Technical Breakdowns and other Gremlins....

Lapin

An all too common occurance on Irish radio. Hardly any programme involving a phonecall from a reporter goes by without a breakdown, a bad line or a reporter getting cut off mid sentence.

As I write this, Sunday Sport (RTÉ Radio 1) has been on air for less than 6 minutes and already they have had 2 communications cock ups.

Surely our broadcasters can afford some decent equipment to provide for their reporters? My mobile phone cost me less than €50 and it has never let me down.

BrianD

If you are using a fixed or mobile line for reports then you are reliant on that network. It's outside of the broadcasters control. Signal quality will vary from location to location and if they are at a football match there is likely to be a higher demand on the network leading to congestion and the higher probability of dropped calls.

I would guess that the iPhone is a popular handset with reporters. You only have read the issues regarding "dropped calls" in other forums.

More Music

Lapin wrote: »

Surely our broadcasters can afford some decent equipment to provide for their reporters? My mobile phone cost me less than €50 and it has never let me down.

So are you saying stations provide phones of inferior quality to your €50 mobile.

A phone is a phone. Doesn't matter if it's a €50 Nokia or a €600 iPhone. Your still stuck with phone quality, they all sound much the same and you're at the mercy of the mobile network.

Codecs, mixers, satellite and ISDN is in a different league.

Lapin

Fair points regarding networks as the cause rather than the phones but still doesn't answer my question as to why such breakdowns occur so often on live radio.

Its not just sports reports involving mobile phones. It happens almost everyday on Morning Ireland, and a landline to the US went down this morning on Marian Finnucane's programme.

It doesn't happen nearly as often on the BBC and other radio stations in the UK in my experience.

Lapin

More Music wrote: »

So are you saying stations provide phones of inferior quality to your €50 mobile.

Wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.

JonathanAnon

Lapin wrote: »

Its not just sports reports involving mobile phones. It happens almost everyday on Morning Ireland, and a landline to the US went down this morning on Marian Finnucane's programme.

Not only did it go down, Lapin, when they called him up it was as crackly as a bad old analog phone connection.. baffling.. I mean we can call people on the space station with a better and more reliable line than RTE seem to be able to achieve..

QuadLeo

Just so I understand this correctly...

Are you suggesting that RTE are responsible for the quality/reliability of someone's phone? Because if so then that's ridiculous. We all know how often networks drop calls in this country. 99% coverage is a statistic that's thrown around but we all know it's not accurate. Maybe, just maybe the networks in other countries like the UK are more reliable therefore - less dropped calls. Part of the problem with landlines now is that people have wireless phones with the base-station hidden away somewhere. The further they get from the base-station the worse the landline will get. You can't always account for the end user. I don't accept the argument that these things don't happen on BBC. Maybe you notice it less with the BBC because you may not listen to the BBC as much as RTE. Obviously you'll hear more technical errors on the service you listen to most. Either way these things happen and that's live radio.

JonathanAnon

QuadLeo wrote: »

Just so I understand this correctly...Are you suggesting that RTE are responsible for the quality/reliability of someone's phone? Because if so then that's ridiculous.

It's up to RTE to ensure that callers are only put on air if there is a good chance that their side of the conversation will be audible.. They should have pre recorded the interview with Neil O'Dowd, especially given that he didnt interact with the counter views that were put forward by Matt Cooper.

As well as that.. at the start of Finucane this morning, somebody was coughing through the whole first ten minutes, there was mobile interference for a substantial part of the show, and Marian kept ruffling the papers in to the microphone... I think hear the bashing around of teacups that you normally hear, but maybe that was blocked out by the aforementioned noises..

QuadLeo

I've heard that too but it's a separate issue. I just think it's a bit much to expect RTE or any station for that matter to be able to predict if a line will stay up or drop out. These things happen. It still comes back to network coverage in this country. If stations started rejecting calls from everybody whose phone line isn't perfect certain shows would struggle (liveline, ak phoneshow, joan lea show etc...) It's definitely not acceptable for a recorded piece or a key interview etc but for breaking news and chat/phone-in it's to be expected. Unfortunately.

JonathanAnon

QuadLeo wrote: »

I've heard that too but it's a separate issue.

ah yeah I understand that.. And I agree about issues with live call in shows .. i.e. that a certain amount of problems with lines is unavoidable.. But there just seems to be a really casual attitude to sound quality in general in RTE...

dib

JonathanAnon wrote: »

But there just seems to be a really casual attitude to sound quality in general in RTE...

Have to say that's absolutely ridiculous. In my opinion, the sound quality on RTE Radio One is by far the best in the country. Today FM and Newstalk in particular would be far worse as far as I'm concerned.

It seems to be the "cool" thing to have a go at RTE on this forum and quite frankly it's getting extremely boring (and no, I don't work for them).

mike65

More again (apparently its the wind!)

QuadLeo

mike65 wrote: »

More again (apparently its the wind!)

hahaha couldn't possibly be the wind or any other excuse for that matter.

It's clearly RTE's policy to make their staff use bad phone lines only, and all the engineers are trained to make each line sound as bad as possible. We all know they just want to read the paper and nobody in montrose actually cares about the quality. They just make up excuses like "the wind" & "bad reception" to annoy the discerning public. :rolleyes:

Lapin

dib wrote: »

Have to say that's absolutely ridiculous. In my opinion, the sound quality on RTE Radio One is by far the best in the country. Today FM and Newstalk in particular would be far worse as far as I'm concerned.

It seems to be the "cool" thing to have a go at RTE on this forum and quite frankly it's getting extremely boring (and no, I don't work for them).

Its got nothing to do with being cool.

RTÉ get the credit they deserve from me when it is merited.
Likewise with criticism. They are not above reproach.
As a publicly funded entitity, we are entitled to ask questions of them.

Besides the point, this thread is not aimed at RTÉ in particular. Faults in communications are commonplace with other radio stations. But as RTÉ is by far the largest broadcaster in the country, its only natural that there will be a higher number of comments concerning them here.

mike65

Another dropped line today on the lunchtime news. Pretty much guaranteed to hear one every day at the moment.