11835 kHz

“We’ll be coming to you in just about two minutes, Wil.” The producer’s voice was strong and clear in my headphones,
“Okay,” I said. I spoke slowly and deliberately, in an effort to hide my nerves.
“Hold on,” he said, and clicked off. There was a brief silence, and then I could hear live programming.
I adjusted my headphones, and looked down at my hastily-scrawled notes. I lifted my microphone, and prepared to send my voice out to 150 million people.
One hundred.
Fifty.
Million.
People.
All over the world.
I was about to file a report with the prestigious World Service of the BBC.

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138 thoughts on “11835 kHz”

  4. It’s always an inspiration to read how hard you work and how much that hard work pays off (both in the realms of career and life). It’s amazing to watch you succeed.
    Dude. You rock my world.

  5. seems like ages since i’ve written in the comments section here….did i miss something?..didn’t you take this comments thing down wil?…
    anyhow, i’m sure glad to see it back up again, and even more glad to hear about the BBC report going so well…
    wow..and to be introduced as ‘BBC’s Wil Wheaton..’
    seriously…that fucking rocks man….big time….
    all the best to you and the family, congrats on everything lately….
    the book, the reports, having arnie for a gov…
    hhhaha…
    jez kiddin…
    😉
    tyson

  6. AWWW!!! YAY!!! great entry, great story! so happy for you, Wil..er…I mean “the BBC’s Wil Wheaton”!!! 🙂

  8. Way Cool,, great Job,,congrats,,been there!!! presure CAN be Tough,, btw, didn’t you do a few Reports for Channel One way back in the early stages of their roll out.. was pretty sure I had seen some images of you in some of their screen captures for some of the printed material,, (I used to work for the parent company-Whittle Communications-NOW DEFUNCT, of course,,),, anyhow YOU delivered !!!!

  9. Hey! That’s the thrill of radio, Wil! –Few people realize that it can be an amazing medium. Listen to Orson Welles’s radio play of “A Christmas Carol” from, like, 1936. –It’s amazing, and at the heart of what I feel is the “magic” of radio.
    All you’re armed with are your voice and your intellect…your mind racing…thinking four sentences ahead….
    Congratulations! You did fabulously.

  10. Chill, Wil. “parked atop a parking garage in Culver City” is a great place to report from. During my radio career I did a lot of remotes, and what I looked for in a location was a place with a strong signal, minimal ambiant noise, and a low possibility of some moron running up and screaming “Baba Booey!” halfway through my piece. It may sound cool to say you’re reporting from the heart of the action, but it’s radio, not TV. Location adds nothing, and may well detract if someone starts honking their horn, shooting off their gun, or just being a dick.
    Great job, Wil! And if you can get an mp3, I’d love to hear it.

  11. Interesting comments Logan….in fact, the BBC prefers to have some ambient noise, if appropriate. Our view is that a sense of location adds everything to a live report – otherwise what’s the point of being on location? You might just as well be in a studio. Radio is, in the view of the World Service, as much about sound as speech. Still, different radio stations have different styles…
    Anyway, you might be interesed to know what the editor of the programme said about the recall election coverage….this is taken from his programme report:
    ‘It was a busy night after 0500, and with rather a lot of Arnie in it. We dipped into his acceptance speech live a couple of times, and had clips straight after. Good to have Fergus in Sacramento, but for us it was even better to have Will (sic) Wheaton.’

  12. Wil,
    You wrote alot. I know before it is all said and done that you will wright at least ten books. You have the ruff draft for nine and a half already. Be carefull writing for those newspapers or magazines, these days, because they will edit your story. I guess California is a great place to wright. I hope your new elected star does everyone good.
    FG

  13. As always, Wil. A stellar show. You really know how to please an audience. That’s for sure.
    I for one am proud to have visited the site of BBC’sWW!
    Lemme know if you wanna go out for drinks sometime in Culver City! I’m buying.
    Just JJ
    jjandbird.com

  14. From Logan: “During my radio career I did a lot of remotes, and what I looked for in a location was a place with a strong signal, minimal ambiant noise, and a low possibility of some moron running up and screaming “Baba Booey!”
    Oh, that’s too funny, Logan. I guess that is always a possibility, huh?

  15. Wil,
    If you have an MP3/OGG (or URL?) of your BBC broadcasts – I’m sure that I speak for many WWDN readers when I say that we’d like to hear what you had to say.

  16. That sounds really awesome, Wil. I wish I could have actually heard it! I have to find out what radio station in L.A. carries the BBC.

  17. That sounds really awesome, Wil. I wish I could have actually heard it! I have to find out what radio station in L.A. carries the BBC.

  19. That was so great! Congratulations, Wil! I guess the audioblog was good practice, wasn’t it? And if you can’t get an audio copy of your broadcast, how about a written transcript? I’d love to know what you said. And from your entry, I bet you’d like to know, too! 😀 Again, congrats!

  20. Hello, Interesting Article. Seems like a great experiance. I wasn’t able to find the reports on the BBC’s audio archives, but I did find a few interesting links. The first link is article about weblog’s and lists yours as best of 2002:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/dot_life/1799998.stm
    The next one lists all of the BBC’s different radio stations. You can listen live on the web:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
    The last one is a link to the World Radio Network. You can listen to Short Wave Radio from around the world, like the BBC, or Radio Australia, etc:
    http://www.wrn.org/

  21. I suppose you then pictured them all in their underwear, got turned on by the thought of 75 million nearly-naked women hanging on every word, then got so nervous you couldn’t utter a word.
    Right?

  22. Great article. It’s strange that in the UK I can’t pick up the world service on normal terrestrial radio, but I’ve enjoyed it a lot while I’ve been working overseas. It’s a vital news resource for millions – well done on getting on there!
    As an aside, I’m glad that you’re aware of the proper spelling of the word “savour” ;o)
    To add to the links above, the BBC World Service has an interesting web presence here:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/index.shtml

  23. Wil, I work in TV, and believe me, if your aim is to be a serious reporter, you’ll fit right in with words like presupposition. Why, just the other day, we reported that the Dow Jones “Plumetated.”

  26. Wow. “The BBC’s Wil Wheaton!” Sweet! Here we’ve been reading the website of a reporter for one of the world’s most repsected news outlets, and didn’t even know it!
    Kudos, Wil! Here’s to living out a dream that alot of us radio junkies will never get to do, and doing a good job of it.
    Forget about the preoccupation/presupposition slip. To the Britts, it probably sounded like a normal American thing, which it was. We’re only human, after all.
    And when the grandkids say “Pappy Wil? You were a reporter for the BBC?” You can tell them “Yep, and I did it from inside a car on top of a parking garage.” And then, they can look at you with so much love and say “Wow…”
    /delusions of grandeur

  27. Rats! Wil was on the World Service (which I usually listen to at night when BBC Radio 4 finishes for the evening) and I missed it – because I was listening instead to a tape of The Reduced Shakespere Company!
    Well Done Wil – a BBC Correspondent! Keep it up and you’ll be replacing Alastair Cooke on “Letter From America”!
    Au Res.,
    Paul (who would also like to hear a recording – the Beeb MUST have one!)

  28. “I didn’t have time to savor (savour) the moment.”
    Damn right. Now you’re an official representative of the Beeb, let’s have a little less of this ‘center’ and ‘license’ nonsense.

  30. I was on the radio once. It was a pre-recorded interview at the launch of a handbook for chemistry clubs in schools, and we were there because we’d come second in a national competition organised by the same company who were doing the handbook. Evidently they wanted to show off their involvement in school science by having us there, but the nice people from BBC Radio 4’s ‘Science Now’ came and interviewed all of us, and I was one of the ones they broadcast! It was an amazing feeling (even though it was when my voice was breaking so I sounded really terrible) and then the sound man looked at me and said I should go into radio. Wow!
    And now I’m a computer programmer. Oh well. What I’m attempting to say is that broadcasting live on the BBC World Service must’ve been a thousand times the feeling I had from being on the radio (at the very least), and for some reason I can’t stop grinning about it.
    Are you by any chance a projective empath?

  32. That sounds really awesome, Wil. I wish I could have actually heard it! I have to find out what radio station in L.A. carries the BBC.

  33. That sounds really awesome, Wil. I wish I could have actually heard it! I have to find out what radio station in L.A. carries the BBC.

  34. That sounds really awesome, Wil. I wish I could have actually heard it! I have to find out what radio station in L.A. carries the BBC.

  35. I’m sure that everybody who has ever put any time in on a microphone has their “goof” stories.
    I only ever did broadcasting in high school, and did play-by-play for the sports teams. After one basketball game, my partner and I were on camera doing the wrap-up, and as we closed out I got our names switched around.
    Twenty two plus years later, and they still give me a hard time about it.

  39. All of the license fee payers in the UK now own you, Mr Wheaton.
    Never forget that.
    Now I want two pieces of toast for breakfast followed by freshly squeezed OJ…
    Your passport is in the post.
    Welcome to the Kingdom.

  44. wow, and I used to get nervous when I worked the board at a local public television station. I can’t imagine working bbc.
    –C. Alan

  45. I’m a pretty serious news junkie. I watch too much CNN and listen to too much NPR. I hear top notch reporters make little word mistakes like that all the time. I don’t think anyone thinks any less of them or even notices it most of the time.

  47. Hi Wil,
    First off, well done. I’m so proud of you! I think it’s fantastic that someone sane is being given the opportunity to present this situation to the world.
    I went trawling on the web for links to see if anyone else had noticed you on the Beeb, and came across this rubbish: http://www.stupidlyhappy.com/archives/000826.html.
    I’m “bard” on there, too. And I stuck up for you. Sorry I couldn’t be more eloquent, but it’s 1am here in Oz, and I just didn’t have the patience.

  48. Wil,
    I’m happy for you. Reporter on top of everything else you do, it’s amazing really. Talk about a guy of many talents! Have fun with it above everything else!
    ~Nicholas~

  49. all i can say is..
    well done wil. its an amazing acheivement and another string to your bow.
    you should be and very rightly so proud of yourself.
    in the future please put up the gmt times you’re on, i’ds love to be able to listen..
    think i’ll watch that austin powers movie again..bbc indeed.

  50. You indeed rock! Love the BBC radio feed late at night on our local NPR station. I would have given anything to hear that live.

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