The BCC - I was learning how to get things done on ships.

As I stood on the Broadcast Center (BCC) door way on my first day, I wondered what the heck I had gotten myself into. There was no floor in the room, to speak of. There was only a metal grid framework without any type of covering over it. So you had to walk on the grid work itself or else step into a hole which contained a mass of wires and cables. An accident, waiting for a place to happen.

There wasn’t a ceiling. Again there was a grid framework without ceiling panels and another mass of wires and cables. The lighting consisted of light bulbs on sockets hanging from wires which were connected by wire nuts. In the middle of the room were racks that contained every possible mismatch of video player decks, a music cartridge playing machine circa 1960, a satellite control system and assortment of satellite receivers.

At the end of the rack was another assembly of VCRs and a computer control system…or lack thereof, and an audio cassette deck player below it. This, I was to learn was the crew movie system. It was controlled by a Commodore 16 home computer, which was actually only a keyboard, and a matching 1531 cassette tape recorder.

This system was released in 1984 at an outrageous price of $99.00. Those of you who remember back then, this was the brain child behind one of the first computer games called, “Pong”. I remember playing pong with my 13 year old nephew! That was the system that controlled the crew movie channel.

THE SYSTEM

THAT CONTROLLED

THE CREW MOVIE CHANNEL!!

A Commodore 16!!! State of the art in 1984!!! This was 1997. It consisted of a keyboard and cassette player.

I soon learned this system had a world of its own. If there was any type of power fluctuation, which was often on this ship, the Commodore 16 would shut down and had to be rebooted. How this was done was by loading an audio cassette tape into the 1531 cassette player, pushing play on the deck and then holding your breath while the ‘booting up’ process went to work. This usually took 30 minutes or so.

Behind these racks was the biggest rat’s nest of wires and cables that I had ever seen. It was obvious that this room was not a priority to be kept up to date. Whenever any work had to be done it was based on the bailing twine and duck tape system. Keep it working and don’t worry about it. There were mismatched cables with multiple connecters to make everything join up. Audio cables on video lines and vice versa. There was even a plugged in, gold colored electrical wire that had been taken from a table lamp, powering up one of the VCR decks.

There was a wall shelf that went from ceiling, or lack of, to floor that was full of VHS movies of every kind. A long table where sat a beat up 17” color TV that was used to verify that TV channels were working. The table served also as the working desk where the phone was located. In a corner was another table with two VHS editing decks, one play back deck and one recorder deck, connected to a multi deck control switching system. Funny thing was there was only one playback deck to control. It was only capable of doing straight cuts and had no fade in / fade out or special effects of any kind. BANG the video production on the tape came onto the TV and BANG it would end.

In another corner was a stack of boxes which contained another rat’s nest of loose cables of all kinds. Storage, I gathered. There was a locked room with a wire mesh door which contained the control system for the Public Announcement system for the ship. Oh yes, there were ash trays full of cigarette butts all over the place. The electricians used to use the BCC as a smoke break area. They all had keys to the room and often when I came into the room, there was a cloud of smoke from those who had been in the room.

This place was a mess.

I digress at this point to another story.

Two weeks later at the end of the Captain’s Welcome Aboard Party, the Captain standing next to me said, “TV!” I guess HE didn’t know my name! He knew my job onboard, but he didn’t know my name. Funny thing was, he knew all the girls names.

“Why are we not getting a clear signal for CNN?” All the while he was looking straight ahead and not at me. I looked straight ahead also and said, “Captain”, I knew his name, but had never been permitted to use it, “If I had a Broadcast Room back home, in the condition that this one is in, I would be fired.” He looked down at me, but I kept looking straight ahead. He walked away.

The next morning at 7:30 AM I made my way to the BCC. As I approached the hallway to the entrance, I saw that the door was open. I thought to myself, had I forgotten to lock the door the night before? I walked into the room and there the Captain was, standing on two rails of the floor grid looking at the ceiling and floor. I stood at the doorway and said “Good morning Captain.” Without looking at me he said, “This is unacceptable.” I said, “I agree, Captain. Can you please come this way? I must show you what I consider a fire hazard.” I had learned that if you wanted something done, throw in the word fire. It was the one word that Captains never wanted to hear.

He looked down at me as I passed by him making my way across the grid work, and he followed to the rear of the racks, to the rat’s nest of wires. Along the way his head came into contact with one of the dangling light bulbs. I heard something muttered in Norwegian and pretended not to see or hear what had happened. We got behind the racks. I said, “These cables are all mismatched, stretched to their capacity, crisscrossed and inter-twined. This creates a lot of heat which these cable are not classed to take. And in many cases such as this,” I pointed to one cable that had three connectors, “ this is the reason why you do not get a clear signal for CNN.” Actually wasn't, but I figured it was a good way to get my point across that there was work needed in the BCC. He nodded and walked out of the BCC. Now I’m thinking, what will this lead to?

Within 30 minutes, electricians, carpenters, technicians, painters and the lot sprang into the BCC. By the end of the day I had a complete tiled floor, a full ceiling with multi switch controlled neon lighting and a fresh coat of paint. The wiring behind the racks was all corrected and cleaned up. The equipment in the racks was still crap, but at least we could get to it without killing ourselves.

I was learning how to get things done on ships.

*Names may have been changed to protect the innocent!