I wish WBEN's newscaster Tom Puckett would use his cough switch. His coughing, gagging, sniffing, burping and farting in the middle of a newscast is annoying and (dare I say) unprofessional.
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Do Radio Stations Still Use A Cough Switch?
- Thread starter Long Time RadioFan
- Start date
Can you post some audio of it here? This must make for really bad radio...Would love to listen!
Many people are working from home. Maybe he is doing his newscasts from his bathroom. That would be appropriate for WBEN. The on air product is foul flatulence...
If there's an off-switch or a pot, he should be using it.
According to the previous post, he is.
When I worked in the business, all mikes, including guests and production, had a cough switch available. It's obvious things have changed.
I don't listen to BEN very often and when I do, it's when I'm on the road. Now that Puckett has a one hour newscast, we'll see how it goes. He seems to have a particularly difficult time making it through the news at noon. E-mails to Tim Wenger and Tom Puckett have yielded no response.
I've never owned, managed or programmed a station over the last 62 years that had a "cough switch" in the studio as they have all been facilities with the host or jock running their own board and they could just use the mike switch briefly. However, at one where the station originated the LA Dodgers baseball, the stadium facility had a mike "off" momentary contact button since the board work was done at the studio; in that case the "dead air" interval was reduced by having a crowd mike outside the booth still left on.
That said, putting a momentary "contact" button anywhere in the individual mike circuit is not hard to do. The button just disconnects as long as it is held. But the console's mike switch does the same thing, too. But most talents would simply pot down if they had to cough, sneeze or pass gas.
Doesn't the mike have an on-off switch? Or a pot?
There's a great story about Bob Eucker who many may know not only as the LONG time radio announcer for the Milwaukee Brewers, but also for his time as a MLB catcher and his several appearances on Carson and in movies like "Major League". etc. Eucker would be on the air doing play by play, and to entertain those in the booth with him, he'd hit the mute button mid-sentence and start using expletives, make risque comments about large chested women in the stadium, etc. then release the mute button and keep talking without skipping a beat.
Here's a video telling the story, it starts at around 1:00 in. Don't listen if you're opposed to cursing. This audio is definitely NSFW:
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Not sure if this still exists, but I worked at stations that had a news booth, consisted of a chair, a desk and a mike...no board. There was always a kill switch/cough switch if the news announcer felt something coming. And, of course, ALL on air personalities were responsible for clearing throats PRIOR to the mike being opened. Coughing, sneezing, wheezing...not acceptable.
At my stations, we had cough switches for the guests but not for the Jocks, who just pulled their mic faders down when they needed to cough.
Many top-30 market talk stations have (or had) cough buttons near the on/off switches. Obviously these were not combo situations.
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