Post by Phil KaneYeah - gone are the days when I would sit in front of the transmitter
to make sure that it didn't walk away. The 15-minute meter logging
was the only thing that interrupted my doing my engineering school
homework unless an alarm went off. Programming came from Master
Control next door or from Studio E after midnight. Ah, for the good
old days! <GG>
When I began in broadcasting in 1900-mumbledee, we took transmitter readings
every half hour. The transmitter had a crystal oven where an actual mercury
thermometer was visible to the observer. That was the old KBBM in Hayward
(now, incidentally KKIQ). Later when I took broadcast training at KCSM they
also had a transmitter with a crystal oven.
When I moved over to KVEZ/KSOL (107.7), the transmitter was on King's
Mountain and was remoted, but the telemetry was so bad on a windy day that
we were told to take an average of the swinging readings. I was told that
the antenna for the analog STL was swaying in the wind, causing the strange
readings. I don't remember if we had to take the readings hourly by then or
not.
By the time I went to KTHO in South Lake Tahoe, the readings were every 3
hours as they were at KWUN. KWUN had multiple issues with the 5-tower
antenna phasing, requiring digilent observations and telling the CE about
excessive common point current, etc. One of the engineers who consulted on
the building of the station told me it should have never been built.
KWUN was fun radio. The owner, Bill Adler, sold every available slot he
could, including the sign-off at sunset, which of course coincided the
dinner time at a restaurant. "KWUN is leaving the air, but the evening is
just beginning at John Jawad's Pioneer Inn in Clayton..." KWUN was real
radio with all kinds of remotes from little league baseball to shopping
center openings. I remember one Saturday lining up two remotes that went
back to back with me reading some local news and weather on the crossover.
They had just enough equipment to cover it. And we were good friends with
telco toll, so their circuits were almost always up and in good
form...except...
Except, one time when a remoted line to one of the bible churches was down.
I don't remember if it was telco's fault or they hadn't paid their bill or
what. Normal procedure was to set up a mixer and leave the mics open for
half an hour before the broadcast to make sure that we could hear them.
This time I couldn't. Had no idea what was wrong. I called the bible
church and they high-tailed it over to KWUN from Oakland and set up a
keyboard and some gospel singers and a preacher and did a live broadcast
from the "news studio" which tripled as the engineering bench and lunch
room. The broadcast came off without a hitch though it started maybe 2
minutes late.
KWUN also ran Notre Dame football via Mutual, and one time they sent us the
wrong schedule for the spot breaks, meaning that they threw to local when we
were expecting network spots, making me rush into the control room and punch
something up. And the network spot lineup was also all wrong.
KWUN liked to have a local adjacency after Mutual news so that it sounded
like the spot was part of the newscast. This meant coming in after the
newscaster signed off but before Mutual ran its bumper jingle. We were
supposed to put in the spot and then play a cart with the jingle after the
spot.
Mutual sometimes gave us headaches because the 2:30pm weekday feed was
supposed to come from "network control" such as it was, from Seattle. I
can't remember if it was KING or KIRO. Anyhow, the West Coast feed was done
because the network spot lineup was different, being 5:30pm afternoon drive
on the East Coast. HOWEVER, the board op in Seattle often failed to pull
the national network patch, meaning that about 1/3 of the time (literally)
we'd hear the start of both the Seattle feed AND the national feed. After a
moment or two (if the newscaster/board op was listening in his phones)
they'd pull the plug on the national feed, but more often than not the
newscaster/board op was NOT listening and the entire first minute of the
newscast had both feeds on it, meaning we'd have to dump out of it.
KTHO was an interesting bird. It was extremely listened to for the winter
road closings, which meant the DJ had to phone the police agencies in
California and Nevada and get the latest updates twice an hour, while often
being put on hold and trying to do a live DJ shift at the same time.
KVEZ went from Spanish language contemporary music to English language
oldies under a change of management. One day I found myself playing board
op to announcers who knew so little English that we communicated a lot in
hand motions, to playing oldies back to back and running voice tracks
(because they didn't think my voice was "mature enough" yet. I left to do
some other things and when I returned the station was changing its callsign
to KSOL and doing an "urban" format under yet another new manager. (This
one stuck.) I didn't sound black enough, either, so I board opped for
various folks and did some production, etc.
TODAY, almost none of this programming stuff happens anymore and none of the
equipment is the same, except that the mixer is recognizable. Heck,
stations even change pattern automatically, no switches to flip.
So today, engineers such as Eric are far more working as IT people at
stations than they are as broadcast engineers.
