I was really excited today about my radio show. I had scored an interview with Ricky Kej and Lonnie Park. Kej is a Grammy-winning singer and keyboard artist and arguably the most famous musician in India (which is a really big audience), and Lonnie is an American musician and producer with a Grammy nomination, 5 Sammy awards and a bunch of other statues on his bookshelves.
That part was fun, but the part of the interview that really excited me was the international part Kej was also an Ambassador to Ambassador to Earth Day Network, worked with UNESCO, addressed the UN, scored music for the opening ceremony of the Cricket World Cup 2011, held in Dhaka-Bangladesh, played at the UN in Geneva and New York, and is an honorary professor at the Indian Institute of Science. That is after 16 albums, 3500 commercials and a nature documentary with David Attenborough. Whew.
In June Kej and Park had produced the My Earth Songs Virtual Concert, watched by more than 25 million viewers in 75 countries. The concert involved over a dozen op musicians from around the world and was configured to be seen in Asia and Africa on television and will be reformatted for broadcast online in North and Latin America later this year. What amazed me, is that they put it together in a little over a month!
Now there have been a number of international concerts and music festivals since Covid19 shut down live festivals. The technology and infrastructure to launch a festival or concert from. Say, Havana, go to New York for a gig, shift across the world to Tokyo for a song, and then to LA where the host takes over is off the shelf now. There are companies that can set it up and pull it off with few to no hitches, quickly and efficiently.
Remember the One World: Together at Home global charity concert that was broadcast on the major US network and several online platforms, Executive Producer Michael Dempsey’s production team pulled it off in about three weeks. They melded more than 150 pieces of content created for the six-hour show that was actually produced and directed with all the technical team members and much of the live talent working from home. Technologies like LiveU and Cisco WebEx and group chats and multiple satellites and hubs made it all work. So, this is something we know how to do.
At least I thought I did. Ricky was going to call into my show from India. Lonnie was calling in from Ithaca New York, I, of course, am in Mexico. My syndicator producer is in Boston and my European rebroadcaster is in England. And my platform, Blogtalk radio is in the cloud with servers who knows where. Piece of cake.
So, I logged in, activated the host function, got the countdown.
“Your show will start in 5 minutes”.
Great. We are on track. I had pre-interviewed Lonnie an hour earlier to make sure he had the guest line number, remembered the time, and was cool with the music choices and interview topic. He was chatting online with Kej in India and everything was ready to go.
“Your show will start in 2 mins”.
Time for my guests to call in. Nothing
“Your show will start in 1 min:.
No guests. Nada. We set up the backup call-out function and programmed a phone for Lonnie.
“5-4-3-2-1-welcome to Blogtalk radio (cue start music and read program intro and network i.d.)
No guests!! Call-out hit a busy signal for Lonnie and we have no number for Kej.
While I was reading the network intro, live on the air, the office phone rings and I see it is Lonnie. Everyone else is in Boston so I have to get it. I cue start music, cut the mic and answer “you can’t get in? What happened?”
The clock was running – my normal 30 sec of intro music was at 20 sec.
“No such number,” says Lonnie.
The intro music is now 45 seconds and has gone from the instrumental intro to verses. Fortunately, I have permission to use the whole song (Big Big Bed by Blame Sally), but my audience is used to me coming in at :30 and not hearing verses. Hope they like it.
“Lonnie, what number are you calling?”.
He reads it; one number is transposed. I corrected the number and asked him to call back, hang up, and cut the intro music at 60 sec, open the mic and welcome my live audience.
Ten seconds later Lonnie’s call appears on our guest board, followed by Ricky’s a few seconds later. Lonnie had texted Kej the right number and they both called in. I had just started the guest intro, so we were ok.
It’s not One World: Together at Home but for a few seconds there I felt like it. Despite all the technology, the backup systems, and the experienced people, a low-tech typo in a confirmation sheet sent to an artist almost derailed the show. And a low-tech phone call to a landline solved the problem. If you want to hear how it sounded, check out http://tobtr.com/11803567.
Patrick O’Heffernan
