Scribblings From The Public Restroom Stalls Of The Gods

OK, a funny story from my early days in TV, before I get Babylon 5 off my brain again.

My first TV job was technically “board operator” at the local Fox station (which isn’t even the local Fox station anymore). When I started, everything was switched live, and commercial breaks were a nerve-wracking rapid-fire Chinese fire drill of tape swapping. Somewhere in there, two things happened to bring a little bit of sanity to the proceedings: it was decided that the local breaks for network programming should be done from pre-built reels, and then at a later date, the station purchased a computer-based system for running spots, and an automation system to go with it. The two were even connected – you’d program the automation to take the local breaks and it would autofire that computer. Wow! I’m sure the resolution and storage capacity of that setup would be laughable now, but back then it was right out of the future.

Local programming, however, was still “built” – i.e. the appropriate commercials were literally insert-edited (or at least they were supposed to be) onto the tapes in question. Let’s say you had an episode of Love Connection; in the gaps left for local breaks, you’d insert-edit the local commercials on the log, one at a time; this was called “building” the show, and it was done at a little edit bay in the back of the control room. You were supposed to be building shows in between commercial breaks.

Now this, of course, was the first step down the road to disaster. The computer system had a “playlist” loaded into it for each broadcast day. If you were “building” shows during prime time, which often happened if the previous shift didn’t get it in gear, you had to walk a tightrope – moving the computer system forward so it could insert commercials into the show you were building, but you had to be done with that procedure, and have the playlist moved back to the right place, so the automation system could catch the next break in real time. If you didn’t stay sharp, the automation system would fire the wrong break from the wrong show (and that break probably wouldn’t time out the same as the break it was supposed to be running – i.e. coming up 30 seconds short), or…it could be even worse. Since the computer spot system ran through that edit bay, technically, what the automation system switched to in order to play spots wasn’t another A/V output from that computer…it would switch to the output of that edit bay. If you were checking or building a show when the automation fired a break, nobody would see commercials: they’d see you screwing around with the tape.

Are you with me? Because here’s where it goes horrendously wrong. Imagine you’ve got some nutty board operator in his early 20s who’s gotten far enough ahead on building his shows that he’s going to kick back during prime time and do a little bit of unauthorized editing – to the tune of making a dub of the latest fresh-off-the-satellite episode of Babylon 5 without the commercials in it, to be dubbed to VHS for his own private collection. Who this person could be, I’ve no idea. He might even be a theoretical person who doesn’t actually exist. (If this entirely hypothetical individual had known that such things as “DVD box sets” of entire seasons of TV shows were only a few years away, maybe he wouldn’t have bothered.)

So here’s the disaster: at the appointed moment in prime time one Saturday night, the automation system will send its signal to the computer to play a commercial break, and simultaneously switch to the output of that edit bay. But that edit bay will be otherwise “occupied” doing something that, let’s face it, it isn’t really supposed to be doing. A tape will be running, so the commercials won’t be seen – at least not for a moment until the horrible truth sinks in for our hypothetical board op.

(Let me just take a moment to point out that, really, this Rube Goldberg setup where the entire edit bay had to idle to run commercials was one of the lousiest jobs of wiring I’ve ever seen. My room at home is set up better than that. This was just a bit…well…lazy.)

Here’s how the train wreck all comes home. The show in prime time is Fox’s own Old Faithful of reality shows, Cops. The show segment is coming to an end with the gruff announcer talking about what’ll be happening in the next segment. Then the automation, which has been correctly programmed, triggers its break at precisely the right time, right after the announcer says “When COPS returns!”…

…and then the automated switcher jumps to the edit bay, and instead of commercials, gets the following Delenn quote from In The Shadow Of Z’ha’dum: “BILLIONS WILL DIE!”

Whoever this hypothetical board op was, I don’t think he ever managed to hit a stop button so fast in his life. Still, the local sponsors had to be impressed – that was quite a tease for a lousy episode of Cops!

At some point, I think it was decided that the hypothetical board op was safer working at an edit bay in the back of the building, putting together promos and stuff. Quite right, too. Probably never worked in TV again after that. 😉… Read more