Me and girlfriend were watching old tapes on the VCR and as the taped episode was about to begin, we hear a very rapid sequence of touch tones, about 7 digits’ worth, just like a phone call.
This reminded me of how often I’ve heard that, particularly on television broadcasts (this tape was a commercial tape release of a series that had originally been broadcast on PBS).
What kind of device are they passing instructions to, and why should it be audible to us like that?
I often hear that sequence of tones as well, usually on cable-only channels and usually upon coming out of a local commercial. I suspect it’s some sort of “resume channel feed” id or sequence alert. In other words, a signal to the local cable operators to get out of the local commercials they’re running and to resume the program.
But that’s just a guess.
It’s called a bee-doop, and it’s pretty much as described. It informs the station that the commercial (or local) time is over and the network feed is to begin. IIRC, you’re not supposed to hear them, but occasionally you do. It’s not that big a deal and they won’t start a nuclear war.
Robin
msrobyn,
So if we’re hearing it, does that mean that someone’s screwing up? I usually hear it on the… ahem… lower budget cable channels. Meaning that’s where the less experienced board ops are. Am I in the ball park?
Just to add and clarify to the above-
A bee-doop is a means to trigger different equipment from remote locations.
It’s primarily used by small market radio stations, T.V., whatever, that have become almost completely automated.
Someone from the ‘bigger’, or ‘central’ station spits out a bee-doop and sends it down the line. Each station then picks up this tone and autmatically plays a recording that corresponds to the type of bee-doop. Ie., a station I.D., a time stamp, or an ad.
If you listen to NPR, ever so often you can hear the bee-doop informing the local PR station it’s time to fire off a local ad, err, sponsor ‘thank-you’, news update, etc…
Since it’s almost always a computer that is picking up the bee-doop these days, and all it does is fire off a loop or pre-recording down the line, they’ve been able to mask the tone and make it less noticable.
I’ll check this tomorrow to see what I’ve missed so far. Hey, it’s 3:44 in the morning, what do you expect?
Damn. That was confusing.
Nine times out of ten you don’t hear it because it’s simply triggering a computer to play something pre-recorded. There’s no one in the loop.
Where you will hear it is when it is prompting a live person to do something, ie., to make a local news update, weather report, or breaking event.
Make sense?
Thanks, Cnote
BTW, missed ya this weekend at the Dopefest.
Robin