KJR AM - The Lights Are On, But No One's Home...

[systemdump]

In my experience in the broadcasting industry, I have manually been a radio station board op and master control operator for many professional and college sports. My very first job in radio was running Denver Bronco Football games on a phone line at 15-years old. From there, I've ran on both radio and television for Idaho Vandal Football and Basketball games. I've been the satellite repeater for games, I've been the originator of network broadcasts on the television side from Idaho Public TV's Network operations center that feeds 3 regions and 5 TV stations in the state of Idaho. I've also ran Mariners Network games and Pre-Season Seahawk games as a repeater for a Boise TV station, usually taking a dirty feed from KING5. An operator and his format sheet..That's it!

No where in that line of being behind the board and controls of those broadcasts did I experience any automation until running ESPN and ESPN+ game feeds. The DTMF tones are tuned to certain frequencies that are supposed to run select elements when a tone is cued down the audio sub-channel. I've programmed two different automation systems in the past to run LIVE events yet the management I worked for in Boise wasn't confident in the automation system to get the job done properly. Even when a different person tried to accomplish the same goal of automating a live sporting event, it just ended up sounding like garbage.

Nothing beats a real, LIVE person behind the board when it comes to running sporting events. Clear Channel trying to automate LIVE events shows you how much they actually respect the air product and image of their properties. In their eyes, games that are on the ESPN Feed are just filling up airtime until Monday.

I think that automation is ok but not infallible and at least someone should be their to monitor modulation and power levels anyway. Ours was set up that way but sometimes you could miss a cue if something like an injury occurs, You may be recording a liner when it happens, or nature calls

 

[Drucifer]

There is no more of a sick feeling in days long ago whilst standing at the urinal and hearing the air feed on the speaker in the mens room say "let's pause 10 seconds for station identification on the Cincinnati Reds Baseball network" followed by...dead air (because nature had called LOL).

 

[IndigoCoyote]

You pee at :15 and :45- those are the RULES, mister!

 

[systemdump]

You pee at :15 and :45- those are the RULES, mister!

On the Cincinnati Reds Baseball network, or any other game could have unexpected breaks, Studio clocks do not always apply due to unforeseen circumstances. I remember running Live remote games at the studio, they cut away at any time, as fast as they can say "We'll be back after these messages". What's worse sometimes they will leave the mike up and say anything embarrassing or profanities from the crowd.

 

[IndigoCoyote]

I was kind of joking....kind of.

 

[bossbill]

Having done board op duty at age 15 to installing major systems in Seattle at age 25, to running five stations with a five-person air staff today, I can say with certainty that well over 90% of missed cues over the years has been human error. While I lament the loss of live local talent on music-based radio programs, the most logical cost savings in a radio station is with board ops. In my day in the 70s, we called them babysitters... they threaded tape on the Scully, inserted a new cart in the carousel, loaded the next day's log from punch tape, and they made mistakes. Wrong reel, wrong cart, wrong day's log, letting the reel run out, etc. And they fell asleep sometimes.

One of the easiest things to automate is a sports event. And that is the most likely event to be screwed up by a bored board op talking to his/her girl/boy friend, reading a book, looking at porn, etc. As stated much earlier, we did an entire football and basketball season without human presence, with no errors. Can the board op match that?

 

[bossbill]

the most logical cost savings in a radio station is with board ops.

Meant that to say that the most logical savings in a radio station is elimination of board ops.

 

[systemdump]

the most logical cost savings in a radio station is with board ops.

Meant that to say that the most logical savings in a radio station is elimination of board ops.

Dear KJR, I am looking for a job in data entry. I can't type very fast but faster then it takes for an event to play. I started programming automation by using a circular phone dial, then it was moving pegs, commodore 64, then IBM PC based systems. Previously ran a live board, and a live show stepping automation for sources.

PS: Scully Reels are radically large and can cause injury during fast forward or rewind. I have a bunch of 14' reels gathering dust for those (or should I call them fan blades)

 

[nwoidaho]

You pee at :15 and :45- those are the RULES, mister!

I have actually had to pee in the control room in a one-liter bottle while running an extra inning game on the Mariners network. Had to lock the doors and everything.

 

[nwoidaho]

Having done board op duty at age 15 to installing major systems in Seattle at age 25, to running five stations with a five-person air staff today, I can say with certainty that well over 90% of missed cues over the years has been human error. While I lament the loss of live local talent on music-based radio programs, the most logical cost savings in a radio station is with board ops. In my day in the 70s, we called them babysitters... they threaded tape on the Scully, inserted a new cart in the carousel, loaded the next day's log from punch tape, and they made mistakes. Wrong reel, wrong cart, wrong day's log, letting the reel run out, etc. And they fell asleep sometimes.

One of the easiest things to automate is a sports event. And that is the most likely event to be screwed up by a bored board op talking to his/her girl/boy friend, reading a book, looking at porn, etc. As stated much earlier, we did an entire football and basketball season without human presence, with no errors. Can the board op match that?

I'm not the one hiring that board op. Most of the decent board/control operators where I worked we're afraid of airing LIVE programming and events. The station I worked for was inside of it's first 10 years of existence. The main day parts needed a trained, veteran hand to make sure the entire day ran properly. The other shifts we're usually filled with somewhat decent ops or college students not looking to make the control room job a full-time deal.

I exclusively ran those events based on past experience and willingness to use my attention span to watch an entire football or baseball game.

The main Sports radio station here in Boise just started simulcasting on FM. You can tell it's automated 80 percent of the day and every weekend. They run live games on the weekends that sound just fine. No dead air, no missed breaks, decent stereo sound, ect.. I know the automation systems that run these events can run live events just fine, I just think in the router-driven automation system world, the quality of the broadcast suffers by not having someone babysitting in the control room.

 

[AQH]

Having done board op duty at age 15 to installing major systems in Seattle at age 25, to running five stations with a five-person air staff today, I can say with certainty that well over 90% of missed cues over the years has been human error. While I lament the loss of live local talent on music-based radio programs, the most logical cost savings in a radio station is with board ops. In my day in the 70s, we called them babysitters... they threaded tape on the Scully, inserted a new cart in the carousel, loaded the next day's log from punch tape, and they made mistakes. Wrong reel, wrong cart, wrong day's log, letting the reel run out, etc. And they fell asleep sometimes.

One of the easiest things to automate is a sports event. And that is the most likely event to be screwed up by a bored board op talking to his/her girl/boy friend, reading a book, looking at porn, etc. As stated much earlier, we did an entire football and basketball season without human presence, with no errors. Can the board op match that?

I'm not the one hiring that board op. Most of the decent board/control operators where I worked we're afraid of airing LIVE programming and events. The station I worked for was inside of it's first 10 years of existence. The main day parts needed a trained, veteran hand to make sure the entire day ran properly. The other shifts we're usually filled with somewhat decent ops or college students not looking to make the control room job a full-time deal.

I exclusively ran those events based on past experience and willingness to use my attention span to watch an entire football or baseball game.

The main Sports radio station here in Boise just started simulcasting on FM. You can tell it's automated 80 percent of the day and every weekend. They run live games on the weekends that sound just fine. No dead air, no missed breaks, decent stereo sound, ect.. I know the automation systems that run these events can run live events just fine, I just think in the router-driven automation system world, the quality of the broadcast suffers by not having someone babysitting in the control room.

Your owner, GM, PD or whoever, feels more comfortable with a human there, and that's just fine.

Bill's point is that automation systems are as good as the people who program them.

S**t happens during live broadcasts, sports or whatever during automation. How people take that fact is the difference. Some people don't sweat a minor error that happens on occasion, some people will take a single mistake and blow it out of proportion to advance their agenda or personal feeling towards a station or individual(s).

 

[bossbill]

Confession time:
When I was in high school I board op'd numerous high school games for the local radio station. The bathroom was down a flight of stairs. I was often forced to use the rear studio window (which faced an alley) to relieve myself so I would not miss the "time out on the floor, we'll be back in 60 seconds". And we had to do mostly live copy because we didn't have cart machines yet.

 

[Grounded Grid]

Actually, I find it easy to watch over sports programming... and voice-tracked shows, for that matter, now that everything's on computers. Access programs like VNC make it easy for several people on the staff... usually the program director & myself, to keep an eye on automated shows. It only takes a few seconds to log in & fix a problem, though there aren't all that many of them. As Bill says, it's usually a human error issue.

"Nobody being home" isn't necessarily a major problem... at least not for technical reasons.

 

[Steenman]

is this where I show my age and talk about my very first radio job in Honolulu was helping to do the baseball 'recreates' we'd grab the play by play of the teletype and bring it in to the studio with the sports 'announcer' would recreate the game as if you were hearing it live. My job was to help with that also to 'foley' the sounds, crack of a bat, etc. It was a true art form watching these guys work a lost art for sure these days. when the teletype broke then it would be a 'rain delay' I did it for about 3 months then it went on to an overnight gig.

 

[notalent]

I always thought it odd that a multi million dollar radio station would put the integrety of the entire operation in the hands of its lowest paid person, the board op.

And Bill thinks this is the most likely place to cut? Maybe from the perspective that computers can do the job with fewer errors but if saving $24 on board opping a baseball game means keeping the lights on then you have bigger problems.

 

[systemdump]

And now it's up to a computer to respond from commands at the game, It really puts the board operator right there at the game so this could result in fewer errors, I always wondered why a "blind" board op had to follow a game to air it.