Show Diary - 5 February 2026: Mums, social pressure and modern reality

[Guest]

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[BBChris]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/55780V4Hxt7sNlsR3Rcxz4l/dira

[Lee E]

Interesting, try to see how to use it you have to log in

Bring me to a related question - how do R1 and R2 etc voice track shows - so in Myriad and PlayoutOne for example the log is built and you log in from home or at the studio click on the song you want to talk out of and into and click record you hear the last few secs of outgoing music, then do your link, play a bed, or hit play on the next track and talk over the intro etc 

How do they do that at R1? do they do that? or do they just sit and literally record a whole show as if was live 

 

If they do record a whole show as if live how do they get the metadata on screen surely the show is one track in itself for 58 mins ? 

Anthems and Party Anthems are pre mixed by the music team on something like Audition i suspect? as one track, so for Greg 1000-1030 is one 30 min track and Jordan gets one 28 min track, for 1032 - 1100, so how does that work? 

If I pre record a show for instance I have to send it to the station as 6 20 min chunks or parts to fir in round the ads and news etc 

I reckon someone here will know

[BBCR1_James]

On Matts story at the weekend he showed the play out screen. 
 

as expected it looks like Anthems is pre-mixed in chunks (I don’t think full 30 mins though), I think chucks of 10-15 mins as he accidentally played the same one twice. Hit play on a track and it started playing one 3 or 4 tracks earlier and then went “woops we’ve already played that” so obviously has the wrong mix cued. They all seem to have whooshes as ins and outs.
 

in terms of meta, on the play out screen it had the mix highlighted and then each track was just added as a note below, obvs for DJ reference but don’t know whether that’s linked to the ‘now playing’ as well. 
 

[Lily Georgia]

As long as each track has been correctly logged in the first place, this metadata is retained even when mixed into an Anthems 'chunk' or as part of a fully pre-rec show.  The dira! playout system links to the 'Now Playing' info.

Basically, if done correctly, music is logged and marked on the system as 'send to public display' so it appears on Now Playing, but beds, imaging, trails, speech clips etc are not marked 'send to public display' so they don't appear on Now Playing, even though everything is played out of the same system.  This also generates the tracklistings on programme web pages - if these are ever blank it's because there was some kind of error with the music logging.

[Anne O Rack]

They use VCS as the playout software. It's a suite of applications - the elements you will see often in front of the presenter are the cartwall and onair control (running order).

The former is a touch screen Windows application and the latter is controlled using the wooden control panel on the desk and is also is Windows application (originally was unix). The content for either can be edited via the software on the PCs.

On the photo attached it is the second and third screens on the desk, however, they are logged out. The cartwall is a load of coloured blocks in normal operation.

[JamTriv]

11 hours ago, Anne O Rack said:

They use VCS as the playout software. It's a suite of applications - the elements you will see often in front of the presenter are the cartwall and onair control (running order).

The former is a touch screen Windows application and the latter is controlled using the wooden control panel on the desk and is also is Windows application (originally was unix). The content for either can be edited via the software on the PCs.

On the photo attached it is the second and third screens on the desk, however, they are logged out. The cartwall is a load of coloured blocks in normal operation.

Not entirely relevant but how do they do the news? Is the newsbeat studio on a fader and it just gets faded up a few seconds before :30? Also is the newsbeat ramp a track (like on a fader?) or a touch screen button?

[Lee E]

13 hours ago, Anne O Rack said:

They use VCS as the playout software. It's a suite of applications - the elements you will see often in front of the presenter are the cartwall and onair control (running order).

The former is a touch screen Windows application and the latter is controlled using the wooden control panel on the desk and is also is Windows application (originally was unix). The content for either can be edited via the software on the PCs.

On the photo attached it is the second and third screens on the desk, however, they are logged out. The cartwall is a load of coloured blocks in normal operation.

I assume each presenter logs in and it brings up their cart wall and settings? how does stuff like the ten minute take over work? and the faders are push to start? also can the configure the faders for each presenter or are their outputs set 

 

[BBCR1_James]

On 2/13/2021 at 12:14 PM, JamTriv said:

Not entirely relevant but how do they do the news? Is the newsbeat studio on a fader and it just gets faded up a few seconds before :30? Also is the newsbeat ramp a track (like on a fader?) or a touch screen button?

As the news is simulcast across three stations I believe it’s a little more complex then this as each station uses its own Newsbeat intro. BBCR1 uses ‘1’, 1Xtra uses ‘1Xtra’ and AN uses ‘Asian Network’. 

So I believe what happens is each presenter plays there own ramp into the news (the bit where they talk over e.g ‘it’s 9:30 on Radio 1, it’s time for Newsbeat with Roisin Hastie’), then after the ‘1’, ‘1Xtra’ etc they will quickly fade up the Newsbeat studio which which will have the headline bed playing on a loop for the reader to read the headline over . Then the newsreader will press play on the ‘Newsbeat’ ident and main story bed when ready. The whole of Newsbeat is then controlled by the newsreader (clips and different FX) before the outro is played where the presenters on the individual stations will fade out the Newsbeat studio and resume the show. 

Each presenter obviously has to hit play at the exact second on their ramp otherwise they will miss the headline or be too early (which you hear sometimes when there is just the bed looping with no one talking).

I presume the ramps are on faders so they can fade in and out if required (sometimes, if a bit late, Greg fades in the ramp a bit late just in time for the ‘1’ ident, but skipping the actual ramp).

what is interesting, at breakfast when Greg always talks to Roisin, they have to leave a pause after the news to make sure 1Xtra/Asian Network have taken the Newsbeat studio off air otherwise they would hear Roisin talking to Greg without hearing Greg. 

[Lee E]

It's a very manual operation then compared to something like Myriad where if it's set right stick it into auto during the last song upto the news news in plays and it connects to the news service - one station I work at you have to fade up Sky News as the news in plays and you have a selection of ramps of the stations theme in different tempos to play upto the news for backtiming, varying between 15 secs and 45 secs 

I know other stations that use RNH bulletins that are dropboxed and then auto imported into a track about 5 to the hour, so they are less important to hit time dead on as the news is pre recorded as such 

[Graeme]

The news intro must be hard scheduled into the system - they couldn’t rely on all the stations pressing that at the same time each time surely? They must be hard loaded to play out at 08:59:55 or similar? 
 

no?

[Graeme]

The news intro must be hard scheduled into the system - they couldn’t rely on all the stations pressing that at the same time each time surely? They must be hard loaded to play out at 08:59:55 or similar? 
 

no?

[Lee E]

1 hour ago, Graeme said:

The news intro must be hard scheduled into the system - they couldn’t rely on all the stations pressing that at the same time each time surely? They must be hard loaded to play out at 08:59:55 or similar? 
 

no?

Maybe they have an absolute time marker like Myriad does and Playoutone 

[Lily Georgia]

Each of the networks has a 'News In' ID of the same length - they have to manually fire it at :51 seconds.

The newsreader is instructed to start at exactly :00 no matter what they hear in their headphones so that if one network makes a mistake there's no disruption to the others.

So if the ID is played late then it will crash the headline, if it's played early you'll hear a bit of a gap before the newsreader reads the headline.  I've heard both of these happen plenty of times so it's definitely manual!