Behind the Console: The Great Flood

 

Pre- and Post-show ruminations from Executive Producer, Brent Clanton

Houston recently went through a deep freeze of Biblical proportions: If there had been a 13^th Plague, the polar vortex that hit Texas in mid-February would have been it. The Big Chills—there were two cold-events--arrived just in time for my birthday, which was spent assembling pre-recorded “Blizzard Edition” shows. We knew that with the city’s freeway system iced over, Lance and I wouldn’t be able to get into the studio. The effort would have been moot, anyway, as the building we’re in lost power, and thus internet. The following week, with the Texas Thaw well underway, we looked forward to a mid-March vacation, thinking the worst of the elements was behind us.

But, no…

Four-days into “Spring Break,” I was awakened by a phone call from our building’s manager, who reported a burst water pipe on the 10^th floor had unleashed a flood of water, flowing two floors down, directly into our studio, and “could Lance or I maybe come down and take a look?” I was 20-miles east of Nashville, and Lance was getting his chill thrill on in the Utah Tundra. My wife and I cut our visit short, and immediately drove back to Texas to see what awaited us.

I wouldn’t say the studio was a total loss, but it was clear there would be no live shows originating from our besoddened room without a lot of quick action. The deluge had spilled directly on top of our audio console—a beautiful, 22-channel Audio Arts Engineering D-76 “hybrid” analog-digital beast that was the workhorse of our room. Also lost were microphones, cameras, switches, keyboards, power-supplies…the list was exhaustive—and fatal for the studio.

Our broadcast engineer, Chuck McLeod met me the next afternoon (Friday) and we began to assess the loss--and more importantly, determined what still worked that we could rebuild upon. The power supply to the console was sitting in a puddle of water on the bottom shelf of an equipment rack, 6-inches off the floor, a victim of the splash over from the torrent from above. Removal of some of the audio console busses revealed a hopelessly befouled mother board.

We removed the damaged gear and set about determining the minimum needed to put a show back on the air. McLeod and I spent the entire next day (Saturday) building connector cables and re-engineering our audio chain around a borrowed 8-channel Mackie club mixer. I sent a photo of the Mackie to Lance and said, “this is what happens when you rinse your console in cold water: shrinkage.”

I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch for Chuck and me, and we continued into the late afternoon, removing damaged equipment, tracing circuits, and re-routing and reconnecting what we could salvage.

On Sunday, we completed the work-arounds, contriving a make-shift monitor mute out of a spare headphone amp Chuck had sitting on a shelf. If there was a beauty to be found in all the mess, it was that our original design concept, utilizing analog match boxes for the console output, made it relatively easy to “patch” microphones, audio sources, and other essential gear into our replacement mixer.

We finished up around 7pm on Sunday evening, and I gave the water-stained console a once-over with countertop polish, confident we would be “live” the following morning. To reiterate the obvious, we could not have gone from water-logged to air-worthy in three days without the able assistance of Chuck McLeod!

This writing concludes our first week back from vacation, and our first week doing the show with duct-tape and baling wire. In the coming weeks, I will be reporting to you our repair and reconfiguration of the studio, our new gear installation, and perhaps, a sneak preview as we test the “new & improved” Real Investment Show Broadcast Center & Deli.