I remember when I used to write for All Things Considered… [T]here were an insane number of variables that went into creating that big hunk of nightly audio: Recordings created months ago or two hours ago; people working together in a dozen time zones; contracts, permissions, fact-checking. It had to fit together technically; it had to be transmitted efficiently at a high bitrate to maintain quality (but may be sped up or slowed down to the limits of Fourier transforms); it had to be edited to match certain durations; it had to have a certain consistency and flow; and so on. It requires the human equivalent of map-reduce to manage it. And they—meaning editors and producers—managed a release every night, with 12 million users.
Real Editors Ship