Abstract
The clanging of a bin lorry is not the usual accompaniment to Today programme interviews. Yet Lockdown Britain has turned our presenters’ front rooms into studios and they are not immune to the noises off which come with working from home.
Home presenting is not completely alien to the programme. Early in my time on Today, a spate of harsh winters saw a snowbound Garry Richardson broadcasting, Harry Potter-style, from the cupboard under his stairs. Martha, Mishal, Nick and Justin also all regularly pre-record interviews from home when guests cannot make an early morning live.
Broadcasting the entire three hours live with the studio at New Broadcasting House completely empty, however, is quite another challenge.
The small squad of sound engineers who usually get Today and other news programmes on air for outside broadcasts appeared with bags of kit to bolster the mixture of ISDN and internet connections already fixed up in the presenters’ homes. Soft furnishings took on a new importance. A minimalist, hard walled, panel-floored room is the enemy of capturing that studio silence feel, so the presenters cocooned themselves in cushions, some hung from the wall like works of art.
Laptops giving direct access to running orders written and rejigged at New Broadcasting House are no substitute for the face-to-face contact of the studio. Today’s programme “furniture” of time checks, trails and programme “idents” works only when presenters can signal to each other who is going to pick up next.
Those who have inhabited the studio galleries for a few years have become connoisseurs in hand signals. Hands thrown up in the air means “what the hell am I doing next?”, palms put varying distances apart means “how long?”, and a thumbs up when told the interview needs to end often means they are going to ask another question regardless.
A silent Zoom meeting with the presenters, studio director and overnight editor on screen turned out to be a neat way to replicate at least some of those crucial visual cues, while an app showing an atomic clock helped to avoid Today’s ultimate no-no: crashing the pips.
Jeremy Bowen recently revealed he has regularly appeared on Today naked in his war zone bed. Thankfully, the video link unveiled no such misdemeanours among our presenters. Reports that Nick presented his first home programme in pyjamas were apocryphal: he was always in a respectable shirt when I saw him.
The mechanics of getting the presenters on air were compounded by the fact that every guest was remote broadcasting too, on a sometimes shaky FaceTime, Skype or telephone line. This put a huge extra burden on the two-person studio engineer/director team, who grappled with dialling up a plethora of numbers. Not for nothing did the presenters name them with extra thanks at the end of each breathless programme.
To ease the strain, we started to record more interviews the previous day to give some breathing space, and even Thought for the Day was put on tape, with occasional rapid rewrites when there were overnight developments, such as Boris Johnson going into hospital, to ensure it hit the right note.
Behind the scenes, the day-before production team worked entirely from home, booking guests and editing recorded interviews from their kitchen tables. The office voicemail appealing for urgent calls only to be diverted to my mobile did not deter some of the more far-fetched PR pitches – my 10-year-old son became an expert mimic of my fobbing off unwanted press officer calls. And rest assured, the W1A spirit of meetings held in absurdly named rooms quickly embraced editorial conference via Zoom.
Things did not always go smoothly. There was one excruciating 10 minutes where one guest sounded like a distant wasp before disappearing completely and Martha’s line broke up and then collapsed, prompting another visit from our sound engineer with more 4G gizmos for her garden in what seemed to be a broadband blackspot.
Our initial efforts to keep as many staff as possible social distancing at home also went a bit too far and we needed to boost the office presence when the programme was on air to avoid putting too much strain on the small and fatigued overnight team – the real heroes, going into the office in the dark and battling relentlessly with the new realities.
For the future, there is the worry that guests acclimatised to home interviews will shun the studios when social distancing ends. I so hope not. You may not be able to see it, but the chemistry of the presenter going literally head to head with a politician or showing a human face to a guest with a compelling personal story crackles through any radio.
Internet connections, video links and some strewn furnishings are no substitute for the intimacy of Radio Studio number 33, where the gossips that presenters have with guests in the green room can often change the course of the on-air interview. Never before have we so much missed the soggy toast of the Today breakfast trolley.
