RE: Bob Bittner's Unlikely Ally In The Fight Against The "CashMachine"

["Pete Ferrand" <pete@vermontel.net>]

>
> Sounds like the old WJUL (91.5 Lowell) set-up.  They

The ability of going in and out of delay with a single button is a
remarkable improvement. Those old systems with tape recorders (and
there were some cart machines that were used for delay, too,
another horror show as the tape wore out pretty fast) were
absolutely inscrutible in where the audio goes in and where it
goes out.

I always had a hard time conceptualizing, not the basic concept of
course, but which controls get thrown in which order to go in and
out and how to dump a bad word. Obviously this has to be done in
the heat of the rather excitable moment in many cases. With
typical small station setups where there's only one room set up
this way, there's no way to practice the sequence, either, unless
you come in when the station's off the air and then you probably
won't hear how you did.

And to go in at the start of the show you have to start the
program into the delay machine while something else is on the air
and then get rid of that and bring the delay machine output up at
the right time and make sure all the board outputs except one are
switched to the audition channel, for the old style boards.

I was at at least one station where some operator (no, not me) got
confused at the wrong time, and, instead of dumping the bad word,
set up a loop so the bad word echoed over and over again.

My main use of the modern delays has been  a) when I'm late
getting back from the bathroom and need a moment to get organized
and  b) when the newscaster or whoever accidentally gives the
wrong call letters.

-Pete
Plainfield, NH