[q]

During an OB for all BBC stations, it's standard practice to have a BA desk driving back in the main studio, with a duplicated copy of the running order, ready to take control in the event of an OS dropout, which is what will have occurred during the 8:30 bulletin.

That'll explain the guy sitting in the empty studio in front of the desk snooping on the texts whilst Moyles and co were at the BT Tower then. With the "on air" light on, a fader up and the cartwall page for Chris' audio loaded.

Mind you, I thought the guy sitting in the studio always did the 'mixing' between sources, starting of music etc and that any ISDN links would only be used for voices, since 128kbps MP2 doesn't sound too nice when music is played down it.

[David]

bonded ISDN. more juice as its double the lines.

[Aran2000]

...Mind you, I thought the guy sitting in the studio always did the 'mixing' between sources, starting of music etc and that any ISDN links would only be used for voices...

It purely depends on the scale of the OB and what feeds are negotiated back to the studio. On a smaller OB, such as BBC local radio or ILR, a single ISDN line is purely used for voice and talkback, with audio cuts being fired manually back in the studio. Thus the OB can take place using nothing more than an ISDN codec, mic and headphones at the remote site (i.e. on the cheap). This simplicity also has the advantage of there being less to go wrong.

On a larger scale, with more budget and planning, you can afford to take more audio kit on the road and utilise more audio uplink bandwidth and hence, play your audio directly from the OB site. This works better for self-op shows like Chris' as it helps preserve the dynamic nature of a self-op programme.

[Tunster]

My bad!

Thought my guess was a lil too ahead of the times! Simple is best, and CDs can't really go wrong........

Who wants to go back to the uncrashable Windows 3.11?

[microchip08]

Isn't it easy to hack?

shut up.

That's rather rude.... you great big oversized bag of sugar.

[Adam]

Retro is so cool - I used to love Spectrum and still do. And Sega Mega Drive with the Sonic Games..

Anybody ever heard of a game called Chucky Egg ? I thhink we've had the Spectrum chat last year. Aaah.

[Sidders]

I have an emulator, but not used it for a while. I might get my speccy out and shake the dust off, make sure it still works.