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It's one of the sad realities of the broadcast industry today. At least in Ultimo there are still a handful of engineers who know something about the system, everywhere else you have to sit and wait on the IT helpline and even when you get through, chances are the person at the other end knows more about Microsoft Word than they do about broadcast infrastructure. Welcome to the 21st century!!
Unless of course you're dealing with RCS, and their new console partner Wheatstone, in which case it's 24/7 with guys in Australia who know the system inside out and are exceptionally well-trained. And from what I gather most of them came from radio so they know the heat that's on you. Never had an issue that they didn't manage to fix, and they always stayed with me until we were back on air. And now with Zetta things just got even easier to manage because it can all be remote. Shame Auntie never invested in RCS systems instead of building their own ;)
ABC Classic-FM dropped out for quite a while during the latter stages of Haydn's masterpiece The Creation. Last time I listened to this work on Classic-FM, something went wrong in the studio and they lost the ending of the work ! I was hoping there would not be a repeat of that - but yes, there was !!
Having once had the frightening experience of hosting a live BBC Radio show very late at night when the 'control surfaces' went berserk (I couldn't hear my microphone working and each item I fired from the playlist appeared to fire the item before it - but studio monitoring was lying and not only was my microphone permanently on, but all the items I fired were playing out simultaneously.....) I have great sympathy for the guys at Triple J. And this is why my own internet station (which syndicates some programming to Oz & NZ) has a state-of-the-art modular ANALOGUE transmission desk!!!
Classic FM was off too, with the most irritating recorded message I think I have ever heard! It was repeated every five seconds!