All Classical Portland KQAC - Automated?

[sdwulfdawg]

All Classical Portland is an excellent classical music radio station.

I'm curious, however, are they on the air "live" with their program content or are they automated with pre-recorded segments?

You never hear time checks, although once in a while they will mention the daypart they are broadcasting.

Also, do the on air hosts do the button pushing? Or is there a on air producer?

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I'm not familiar with the station, but my guess is that they are mostly live with some voice tracking at night.

But I'm pretty confident they do not use producers along with their announcers. That practice ended just about everywhere a long time ago. And if they were using producers, typically the announcers would mention their name at the start or end of their shift. "With producer Lindsay Holton, I'm Andrea Murray for All-Classical KQAC. We'll leave you today with a piece from the early 19th Century..."

 

[semoochie]

I'm not familiar with the station, but my guess is that they are mostly live with some voice tracking at night.

But I'm pretty confident they do not use producers along with their announcers. That practice ended just about everywhere a long time ago. And if they were using producers, typically the announcers would mention their name at the start or end of their shift. "With producer Lindsay Holton, I'm Andrea Murray for All-Classical KQAC. We'll leave you today with a piece from the early 19th Century..."

I believe that had to do with an engineer's union, separate from AFTRA, which I'm pretty sure was mostly limited to the larger markets. As I understand it, their union prohibited anyone else from touching the equipment. I ran into such a situation at KKHI San Francisco but as far as I know, it didn't exist in Portland. I'm thinking that everyone else was called a combo operator.

 

[davideduardo]

I believe that had to do with an engineer's union, separate from AFTRA, which I'm pretty sure was mostly limited to the larger markets. As I understand it, their union prohibited anyone else from touching the equipment. I ran into such a situation at KKHI San Francisco but as far as I know, it didn't exist in Portland. I'm thinking that everyone else was called a combo operator.

You have to be specific about the era. Back in the period before the mid to late 80's, many stations even outside the major markets had long-standing contracts, often with the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers) for transmitter operation and studio control jobs.

When I went to Birmingham's WERC AM & FM in the early 70's, we had an IBEW strike as the new owner wanted combo operations. The picket line went on for months, but the change in ownership has allowed a contract review and the board ops and transmitter babysitters were gone.

When I got to KWKW in LA, we had union announcer contracts with AFTRA and an IBEW contract for the board ops.

Even before that, in markets as small as Chattanooga, the AFM, the Musician's Union, stations were often required to have a live studio orchestra or band for as many hours as they wanted to play recorded music. That faded in the early 50's with Petrillo's fading power in the union, but it showed how a station might have had a talent contract, an engineer's contract and even an AFM contract... and have to deal with three unions, none of which would cross the other's picket lines if there was a strike.