This is where the blog gets dull, no travel information. We edited and sent the big breakfast piece last night, that was finished around 3am, we then edited the Today Programme package and sent that back.
These are sent using a small satellite dish called a BGAN (Broadband Global Area Network) said in my best nerdy voice. It basically gives me a steady broadband internet connection, which is critical here as broadband in Ethiopia is as fast as dial-up. In true broadcasting tradition, that meant me going onto the roof of the hotel (Safely) and dropping a cable into my room.
The TV, Radio, Stills pictures and text bits all get sent back this way. And it means I can keep in touch with base through email. This is also what we use to do the TV Lives.
It takes about 40 - 60mins to send the TV packages and the Radio and pics go quite quickly. By the time everything was filed, checked and everyone was happy it was 5.15am.
BBC One Breakfast wanted us to be on live to introduce our film, so I was back up at 6.30am to set all the kit up....
This morning everybody wanted a go...but at first nothing worked. The rather heavy satellite dish (The M4) is not stable and unusable, and when I try to switch to the backup that fails as well. Luckily these were the only faults all day.
So we really have spent from 8am – 6pm doing TV lives, radio lives, and sending back internet bits literally non-stop, the list is quite impressive.
But we still have some more to produce. We have one more film to make for Breakfast television tomorrow, so another late night beckons...
We had dinner in the restaurant tonight for sanity as we had it in the room yesterday. If we'd had it in the room tonight we'd have got cabin fever.
Everything was finished at send back by 3am which gave me nice long 3 hour sleep.
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