What has happened to production values in BBC local radio? Well, I assume they once had them!
BBC Radio Merseyside is the regional station based in Liverpool, and has the usual BBC local radio format of playing very old safe records and having prestenters in their late 60s talking to an audience of people in their late 80s.
Now, surely these presenters, most of whom were with the radio station from day one, were taught the concept of how to operate a studio mixing desk?
It’s not rocket science, but here, in a single sentence is the basic idea of what to do: Like the conductor of an orchestra, the task is to bring all the different ‘sources’ that go together to make a radio show, through to the ears of the listener.
Now then, fairly obviously, the listener wants to ‘hear’ the overall show without having to get up and turn the volume up and down on their radio set. The person back at the radio station should check the volume levels of everything in advance of making it available for the listeners, and he/she should be turning the volume up or down so that everything comes through at the same volume as far as the listener is concerned. If something suddenly gets too loud or too quiet whilst it is being fed to the listener, then it is his/her job to adjust the volume accordingly. It is NOT the listener’s job! To assist them there are large volume meters flicking away on the desk if they haven’t already ‘heard’ that there is a volume issue.
Ideally, the presenter (or whoever is operating the mixing desk) should be monitoring the overall volume level at all times and constantly ready to turn things up or down as required.
There’s a clever piece of audio processing equipment (usually called an ‘Optimod’) that can also be used, and is used by BBC Radio Merseyside at their FM transmitter. This clever gizmo does many things including instantly realising and ‘trapping’ volume level mistakes made by the person operating the studio by, within micro-seconds, stopping anything from being too loud or too quiet.
In an ideal world the ‘Optimod’ should be the last resort, the final ear protector, the device that makes everything smooth for the listeners’ ear.
Now, for some odd reason the DAB digital radio transmitter version of BBC Radio Merseyside does not have an Optimod to protect it. And, wow, the volume levels are all over the place.
On phone-ins, the presenter will be at one level, his caller will be barely audible, or the next one will be much louder. The same when the travel reporter reads out the travel news, or pre-recorded interviews are played. On a busy day when they cross to different places to hear reports from different football grounds, the volume levels are never ‘flat’ and so it is impossible to listen to the station via DAB.
In theory, if the production values were properly upheld by the studio operator then the lack of an ‘Optimod’ wouldn’t matter. However, it is not possible to listen to BBC Radio Merseyside without sitting there poised over the volume control, constantly turning it up and down. No normal person would bother, of course.
So, what is the point of them bothering to have a DAB presence? It’s a waste of money and electricity. Nobody could possibly be listening. How can this incompetence ever possibly help invite a migration away from analogue radio broadcasting?
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