Captain's Blog: The Studio Came Back Online
- Noah McDonough
- Dec 22, 2025
- 3 min read
Updated: Dec 22, 2025
Entry 12– A Captain’s Blog. This entry documents a student-led live broadcast inside CSM’s TV Studio A.
There are rooms that hold memory.
Not nostalgia — muscle memory. Cables want to run where they always ran. Lights hang where they were meant to hang. Even quiet, a room like that feels alert.
CSM’s TV Studio A hadn’t hosted a live audience in more than fifteen years.
No applause moving across the floor.
No performers sharing oxygen with cameras and crew.
Just equipment.
Just potential.
Until last Thursday.
It was a twelve-hour production day inside TV Studio A at the College of San Mateo —a student-led broadcast, produced in partnership with KCSM.
Not rehearsal.
Not simulation.
A live audience.A real clock.Students, performers, cameras, control room, cues — all sharing the same space again.
The room remembered what it was built for.
Studio 91, Live
Studio 91 is KCSM’s new music show with video — a collaboration between KCSM professionals and CSM students, built to put real broadcast responsibility in student hands.
On this day, Studio 91 took physical form inside TV Studio A.
A professional show identity running through a college studio, with students operating cameras, audio, switching, and floor direction alongside experienced KCSM staff.
This wasn’t a guest appearance or a facility rental. It was a working partnership.
The False Start
The first start didn’t hold.
Cameras were live.
Audience was seated.
The clock was running.
And something wasn’t ready.
So we stopped.
Not quietly. Not invisibly.
In front of the room.
A live audience watching a live production decide, in real time,that the right move was to reset instead of pretending everything was fine.
There’s a particular kind of silence that shows up in moments like that. Not panic — attention.
Crew checked positions.Students recalibrated. Performers waited without losing the room.
No one scrambled.
No one rushed to explain.
We reset.
And then we went again.
That moment mattered.
Because live production isn’t about hiding imperfections — it’s about knowing when to pause, when to correct, and when to commit.
The audience didn’t see a mistake.
They saw the work.
Red Light, No Rehearsal
Shortly before showtime, something fundamental was missing.
No lower thirds.
No names. No context. No visual grounding on screen.
In a live environment, that’s not a design issue — it’s a credibility gap.
So the students built them.
On the fly. In Canva. Exported clean. Uploaded directly into the ATEM switcher.
No debate. No delay. Just forward motion.
When the graphics went live, the broadcast settled into its footing.
Live production doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards momentum and clarity.
Learning the Board by Using the Board
Systems behave differently when they’re live.
The ATEM stops being abstract the moment the room is full. Signal flow becomes physical Keys and DSKs stop being ideas and become responsibility.
You don’t reason your way through timing — you feel it. You stop asking what a button does and start knowing when it matters.
Somewhere in the middle of the day, the students stopped operating around the systemand started operating within it.
That shift is subtle. But once it happens, you don’t unlearn it.
Serving the Moment
Live rooms redistribute attention quickly.
When something needs to move, the room doesn’t look for authority — it looks for clarity.
Direction passes hand to hand.
From voice to gesture.
From signal to response.
Nothing is announced.
Nothing is claimed.
The room simply accepts what helps it keep going.
What Changed
By the end of the day, this wasn’t about learning new tools.
It was about learning how time feels when it’s live.
How trust forms between students, staff, and crew without explanation. How preparation shows up as calm.
How rooms go dormant — and how quickly they wake up.
This wasn’t reflection after the fact.This was craft forming under pressure.
It wasn’t a rehearsal. It wasn’t a class exercise.
It was a live room, running at speed.
TV Studio A came back online —because students, CSM, and KCSM brought it there together.
Ex Aere Ignis Signi
Noah McDonough
Founder | Renegade Chronicles™
View the full show here
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