How do TV and radio stations work? Logistics.

Factual Questions
1

RADIO

Based upon watching WKRP in the old days, there was a DJ, records, and a microphone and turntable somehow hooked into a transmitter.

I don’t know how they did commercials. I seem to recall a big reel of tape. Did they put all the commercials on one tape and play them in sequence somehow?

At some point, I imagine radio stations switched to CD players instead of turntables.

How has all that changed with computers? I imagine you could put all the music and commercials on a computer, program playlists with commercial breaks, press Play, and walk away.

TELEVISION

I never figured out how this works. All I could ever imagine was the equivalent of a radio DJ sitting in a TV studio somewhere with a bunch of reels of TV shows on tape (e.g., “WKRP, Episode 32”). Every half hour or hour, the guy at the station would have to switch the tape to put on a new show.

I don’ t know how local affiliates coordinate shows and commercials with national network programs. I imagine all the local affiliates can tap into a national broadcast somehow and can supercede national commercials with local commercials pursuant to some contract.

Do the national networks send tapes of every network show to the local affiliates? What about nightly national news shows? Same thing?

2

I got out of the business several years back so I’m a little vague on the state of the art, but I can speak to most of this.

Commercials and other short things (musical bumps and whatnot) were put on tape cartridges. Ever see an 8-track tape. Basically the same principle: an endless loop of tape in a handy plastic case (I’ve never tried to verify this, but I’ve always suspected Bill Lear got the idea for 8-tracks from the audio cart.) The primary difference is that audio carts had just two tracks for mono, three for stereo. The extra track is a cue track. When recording, a tone is laid down at the begining of a cut. In playback, the machine senses this tone and stops, so that the tape is always cued up to the right spot. (On WKRP, they had a cart machine built into the console and they made use of it; a real station had several free-standing machines.) Tape lengths ranged from 10 or 20 seconds to 10 minutes; there was also a large size that held 30 minutes of tape, enough for a full program (but I think that size was used primarily by undertakers to provide unattended maudlin background music).

Stations are moving to putting everything on computer, but I’ll pass on this since it’s after my time.
Yeah, everything but live programming comes from a tape machine somewhere. So far as I know, film is dead in television. Anything that does come in on film is immediately transferred to tape. (Harold Ensley of The Sportsman’s Friend insisted on shooting his fishing expeditions on 16mm film to the end, which was just a few years ago.)

Inserting commercials into network programming is no big deal, since the nets are kind enough to send their stations cue sheets with exact times for the breaks. Live programs are a bit tricky, but they can still provide cue sheets - the local spots usually immediately follow some national spots and a network ID, so the place for the local place is obvious. They can also give an audible cue (the common sports announcer’s “We’ll be right back after these words from our local stations.”

Network programming is distributed to affiliates by satillite.

3

Just did a search, and the first hit will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about cart machines, complete with pictures.

4

Actually the broadcast cart was ripped off directly from the 4-track tape invented in 1956. Broadcast carts came along in 1959, after the four track was deemed unmarketable, and the inventor was looking for some way to salvage his invention.

The 4-track was bought in the early 1960s by Earl “Madman” Muntz, an entrepeneur who not only sold 4-track tape players, he also built and sold the Muntz Jet automobile, broke the $100.00 barrier for TV sets for the first time with his $99.95 Muntz TV, and he was the person we can hold responsible for the term TV.

Sorry - back to 4-track. Lear bought one of Muntz’s 4-tracks, but was unhappy with the short program length (limited to 10.5 mins per track, or 21 minutes total.) So he simply expanded the cartridge, added more tracks, and the 8-track was born. 42 minutes total playing time, enough for most albums of the day.

And BJ, from one former broadcaster to another, thanks for the memory lane trip with your cart web page!

5

And yet another fine theory is shot to hell by the facts! Thanks for the Dope, Rico.

Yeah, that web page brought back some memories. The Delta IV was a sweet machine. In my public radio production director days, I had a tape loading machine in my office. Next to it was an ancient Spotmaster that I used to check my rebuilt carts. One day someone commented on it and I said, “I was weaned on a Spotmaster.” His response: “You sure had a weird mother.”

[I see I no longer rate a place in your sig line. Just as well. :wink: )

6

Carts were absolutely the staple of pre-computerized radio. One thing not mentioned thus far is that cart players typically had a relay contact output activated by the end-of-cut cue. This allowed one cart machine to stop, and automatically start the next one. Thus a series of commercials, PSA’s etc could be cue’d up in advance, and they would automatically sequence themselves. Thus it was common to have a stack of at least 3-4 cart machines available to the DJ.

In the late 80’s early 90’s I was involved in an early attempt at computerizing radio stations. Didn’gt pan out, but it was an interesting system. Keep in mind that, at that time, MP3 meant nothing. The first digital audio boards for PC’s were barely beta testing. and I had one of the first 480 Meg hard drives shipped, and it’s form factor was the same as two CD drives.

Early “format” radio used either satillite distribution, or reel-reel tapes with several hours of programming on them.

Our system used a bank of 16 (expandable up to 256) VCRs. The normal audio track was used for cueing, and the audio used bothe the VHS HiFi tracks, and we started out with digital audio incoded into the video track…untill sony quit making the box that did that.

There was all sorts of geegaws to allow precision cueing, fading from one deck to the other, etc.

This was the Drake-Chenault “DigiTotal” system for those who were in radio at the time. It basically never sold, but our prototype systems were bought up by a group of religious broadcasters in the south pacific, and may still be running for all I know.

7

He might have liked to think so, and maybe his family still does, but the first Mutz television sets came out in 1948, and the New York Times had been using the abbreviation “TV” since at least 1939 for their daily radio and television listings.

8

You pretty much nailed it right there. Thanks to computer technology, a station can download music libraries along with DJ sets via satellite and dispense with CDs and live talent. The computer can handle the breaks and such. Commercials are now available on the Internet for download, as are some programs.

In fact, most of a radio station’s operations are handled by computer. I don’t know how to splice tape. I’m a genius at audio production, but I couldn’t splice tape if my life depended on it. I just feed all the elements of what I want to produce into a computer and use audio-editing software like Adobe Audition or Audacity. (It depends on where I am. If I’m working at home, I use Audacity. It’s free.) When I have to interview someone, I use a telephone hybrid that feeds directly into Audition or, for outside interviews, I use a hard-disk recorder that connects to the computer through a USB cable. It’s nice in some respects because some of the scutwork is gone.

Robin

9

MsRobyn: the old geezer in me finds it rather sad that you’ve never known the “joy” of taking a razor blade to tape. But I gotta admit, computer based “multi-track recorders” were a godsend (beat the heck out of dubbing elements onto a four-track Scully).

Kevbo: sounds like you’re talking about Sony’s F1 digital processor, which came out in the mid-'80s. A lot of public radio stations got into digital recording with an F1 and a BetaMax, for about $2000. (Editing was another matter. . . .)

Your post reminded me of an old method of building “automation” cues into tape-distributed programs - they just put a 50-Hertz tone in the left audio channel which the station could use to trigger a local break or whatever. :rolleyes:

10

Considering that I’m a klutz, it’s probably for the best that I don’t splice tape. :smiley:

This summer, I wrote and produced a feature-length audio piece about mental hygiene films. It required four separate clips from three different films, my voiced narration, and clips from an interview I did for it. All told, it took about an hour or so to voice and edit. Getting the film audio was no big deal, and Audition made it easy to fit my narration into the first film clip. I shudder to think how long it would take in the old days.

Robin

11

This is the part I’m most curious about. Is this how TV worked or works… a big vault of video tape with some dude swapping tapes every half hour, manually stopping tapes now & then to start the commercial machine?

12

Sometimes a TV station just relays a satellite feed from the main network, but that typically only happens for live shows. Normally a station will videotape a program when it’s beamed over satellite earlier in the day or week.

Putting in commercials isn’t much of a problem. The shows come down with black holes for commercial breaks, and there are logs indicating when these breaks start and how long they last. The equipment is designed to play commercials automatically, but there’s always a human backup in Master Control who can hit the buttons if necessary.

At stations I’ve worked at, it’s been a mix of computer and videotape. Typically all commercials are pre-loaded onto computer servers, while shows are kept on videotape (and may be double-taped in case a backup is needed).

The “big vault full of tapes” is called a library, and it’s where stations will put shows they’re planning to air at a later date, or keep for archives.

13

Back in the “old days” pretty much so.

The programs were either shipped to the station on tape, or recorded off a satellite feed at some lunatic time in the morning. The program would generally have a “slate” at the beginning describing the timing of the spot (commercial) breaks, and it was up to the guy in Master Control to pay attention to the timing when the program aired. If the slate said there was a break at 12:30 (minutes:seconds) then by 12:00, they better have the tape with the spots cued and ready to roll. Depending on the tape machine, they’d usually need a 5-second “pre-roll” for the thing to come to a stable speed, so the spots would be cued to five seconds before start, and at 12:25, he’d hit play. At 12:30, he’d hit the appropriate button on the video switcher to cut over to the tape.

While the spots run, he’d then cue the program tape to 5 seconds before the next segment start so he’d be ready to cut back to the program, and cue up the next batch of spots. If they were lucky, a production assistant or intern would assemble the spots earlier. If not, they’d be busy as a one-armed wallpaper hanger swapping tapes and cuing spots during the break.

Now, like with radio, a lot of programming is either dumped onto hard drive, or left on the tape, the difference being that the tape is now digital and all the cue info is coded. The process is not wildly different than setting up a playlist on an iPod - someone in Master Control grabs the mouse and clicks on Program Segment 1, Spot 1, Spot 2, Spot 3, Spot 4, Program Segment 2, Spot 5, Spot 6, and so on, and the computer strings it all together. The process is not without risk - it is possible for someone to click on program segments out of order, but generally that sort of goof only happens on small UHF stations. :smiley:

14

[QUOTE=BJ
Kevbo: sounds like you’re talking about Sony’s F1 digital processor, which came out in the mid-'80s. A lot of public radio stations got into digital recording with an F1 and a BetaMax, for about $2000. (Editing was another matter. . . .)
[/QUOTE]

The timing is right for that. By the time I was put on the project, they were off the market. That would’ve been late 80’s. We had a few of them that D-C used for mastering. All the stations (Only 2 beta testers that was) got was VHS HiFi with blank video…still sounded great.

There were serious issues with trying to do all the cueing and shuttling on consumer grade VCRs, that would have eventually spelled doom, but the immediate problem was that the salesmen had way too much influance over the design requirements. Thus whatever was needed by this week’s potential customer became an essential feature regardless it’s utility to the general market.

We also got hit with the first in-the-wild computer virus (Jerusalem-B) I’d ever encountered. Played hell with us for several months untill one of the AV programs caught up to it.

I mentioned “format” radio earlier, but some dopers mightn’t realize the full meaning of that term beyond just “country western” “top 40” or “oldies”, companies do a lot of research to refine specific play lists, based on a lot of rules, such as:

No more than 1 song not in top 100 per hour.
No more than 2 songs by female artists per hour.
Never 2 songs in a row by female artists.
3 songs per hour from top 10 list.
Never 2 songs by same artist in same hour unless both in top 20 list.
Etc Etc.

Number of songs between breaks, length of breaks, etc. are all finely tweaked to maximize profit. Too many commercials and you lose market share, too few, and you don’t have the time to sell advertisers.

Lots of other stuff went into a “format”, as detailed as do you announce the time on weekends or not.

Essentially anything that might annoy any listener is eliminated. “Format radio” is typically equated with middle-of-the-road inoccuous fare, only a small step above elevator muzak.

These “formats” are each assigned a trademarked name. “Smooth Jazz” is one “Great American Country” was another. The rules above applied (per my feeble memory) to the later trademarked name in the late 80’s early 90’s. Yes, they DID explicitly discriminate against female artists in that way.

Now of course it all comes of satillite. But in the old days it could be distributed on reel-reel tapes, or even just the playlist itself, with the station sourcing the content on it’s own. Pricing of the “format” to the station depended on delivery methode, and market size.

15

I’m a radio guy from the old days when it was turntables and cart decks and Ampex AG-440 open reel machines. Now I work at a public radio station that has just gone automated for the second time. We had been running on a DOS automation program written by an engineer at the station, back in the mid-'90s. Problem is, he could only run it on old, 75 MHz computers for some reason. Over the last year, all of his machines have started to die, and they don’t make the 2-gig HD or motherboards anymore. So they bit the bullet and spent the money on real broadcast automation software. It’s called NexGen, and is pretty much the state of the art.

There is a very steep learning curve. We keep finding out new things about what not to do, by making mistakes on the air with it. But we’ve got most of the bugs ironed out. When it works, it works flawlessly. When it doesn’t work, somebody told it to do the wrong thing, and it did as it was told. We are always changing it and adapting it so that the errors don’t happen the next time.

Basically, what it does is count time and fire events when you tell it to. For example:

13:00:00 Run Macro NPR-1
13:06:00 Spot Block
13:06:00 Run Macro Play Spot Block, No Fill
13:06:00 Underwriter Intro
13:06:04 Dewey, Cheatam & Howe, PA
13:06:21 End Spot Block
13:06:21 Run Macro Fade Up NPR
13:06:30 Run Macro NPR-1

And so on, all day, every day. It is programmed to switch to any of our sound sources - satellite audio receiver, hard disk recorder for time-shifted programs, local hard drives for all short announcements, promos and fill music, plus long form programs. Less frequently used now are the DAT and Minidisc recorders and CD players for delayed playback. We can just transfer everything onto the hard drives. We tell it when to play a recording and when to stop playing it, when to archive it and when to erase it.

The day is coming very soon now where we will be integrated with NPR by computer connection. We will book reception of a show. It will be downloaded to our automation computer in segments, and air in close to real time, or at any time we specify. This will do away with the current method of satellite delivery that NPR uses for content provision. When the underwriting department has all of their information input into the traffic program, NexGen will integrate with their traffic accounting program to generate reports of any kind, on what was played and when. They will be able to specify which underwriters will run on what dates, instead of us entering them manually. Eventually, it should be a thing of wonder.

We have three stations that are being automated simultaneously, with their own playlists. All of this is accomplished on 4 PCs. That’s pretty impressive in and of itself, as I used to live near a radio station when I was a kid, that had one of the earliest automation systems in the '70s. It took up a whole room of racks of equipment and cartridge carousels and open reel decks and lights and knobs and wires… all controlled by an early computer via punch cards and push pins. It almost always worked, except when it would go fubar without notice or reason. Well, one of the objectives is to make the equipment work so that the wrong thing never plays. That’s the theoretical ideal. I don’t know if we’ll ever achieve it.