Last night, BBC John* gave us a tour of BBC West Midlands in the Mailbox. That place is amazing. We got rather excited in the Midlands Today studio - the camera was so smooth to move and they have a pedal for the autocue under the desk! Undoubtedly there were three highlights though: The Archers studio, the room with no sound and the Radio 2 studio.
In the Radio 2 studio, John made the mistake of letting us play with the jingles. At Burn FM, we have an automated system but you still have to drag the songs/jingles/whatever you want to play into the carts using a mouse. In the Radio 2 studio, it's touch screen! Consequently Ali and I spent about five minutes fading all the jingles in and out and pretty much playing them non stop before we finally dragged ourselves away from the computer.
The Archers studio has all the items they use for sounds effects. The best of all was a set of stairs that was split into three sections so that running up either of these sections created diffferent noises to another section. Cue a rather excited Ali and me running up and down the stairs until it was time to move on.
And move on we did. To the room with no sound, well not no sound, but a distinct lack of it. The walls have foam triangles, which mutes the sound. Apparently they have to have cameras in there because your brain tries to turn up the sound by sending lots of blood to your ears and it could cause you to faint. Further to my trip to The Natural History Museum, Ali and I spent our time roaring at each other through the walls.

Whilst we're on the general subject of broadcast, Burn FM started their broadcast today. Emily put me down to read the Beat Bulletin at half three and so I turned up to what is possibly one of the funniest shows** I've heard in ages; they get bonus points for playing the Chuckle Brothers theme tune. After someone informed them I was supposed to be reading the Entertainment News, they tried to find the jingle but succeeded in playing some random clip of music. They then recovered from this by saying that it was the news, different to usual and to be interpreted how you will. They really were hilarious; when I left, I tuned my phone to Burn and it resulted in a lot of trying not to laugh as I walk down the street for fear of looking mad.


*So called because he works at the BBC and is called John. We are geniuses when it comes to names.
**If you are a student, or generally don't have to go to work for whatever reason, their show is apparently now going to be on Fridays from 3, so tune in for improv, randomness and general hilarity...that is of course if you can bear to tear yourself away from Colin and Edith on Radio 1.