And OH...... and those horrble telco lines (Re: Speaking of Beeps (was: WBZ Delay)

[John J. Francini]

Unfortunately, the sound quality on the TVs available to me in the 
70s was such that I didn't really notice much difference between the 
network feed and the local audio. Sound in most TVs back then was 
crap, crap, crap. And it wasn't just the speaker; the entire audio 
chain on most sets wasn't designed to pass much more than about 8 or 
so KHz.

TV set sound didn't improve markedly until stereo broadcasting became 
available.  Only then did manufacturers start throwing some money 
into better audio.

There may well have been some sets with good audio available before 
stereo TV sound was commonplace, but we certainly didn't have such a 
set until perhaps the mid 80s...

j


At 16:00 -0800 1/4/06, Peter Q. George wrote:
>WOW!!!  What memories you have, John!!  I also recall
>that prior to February, 1978, all network audio from
>the Big 3 major networks and PBS were fed on 5,000 kHz
>lines to the Boston affilates (and everywhere else,
>for that matter).  They truly sounded like crap. But
>that's all there was and "there ain't no mo".  I was
>fascinated by the sound of the network audio on the
>NYC O+O's (WCBS-TV, WNBC-TV and WABC-TV) when I
>visited New York in 1975.  Full quality 15 kHz!  I
>always wondered why we could not get the same network
>audio quality on the local level here in Boston.
>Well, we had a little "sneak preview" in June, 1973
>and later on in 1974.  The ABC feed to from AT&T
>long-lines was disrupted for some reason or another in
>June '73.  SO, ABC provided a microwaved version to
>both WCVB and WTEV for a brief period until the lines
>were repaired.  The microwave feed on ABC sounded like
>the network audio you would hear in New York on
>WABC-TV (Channel 7).  It only lasted a few days and
>.... the 5,000 kHz monster was back it's full-glory.
>(Yuck!)
>
>In 1974, WPRI-TV (Channel 12) somehow got a
>full-quality microwave feed from CBS and stuck with it
>until they left CBS for ABC in 1977.  Same quality
>audio you would heard if you were in New York on
>WCBS-TV (Channel 2). 
>
>Thank God, those old AT&T long-lines for TV are LONG
>gone!!!!
>
>
>73, Peter Q. George
>
>--- John Francini <francini@mac.com> wrote:
>
>>  Tones...
>>
>>  It used to be the case that the CBS tone that's
>>  still used on their 
>>  radio net was also used on the TV side. I have many
>>  childhood 
>>  memories of the sequence we'd see on the 18"
>>  Philco-Ford B&W set at 
>>  the top of the hour when a new show started:
>>
>>  :59:59: Screen would go to black, and the picture
>>  would roll once as 
>>  the station switched from internal sync to network
>>  sync
>>  :00:00: Bonnng!
>>  :00:00.5: Start of new program.
>>	"From Television City in Hollywood... Boy the way
>>  Glen Miller 
>>  Played..." [All in the Family]
>>	"[teletype bed] This is The CBS Evening News with
>>  Walter Cronkite"
>>  ...etc...
>>
>>  I can't name many of the shows, but I can definitely
>>  remember the 
>>  blank-sync change-chime-program start sequence.
>>
>>
>>  For the longest time I had my Macs set up to play
>>  the CBS chime at 
>>  the top of the hour (and would again if I could find
>>  a high-
>>  quality .wav/.mp3 of it), and the CBS click (which
>>  brackets radio 
>>  commercials on the net) as my beep tone.
>>
>>
>>  [screetchy Jean Stapleton voice] Those Were The
>>  Daaaaaayyysss!
>>
>>  john
>>
>>
>>
>>  On 4 Jan 2006, at 16:10, Bill O'Neill wrote:
>>
>>  > Todd Glickman wrote:
>>  >> but shouldn't the time tone be in the airchain
>>  after the delay, to 
>>  >> mark the exact top-of-the-hour?
>>  > Can someone point out where one can get a top o'
>>  hour tone system 
>>  > that doesn't resemble a Heathkit project?
>>  >
>>  > <harp sfx in> Love the tone.  One of the way-back
>>  tones at WCAP was 
>>  > this big, ancient master control studio clock.
>>  Under the "12" Ike 
>>  > Cohen had rigged-up some sort of "U" shaped set of
>>  contacts, with a 
>  > > contact at the tip of the second hand. When the
>>  second hand swept 
>>  > the first contact it opened the line from the tone
>>  oscillator in 
>>  > rack (that was always on) and as it swept the
>>  second contact, it 
>>  > closed the switch. The swipe time was about 2
>>  seconds. (It actually 
>>  > worked!)   The next generation was that very same
>>  tube-job tone 
>>  > oscillator but it was opened and closed by ABC's
>>  "00" cue for 
>>  > Information Net.  The twin tone was about 2
>>  seconds apart. Even 
>>  > though WCAP didn't air Information (it delayed
>>  Direction at :50) it 
>>  > was a solution that worked for many years. The
>>  station has been 
>>  > tone-less for sometime now. When Ike passed away,
>>  so did most of 
>>  > the secrets of "the museum of broadcasting."
>>  <harp sfx out>
>>  >
>>  > Bill (Don't use that tone with me, young man)
>>  O'Neill
>>
>>
>
>
>Peter Q. George (K1XRB)
>Whitman, Massachusetts
>                            "Scanning the bands since 1967"
>radiojunkie1@yahoo.com
>radiojunkie3@yahoo.com
>***********************************************************
>
>
>
>__________________________________________
>Yahoo! DSL – Something to write home about.
>Just $16.99/mo. or less.
>dsl.yahoo.com

-- 
----
John Francini <mailto:francini@mac.com>
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