Driving The Desk
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Paul Easton posted on Monday 13th February at 08:07 - 743 viewsSome people, especially on a certain other forum, get very worked-up over whether or not presenters drive their own desk.
In a frank interview on Five Live Breakfast a few years ago in the aftermath of the Ross/Brand affair, Paul Gambaccini criticised radio presenters (such as Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand) who do not ‘drive the desk’ – i.e. operate the equipment – themselves. “If you don’t do that, you are physically removed from the contents of your programme and you are obsessed on your own performance.”
Having occasionally spent some time during my career as a presenter I always felt happier driving the desk because it gave me that feeling of being in complete control. These days, though, it’s probably easier because all of your music, commercials, jingles etc. are all stored in a computer-based playout system, ready to be played at the push of the ‘Next’ button – or even done automatically without anybody in the studio. ‘Back in the day’, though, doing a live show – playing music from vinyl and commercials, ads, promos and jingles from carts (especially if you had split ads) – kept you on your toes throughout the show. One of my radio mentors used to describe it as “the ballet of radio”.
Not only that, but you also had to be your own producer – in the ‘proper’ sense of the term – as, especially if you were doing a daytime show, you would also be responsible for arranging interviews/studio guests and other features for your show’s speech content.
I’m not totally convinced, though, by the argument that you cannot produce good music radio unless the presenter drives their own desk.
In the 60s/70s the presenters on WABC New York (arguably one of the best music stations that ever existed) were not ‘self-op’ but had an operator to drive the desk – although the presenter and ‘board op’ (as TOs are known in the States) were in the same studio, rather than separated by a window. Many other large US music stations were also heavily-unionized.
Closer to home, ‘Fab 208’ – Radio Luxembourg – had engineer-operated studios for many years.
When I arrived at Blue Danube Radio in Vienna for the first time in November 1988 I was quite surprised to find that not only were most of BDR’s programmes not ‘self-op’ but neither were most of the programmes on Austria’s national pop music network Ö3 (their equivalent of BBC Radio 1), just a few studios along the corridor from ours. Ö3 had a small self-op studio (‘DJ-1’) which was used for a handful of programmes – including BDR’s easy-listening afternoon show ‘Serenade’ – but that was it.
In January 1989 BDR’s main studio was converted to enable the other music-only programmes to be self-op. I have the dubious honour of being the last person to present ‘Serenade’ from ‘DJ-1’). Those shows with a high speech content, such as the ‘Midday Magazine’ and the evening news programme, ‘World Report’, remained with an engineer at the helm.
Similarly, while showing a friend of mine from Italian radio round Capital, when I worked there in the early-90s, he was surprised to see the studios were self-op – as I discovered when he returned the favour a few months later and showed me round RTL 102.5 in Milan, they used a separate studio operator.
In his report on Radios 1 and 2 (and 1Xtra/6 Music) last year John Myers recommended that presenters – especially on R2 – should be encouraged to self-op wherever possible.
Ideally I believe music radio presenters should be self-op, but there is more to being a successful broadcaster than being able to drive a desk, talk up to the vocal, or do a really good segué.
The best broadcasters are those who ‘connect’ with their audience and surely that connection should not be hindered (or prevented) just because someone has the manual equivalent of “two left feet”.
I’ll give credit to my former community station when I was a presenter for making me drive the desk and manually playing the music using CD’s and sweepers with MD’s.
It helped master the skill of timing songs and links so I could do those all so important reads and features as well ensuring my song selections didn’t go over.
If I was presenting the 80s show, I’d have time in the week to select my tracks, although when I was a swing jock and at the last minute asked to cover drive it was a challenge to comply with the station’s music policy and keep the timings right, especially when a 2 minute filler track might not be suitable.
I think it the matter of self-op can be decided quite easily by just considering what situation makes the show sound best.
A presenter is employed for a wide variety of things: good voice, likeable personality, connection with audience, knowledge of specialist subjects etc… so if them having to concentrate on self-op impedes their ability to demonstrate their true skills and relax, then why should they be required to self-op? Equally, if they are comfortable with self-op and the end result is a tighter sounding show, then that is also a good idea. It should be a choice driven by quality, rather than any stubborn principle.
If a presenter applied for job and said their top selling point was that they could drive a desk, would you really be tempted to put them on air?
I love driving the desk, it makes the whole show an adrenalin rush! We play everything from CD or USB stick. Our playout computer runs iTunes and doubles as the web browser. The show I present is sounding tighter than ever – we do a competition to win a pizza delivered every show and we are getting more calls than we can handle – a fact that makes me proud. We have a live session every show and the latest one attracted 152 ‘likes’ on our blog.
Our show follows on from a guy who uses a single CD and goes 1 track to the next. He uses a script also. His show sounds ace.
Our station (Soundart Radio ) has been described by Michael Hill (Radio Player) as redefining radio. It carries shows from learning disabled children alongside funeral directors, artists and attention seekers like me. It has no format and no playlist.
I’m really glad of the freedom I get, without it I’d be dull.
Disclosure: 1. I have a producer to make the band sound good. 2. I have no previous radio experience and 3. I may have ballsed up the links in this post:)
Funny you should mention John Myers,Paul.
This link below shows him in the BBC Documentary Trouble At The Top re the set up of Century 105 (now Real NW). Watch from around 10m24s in when he goes to see Graham Ledger re Derek Hatton… he comes out with a line about self op which is absolutely bang on.
Can I come in with a different angle? I feel inclined to do so because of your last sentence about broadcasters connecting with their audience.
Running an online community radio station from a town centre premises using volunteers has been a real learning experience for me. For a short while we had a higher ratio of former hospital/ILR/internet broadcasters with experience ranging from umpteen minutes to many years, who reckoned they knew everything about radio and wanted things done their way, including not sticking to a format designed to bring everybody to the same level (from people with learning difficulties to radio pros), so that with a format of two minute links and no talking over intros and fades over songs, you reduce the need for as much technical input and reduce the likelihood of mistakes, i.e. less experienced presenters crashing vocals and doing too much fader w*****g, less of the pros talking too much and altogether less likelihood of the listener getting irritated. Within the two minute links they are allowed to be as creative/funny/entertaining/formal/patronising/boring as they want to be – but stay within format.
Consequently, the computer playout system does almost everything for them – and their cue to talk is on the screen, with timers and so on. There is virtually nothing that they need to do, technically, except lift the microphone fader and talk for 2 minutes. That’s it!!!
What I have found is that the pro’s shut-up and the non-pros (without a radio background) have developed to become quite creative and entertaining.
However, the non-pros also do quite lot of interaction with the audience by means of using the social networking sites and talking about subjects that are trending on the internet at that moment, whereas many of the pros just wanted to talk about themselves, the music, their life, their egos and so on.
It was also the non-pros (who are in the majority of staff by a long way) that wanted the studio re-layed, so that the computer monitor with access to the net and Facebook (etc) was immediately before their eyes, whilst the “music monitor” was to the right beside it, since it was the the computer they used the least and they simply let it run and do it’s thing. Even the presenters that are doing specialist shows tend to compile the playlist for their entire show in about 10 minutes at the start of their show – and then just let it run, leaving them to “connect with their audience” using the Facebook monitor. The only people that have complained about the new layout were the very small number of radio pros that we have because they reckoned they needed to have much more technical input than is actually required.
At the end of the day, with my station being full of members of the public who are now coming in and doing radio shows, it has really taught me how the public perceive radio and in this case do radio by means of interaction with the audience being of much higher priority than having to faff about with the technical skills needed for tight segues. Maybe the people who are so well within the radio industry think too much about the technical skills needed and too little about the presenters needing to do the other important thing of talking to the public.