The last 8 weeks have brought many challenges to HRB. How does the station keep on air and broadcasting shows for the patients and staff? In keeping with government guidelines, the studios have not been used the majority of the time apart from a small number of shows each week. Most shows have been produced from presenters’ homes.
The station had the basic technology infrastructure to be able to do this although an internet upgrade meant that a more sophisticated system for recording shows was able to be rolled out along with the ability to present live shows remotely too, although this has yet to be rolled out fully.
Programme Controller Neil Ogden says “HRB was fortunately in a good position technologically. We had the basic infrastructure to record programmes from presenters’ homes and we have had for many years the ways and means to do many everyday functions of running the station remotely too. We found that the extra strain on the internet line meant an upgrade to fibre became necessary and the out of date technology that we were using for live incoming shows needed upgrading.”
Thanks to the technology of a Raspberry PI, the station now has the ability to produce live shows remotely, something that has been happening on a Sunday afternoon with Neil Ogden’s Sound of Sunday.
The technology won’t be going away when things get back to normal – the ability to record shows remotely will potentially be of benefit in the future to allow the easier production of shows remotely while the ability to broadcast live remotely means outside broadcast from any location where there is internet become possible.
