How do public radio interviews in remote studios work?
June 25, 2017 6:55 PM Subscribe
As a public radio junkie, I hear radio hosts interview guests located in remote studios several times a week. I've always wondered what goes on behind the scenes.
When one radio station interviews a guest to another station in a different city, what actually happens? I can imagine the flagship station in New York has a good relationship with the flagship station in Boston, but surely there are thousands of much smaller stations that don't have any personal contacts with each other. How does a producer in Bowling Green get time in a studio in Flagstaff to interview someone for a show that hasn't yet aired? Is there some sort of secret index of radio producers' personal phone numbers, or do you just call up the front desk at a radio station and ask them for studio time? Is there a payment involved? Is the audio recorded on both sides and merged later, or recorded in real time on one side with a high bandwidth audio link? Do fringe podcasters participate in the same network, or is there a limited in group among established radio people?
When one radio station interviews a guest to another station in a different city, what actually happens? I can imagine the flagship station in New York has a good relationship with the flagship station in Boston, but surely there are thousands of much smaller stations that don't have any personal contacts with each other. How does a producer in Bowling Green get time in a studio in Flagstaff to interview someone for a show that hasn't yet aired? Is there some sort of secret index of radio producers' personal phone numbers, or do you just call up the front desk at a radio station and ask them for studio time? Is there a payment involved? Is the audio recorded on both sides and merged later, or recorded in real time on one side with a high bandwidth audio link? Do fringe podcasters participate in the same network, or is there a limited in group among established radio people?
Oh and yeah they emailed them the audio recordings and, I presume, merged them. I don't know the specifics but I know they sent big files to the public radio station that interviewed me afterwards.
posted by jessamyn at 7:16 PM on June 25, 2017
posted by jessamyn at 7:16 PM on June 25, 2017
There are audio interfaces for POTS (plain old telephone system), ISDN, and VOIP telephony systems that tie into the audio mixers used in TV and radio studios (as well as some commercial studios) that are used for real-time remote interviews (and some non-realtime ones). In other cases, they might record to media and send them via mail or digital transfer.
WETA's studio page has examples of the services they provided - if someone wanted to interview someone in DC, they might contact WETA and hire their production services.
Exactly how the interview is conducted can very. On one extreme, the interviewer might just e-mail someone questions and the answers are recorded and then merged with a different interview. In others, there might be a real-time dialog, with the interviewee hearing the questions via headphones/pieces or speakers in the studio.
posted by Candleman at 7:27 PM on June 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
WETA's studio page has examples of the services they provided - if someone wanted to interview someone in DC, they might contact WETA and hire their production services.
Exactly how the interview is conducted can very. On one extreme, the interviewer might just e-mail someone questions and the answers are recorded and then merged with a different interview. In others, there might be a real-time dialog, with the interviewee hearing the questions via headphones/pieces or speakers in the studio.
posted by Candleman at 7:27 PM on June 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
I recall at least one This American Life segment, don't ask me which, which broke the 4th wall, as it were, when a recording engineer in the same room as the subject was somehow pulled into the interview. They revealed that the way it worked in that case was that an engineer with portable recording equipment went to the home or workplace of the subject, who was then mic'ed up and spoke on the phone to the interviewer, and both interviewer and subject were recorded on high quality equipment while they were speaking to each other over a phone line. The two high-quality recordings were then intercut for the benefit of the listener.
But what it comes down to in general is that there are recording studios for hire all over, many of which are radio stations, but they are likely the minority. Presumably radio stations can do deals with which other, but otherwise it's payment for services rendered.
In the case of live interaction, the studios or radio stations with high-enough-speed digital lines (ISDN, as mentioned before, is a staple technology) for live, interactive (read: low-delay, aka low latency) high-quality audio. BBC's movie reviewer Mark Kermode does a weekly show on BBC FiveLive (Radio 5), and in the past he has done it from KUOW (Seattle's NPR affiliate) as well as WGBH* in Boston, which suggests some affinity for public radio stations in general, or maybe just ease of use. There, the only downside is time-zones; the 2PM Friday show started at 6AM for Kermode here in Seattle. Audio-wise you couldn't tell he wasn't in the studio, but there's a webcam in London which was showing his empty chair, and so his absence was conversation fodder.
* Incidently, "WGBH" is a terribly amusing set of call-letters to a Briton; to them GBH is short for "Grievous Bodily Harm," something like the crime we'd call Assault & Battery.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:24 PM on June 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
But what it comes down to in general is that there are recording studios for hire all over, many of which are radio stations, but they are likely the minority. Presumably radio stations can do deals with which other, but otherwise it's payment for services rendered.
In the case of live interaction, the studios or radio stations with high-enough-speed digital lines (ISDN, as mentioned before, is a staple technology) for live, interactive (read: low-delay, aka low latency) high-quality audio. BBC's movie reviewer Mark Kermode does a weekly show on BBC FiveLive (Radio 5), and in the past he has done it from KUOW (Seattle's NPR affiliate) as well as WGBH* in Boston, which suggests some affinity for public radio stations in general, or maybe just ease of use. There, the only downside is time-zones; the 2PM Friday show started at 6AM for Kermode here in Seattle. Audio-wise you couldn't tell he wasn't in the studio, but there's a webcam in London which was showing his empty chair, and so his absence was conversation fodder.
* Incidently, "WGBH" is a terribly amusing set of call-letters to a Briton; to them GBH is short for "Grievous Bodily Harm," something like the crime we'd call Assault & Battery.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:24 PM on June 25, 2017 [2 favorites]
Do fringe podcasters participate in the same network
Most of the podcasters (that aren't affiliated with something like NPR) I know that do interviews are using Skype for the purpose at this time. There's a few ways that are commonly used to do that. Mostly I know people going with the third option and running it through a mixer (hardware or software). If they have the budget, they can hire the same studios as the radio stations, but the costs involved may not be worth it to them with the much smaller budgets they operate on. Even if it's just a 5-10 minute interview, there's usually minimum fees that push the costs up.
posted by Candleman at 9:16 PM on June 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
Most of the podcasters (that aren't affiliated with something like NPR) I know that do interviews are using Skype for the purpose at this time. There's a few ways that are commonly used to do that. Mostly I know people going with the third option and running it through a mixer (hardware or software). If they have the budget, they can hire the same studios as the radio stations, but the costs involved may not be worth it to them with the much smaller budgets they operate on. Even if it's just a 5-10 minute interview, there's usually minimum fees that push the costs up.
posted by Candleman at 9:16 PM on June 25, 2017 [1 favorite]
Best answer: I'm a public radio producer. Booking guests at studios around the country is part of my job.
As mentioned above, most of the interviews are via ISDN connections between studios. Here's an example of how a studio booking works:
Say I'm in Boston and we need to interview someone in Birmingham, Alabama. The first thing I do is go to this website, which has a list of all the public radio stations in the country with ISDN capabilities and the contact information for the engineer there. I'll e-mail the engineer in Birmingham to say that we're hoping to interview a guest via ISDN at their studios on Tuesday, June 27th, from 1pm ET to 2pm ET. If the engineer says, "Sure, that works", I'll get directions to the studio and send them to the guest. At a little before 1pm ET on Tuesday, we'll dial the studio in Birmingham over ISDN. It's a super fast connection, so we'll be able to hear the guest in Birmingham in high-quality sound (and vice versa). The engineer in our studio records the host and guest on separate tracks so it makes editing the interview easier. The cost of using a studio varies, but it's usually around $125 to $150 an hour in the US. The studio in Birmingham will send an invoice later that our business manager will pay. There's generally trust between public radio stations that invoices will be paid.
We also sometimes do tape syncs (described above), where we'll send a radio producer to record a guest who we're talking with on the phone. The producer will send us the audio after the interview and we'll mix it with the host's studio audio. Here are good instructions for how to do a tape sync. We usually pay about $125 per tape sync. We find radio producers around the country using the Association of Independents in Radio's Talent Directory.
I'm sure podcasters could book a studio just like we do, but they probably wouldn't be able to use ISDN. They would likely tape themselves in their home studios while the guest in the other studio is recorded there. The audio would be mixed together later. The payment part might be a little trickier since they're not affiliated with a station, so they might need to pay up front at first or something like that.
posted by Dalton at 3:39 AM on June 26, 2017 [11 favorites]
As mentioned above, most of the interviews are via ISDN connections between studios. Here's an example of how a studio booking works:
Say I'm in Boston and we need to interview someone in Birmingham, Alabama. The first thing I do is go to this website, which has a list of all the public radio stations in the country with ISDN capabilities and the contact information for the engineer there. I'll e-mail the engineer in Birmingham to say that we're hoping to interview a guest via ISDN at their studios on Tuesday, June 27th, from 1pm ET to 2pm ET. If the engineer says, "Sure, that works", I'll get directions to the studio and send them to the guest. At a little before 1pm ET on Tuesday, we'll dial the studio in Birmingham over ISDN. It's a super fast connection, so we'll be able to hear the guest in Birmingham in high-quality sound (and vice versa). The engineer in our studio records the host and guest on separate tracks so it makes editing the interview easier. The cost of using a studio varies, but it's usually around $125 to $150 an hour in the US. The studio in Birmingham will send an invoice later that our business manager will pay. There's generally trust between public radio stations that invoices will be paid.
We also sometimes do tape syncs (described above), where we'll send a radio producer to record a guest who we're talking with on the phone. The producer will send us the audio after the interview and we'll mix it with the host's studio audio. Here are good instructions for how to do a tape sync. We usually pay about $125 per tape sync. We find radio producers around the country using the Association of Independents in Radio's Talent Directory.
I'm sure podcasters could book a studio just like we do, but they probably wouldn't be able to use ISDN. They would likely tape themselves in their home studios while the guest in the other studio is recorded there. The audio would be mixed together later. The payment part might be a little trickier since they're not affiliated with a station, so they might need to pay up front at first or something like that.
posted by Dalton at 3:39 AM on June 26, 2017 [11 favorites]
I'm a fringe podcaster (no, not telling), though I contribute in-studio and don't do any of the engineering myself. My friend has a small setup, namely 2x 8-channel mixers, a windows PC with a fat hard drive running Audacity or similar, and 8 mics on moveable arms, 8 sets of headphones.
Anything that can be plugged into the mixer will work as audio, and we commonly have done that with tablets (running soundboard apps so we get the wacky-boings in when we need them, and with our level of comedy, we really do need them), a laptop (running Skype, for when one of the co-hosts was across country-- it worked so-so as long as the wifi held out), and could do the same for phone calls from phones, music from portable music players, etc. We once plugged in an Amazon Echo Dot so we could make Alexa contribute to one of the podcasts, though we had to script and cue her and trim the cues. We tried wiring the echo dot, but the output was noisy, so we mic'ed it instead.
It's pretty easy to avoid these costs with cheaper-sounding workarounds if you aren't married to that quality-level that Public Radio has.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:48 AM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
Anything that can be plugged into the mixer will work as audio, and we commonly have done that with tablets (running soundboard apps so we get the wacky-boings in when we need them, and with our level of comedy, we really do need them), a laptop (running Skype, for when one of the co-hosts was across country-- it worked so-so as long as the wifi held out), and could do the same for phone calls from phones, music from portable music players, etc. We once plugged in an Amazon Echo Dot so we could make Alexa contribute to one of the podcasts, though we had to script and cue her and trim the cues. We tried wiring the echo dot, but the output was noisy, so we mic'ed it instead.
It's pretty easy to avoid these costs with cheaper-sounding workarounds if you aren't married to that quality-level that Public Radio has.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:48 AM on June 27, 2017 [1 favorite]
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posted by jessamyn at 7:14 PM on June 25, 2017 [5 favorites]