In this letter to the editor, the author comments on Radio World’s recent feature “A Radio Engineer’s Best Friend,” where we highlighted the furry friends of our readers and fellow engineers.
I don’t have a picture, but … a very long time ago at KJAZ I kept getting complaints about “hum in the microphone.”
So I’d go in late at night and double check everything and could not find the hum. The air staff thought I was just blowing them off.
One day I dropped by in the afternoon and the DJ said “I’m hearing the hum again.” This time I could hear it, too. It was coming from the station cat, “Jive.” The console was a Gates Stereo Yard, full of tubes, and nice and warm on the top. Jive liked the warmth and was laying on the console directly behind the microphone — an RCA 77DX. Jive was happy and purring.
The air staff learned to chase Jive off of the console before a break.
— Bill Ruck, San Francisco
Bill offers a little backstory: “In the early 70s I was on active duty in the Navy stationed at NAS Alameda. KJAZ was in Alameda too, so it was easy to drop by the studios. KJAZ was a jazz station at that time and ‘Jive’ was a very appropriate name for a jazz station’s cat.”
[Check Out More Letters at Radio World’s Reader’s Forum Section]
