Allow me to be a geek for a second, but do you know anything about OS/2? I have no clue what so ever. In fact, prior to working here, I thought the operating system was dead. Yeah, you remember that thing IBM tried to put out in competition with Windows in the mid-1990’s? Well, probably not, but regardless, it existed at one time. In the world of NPR, it lives. In fact, it thrives.
All the satellite feeds you hear on the radio are switched using a single computer running this said system. Somehow, and for some reason, NPR bought into OS/2 back whenever and built its entire network around it. It truly is an amazing thing to behold but hardly pretty to look at. The interface is not easy to understand, and that goes for the OS and the software that switches the satellite streams. It’s ugly. In six months, it will all change as NPR pushes down a new way to do things, but until then, we have a dead computer and are doing all switching by hand.
With two radio stations, pushing out live feeds and recording other feeds for later playback, it can kind of get confusing.