Great Mistakes #2

Well it’s one thing to bring the curtain down on a multimillion dollar production, but to take our National broadcaster off air? Uuuhh yep – done it. Although it wasn’t really my fault, just one of those freak things.
We were having server upgrades one Saturday morning and I was on shift. We couldn’t do any live programs because all our computers were off line. So everything was precorded to be played off CD and I had the important job of sitting in the studio playing CD’s of the hours’ blocks of content, excluding the news. So at the top of every hour I had 5 minutes to change CDs and get them cued while the news was on and then at 5 past the hour, my studio was on air.
Now our CD players had a bit of a trick to them – the CD drawers weren’t mechanical closing types – you had to push them shut. But if you pushed too hard the CD sometimes jumped out of its carriage and got stuck, but if you didn’t push hard enough the door wouldn’t close. So there was a fine art to closing the CD drawer.
So 10 am, I went to change the CD and low and behold, although being extremely careful, I just shoved it that little bit too hard. The CD had jumped out and was now stuck up in the back of the CD player, unable to be played. Here’s where the panic starts. I’ve got less than 5 minutes to fix the problem or we’ll go off air. I tried and tried to get the drawer open but it was jammed. I ring up tech services in the building.
ME - “Can you please send someone up to RN studio 242 to get a CD player open in the next 2 minutes. This is an on air emergency – we’ll go off air if we don’t fix this before 5 past.”
THEM – “What’s your name?”
ME – “mi……. – can you please send someone one up now?”
THEM – “what’s your surname?”
ME – “Go……….”
THEM – “how do you spell that?”
ME – “just get someone @#%$% up here now!!!!!!!!!”
Needless to say, they didn’t get to me before 5 past and we went off air. Eventually they arrived and got the thing open and into another CD player and we were back on air.
A couple of years later when we had another server upgrade, I warned the engineer about what happened to me. I said they should have back up CDs in case the CD player jammed. They didn’t take my advice. We went off air again that morning…