Although the requirements vary from show to show, Hand Held's Nick Bruce-Smith says that typically they have supplied around eight headsets, eight hand-helds and eight in-ear systems per event, mainly from Shure. These plus whatever the bands bring of their own gear and the BBC's own radio systems means a total of up to 40 channels of radio that require licensing. Technical Earth's John ‘Freddo’ Fredericks is Brit Row's man on the ground who looks after and polices all of the radio systems on site.
According to Bruce-Smith who is responsible for arranging the licensing, the biggest complication is lack of information from the bands concerning their requirements. "Because each band is only doing such a short set, it comes quite low on their priority list to sort out, so as a rule it all tends to be rather last minute," he explained. "We invariably start with a skeleton system which never actually comes together until the day before! We can't even use the previous event as a template because often the bands have changed and available frequency ranges differ from site to site. The event as a whole isn't too complex, but it can be a bit of a juggling act to pull it all together."
The Falkirk event has proved to be the most challenging so far with lots of equipment being brought in by bands which all required licensing, coupled with the fact that there were very few frequencies available at that particular site. "In the end we decided we were just going to have to double up on some frequencies and make Freddo do some work for a change! Needless to say, it was all alright on the night!"
(Lee Baldock)
