Here is what we have found:
You must have the live streaming control room open before you start your stream in OBS. If you do it in the wrong order, the control room will say "Excellent", but your stream will never appear. In that case, you must stop your stream, wait for the control room to say "Start sending us your video from your streaming software to go live.", and then restart your stream.
You need to do nothing in the control room, just have it open in any browser window. This is problematic because we do not want really want operators to have access to our channel nor be able to change live stream settings.
We have another problem. The URL
https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live does not work properly. Anyone who goes there before we start the stream will never see the stream. The "waiting" counter will go up, and the live chat will work, but the video will never play. After we start the stream, we cannot get back to that live chat, so cannot tell the people waiting for a stream that will never appear to reload.
Here is our process for a stream that should start at 10:30:
9:45 - schedule Facebook stream for 10:30.
9:45 - Start recording in OBS, sound check, play recording, verify recording has audio.
10:00 - load
https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live and DO NOT EVER CLOSE THIS because you won't be able to get it back
10:01 - YouTube stream start.
10:02 - in another tab, load
https://www.youtube.com/channel/channelname/live . Verify the stream is running, then switch back to your first tab and use Live Chat to tell everyone to refresh.
10:12 - Facebook stream start (must be between 10:10 and 10:20; DO NOT start outside these times).
10:13 - Use cell phone to verify YouTube stream is running and has audio.
10:14 - Use desktop to verify Facebook stream is running.
10:15-10:30 troubleshoot anything non-working. If you have time, check to see if anyone hasn't yet refreshed YouTube and is waiting for a stream that will never appear.
10:30 - Show starts.
This is a whole lot more complicated than it needs to be. As a bonus, if you screw it up and do something at the wrong time or in the wrong order, THERE WILL BE NO ERRORS to tell you that you're doing it wrong.