Talk shows through the ages

[Shawn Mamros]

>Yes that's how it used to be done-- Ed and Wendy King had a very 
>popular talk show on KDKA in Pittsburgh in the late 40s, if I recall 
>correctly, and that's what they had to do-- paraphrase what the 
>caller said and then reply.  SO was that due to technical issues?  I 
>mean, in the 1940s, was it impossible technically to put a call on 
>the air and have it sound good? Or was this a carry-over from earlier 
>FCC and FRC decisions?   [...]

The Kings' "Party Line" program ran from 1951 until Ed's passing in
1971.  By most accounts I've seen, two-way talk was technically
feasible at the time, but Ed chose to do the show the old-fashioned
way and didn't air the callers' voices.  By all accounts, the show
was very popular in spite of that.

Regarding technical feasibility...
I suppose one could do an extremely low-tech two-way talk show
with two phones in the studio - one which the show host would
be using, the other an extension with a microphone attached to
the earpiece - but it would sound atrocious, because you'd get
both the host's and the caller's voice over the phone, and it
wouldn't mix well at all with the host's mic.  The device which
solves this problem is called a telephone hybrid; it splits the
local (show host's) voice signal from the remote (caller's) voice,
and allows the latter to be wired directly to a mixng console.

I've been trying to look up an invention date for the telephone
hybrid, but haven't had any luck so far.  It's that device, more
than any other, which makes modern two-way talk possible; knowing
when the first one was built would tell us when two-way talk shows
became practical to do.

As others have said, one can technically do a talk show without
a delay device, and strictly speaking, there's no legal requirement
to have one.  It's just that the license holder is still held
responsible for everything that gets said on the air, regardless
of whether it comes from a station announcer or an outside caller.
Since it's difficult to put that much trust in the callers, most
stations and networks prefer having the delay.

-Shawn Mamros
E-mail to: mamros -at- mit dot edu