Broadcast Engineer Andrew Massaua’s mornings begin at 2:45 am, driving on a deserted Interstate 90 before the crack of dawn. By 4 am, he is in the studio, preparing for Morning Edition at 5 am. As a broadcast engineer, Massaua is behind the console, running the sound board live and integrating NPR’s programming with local programming to build the morning weekday shows. Massaua sat down with us to reflect on his 25 years in radio, his humble beginnings and his love for public media.

You wake up so early. What time do you go to bed?
I’m usually in bed by 8 pm and try to get eight hours of sleep each night. It’s tough to fall asleep in the summertime when the sun is still out in the evening. But my workdays end when most people are taking their lunch break. There’s never any traffic for my commutes home.

How did your career in radio begin?
I went to Emerson College in Boston and fell in love with audio production and broadcasting at my college radio station. I majored in broadcast journalism with a focus on audio. There wasn’t a tactical audio production major at the time, so for journalism, I had to choose between radio and television. I’ve always had a passion for music, so I gravitated towards radio. There’s also more of an anonymous nature in radio that I enjoy, where people can’t physically see the speaker. At WERS 88.9FM, I was the music director and worked on the music shows at night.

Why did you gravitate towards audio production?
I’ve always had a love of technical equipment that got instilled in me pretty early. My grandfather and my father both love their stereo equipment. My father had a CB radio, so I was always interested in working with and using that type of technology.

How do you perceive the role of radio in people’s lives?
There’s something called passive listening, where you’re in your car or at home, doing another task, and the radio is on. You’re absorbing the sounds, but you’re still focused on your task. The majority of listening isn’t active listening. You’re not sitting there staring at the radio. The second an error occurs - someone misspeaks, there’s a bad noise - it snaps your attention away from what you’re doing. Thus, my goal is to make a show as seamless sounding as possible so that people enjoy their listening experience while they are commuting or eating breakfast.

Other than your technical expertise, what other skills do you bring to the job?
I came from a background of talk radio, and one of the stations I worked at was sports-related. So here, I’ve become the de facto sports editor, where writers and producers will check with me if things are worded correctly or when the next game is.

What’s your favorite part of being a broadcast engineer?
Discovering people listening to our broadcast. When I’m on the road and pull up next to someone listening to the station I work on, it’s pretty cool. When somebody comes up to say “hey, you did a really good job on that,” it’s something to be proud of. It’s awesome to hear your own work over the air with an audience engaging with, listening to and learning from the broadcast.

If you hosted your own radio show, what would you talk about?
I’ve always had an interest in music and specifically hip-hop music, so I would love to produce a show that looks at the history of that genre, where it came from, how people produced music with their parents’ records and what hip-hop is today.

Listen to Morning Edition weekdays 5-10 am on GBH 89.7 or online here.