³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

On March 8th, Radio 3 marks International Women’s Day with music written exclusively by women, and the premiere of a newly-discovered medieval choral piece by Maddalena Casulana.

The theme for International Women’s Day 2022 is Break the Bias. As Radio 3’s Digital Producer, writes Rebecca Grisedale-Sherry, I want to help break the bias in broadcasting and introduce you to some of the brilliant women in technical roles at Radio 3.

I have been making programmes for the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ for over 16 years, and in my experience, very few of the technicians I have worked with have been women. But that’s not the case at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 3, where many of the sound engineers, studio managers and technical producers are women.

The voices of Radio 3 presenters like Elizabeth Alker, Louise Blain, Katie Derham, Hannah French, Jess Gillam, Penny Gore, Lopa Kothari, Georgia Mann, Kate Molleson, Hannah Peel, Sara Mohr-Pietsch, Verity Sharp, Lucie Skeaping, Fiona Talkington, Sarah Walker, and Catriona Young will be familiar to you already, but there’s a whole team on the other side of the microphone who you don’t usually get to meet.

I’m talking about the producers, studio managers and sound engineers who make sure that every broadcast, whether it’s live, or pre-recorded, is the best that it can be.

I want to celebrate the brilliant work my colleagues do every day to bring Radio 3 programmes to life; balancing noise levels, rigging microphones and controlling faders.

My colleagues follow in the footsteps of pioneers like Daphne Oram (one of the original studio managers at ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Maida Vale when it opened in 1958) and Delia Derbyshire, famous for her arrangement of the Doctor Who theme.

Training women Technical Assistants, 1941.

by Dr Emma Sandon, senior lecturer in Film and Television, Birkbeck College, and Dr Kate Terkanian, lecturer in Modern History, Bournemouth University, reveals that “Women first trained for jobs in the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳'s Engineering Department in 1941, to fill roles vacated by male engineers serving in the war. By the end of the Second World War, 800 women had been trained at the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Engineering Training School. They were initially employed in radio, on maintenance and programme work as well as on radio transmission stations. They acted as Programme Engineers controlling the audio output and providing sound effects, and in transmitters, switching signals and performing routine maintenance.”

To celebrate the brilliant work my colleagues do every day, I made four short films taking you behind the scenes of Radio 3.

I hope that by making the women who do these technical jobs more visible, we can all work towards "breaking the bias", now and in the future.

Filming and editing by Philip O'Meara

Meet Matilda, working behind the scenes of a Radio 3 Breakfast show, live from Broadcasting House in London. Matilda is the technical producer responsible for driving the studio desk and delivering the words and music that make up the programme.

Discover the art of mixing an opera recorded live at the Royal Opera House, ready for broadcast on Radio 3. Susan and Tanzy work closely together to give audiences at home the most faithful broadcast of the action on stage: “It feels a real privilege for us to be here.”

Lots of preparation goes into the broadcast of a Lunchtime Concert live from London’s Wigmore Hall, and Tracy is responsible for making it all go smoothly. Go behind the scenes to discover how Tracy chooses the correct microphone for each instrument, bringing the sound of the concert hall to life.

From Studio 80A in Broadcasting House London, Jo and Nat prepare for a live performance on Radio 3’s daily In Tune programme. It’s a busy programme, so they work closely together. “There’s an awful lot of equipment, and cables, and mics, but at the end of the day, we’re paid to listen.”