The Grits & a Brit technical team would like to issue an apology.
The Grits & a Brit technical team is Jay.
This is where the problems begin…..
There are certain things you expect when recording a podcast. You expect the occasional stumble over a word or you expect someone to forget what they were talking about halfway through a sentence. You’ll expect Chris and Jay to disagree about something that neither of them realized was controversial until approximately thirty seconds earlier.
What you don’t expect is for one of the hosts to suddenly sound as though she’s recording the podcast from three streets away.
Welcome to Episode 9 of Grits & a Brit.
An episode in which we told the story of how Chris and Jay met. An episode involving a 3,000-mile bicycle ride across America. An episode full of memories, stories and laughter, and an episode in which our highly trained technical department — Jay — pressed the wrong buttons.
Meet the Grits & a Brit Technical Department
Some podcasts have producers. Some have sound engineers. Some have entire teams sitting behind enormous mixing desks, monitoring levels and making sure everything sounds perfect. Grits & a Brit has Jay. This is considerably cheaper and usually, it works.
On this particular occasion, however, our technical department made what professionals in the broadcasting industry refer to as:
“Oops.”
A button was pressed, possibly more than one button. Things happened. Lights presumably came on. Jay remained confident and Chris began slowly disappearing into the distance. Not physically of course, that would have been easier to diagnose. Just her voice.
“Why Does Chris Sound Like She’s Outside?”
The recording continued. Jay sounded perfectly normal. Chris sounded like she’d left the room, then the house, then possibly the neighborhood.
Imagine this:
Jay: “So that’s when I finally arrived in Florida after cycling 3,000 miles across America…”
Chris, apparently standing near a mailbox three streets away: “And that’s when we met…”
Jay: “Exactly.”
At no point did the technical department think:
“Hmm. Chris sounds unusually far away.” This is why the technical department is now under review.
The Investigation Begins
Once the problem was discovered, there was an immediate and thorough technical investigation.
By which we mean Jay stared at the equipment for a while.
The microphones were checked. The cables were checked. The settings were checked. Buttons were examined suspiciously. Eventually, the truth emerged. The equipment was fine. The microphones were fine. The computer was fine. There was no mysterious software problem. There was no electrical interference. There wasn’t even a particularly convincing excuse…… Jay had pressed the wrong buttons.
Chris: “So it wasn’t the equipment?”
Jay: “Technically, the equipment did exactly what I told it to do.”
Chris: “And what did you tell it to do?”
Jay: “Apparently… put you three streets away.”
Dear reader, there are moments in a marriage when saying nothing is probably the safest option.
This was one of those moments.
Jay did not choose that option.
Chris Has Announced New Quality-Control Procedures
Following what we’re now calling The Episode 9 Incident, there have been some changes behind the scenes at Grits & a Brit.
Specifically, Chris has announced that she will be watching Jay very closely from now on. Very closely. The days when Jay could casually press buttons without supervision are apparently over.
Jay: “I know what I’m doing.”
Chris: “That’s what worries me.”
Before future recordings, all suspicious button-pressing activity may now be subject to inspection. Chris will now be keeping a careful eye on the Tech Team. Nobody needs to tell Jay that. He already knows.
But Here’s the Funny Thing…
Despite our little technical adventure, Episode 9 remains one of our favorite episodes.
Because it’s our story.
It’s the episode where we talk about how a British man ended up cycling roughly 3,000 miles across America and eventually arrived in Florida. And how, at the end of all those miles, Chris and Jay met. Neither of them could possibly have known where that meeting would eventually lead. Marriage. Life together in America. Years of arguments about biscuits, cookies, football, soccer, tea, tipping and the correct spelling of colour. And eventually… A podcast.
Admittedly, you’d hope that after all that effort the Tech Team would have remembered to record both hosts at approximately the same volume.
But you can’t have everything.
An Official Statement from the Technical Department
Following recent events, Jay would like to issue the following statement:
“The Grits & a Brit Technical Department is aware of an incident during Episode 9 in which Chris appeared to be broadcasting from somewhere considerably further away than the chair she was actually sitting in.
We take matters of this nature extremely seriously.
An immediate investigation was launched, lasting several minutes and involved staring at the sound equipment, checking a number of settings and quietly hoping the problem would turn out to be somebody else’s fault.
It did not.
The investigation concluded that the incident was caused by what the Technical Department describes as ‘operator error’ and what Chris describes as ‘Jay pressing the wrong buttons.’
The Technical Department accepts full responsibility. This was relatively easy, as the Technical Department consists entirely of me.
The affected audio has now been corrected and Episode 9 has been restored to the high technical standards our listeners have come to expect — namely, being able to hear both hosts from roughly the same postcode.
Additional safeguards have now been introduced. These include checking the settings before recording, not pressing buttons simply because they light up, and Chris standing behind me saying, ‘What does that one do?’
We are confident that lessons have been learned.
Chris is less confident.
On behalf of the entire Grits and a Brit Technical Department, I apologize.
Unfortunately, I am the entire Grits & a Brit Technical Department.”
— Jay
Head of Technical Operations
Grits and a Brit
Button-pressing privileges currently under review
Listen to Episode 9: How I Met Your Podcaster
So if you haven’t heard Episode 9 yet, give it a listen.
You’ll hear the story of the 3,000-mile bicycle ride that eventually brought Jay to Florida, how Chris and Jay met, and how one chance encounter ultimately led to Grits & a Brit. What you won’t hear is Chris pioneering an exciting new podcasting technique: remote recording from several streets away while actually sitting right next to the microphone.
Thankfully, the technical team eventually figured out what the technical team had done wrong, and Episode 9 has now been fixed. Chris has been returned to the room, the audio sounds as it should, and all evidence of her brief broadcasting career from the other side of the neighborhood has been removed.
We’d like to say the whole thing was intentional.
It wasn’t.
But that’s podcasting.
And for all future episodes, rest assured that Grits & a Brit now operates under a rigorous new technical procedure:
Jay presses the buttons.
Chris watches Jay press the buttons.
Very closely.
What could possibly go wrong?