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1110 New Format

amos1001 said:
Probably Rockin' Ray and the Sunday night hall.if fame.

Mike did you ever do Ray's Hall of Fame show?
I don't know your history, although I know you were at SOC.
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I came to WBT from WSOC when AM 93 went full simulcast with WSOC-FM March 1985. I had worked for stations in Miami and Palm Beach before moving to Charlotte in 1981.

came onboard to do "After Hours" the overnight free form oldies show before Larry King moved from WSOC-AM to WBT. I also went up in the traffic plane as "Jeff Pilot" when Marty Lambert needed time off. I was busy since I was also dubbing WSOC-FM's music to cart for WSOC. It was a busy time for me!

Ray got Chris Beachly to fill in for him since many times I was scheduled before or after Ray.

Ray was a super nice guy, always up and positive.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
Actually we had silence sensor in 1972. It led out an ear piercing squeel.
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my first actual job (other than fill-in) was live weekends at a mon-fri automated station in 71. i suppose that gates automation had a silence sensor, but i don't remember it. after that i wasn't involved with an automated station until 80, except doing voice tracks in 77.
 
I started taking transmitter readings and feeding an automation at WAXY-FM 106 (105.9) in 1972 as FM just started becoming mass appeal. Four reels no waiting!
 
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K.M. Richards said:
If you guys can't stay on-topic, I will be happy to accommodate you by posting the entirety of my career ... it would be more than a dozen very long paragraphs.
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davideduardo said:
There is something to be said for making a clean and non-confusing break from the prior content on the AM. If 1110 will have a different format, then waiting to start it prevents listeners confusing the now-moved-to-FM format with whatever comes ahead on the AM.
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I guess the question is how different? Will it be supported by WBT's strong news department or run out of a closet? It's hard to start a brand new AM station without a lot of promotion. Without that, it dies.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
I guess the question is how different? Will it be supported by WBT's strong news department or run out of a closet? It's hard to start a brand new AM station without a lot of promotion. Without that, it dies.
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I will say this. Radio One certainly has managed to keep whatever it is under wraps pretty damn successfully.
 
Mike Sheridan said:
I started taking transmitter readings and feeding an automation at WAXY-FM 106 (105.9) in 1972 as FM just started becoming mass appeal. Four reels no waiting!
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for me it was 1970, xmitter readings every 30 minutes. ebs test was 1000khz tone, turn the plate voltage off and on 3 times and climb up the tower and yell THIS IS A TEST! our automation in 1970 was 4 carousel decks (24 carts, commercials), 2 "55" machines (55 carts, music), a time announcer (2 carts, even and odd times) and a couple of carts for weather and stuff like that.
 
amos1001 said:
2 "55" machines (55 carts, music),
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Did either of your 55's ever leave a played cart slightly less than fully retracted and then smash it to pieces when the playback unit moved back to the top after playing cart #55?
 
K.M. Richards said:
Did either of your 55's ever leave a played cart slightly less than fully retracted and then smash it to pieces when the playback unit moved back to the top after playing cart #55?
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We had one of those at WERC-FM in Birmingham. When I got there, they were doing a gold format, badly. We went to a "rock40" format, but not before I saw that machine chop a Fidelipac in half, jamming the device and spreading gray and clear plastic all over, along with the bend metal tape lift rod.
 
amos1001 said:
is that a rhetorical question?
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It was.

Thankfully, I never had to work with an automation system that had 55s, but I heard stories from colleagues at various times in my career about that particular design flaw.

I note that -- much to Gates Radio's dismay -- those never became an industry standard for multi-cart playback.
 
amos1001 said:
for me it was 1970, xmitter readings every 30 minutes. ebs test was 1000khz tone, turn the plate voltage off and on 3 times and climb up the tower and yell THIS IS A TEST! our automation in 1970 was 4 carousel decks (24 carts, commercials), 2 "55" machines (55 carts, music), a time announcer (2 carts, even and odd times) and a couple of carts for weather and stuff like that.
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LOL! Pardon my ignorance, but when you say carousel decks, ya mean those things that looked like a round window fan with carts stuck in it? First station I toured (WMAG, High Point) in 1984 at the age of seven, had those and if I remember correctly, used them even when a DJ was there during the day, as in miday when we were there. Oh yeah, we toured 'MFR too, first and only place I ever saw a teletype, loved it, yeah buddy! That's the day I was officially bit by the bug!
 
davideduardo said:
We had one of those at WERC-FM in Birmingham. When I got there, they were doing a gold format, badly. We went to a "rock40" format, but not before I saw that machine chop a Fidelipac in half, jamming the device and spreading gray and clear plastic all over, along with the bend metal tape lift rod.
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Oh good night! Man, Fidelipacs were the best carts. I remember them having those embossed letters right across the front, that's when I knew I wasn't gonna have any issues with my production, save for me LOL.
 
K.M. Richards said:
It was.

Thankfully, I never had to work with an automation system that had 55s, but I heard stories from colleagues at various times in my career about that particular design flaw.

I note that -- much to Gates Radio's dismay -- those never became an industry standard for multi-cart playback.
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Yeah, we had two decks, a three stack and a two across. I believe the bottom one on the three didn't work and the second on the two was strictly for fastforwarding tapes after they were done. I hardly used the latter, just let them queue for the most part, always tried to be doing other stuff, so the pots could be down. Man, I haven't thought about some of this in years. We switched to minidiscs after carts and they may still use them to this day, dunno.
 
I was thinking more along the lines of other automation multi-cart playback equipment, Josh.

SMC Carousels (yes, the round units that sort of looked like a fan), IGM Instacart, Schafer Audiofile.

What you are describing are single-cart players, as in there can only be one at a time ... no multiple trays.
 
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