For those of you who do not know, I work for a radio station in the Tampa/St. Petersburg/Sarasota Market. I have been a desk jockey for the station since the start of the summer. In recent weeks, I have been “voice checking” (recording copy for evaluation by my supervisors), working on my inflection and pacing. Wednesday afternoon, I was doing a VC in the production room adjacent to the Master Control Room. I was reading promos for some of our national broadcasts and out-of-date copy regarding our last fund drive.
We have a complex digital system, where the control boards can all be controlled remotely; I had been told that it is not uncommon for someone to mess with a coworker by re-arranging their board remotely during work like voice checks. So, when the lights on the board flashed, I assumed someone was playing tricks on me. Several minutes later, I notice several people hovering over the Master Control Board. At once, they all looked up and me and, in slow motion, raised their hands to their throats to make the left-to-right slice of the “kill it” signal. I looked at them, puzzled, and muted all the channels on my board.
A software malfunction had caused stereo channels in the two rooms to cross, and my voice was going out over the air, live. I was talking over classical music, reading completely unrelated copy several times. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so humiliated. People were quite upset with me until they realized I had done nothing wrong. I continued to do VCs with the caveat that a single blinking light would send me straight home.
At least the big leap is over with.
this is one of those funny things you cringe at the same time. thanks for the post though on an early morning in ohio.