Mike Webster and Hélène show how CBC Vancouver's Radio Master Control manages 150 transmitters across the province using mixing boards, automation computers, and redundant Dalet playback systems. An alarm system triggers automatic fill-music if there's silence, and the team monitors TV feeds for emergency switching.
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Howdy, howdy.
Hi there.
Who are you and what do you do?
I'm Mike Webster, I'm the RadioMaster control technician.
Cool. What does Master Control do, first of all?
Well, it controls all the radio for the province of British Columbia. All our 150 or so transmitters throughout the province, they all come through here. All the programming is fed through this room.
So you got a lot of computers in here. Would you mind telling me kind of what they all do? Sure. Let's just start here. What is this mixing board?
This mixing board here is for our little studio in there where you, Tod Maffin, do your two-ways with different stations throughout the country.
Okay.
This here is our automation computer that controls all the switches and the events. It can change between different stations here.
So what do you mean switches?
What does that mean? Well, all the different events that will happen during the day on the radio stations. You can see here on, uh, this is CBU, yeah, our local AM station. At these times here, they'll switch at those times and those things will happen. These items will play at those times.
It looks suspiciously like DOS.
I believe it is. Is it actually? It is very basic.
It's very stable.
It's very stable. It doesn't need to do much other than switch between events.
So that's cool. And what does this do?
This is the main switcher. If I need to do quick access to switch things, I push buttons here. I can go here to CB1, is an abbreviation for CBU. So I could change what's being fed there if I want by pressing one of these buttons and then hitting take, and it would put that on air.
Does this replace big patch bays then of cables everywhere, like switchboards in the olden days?
Kind of, yeah, it does. It's just a very fancy interface between the switcher and the different parts of the room.
Gotcha. So next we've got kind of this 3-wide panel, very pretty lights.
There are lots of lights.
What do they all represent?
Well, as these labels here show, they represent all our different stations. This is CBU FM, or CBU AM, CBU FM.
So that's Radio 1, Radio 2.
Radio 2, the French, French stereo. This is our shortwave. This is Radio 3, and these are different networks throughout the province.
Are you actually sort of watching these to make sure like levels aren't too hot?
I do, I do throughout the day, yeah. Sometimes some stuff is loud and you have to bring it down, but not often.
Okay. What about this kind of area here?
This here is an alarm panel. This just, when we have alarms and there's silence and stuff on air, or things aren't happening the way they should, this, these different panels show us alarms and problems on different buses.
How long does it take of silence before an alarm goes off in here?
It depends which bus it is. If it's on air, about 40 seconds before fill music kicks in and plays automatically.
Oh, so is there— there's fill music automatically?
Automatically.
Do you know what it is? What is the music?
No, I don't. There's CDs that play that are loaded in these machines.
Oh yeah? And they play automatically once the alarm period Can I pop one out and see what it is?
It won't have a label on it. It'll just look something like that.
Right, okay. All right, okay, now this is the cool part. This is a wall of glass screens.
This is our Dalit system. This plays Dalit files, which is an audio, a computerized audio system.
Why do you need so many? What does each one play?
Well, each one plays different, can play different times or can play different material. Various times during the day, there might be 6 of them running at once, 6 or 7 of them.
And then what is— so each of these represents a different computer?
Well, not a different computer, but different players.
I see, okay.
Because there's sometimes there's one computer for 2 monitors. It just depends which one it is. Cool, all right. This system down here is a duplicate of what's down there.
Oh.
What we looked at when you first came in.
So why is there a duplicate?
In case one fails.
Ah, okay.
Backup system.
So you can't launch nuclear strike codes like—
No.
You have to have one person turning a key here and the other there?
No, no, no.
Okay, that's too bad.
This is our radio traffic department here. She programs all the events.
Hello. Hello.
What's your name?
My name is Hélène.
And so what does radio traffic mean? Like, I think most people hear that and they think the traffic reports they hear on the radio, but it's quite different.
Well, I get the odd phone calls telling me there's a traffic accident.
Really?
Whatever. But no, I do what goes on the air for French and English networks. So I schedule the girls on air, I tell the computer what to do, I organize interviews to book circuits to and from CDH, CDB, and then feeds as well.
Cool.
Yeah, so.
So it's still a pretty manual job, hey? Like I know you and I are in touch periodically because of my technology column, and it doesn't just kind of happen automatically. You've got to book lines and call people and say, hey, this is—
Yeah, it involves a lot of people, you know, like here and then each region you're dialing into.
There you go.
Yeah. Awesome, thank you.
You're welcome.
Whoa! Whoa!
There's a giant hole that I almost fell into there. That's safe.
Yeah, it is.
Why are there TVs in Radio Master Control?
Well, these are here for us to monitor CBC television. There's monitors for incoming feeds from satellite trucks, like this one right here.
Okay.
That's coming in live from a satellite truck, which I think That looks like— He's in Westminster at the Picton trial.
Right, okay, so that's a reporter off— because it's currently off air— taking Canada Live, Brian Taylor. Alright.
And some of them are— they're not all CBC shows. These are French programs. It's just we can monitor and we can switch them if we have to, but we don't.
So we talked about the computer down there that replaces patch bays in many ways, and yet we have this enormous wall of You always have to have patch bays. Why?
Well, if something fails, you have to be able to— if the switcher fails, one of these switchers fails, and they can, you have to be able to get programming to points that need to have programming.
I see.
And these are little mini ones.
I noticed they're smaller than the big fat ones that we used to have. What would happen if I took these two and ripped them out?
Someone from French Radio would come down and probably hit you.
