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IS
Inspector Sands
The emergency "tape" can be played in from the studio playout system (eg for evacuation situations) or via the silence detector (when things are hitting the fan). These needn't contain the same audio.

In the evacuation situation, it's much easier to deal with when they are back in the building if the studio is still on air. If the silence detector version gets triggered it's a pain to get the studio switched back on air, they have to get a feed of the emergency tape to fade up as an outside source before the studio gets put back on air.

There was a good demonstration of this one morning with Moyles when the emergency tape was played twice in the same show when the fire alarm system was having a funny morning. Then they were able to play the tape manually from the studio because the first alarm was silent and no one noticed as they got back in and seamlessly faded off it.

The second time however the alarm was audible on air and they couldn't get it started so just pulled the faders down and the silence detector copy triggered

https://chrismoyles.net/soundvault/soundvault.php?fileid=1088
paul_hadley and dvboy gave kudos
MA
madmusician
I remember when Chris Evans had to evacuate Radio 2 in February 2015, I was surprised that they made the decision to play the next record on the system then allow silence afterwards before the silence detector triggered, as it meant that there was a good 90 seconds of silence broadcast at an important time of the day, rather than play the emergency tape out from the studio.

Here’s how it sounded on the day (with the silence and the emergency tape edited out): https://up.metropol247.co.uk/madmusician/Evacuation;%20February%202015.mp3
SP
Steve in Pudsey
That link isn't working, I suspect the ; in the filename could be the problem.

I think some stations have a facility to tell the playout system to just carry on playing everything back to back which they use in these circumstances, perhaps that was the intention and for whatever reason it didn't go to plan?

In the days before playout systems there used to be a minidisc in the Radio 1 studios for this occurrence. Legend has it that on one occasion Simon Mayo had to use it only to find out once everyone was outside that the recently departed Nicky Campbell had replaced the contents with a Best Of his show.
BU
buster
The emergency "tape" can be played in from the studio playout system (eg for evacuation situations) or via the silence detector (when things are hitting the fan). These needn't contain the same audio.

In the evacuation situation, it's much easier to deal with when they are back in the building if the studio is still on air. If the silence detector version gets triggered it's a pain to get the studio switched back on air, they have to get a feed of the emergency tape to fade up as an outside source before the studio gets put back on air.

There was a good demonstration of this one morning with Moyles when the emergency tape was played twice in the same show when the fire alarm system was having a funny morning. Then they were able to play the tape manually from the studio because the first alarm was silent and no one noticed as they got back in and seamlessly faded off it.

The second time however the alarm was audible on air and they couldn't get it started so just pulled the faders down and the silence detector copy triggered

https://chrismoyles.net/soundvault/soundvault.php?fileid=1088


That particular emergency tape seemed to be cursed, it went out quite a few times while it was in “service” and you always knew if it was Hey Ya followed by Hole in the Head that you were in emergency mode. There was one earlier in 2004 just before Mark and Lard left when the network was switched to London somehow and you got a minute or two of Wes recording a promo before his producer got a phone call telling them they were on air and to put the mic down!

Nicely edited start though into Hey Ya - RA-DI-O “1-2-3...”
JA
james-2001
I know it was TV rather than radio, but the MTV channels had an emergency tape on their channels which seemed to be in use for years. Can't remember exactly what was on it now, but I remember Stan by Eminem and Overload by the Sugababes was on it.
SP
Steve in Pudsey
The emergency "tape" can be played in from the studio playout system (eg for evacuation situations) or via the silence detector (when things are hitting the fan). These needn't contain the same audio.

In the evacuation situation, it's much easier to deal with when they are back in the building if the studio is still on air. If the silence detector version gets triggered it's a pain to get the studio switched back on air, they have to get a feed of the emergency tape to fade up as an outside source before the studio gets put back on air.

There was a good demonstration of this one morning with Moyles when the emergency tape was played twice in the same show when the fire alarm system was having a funny morning. Then they were able to play the tape manually from the studio because the first alarm was silent and no one noticed as they got back in and seamlessly faded off it.

The second time however the alarm was audible on air and they couldn't get it started so just pulled the faders down and the silence detector copy triggered

https://chrismoyles.net/soundvault/soundvault.php?fileid=1088


I think that second time Moyles put the mics back up to stop the silence detector while he was trying to get something other than Outkast to play (maybe trying to start the emergency playlist from a couple of tracks in?) then gave up and played it as normal.
ST
steveboswell
I know it was TV rather than radio, but the MTV channels had an emergency tape on their channels which seemed to be in use for years. Can't remember exactly what was on it now, but I remember Stan by Eminem and Overload by the Sugababes was on it.


Overload by the Sugababes seems to be a favourite amongst emergency tape compilers!
GE
thegeek Founding member
BBI45 posted:
Show Must Go On is a common choice for emergency tapes

Sorry if this has been said before, but is there not a bit of irony in that?

I still can't hear Missing by Everything But the Girl without thinking of Clyde 1's emergency tape (which went off multiple times on one stormy evening, presumably because the line to Black Hill kept dropping out)
BH
BillyH Founding member
As mentioned by me a few times in the past, the Magic TV channel went completely nuts one night in 2003 and kept playing Don't You Want Me by the Human League all night - on average in between every other video. At the time I thought they were either trolling us or some mad Human League fan had called up a million times and kept requesting it, but it was someone on this forum who reasoned it was probably their emergency tape/disc that kept restarting for whatever reason.

A local radio station around the same time got stuck on the last five seconds of 'Starlight' by Supermen Lovers and kept replaying it for hours, which must have been some computer crash that took a while to resolve. Even now when I hear "Staaaarrr, liiiiiight, haaaaaave, what you neeeeeeeed" I'm taken back to that evening...
JA
james-2001
While not technically an emergency tape, when The Box first moved to a new playout system back in 2000, it often used to crash quite frequently, and was rebooted on air so you had a mix of several minutes of black screen and various colour screens until it returned. When it came back, it looked like they had a playlist programmed into it that would play until phone call requests had been recieved. So when it crashed, you'd always see at least the first two songs on that playlist- unless it crashed again before it got through them, which often happened. I remember one night where it crashed repeatedly and Same Old Brand New You by a1 must have been played at least 10 times because it was the first song on that playlist that week... and quite often it didn't even get through the entire video before it crashed again.

Looking back on it, it almost seems suprising they were able to get away with those frequent on-air crashes and reboots without even so much as an apology caption.
VM
VMPhil
What's the channel that got stuck playing 3 of a Kind - Babycakes on a loop for an entire day?
JA
james-2001
What's the channel that got stuck playing 3 of a Kind - Babycakes on a loop for an entire day?


Oh god no, that sounds like torture!

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