recently the Audio Director for a series of sporting broadcasts where we took the feed of the game from overseas, added commentary from the studio, then it was re-broadcast both locally to Australia and overseas again too.

We had rehearsed our opening, talked through the flow of the show, when we would cross to the live action at kick-off and the like, so all was prepared.
We even had our plan B ready, should the game be delayed, or bad weather hold things up, we had extra stories to talk about, video pieces ready, even a few phone in interviews with sporting stars if we needed to fill for more time.

So we were ready.

All goes to plan, the show starts, hosts engage in discussion and analysis, we roll the tape pieces, come in and out of ad breaks, so far so good. The kick-off approaches. We can see the game getting ready on the preview monitors, the audio is good and so as the teams take the field and go to their ends, we get ready to cross to the live game.

Our hosts announce the kick-off, the ref blows his whistle, we throw to the game and then…….black! The incoming satellite feed has gone.

Now at this point, extra stories and the like aren’t much good as we’ve left our commentators and gone ‘live’, but we cut back to our studio and the commentators apologise for the problems and start to ‘fill’ with more analysis while we wait for the satellite feed to be restored. However it quickly becomes apparent that this is going to be a long delay, so stories and analysis aren’t going to be enough.

“Lets throw to a replay of the second half of yesterdays game” is the call from the producer.
“Sure we’ll roll it in off VTR1” from tapes
“ummmm, I don’t have VTR1 patched” I reply.
“OK hang on a sec” pause “ gimme a sec we’ll roll it off 5, you got 5”
“yep I got 5, roll it and I’ll check audio”

Tape 5 rolls, all is good, so we cue up, let the hosts know, they throw to the replay, and we carry on with that till the satellite feed is restored.

We had allowed for delays with tape pieces, interviews and the like, we even knew we had the previous days game if we needed it, but we didn’t expect the problem to be a failure of the satellite feed, so when that happened, we were momentarily caught by surprise.

In the end, the show went well, and nobody of course knew we were looking around for a solution in the background, as the hosts were filling during that time, but the lesson learned is ‘always always, have a plan B and C and D’