Ah- we have a fire alarm test every Monday morning but usually at 5 past 6. Hey, proves it's live!!! A similar thing happened to me many years ago, the alarm went off and it doesn't cut off when the mic is opened, so I introduced the film with a "please evacuate the building"
Good to see that we've moved forwards from the days when studios with live mics were acoustically isolated, and there were warning lights to indicate a problem.
If only something similar could be done now, or is it no longer possible?
There must be ways around that though - the mic channel is never open for long, and any blind announcer could have access to audio alarms in their headset or something?
It ought to be possible.
We survived in the past with no announcers being killed in fire alarm related mishaps.
There's plenty of ways around it. Although for a test, you would want to test all the components, so even if you've got speakers that are normally muted for an alarm, they still need testing (that could be managed though by separately testing those at a time when it's not disruptive). Unfortunately though, with the days of building management companies, and architects who want to manage the entire specification of buildings, even though they don't understand the day-to-day needs of the people who will actually work in their designs, getting things like silent alarms, staged alarms, and basically anything that doesn't fit into their normal understanding of how these things work, becomes a challenge.
I've literally had the argument with an architect about them wanting to put smoke detectors into a live events space, and when told that we use smoke machines all the time, his answer was not to use the smoke machine. We were pushing for a switchable rate-of-rise + smoke detection system, but that wasn't in his book of things to use so we couldn't have it (problem solved six months later with a rather expensive redesign / re-equip of the whole fire alarm system).
Silent alarms and staged systems are still commonly installed and commissioned. For DDA compliance you need to have alternate methods of alerting people, but for this scenario, it could be as simple as having a single quiet beep in the booths when initially triggered, followed by the alarm sounding 15 seconds later - plenty long enough for someone to wrap up an announcement and kill the mic before the full alarm sounds. Having staged systems so that the booths don't go into full alarm mode immediately would be a good step too. Basically, it can be done, but whether the building was able to be designed for use rather than some architects idea of what would look nice* is another matter.
( * my favourite argument with an architect is that we couldn't mount a 50" TV on a plate glass wall, even if he can draw it on his plans. Followed by the electrical contractor saying he couldn't mount sockets on a plate glass wall, even if the architect draws them there. Apparently we were being difficult for not working with his vision )
At the risk of sounding ancient, we did have a two stage alarm at BH in the old days.
Worked well.
First alarm alerted you to the problem while the in house firemen investigated, if it was a false alarm it was cancelled, if it was found to be real it was changed to evacuate. If no response was received it timed out to evacute automatically.
It gave on air staff the chance to go to something else, and those of us in control rooms to grab things ready to take with us, and maybe get someone to run down the road to standby facilities, to prepare, just in case.
I understand the plate glass issue - fitting loudspeakers in embassies and Prince's residences would often pose the issue of attaching cables to a lot of marble. Minus kudos to the BT installation engineer who clipped the cable to the grand piano though, even if it was a suitable wooden surface......
There must be ways around that though - the mic channel is never open for long, and any blind announcer could have access to audio alarms in their headset or something?
It ought to be possible.
We survived in the past with no announcers being killed in fire alarm related mishaps.
You'll never get anywhere in the broadcast industry with that kind of attitude
At the risk of sounding ancient, we did have a two stage alarm at BH in the old days.
Worked well.
First alarm alerted you to the problem while the in house firemen investigated, if it was a false alarm it was cancelled, if it was found to be real it was changed to evacuate. If no response was received it timed out to evacute automatically.
It gave on air staff the chance to go to something else, and those of us in control rooms to grab things ready to take with us, and maybe get someone to run down the road to standby facilities, to prepare, just in case.
That's still the case in NBH. There are amber warning and red evacuate lights for operational areas. Amber usually means either a sensor has actuated and is being investigated in that area OR that another area of the building is already evacuating. However it is possible to go straight to red I believe.
