Disinfecting Broadcast Studios and Equipment Carefully

With all the equipment that is necessary to run a successful broadcasting studio, there is serious risk for employee health and safety. Covid-19, influenza, and numerous bacteria, is a common threat to essential workers. Broadcasters need to clean, sanitize, and contact Select Shield for an application of antimicrobial coating.

Nearly 10,000 have been lost in Canada to the global pandemic of 2020. This virus has wreaked havoc across various industries and gravely affected the economy. The broadcasting industry, which is vital to public communications, has also suffered. Coronavirus 2019 has forced many broadcasting studios to send their employees home to work remotely. This can be not only inconvenient for workers but also results in less successful broadcasting productions. Broadcasting is a term that covers several different categories of communication. What is known as the ‘big three’ pertains to television, cable, and radio broadcasting. These industries combined are worth five billion dollars. There are approximately 9,259 Canadians that work in television broadcasting and 12,321 that work in radio broadcasting. These are particularly important jobs that provide knowledge and safety alerts to the public. Broadcasters must do what it takes to provide a truly clean, sanitized work environment for these important workers.

Broadcasting Studios

There are eight different industries that are involved in broadcasting. Aside from the big three (cable, television, and radio), others include:

• Programming and Production Services
• Professional Services
• Associations, Events, and Awards
• Government
• Equipment Manufacturers and Production Services

Broadcasting is essential for several reasons, including the contribution this industry brings to our economy, public information, and entertainment in a time when many are confined in their homes.

Public Broadcasting

Broadcasting has had a long road to reach the success it has today alongside commercial media. Public broadcasting provides Canadian citizens with vital information, entertainment, and is not tainted with commercial or political influences. The Canadian Public Broadcasting Service is a service that is welcome to all citizens, regardless of social, or economic status. They perform their broadcasts based on the following principles:

• Universality
• Diversity
• Independence
• Distinctiveness
• Mandate and Missions

Public Broadcasting plays a vital role in public education and public health and safety.

Radio Broadcasting

Radio is an essential and effective form of broadcasting. Radio broadcasts can reach citizens far from their studios. In remote locations, some citizens are without television services. Other citizens simply do not want to own a television. In these cases, the importance of radio broadcasting is undeniable. Public safety, government information, weather warnings, for all of these notifications it is important that we have a method to communicate with our citizens. Radio broadcasting is an important service for these citizens.

Threats Inside Broadcasting Studios

The threat of illness is a serious risk for these essential workers. In broadcasting, there are many different employees, performing numerous jobs. Some of these positions include announcers, engineers, music directors, sound technicians, production and program directors, on-air personalities, and managers. These are only a few of many individuals that work inside a broadcasting studio. With the large number of workers employed, this amounts to a lot of surfaces being contacted, and numerous microorganisms potentially wreaking havoc throughout the studio.

What are Microorganisms?

Microorganisms, or microbes, are microscopic organisms that are unicellular, multicellular, or consist of cell clusters. Although some are important, even beneficial to life, others can be dangerous and make people ill. With all of the equipment that is touched inside a broadcasting studio, these microorganisms have the potential to spread rapidly. Cameras, control boards, desks, microphones, and numerous other pieces of equipment can harbor these dangerous microorganisms. These microorganisms are divided into four distinct categories, viruses, bacteria, fungi, and protozoa. The following chart contains examples of common threats inside broadcasting studios, and to which categories they belong.

How to Properly Disinfect a Broadcast Studio

Broadcasting equipment is made from a variety of different materials. This can make cleaning and sanitizing a headache. The fear of destroying electronics and control panels had led many broadcasting studios to neglect proper sanitization. This is not okay. Improper hygiene, cleaning, and sanitization leads to the spread of disease. A broadcast studio must be meticulously and thoroughly sanitized.

1.)   Clean

The first step, to true and proper sanitization, is to clean the broadcasting studio. Wearing disposable gloves, use a cleaner that is effective against viruses, including COVID-19. Unfortunately guidelines put out by the Canadian officials recommends using a water/bleach mixture to achieve a truly clean environment on non-electronic surfaces. However, broadcasting equipment, such as microphones, cannot be cleaned with this mixture as it will damage electronic devices. For electronic broadcasting devices, use a soft microfiber cloth with warm soapy water, and gently wipe the equipment.

2.)   Disinfect

Cleaning is only the beginning of ensuring a truly clean work environment. Next, all areas within the studio that are touched or handled should be disinfected. If disinfecting regular surfaces the cleaning solution can be applied directly. For the numerous electronic devices that are used in a broadcasting studio it is suggested that you use only a Lysol or Clorox wipe, or microfibre cloth sufficiently dampened with an appropriate cleaning solution, to disinfect the surfaces. It should leave the surface wet for couple of minutes.  This includes computers, cameras, headsets, and numerous other types of equipment. A microfiber cloth with rubbing alcohol also works well at keyboard, mouse, and computer touchscreen disinfection.

How to Protect After Cleaning and Disinfection

You spend all this time, energy, and money to ensure that you have cleaned and sanitized your broadcasting studio. Yet, there is still any underlying issue at play. How will you keep the areas truly sanitized? Although still an important part of your cleaning regimen, there is more that needs to be done in order to protect your employees. Traditional disinfection, as mentioned above, is only effective until pathogens come back into contact with surfaces. These pathogens then quickly multiply, and your disinfection efforts were nullified. In order to provide a safe work environment, you must invest in a product and service that offers longer term protection. Antimicrobial coatings provide truly sanitized environments for several days. Select Shield is able to disinfect, and protect, entire areas, on average,in less than four hours. This antimicrobial coating is safe to use on all surfaces, including electronics. Select Shield uses high quality electrostatic sprayers that use a finer spray mist (between 10 and 20 microns).  Other sprayers can unnecessarily oversoak a surface, which can be destructive to sensitive equipment commonly found in many broadcasting environments.

Disinfection Services to Avoid

Some companies trick businesses into hiring them for their full room disinfection services with the use of dry fogging machines. Full room cleaning surfaces do effectively reach all surfaces, and are only as effective as traditional disinfection, which we know is short-lived in its success.

Fogging machines are another service you should avoid implementing in your broadcasting studio. The fog produced from this equipment is unsafe for employees and equipment. It also fails to reach all surfaces, cleaning only the area in its direct line of sight, and therefore does not thoroughly disinfect areas. It also does not provide sufficient coverage for dwell time to kill pathogens on the surface.

These services can be waste of your valuable time, money, and efforts, and therefore should be avoided. Antimicrobial coating is the only foolproof way to protect your technology and surfaces within your studio.

Why an Antimicrobial Coating is the Best Method for True Disinfection

With traditional methods, surfaces are immediately contaminated when dangerous microorganisms come back into contact with them. Antimicrobial coatings stop these microorganisms in their tracks by inhibiting the ability for them to grow on surfaces. Antimicrobials coatings are non-toxic, so they are safe for use across various industries. They are also odourless, colorless, and hypoallergenic.

Why Chose Select Shield Antimicrobial Coating for Your Broadcasting Studio Sanitation?

Applying an antimicrobial coating is the only way to truly sanitize your entire broadcasting studios and equipment. Select Shield provides safe, thorough, and cautious service for your broadcasting studio and valuable equipment. We complete an extensive process to ensure that key areas can better protected as we bridge the hygiene gap in between cleaning and disinfection treatment.

Process

• Call us or send us an email with information pertaining to your business. We will reply to your email within hours.
• Schedule an appointment outside of your business hours for a technician to come to your place of business. We can fly our equipment anywhere across the country to a location near you. A technician will be ready when you are to perform our services.
• A qualified technician will pre-test all high traffic, high touch areas to determine the state of cleanliness – this pre-test helps set a benchmark so when we test after spraying, we can ensure there has been an overall improvement.
• Select Shield will then clean and disinfect the environment thoroughly.
• Next, using our unique electrostatic sprayer we apply our antimicrobial coating to specially selected high touch and high traffic surfaces. The sprayer creates an incredible 360-degree wrap around effect on surfaces.
• Our dedicated team will then return to perform a surface cleaning verification test after the procedure has been completed to ensure the job was done well and services were well received.

Our electrostatic sprayer, with antimicrobial coating, is the most effective, long-term solution for the health and safety of all essential workers within the broadcasting industry.

To provide a truly sanitized environment inside your broadcasting studio, you must contact Select Shield today. You can call us directly +1-778-285-7977 for immediate assistance, our representatives are standing by and ready to take your call. If you have questions regarding our services send us an email and we will reply promptly.

It is our pleasure to provide our services and protect those in broadcasting. We look forward to assisting you in your sanitation needs.