A look behind the scenes of "The Saturday Light Brigade", a national-award-winning public radio program originating from the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, Saturday mornings, 6 to noon Eastern.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Happy Saturday!
Our 1/26/08 program begins in in about 90 minutes. I'll comment on the program later today. Feel free to add your feedback whenever you'd like.
2 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Larry, I was listening from about 6:30 'til around 8:10-8:15 or so when there was silence on the air for a minute or so, then an announcement stating that WRCT was going off air for some kind of maintenance. Needless to say, I missed much of your show. What happened? Also, Happy Birthday to Rikki. Ted in Squirrel Hill.
Hi, Ted. Sadly, technology can trip us up sometimes. At about 8:10, there was a "blip" in the data pipeline (an ISDN circuit) that carries our audio (well, the digitized "data" version of it) from the Museum to WRCT (where it is subsequently converted back to audio and sent to the WRCT transmitter). We caught the "blip" immediately and had the circuit up and running again within a a few seconds. However, the WRCT transmitter (like most radio stations these days) has a "silence sensor" that causes an automatic shutoff to occur if the transmitter detects a lack of audio to be broadcast. This is done because it is illegal to broadcast an unmodulated signal (i.e., dead air) for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, the silence sensor kicked in at WRCT during the "blip" and launched a shutdown routine (including playback of an automated announcement). We detected this immediately after it happened and it took a minute or two to arrange a restart of the WRCT transmitter. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
Technology these days is amazing, but also frustrating. The very systems that are designed to ensure high-quality audio and to be a safety net actually complicated the situation! In the "good old analog days", none of this would have happened. The "ones and zeroes" of the digital age can be unforgiving.
Thanks for understanding -- and, from Rikki, for the birthday wishes!
2 comments:
Larry,
I was listening from about 6:30 'til around 8:10-8:15 or so when there was silence on the air for a minute or so, then an announcement stating that WRCT was going off air for some kind of maintenance. Needless to say, I missed much of your show. What happened? Also, Happy Birthday to Rikki.
Ted in Squirrel Hill.
Hi, Ted. Sadly, technology can trip us up sometimes. At about 8:10, there was a "blip" in the data pipeline (an ISDN circuit) that carries our audio (well, the digitized "data" version of it) from the Museum to WRCT (where it is subsequently converted back to audio and sent to the WRCT transmitter). We caught the "blip" immediately and had the circuit up and running again within a a few seconds. However, the WRCT transmitter (like most radio stations these days) has a "silence sensor" that causes an automatic shutoff to occur if the transmitter detects a lack of audio to be broadcast. This is done because it is illegal to broadcast an unmodulated signal (i.e., dead air) for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, the silence sensor kicked in at WRCT during the "blip" and launched a shutdown routine (including playback of an automated announcement). We detected this immediately after it happened and it took a minute or two to arrange a restart of the WRCT transmitter. We're sorry for the inconvenience.
Technology these days is amazing, but also frustrating. The very systems that are designed to ensure high-quality audio and to be a safety net actually complicated the situation! In the "good old analog days", none of this would have happened. The "ones and zeroes" of the digital age can be unforgiving.
Thanks for understanding -- and, from Rikki, for the birthday wishes!
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