Scratching Back Records wasn't for the Sound - It was Radio 101.
If you've been a dj or on-air personality in radio, you may remember the archaic way we had to get a record to play instantly on the air. It involved taking your finger and scratching back the record (with the audio in cue so you could listen to the reverse sounds) about half a revolution on the turntable. That was for a record turning at 45 rpm (revolutions per minute). You shifted the scratch back when the record ran at 33 rpm or 78 rpm.
Turntables at 33, 45, 78 rpm, Playback with Windows Media, MP4, Real, Apple or with podcasting.
Strange as this sounds - if you relate these "turntable" challenges to today - we all have to adjust what we do to the current state of the art technologies. We have to tweak things whether recording something for playback with Microsoft Windows Media, QuickTime, RealNetworks or for syndication for podcasts, blog creation, vblogging, video blogging and for downloading to different portable media devices.
Cart Machines (Still in Use) - Intermediate Technology Solutions today in all media - especially with Podcast Tools
I still wake up having nightmares of my record ending at the radio station and I can't find the record in the library. Sometimes - you could grab a cart of music if your radio station had that technology and start the song up instantly. As technology advanced - cart machines replaced physical round records. If there were no records "carted" or a record wasn't cued - there was dead air on the radio station. (Carts was an intermediate technology - still in use today - of a physical unit (tape in a plastic casing) that were played in cart machines. There are other ways of playback at radio stations from Denon's to full digital audio systems. Most radio stations are in a transition and use hybrid systems and a combination of analog and digital.
Disclaimer: To not alarm the podcasters - who I love - many of the tools that we see popping up for podcasters are transitional "tools" that companies like Microsoft, mobile phone carriers, or consumer electronics manufacturers will create or embed into their software in the next year or two. It won't be as hard to be a podcaster, and it isn't that hard to be one today. It is hard to create a good sounding radio program or podcast.
Webcasting Trauma - Years Ago or Yesterday
It was very hard to be a webcaster at the beginning. 9 years ago - some of us had to manually take up encoders and had to find hidden ISP closets and equipment in office buildings, often dusty and sometimes behind storage or cleaning supplies.
Example: Transporting Xing encoders with CEO Howard Gordon (first live streaming media on Internet before RealNetworks) to a switch in the Westin Building in Seattle, WA to get KZOK and KMPS connected for live streaming.) It's a little easier to be a webcaster today as we've for the most part eliminated cobwebs.
Radio Station Hotline! Alarm!
Human Failures Caused Technological Innovations in Broadcasting or was it the Girls on the phone?
If you failed to start a record on time at a radio station, you were in trouble. That meant the Radio Station Program Director or Assistant Program Director would give you a call on the hotline. This is the special phone line in the control room where your boss could get you anytime. The bank of 800 numbers or local lines were often tied up with listeners calling on the radio station promoted numbers. Not untypical - djs were male and they tended to spend a lot of time on the phone with the female callers tying up all the listener lines.
Disk Jockeys were Male...because that was what the market wanted then.
Technology helped Female djs get on-air.
Djs were male. Strange as it is to remember, I was the first morning drive female "co-host" in my radio station's market, and first afternoon drive female dj, and I don't consider myself that old. (The station was KROK.) This was a novelty. We made the front page of the local newspaper's style section in that we had a female in the morning. In many cases, radio station focus group testing showed that females liked to listen to males, and males liked to listen to both for different reasons. As the years passed, smart programmers and audiologists (chief engineers or specialized audio consultants) realized they needed to adjust the audio processing (microphones and systems) for female audio delivery. This removed some of the annoying shrill tones that many females and males find offensive. It is now easier to do with a few tweaks from a trained engineer who understands how females and males listen to audio and perceive it differently. This is art and science to have all the audio mix together and play comfortably for most listeners.
Not Quite Automation - But Helping Transitional Tools to "Play" Radio
Some smart technologists in radio (called engineers at that time and still today) figured out how to put tones (inaudible tone on the tape) that would cue a relay when the song was ending and blink lights in the studio to warn the dj that their song was ending in a minute or 30 seconds. A dj might be doing something else and the yellow light or red light would get your attention to snap to it to physically wait for the last second of the song to manually start the next song. One had to mix the fading song that was ending and bring in new song starting to play audio. Those of you that dj at clubs understand the challenge and talent required to do this perfectly and consistently It's art (and practice) to do this live and have this sound great every time. It's precision in timing understanding the musical structure either by training or experience to combine the musical elements in a slow mix, long mix, fade out, cold ending or add a transitional element of a jingle with the right music tone and tempo.
Disk Jockeys were Engineering Transcriptionists and Maintenance Providers.
Fast forward to today. I'd love to be dj again today because the technology allows you to be creative and not have to monitor "tower" transmissions, be a music librarian, and do a number of maintenance duties that are now automated. Dj's wered licensed by the government in the US. They had to have an FCC (Federal Communications Commission) license and had to take transmitter and relay log readings. All of us that worked in radio a mere few years ago remember studying for our FCC licenses, having to clean cart machines/tape machines with alcohol and
q-tips, splice audio tape with a razor blade and tape, and knew what to do if you happened to spill a glass of orange juice in a turntable. We now have learned how to reboot and run system diagnostics and still have to grab a q-tip from time to time. Most have to learn how to record a 4 hour show in an hour, not live, but perhaps near "live" on demand adapting a bit a term from TV and cable of that of Near Video On Demand (NVOD).
24 Hour Operations - Drama, Fun and Frustrations
Trust it to say, in a 24 hour operation, those of us who were working our way up in radio to get off the midnight to 6 am air shift didn't want to wake up the chief engineer. It wasn't uncommon, usually at awkward times such as 3 AM in the morning when an engineer received a call that one of us had blown up a turntable in the studio because of a careless orange juice spill. One can't forget having to blow dry the turntable on low heat at 4 am in the morning. DJs had to cue records on one turntable, talking between songs while an engineer was crawling under your feet. The engineer wasn't in his best attitude form at 4 AM trying to sort out the orange juice stickiness factor from the live wires. This hasn't gone away - ask any 24 hour operations center in TV, Radio, cable or in any tech center to tell you if anything unusual may have challenged their sleep. It's amazing where small crumbs of cake, staples, paper clips and donut sugar can be found and the havoc that can be caused by a loose LAN cable or an electrical plug.
The Moral of our History - Transitional Times in Radio, Internet, Broadcasting and Media
Perhaps we all need to reflect on the fact that what we think is cutting edge is just that...but it's a "baby step", "big step" or "transitional step" to personalized, fun and informative media future where we can't really imagine 50 years into the future our media needs.
It's exciting to see people marveling over the latest and greatest. I do it every day as do many of you. I still have to remember with admiration that all of what we're seeing today was built with hard work, mistakes, corporate drama, and luck. Whether we solved a problem with scotch tape, duct tape, hand made machined tool, lines of code, plans on a napkin or a tentative "self-imposed stupid" idea to get us to the next stage, all of us are pushing forward technology.
If your expertise is communicating our passion to the next person, or evangelizing on the subject, it is okay to call yourself a futurist or technologist or communicator or broadcaster. There are no "should be" no lines of differentiation in this new media world. We all contribute to the future whether as an individual media communicator, inventor, or as employees or as CEO of a global conglomerate.
24 Hours Anytime, Anywhere Digital Media With No Problems
I'm watching transitional technology until we get to the anytime, anywhere 24 hours a day media anywhere on the planet. You'll see here fun companies, products, innovations, business models, tools, gadgets, devices as I find them or if they are shoved in my email box and get my attention from the 40 other firms pitching their wares. Some will last, others won't. Some may be fabulous - but many companies don't have the marketing or contacts to make it happen. Others will take or "steal" their designs and make them universals. The big guys may buy up the technology or the talent. Sad for some of us, but true. *** (That's why my post of yesterday about patent reform fits into the digital media future.) ***
Even with our frustrations of today, running into the bad guys and good guys of our personal and professional lives, please feel gratitude from those of us who appreciate your passion and innovation. We really do appreciate the tinkerers, the guys behind the scenes, as well as those guys and gals who move it forward for everyone to use this new media.
See You on the Net.
Peg
PS In upcoming reports, I'll follow the different paths in media regarding automation, personalization, software, tools and content built to ease our lives or to inform, whether we're podcasters, broadcasters, hobbyists, or programmers who deal with multimedia.
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