[Paul]

Hiya,

I'm not really interested in working in radio but I am abit of a tecno geek and wondered if someone could give me a run down on what Radio One use for playing out and stuff like that, if anyone knows ?

How did they transmit Mark and Lard from Manchester via Satelite or ISDN or sommat ?

And this control room they talk of is it just a old geazer with a big switch labelled "Manchester" and "London", with a dat drive in the corner should it go tits up. Oh and finally i've heard on various occasions the dat is sposed to kick in after 7 seconds of silence didn't seem to work that way this week !

Thanks, your geekingly

Paul

[HerculePoirot]

I'm not entirely sure what BBC Radio 1 use. but I would suppose it would be something like Dcart or VCS Dira or Radioman along with Mini Discs.

If you ask Aled on the Ask Aled section, he would know.

[Diffusionuk]

I believe its VCS.

[t36]

As far as playout is concerned, the DJs use a (German) system called VCS Dira! which has been panned by virutally everyone! For jingles etc, you have a screen laid out with buttons to fire them off. There is also a running order on screen that shows the tracks and items that are scheduled. (Radioman is used by BBC Local Radio stations)

Music is generally in the form of broadcast quality WAV files, but you obviously have CD players and Minidisk and all the rest.

As far as switching and transmission are concerned, that's very complex engineering stuff! Essentially, Manchester "takes control" of the playout while Mark and Lard are/were on. That kind of explains the c ockup at the end of the last show.