Great Mistakes #12

I had to put Late Night Live to air a couple of nights this week and I remembered the time I won the prize for being the only person to turn up for a live radio program.  Or should have won it anyway.

I was very new at the ABC, I had only been there about 3 weeks and got put on the transmission shift for Late Light Nive. Which is late at night when there is no one there.  Except for us.  And on one night, only me.

Because I was new to the ABC I didn't know what was normal yet, and had never worked in broadcasting before, so couldn't work out what was normal.  It was only my 4th night on the shift and when i had arrived at work about 6pm the LNL office was open and buzzing with activity.  I did a few other things and went back at about 7:30 to say hi and see what was on the books for the night, but the office door was shut and locked.  Not knowing that that is not normal, I presumed they were out for dinner and would be back, not to worry.  But by 9:30 they still hadn't turned up and I was starting to worry.  It was cutting things a bit fine since we go on air at 10.  So I rang my boss.  

Me...."Ummmm Late Night Live is on tonight isn't it?".   

Him..."yes"

Me..."then why am I the only one here?"

Him..."I don't know"

Bit of panic.

No phone numbers could be found to call anyone to find out what was going on.

So my boss started talking me through looking for a program that maybe was supposed to be broadcast that night or a standby program.

Me being new still wasn't very good at working out what a badly labelled program might look like.

Anyway, I couldn't find a program that looked like it should be played that night.

But I did find a generic standby program.

The minutes ticked away and I played this standby program and sat in the studio waiting for the phone to ring.

It took about 1 minute for the executive producer to ring up and find out why the wrong program was being played.

The story was they had pre recorded the program, but forgotten to tell anyone that we weren't going live - including me, my boss, master control where the switching to the studios is done, plus other people who needed to know.

The phone call was a major understatement...

Me..."Where the hell is everyone?''

EP..."It's not your fault.."

Me..."I know it's not my fault....Why didn't anyone tell me?"