There’s a distinctive tap tap tap tap always running in the background during news reports on the radio. It sounds like people typing on old timey typewriters, but why would they be 1) typing so loud and with such constancy, 2) typing so close to to the microphones, and 3) typing on old-timey typewriters. What in the world is that sound?
Also, are wires actually used in a wiring service? And what is a wiring service (as it relates to the media)?
I think there’s a good chance that what you’re hearing is the sound of a teletype, or what basically amounts to an old version of the fax. news agencies would send stories out to subscriber papers/tv and radio stations, where their teletype machines would retype the transmissions. The machines were basically typewriters; if you want a picture of one, take a look at Good Morning Vietnam. The machines Cronauer rips stories off of are teletypes.
Just a WAG (assuming we’re talking about the same noise)…
It’s a sound effect, on a tape or CD, of either “typewriter noise” or “teletype noise”, traditionally added by the sound engineer as a background to newscasts to give an air of serious journalistic integrity. I believe it was originally intended to evoke the atmosphere of a newsroom, so people could distinguish “the news” from the other “entertainment” that came over the radio during the rest of the hour.
Can’t help you on the other thing, sorry.
They’re subliminal morse-messages sent by the aliens (or the CIA…take your pick) to subvert your mind and take over the world.
Really? Let’s check…
D-R-I-N-K-Y-O-U-R-O-V-A-L-T-I-N-E
What the hell???!
you’re funny, guys 
Oh. Monstro. I just realized–you’re talking about a “wire service”? Like when they say, “And this, just off the wire…”? That’s like AP or Reuters. They’re basically news-gathering services that newspapers and radio stations can subscribe to. For example, the Podunk Daily News Gazette Times Chronicle can’t afford to send a reporter to cover the birth of the Japanese heir to the throne, so they pay AP for the right to run the AP reporter’s story in their paper, so the good folks of Podunk can have all the latest OB/GYN skinny from Tokyo. And it’ll say “(AP)” at the beginning of the story.
Reuters.
UPI.
Back when communication was done by telegraph, all the keys of one line were wired together. All the telegraph keys would click at the same time. The teletype was a typewriter sort of device that used the same idea. It might have used the same wires, for all I know. All of the teletypes on a line would print the same information at the same time. Teletypes were still in common use through the 60’s.
When the first computers were being designed, a method was needed to input data and to print results. A very popular method was to take the same teletype devices used by railroads and news rooms.
Ever wonder why your computer keyboard has an escape key and a control key? Those keys were on the teletypes used on the very early computers. And we’re still using them.
You have to admire the guys who came up with the teletypes. If you had one, you could plug it into the serial port of your PC and it would work. Sortof. no graphics.
i believe this was all started by walter winchel, a newsman from the 30’s and 40’s, who used the sound of the teletype to make his program sound “official,” like he was reading copy hot off the “wire”…which is what they called the teletype.
I have carefully duplicated the unique TELEGRAPH KEY setup used by Walter Winchell in his evening broadcasts. The setup will be used in a Hollywood movie.
Walter Winchell used these keys to generate fast morse code which he sent as 900Hz tones as he started his broadcasts with:
“Good evening Mr. and Mrs. North and South America and all the ships at sea…” “LETS GO TO PRESS”!
A quick search for ‘teletype’ on www.findsounds.com spits out this .wav (182k).
Oh, that wav has nothing to do with April 1st, it’s just the URL, if you wondered.
On Unix and Unix like OS’s terminals are still called tty’s for TeleType
Oops…that was just me.
I’m always tapping like that.
Philadelphia #1 radio station: KYW News Radio - one of the highest rated radio shows in the country - pipes in the sound of a old teletype machine.
TV in the UK still present their football results service with a pretend on-screen teleprinter making typy-typey noises and appearing teasingly one slow letter at a time. Obviously it was decided that, contrary to what you might think, this makes it appear more immediate. It’s a anachronism that just irritates me. Maybe 20 years from now they’ll start showing it appearing with a ping and “You have mail…”.
Many pop music radio stations now present their news over a looping drum beat in the background. I suspect they are afraid that their listeners will tune elsewhere or slip into a coma if not piped a constant 120 bpm.
How do you know that it isn’t really somebody’s idiot nephew typing in the results that slowly? “Well, he has to work somewhere…”