I was recently reading an article from TV Technology by Bill Hayes available online at: www.tvtechnology.com/article/101498 . He was struggling with the age old question of man vs. machine and tried to solve the problem with an additional machine, actually it was software, SOA.
Since I’m a master control operator, I of course have a vested interest but my opinion is not without empirical data. We as operators used to (and still do) take the decks out of remote control so that the automation system doesn’t down cut the feed. Most of the time this wasn’t an issue but if we were getting something from a non-network party we were very leery about the start and stop time and with good reason, the trepidation saved our bacon on many occasions.
Management of course always wants to cut costs, but when do the cuts become fatal? My supervisor told me once they were flirting with the idea of going unmanned overnights. Which in theory sounds great because you can cut a $50,000 a year job with little to no downside, right? They wanted a computer to page an engineer at home and he would wake up (if he remembered the pager) drive down to the station and then correct the problem. The biggest problem I pointed out is that they would be counting on a computer to notify you when a computer breaks! They thought better of the plan.
You can never get reliable unmanned master control and you can never get jet packs. Sad but true.
Jason Troyer
Denver, CO
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