Radio Blog - by Tony W. Katavich, Senior Radio Technician - Mulcher Broadcasting

Tuesday 9 March 2010 - I have had this station going for a while now and overtime you get a lot of crap sent to you by all sorts of sales reps, producers and local companies wanting some free airtime, which can be a pain but whatever isnt useful or any interest you just give it away as a prize, I mean half this junk I couldnt even give away to someone on the street, but if you give it away as a prize on the radio, oh boy do they all want it. I bet if I gave parking tickets out as a prize people would still be ringing in.

Sunday 7 March 2010 - Had a student in the studio today doing some work experience for their radio course, the first thing he did when he walked in was point at the transmitter and say, whats that thing for?, bah I thought, this is going to be a long day, so I explained in fine detail what it was and all the specifications of it and he replied, oh, so why isnt it on the roof ?. I had some advertisements I wanted to get done as well as a few pre-recorded messages for a school fair that was coming up so I got him to sit nice and quietly in the corner to watch, listen and learn. About 30 seconds into recording I hear his cellphone go off, so I point to one of the many "no cellphones" signs hanging in the studio but it still goes off a couple of more times, so I quickly grabbed his phone off him (aswell as sneakily pocketing an old CD player remote that had been lying around for weeks with no home) and marched him to the balcony, I explained the reasons behind the no cellphone signs all over the studio and that in the unwritten book of radio etiquette, when a cell phone goes off during a broadcast it is punishable by death and threw the old remote as high as I could off the 2nd floor and watched it smash into pieces on the parking lot. I let him take it in for about an hour in which he just sat in the corner arms crossed not saying a word or making eye contact, so after feeling a bit bad for him and flicked his cellphone to him and said "you like magic kid?" and his eyes lit up and we ended up having quite a good day.

Friday 5 March 2010 - Kids and live broadcasting is a bad mix, we had a group of kids and teachers in here doing some promo work for an upcoming bike safety week, these kids were full of beans, running up and down the studio, laughing, giggling and shouting but as soon as you get them behind a microphone they freeze up and give one word answers only. It ended up being me and one of the teachers doing the talking even though the kids had a full skit written up and had been practicing it all week. But the worst came when we went to take some photos and upon leaving the studio one of the kids hit the switch and we broadcast a full 12 minutes of an empty studio, which doesnt sound to bad but its when you try and squeeze the ads that were in that 12 minutes back into the rest of the day is when the trouble starts.