This blog has been quite a few months in the making. As some of you may have heard, I will be replaced in my current job by automation. We were first told of the upcoming loss of our positions a few months ago. At the time, we were brought into a meeting with the President/General Manager and told of out outcome. It was not to be because of job performance, but, do to financial. They would no longer in the near future be able to afford us in the budget.
Am getting a little ahead of myself. Let me digress just a little. I am not the only one who got this notice. There are three of us. In my Department, originally there were six people. The three of us were given notice, and since then, one more had been let go. After the three of us go, then there will only be two. I am great at math huh? LOL
Anyway, We three got the notice early. Since we had gotten out notice, five have been let go. One of them being the other person from my department that I had already mentioned. Of the five that were let go, two were department heads. So, a total of eight seems to me the magical number for amount of Reduction In Force, or as it is also known, RIF.
Getting on as to how I named this entry. I gave it this title, because thru the years, I have taken some photographs of my office. First set would be my old set-up, and next grouping would be after the announcement of The loss of my job, and last set, of which I had been waiting to take to show The new automated equipment.
My job is called Master Control Operator. I work for a local television station. I am the person who pushes the buttons who puts programs and breaks on the air at the correct times. This is an overly simple explanation of what I do. It is enough to explain a little of what you will see in the upcoming photos. When I first started at this place, it was back when all the break spots had to be run individually. Each break segment was on a different tape and we had multiple decks on which to air the spots. As I can recall, If a program was short, We may run from 12 to 16 spots on rare occasions.
As time progressed, we moved to getting a server installed where we would load the spots onto a server, and the server would be able to run all the spots without the use of any tape decks. This made the job a whole lot easier. This was all in the time of Analog Television. I was there for the transition into the Digital age. At one point, we were broadcasting in both analog and digital Programming. We were the first in our local area to be broadcasting Digital. At first, was just all SD. Was not all High Definition. Even now, not all programs are HD, but all are Digital.
With the digital age, we have moved from broadcasting just a single channel and co-broadcast on cable, to broadcasting an analog signal and a digital one. While still being an Analog station, were were actually broadcasting three channels. Now, as a digital station, we are broadcasting three different channels not counting doing anything affiliated with cable. We are carried on a few different cable companies. There is our local one, We are on some others feeding nearby communites as well as a cable company in Canada feeding the London Ontario market.
Going to the photos at the top of the page, this was my original Suite. Alas, the photos to our temporary MCO office have been lost. This office for those of you whom may have visited me at work was the small room just off of the main office. All the equipment was crammed into this small room. hence the word in the title of SWEAT. With all that electronics equipment in a small room, it heated up fast. We were so loaded with electronics, that we had a concern about blowing fuses because of how many extention cords we had been using. There was no more spots open in which to plug in anymore.
The SWEET name comes from our new suite. WOW, What a set up. Am learning how to use, but this is all going towards my replacement, but, atleast I will have experience on the board. The Master Control Office now looks so large! Eliminating the racks that had held all the Cathode ray TV units have now been replaced by only TWO count them, Two, Flat Screen units. Even the desk top has so much room now. I will add a few photos below. It has been a ride.
Lastly, I will add on a video clip I took using my camera. Just to show what these flat screens can do.
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