No, it really did! So picture this, you’re presenting your regular show, across the entire country and to whoever’s listening online around the world. You’re playing the penultimate song of that show, back timed exactly to the ads, everything is pretty normal. Or is it? Suddenly every screen in front of you (apart from the internet screen) goes blank. That penultimate song still playing away, listeners oblivious to anything of course apart from enjoying the music.
Let’s stop there for a minute and freeze that moment in time.
What would you do? It’s moments like this when broadcasting live that really let you understand your character, your heart rate, your control of a situation seemingly out of your control. Do you call an engineer, run to the racks room (if you have access), but how much time do you have until, silence?
Oh, there is an additional factor here, your national show goes into local shows across the country, presenters sitting preparing their shows, also listening in. Pressure. How do you cope? The truth is, you only really figure this out when you’re thrown into that pressured moment and by then, it’s too late of course.
Ok, back to it. Let’s recap, So I’m there looking at these blank screens, trying to roughly work out how long until this penultimate song ends. I know in my head what time I should be playing the adverts, so there’s going to be a gap, a large 4 minute one I’m thinking. I glance behind me and notice the tower of CDs, I tip over the entire tower and let them spray across the floor in hope there’s an old Now album in there or maybe The Best Of Britney will do fine. Nothing. Apart from jingles. I can’t play 4 minutes of jingles, can I? Or…can I? No, come on pull yourself together, CDs, NOT an option. Ok, the song is coming to an end. Now, as you may be aware when presenting on most commercial brands, links are fairly short, so your brain is only really trained to speak for short moments, that’s usually up to 1 minute. NOT FOUR!
What did I do then? The answer, I did what was needed to be done in the situation and took control of the solution. Clock ticking away. Mic up, live. And said, “Well, my studio’s decided to break, I can’t play the last tune and I was looking forward to that! So, we have some free time, I was tempted to play you Mark Dennison's (FYI legendary broadcaster) Best Of Karaoke Sessions CD, but I didn’t feel you’d need that in your ears right now, so you’re probably thankful I couldn’t find a spare copy. There is one screen still working in front of me, I can see your messages! So, and I really mean this - if you’ve never had a mention on the radio, there’s a high chance I will be able to get round to mentioning you before the end of my show!” I proceeded to give out the message numbers and fortunately the messages flooded in, time filled, a glance at the clock reminding myself when to hit the ads button (and hope they play of course) thinking in my head “what to do if they don’t?” And that was that. End of show. Job done.
Why am I sharing this with you? Because pressure can flatten the unprepared. When you enter into live broadcasting, it’s always a good idea to think about anything and everything that could go wrong and how you might deal with that. I mean, don’t send yourself into paranoia about pondering on these hypothetical scenarios, it’s just about being aware. You don’t realise it at the time, but a good manager will have probably thought about this and your character at the time of your employment. It’s therefore a compliment that you are entrusted with this pressure and responsibility, because that’s what it is. So I feel it’s your job to live up to that entrusted responsibility and show your boss (and their boss) that they made the correct call on your employment.
This entrusted responsibility can be filtered into many media and broadcast positions. Within voiceover when you land a job or your agent puts you forward for an audition, producers responsible for output and production up, copywriters and creatives ultimately responsible for the story to be told.
I had the best time presenting on The Hit Music Network / Capital Network, you can hear some of those show clips on my soundcloud page.
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