As part of my studies I’ve been undertaking an internship at SBS Radio. The Melbourne office is a subsidiary of the much larger Sydney headquarters. It has been interesting to see how the two offices network their audio and operations. Everything is done to a very strict timeframe. There are further systems in place to provide relevant advertising to different regions.
I’ve been impressed by the way that the operators and broadcasters skilfully collaborate in a situation where the broadcast is in a language that the operator doesn’t understand.
Yesterday I got a chance to operate the panel. They threw me in the deep end by having me panel a live show. Thanks to quality instruction and supervision it went pretty OK. One of the operators told me a funny story about how they were watching SBS at home and there was some dead air and they felt the same panic as if they were the one operating the panel. I think if you’re in radio for long enough you develop a Pavlovian response to dead air.