On the crest of a wave with Pougatch

13 April 2012

Keeping several balls in the air at once is the sport expertly practised on Radio Five Live every Saturday between 1pm and 6pm during the station's flagship programme, Sport On Five.

"Terrible word, flagship,'' says its presenter for the past five months, 32-year-old Mark Pougatch. Terrible perhaps, but useful to indicate the programme's standing and the cachet of being its anchorman. Past presenters include John Inverdale, Jim Rosenthal, Des Lynam and even Eamonn Andrews.

FA Cup third round day is technically the most complicated day of the year.

On Saturday the programme had reporters at 18 cup ties and both Tetley's Cup rugby semi-finals. They were scheduled to take two races from Sandown but the meeting was called off due to a waterlogged course. All the same, Saturday's programme required 50 staff and three studios.

At the helm in Television Centre's Studio S6 was producer Claire McDonnell (over the past 13 years, four of the last five producers of Sport On Five have been women). Editor Joanne Watson has overall control of the content, but McDonnell is director of operations once the programme is on air.

"The joy of radio is that people can do other things while they're listening,'' said Pougatch. "That is its strength, not its weakness. But people in radio are realistic enough to expect that people will watch the telly rather than listen to us when it is practicable.''

At 1.04pm on Saturday Pougatch welcomed the listening nation to the "best footballing weekend of the year''. Actually at the time Pougatch was inhaling one of many doses of nasal spray to combat a heavy cold. The scene-setting opening three minutes are always broadcast off tape. Uniquely among Five Live presenters, Pougatch stands throughout the programme.

"Very rock star,'' he smiled. "I just prefer it.''

A blizzard of voices filled the S6 control room, divided from Pougatch's studio by a wall of glass. McDonnell and Watson headed the personnel, alongside two sound supremos, a broadcast assistant and four "back-ups'' - production staff listening to a match each, alerting McDonnell to goals scored, preparing snatches of pertinent commentary for broadcast (reporters who are not broadcasting live on air commentate only when a team is attacking).

Everybody seemed to keep track of 26 important strands of information, while simultaneously bantering.

With three o'clock came kickoff and commentary from Morecambe with Mike Ingham. Five Live has ISDN lines - broadcast quality telephone lines - at all English grounds in the Premiership, First and Second Divisions. But for example the line at Walsall is rarely used, and "someone might have decided to piss on it''. In the control room, where the sound seemed perfect, the studio engineer could monitor at the flick of a switch what Joe Listener was really hearing on medium wave.

Once every few seconds a beep was heard - the sound of other reporters buzzing in with information of varying import. The more significant data was relayed to McDonnell including every goal, which she then transmitted to Ingham, who delivered it to the listeners.

"Claire is a fantastic producer,'' said Pougatch. "I don't hear any of the control room noise. I just hear Claire telling me to go to Walsall next. Some producers want to give you a 10-chapter explanation about every cue. I'm not interested. Claire has a ton of information to disseminate and she is always calm.''

Down the hall studio S7 was deployed to siphon match information through to S6, while later James Alexander Gordon would deliver the results from studio W8 one floor up. The rather glam Susan Bookbinder, something of a heroine to her fellow Manchester City devotees, visited Pougatch's studio every half hour to read the news. A swingtop kitchen bin next to Pougatch steadily filled with discarded paper as each batch of fresh information became superfluous.

At 3.25 regular visits round all the grounds for a 10-second update hit pay dirt at Bolton, where John Rawlings happened to be live on air as Yeovil scored. At Charlton, Steve Wilson won plaudits for his second half commentary at the big story of the day. In the control room the back-ups prepared soundbite snaps to illustrate the Sports Report headlines, revising the edit when Charlton equalised with four minutes to go. At five o'clock the venerable strains of Out Of The Blue signalled Sports Report, now in its 52nd year. At that moment three million listeners were tuning in. Suddenly it was six o'clock.

"Shame about Dagenham,'' sighed McDonnell. "If Charlton hadn't scored it would have been a great day. I don't know if I could tell you many of the other results though. During the show you keep track of everything, but afterwards if somebody asks you how Derby did, you can't even reliably say whether they played.''

No matter. The juggling act was complete for another week.

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On the crest of a wave with Pougatch

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