Re: Neighbors, at the tone...

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Sven Weil wrote:
>In New York City, stations with time tones:
> NewsRadio 88 (WCBS-AM) and WINS-Radio
>1010; WCBS-FM 101; Radio WADO-1280; WQXR-FM 96.3.
>
>I believe Radio 710 (WOR) and WEVD-1050 sometimes use them also.  Please
>correct me if I'm wrong :-)

        As far as I know, WOR always uses the tone. Late at night, when
they sometimes run whatever network news they use (CNN?) you get two tones
that aren't always exactly in synch. Not sure about WEVD.

        Also, WINS is unusual in that it still uses a tone on the half-hour
(as WCBS (AM) used to do).  The only other station I've heard doing that
lately is the English-language news/talk station in Montreal (not 590 kHz)
- -- calls escaping me at the moment.

        Stations that run the CBS hourly news and I think some of the other
networks (CNN?) get a tone thrown in, don't they? I know on WTIC (AM), on
the rare occasions in the middle of the night when they take the CBS
hourly, it's a real noisy moment, with WTIC's four-tone signal simultaneous
with the CBS chime signal. The WTIC signal takes so long it's sometimes
still running over the first note or two of the news intro. when they're a
fraction of a second out of synch with the net time.

        And the CBS signal is unusual in that it is more of a chime. In the
ancient days of one network line, you used to hear it by itself without the
hourly news intro on the rare occasion when some huge news event sent the
network into special programming that they did not stop for the news. Also,
on WCBS, you sometimes hear it by itself on the very rare occasion they are
going through the top of the hour with local programming. For awhile, they
ran some sports play by play years back and you'd hear it then. I don't
know how that is achieved technically on WCBS. Maybe it's played manually,
or maybe because they're WCBS they're set up to always tap into the network
origination of the time tone separately from the network program output.
It's interesting to hear it without the news intro. It's such a signature
by itself, that you know immediately it's a CBS station.

------------------------------