This morning on 2CC something went wrong with the 5am news from Sydney (my guess is that somebody didn’t press the right button at 2UE), and instead of news we got silence for 15 seconds, followed by the 2CC emergency tape. I’ve heard this new emergency tape a few times but it until this morning I had only heard the first few seconds.
The new emergency tape starts the same way as the old one [1]…a short, generic, 2CC station ID, but after that it is completely different. Some presumably witty person has the first bit of “programming” on the tape as a song…namely Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Sound Of Silence”, a rather apt song for a tape which is launched automatically after 15 seconds of silence.
Following this song there is an outdated but relatively generic promo for Mike Jeffreys’ Breakfast Program and, if I recall correctly, one of those “advertise on commercial radio” ads.
By this stage in the emergency tape I was mildly worried about the dodgy Optus satellite [2] that carries the Southern Cross Broadcasting signal. Thankfully though a weather pulse came through, which prompted 2CC’s computer to break the studio silence and therefore interrupt the emergency tape. The weather was followed by the return of John Kerr’s programme, which indicates to me that it was human error at 2UE that created silent news.
None the less, I hope the infamous alphabet song [1] is hidden on 2CC’s emergency tape somewhere, as an emergency tape just isn’t an emergency tape without the cheerful sound of “A you’re adorable, B you’re so beautiful, C you’re a cutie full of charm…”. It has a strangely adorable quality that almost reassures the listener that everything will be back to normal soon.
Samuel