In this letter to the editor, Archie Stulc responds to Tom Vernon’s feature, “Early Adopters: When Computers First Met Radio.” Radio World welcomes letters to the editor on this or any story. Email [email protected].
I read Tom Vernon’s article “Early Adopters: When Computers Met Radio” with great interest and bad memories.
Four decades ago when I started working in “real” radio, I had the opportunity to install new studios with the man who would become my engineering mentor. Things got interesting.
First, half of the new equipment we were installing didn’t work straight out of the box. We adapted, overcame and improvised. No time to send boxes back for repair.
But there was this piece that was to be the automation of the station, the electronic box that would roll out your programming supported by the cheapest warm bodies still available just to make sure that we were on the air.
It didn’t work out that way. Actually it went way off plan.
First, on the installation were two 500 Mb Winchester hard drives, each weighing in around 20 pounds and needing air flow.
Second, we had to program the beast to do what we wanted. Sounds simple, but it wasn’t all that easy. We had to deal with all kinds of numbers. Spot times. Which spot? Which song. Song number. Etc.
But it turned out that two 500 Mb drives couldn’t hold all of the spots plus a small number of songs. OK. Pivot and adapt: Use live DJs and press a button to play the commercial break. A reasonable idea.
Right. Until the squirrels got loose.
When activated to play a break, the system would start an ad. Then start another one, not on the schedule. And then half of another ad or promo. Then random audio bits. It wouldn’t stop.
And because that box fed the transmitter feed, the DJ couldn’t override the audio feed without shutting off the box and flipping a couple of switches.
There were two aspects to “fixing” this.
First, after some heated conversations with the two guys who had designed and built this box, we were given reprogramming instructions that “should” fix the problem. Should.
That meant that my mentor and I spent a day and a half entering new commands on the Chiclet keypad in hexadecimal.
My mentor then told me the best advice I ever got: “Never trust a box that counts to F.”
And I won’t get into how they sent the wrong parts for a repair and had to actually come out to fix the box. Just after that, the automation system became a ship anchor.
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