You can hear Mark Forrest every weekday on the UK’s new National Classical Music station Scala Radio. Best of all, a champion of remote-working Mark broadcast’s his show each day from his farm in the Yorkshire dales. Here, exclusively for Voicetracker Hub, he shares his insights on how it works technically, and how it benefits both the station and the listener!
“For farmers Easter is the culmination of twelve months of preparation, selecting the best rams and the healthiest ewes and making sure that the pastures are green and plentiful and ready to accommodate new life. In the past as a presenter on a national radio network I’d have missed out on both the hard work and the delights of this time of year, sitting in a studio in London. Not any longer. Every weekday I present the 4pm to 7pm show on the UK’s new classical music station, Scala Radio from my home studio on our farm in a little village in Swaledale, 250 miles north of the rest of the Scala team.
I’ve had the basics here; ISDN codecs, microphone and headphones since buying the house over a decade ago and I’ve used the kit many times to present shows and pre-record interviews. In the past I simply provided the live links while a producer back at base played in the music, imaging and ads. Now I do everything myself. The home studio has expanded to include a mixer, voice processor and monitors. There are now two computers, one for the playout system, a second which is logged in to Scala’s social media and text console.
For the listener the benefits are tangible. Presenters are the products of our environment and our daily lives. We reflect on the situations we find ourselves in and my life today is very different to the 15 years I spent living in East London and working in Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square. I can and regularly do share with the audience the sounds of my life in the Yorkshire Dales. And when I play ‘On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring’, by that fine Yorkshire composer Frederick Delius, there’s a high probability I’ll have had that experience myself while out with the dogs in the hour before the show.”
