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Old Broadcast Automation

My frst experience with automation was a home brew system at WMPT FM South Williamsport, Pa in1968., We used it 7 to midnight becasue the owner wanted to keep rock off the air in the evening. The system was designed by our Chief Engineer Alan Preuss and had a big of Skully Reel to Reel, a SMC 24 cart carousel, an SMC stereo recorder/playback (we used that for station id's), a home brew silence sensor, and auto fader to join ABC news. I worked pretty well but you had to remember to change tapes during the news since you only had one reel to reel. Eventually we got smart and carted some "emergency" songs for reel change.

Programing was from IGM the Beautiful Muisc package and Music with McMaster (Don McMaster) anyone remember that package?

We also recorded and produced a couple of local music suhows including one for Fulton Piano & Organs that ran once a week. We recorded it in the store and manually played it back.
 
Began my career in radio as a combo DJ/engineering assistant. AM ran live on 13 year old equipment in 1973. FM ran on first an old stepper driven Gates system with Scully 270 playback decks and IGM carousels. We called it Mother F'er when it got temperamental. We ran Schulke beautiful music with good old 10khz frequency response off of his high speed duped tapes. And our Gates FM-5H with a TE-3 exciter and 9 db stereo separation on a good day. Replaced Schulke with Bonneville Beautiful Music and a shiny new RCA Exciter and HH Scott Stereo Generator and life was better. Later on, got a shiny new Harris Stereo 80 the year they got reliable. With that Harris elevator cart machine which did that jamming, burning the motor up, and eating the heads of carts. I called it Peter, Peter, Cart Eater, And had ReVox PR 99 decks and all was otherwise rational and sane. Replaced that Harris elevator system with another pair of IGM carousels and life was good. Dubbed a lot of carts when that elevator system wanted dinner and a snack.
 
Wow Kent, the systems I used worked great in comparison! The Broadcast Products AR-2000 had a major power supply problem once, and the Instacarts on the Harris System 90 would slip past their cue tones but that was about it.
 
If Bill and I had the choice, we would have had the IGM Instacarts installed when the Stereo 80 was ordered. They were an optional. That Harris Elevator system was the only bad thing about our Stereo 80. Once the Instacarts were installed, that system ran great. We had very few misfires on the cue tones. And Bonneville Beautiful Music sounded great on this system. That old system still runs on one of the stations I engineer for and does subcarrier duty. Run a music program on subcarrier for hospitals and nursing homes and have 3 SCA programs. One is beautiful, one light rock, and one country. I began my broadcasting career at age 9 years. Was a short, gimpy, special needs kid who could solder well, knew his way around cranky gear and was dependable.
 
Ditto on the Instacarts over the others. When you learned how to fix one tray, then you knew how to fix the 47 others. Had an AM and FM that ran four Instacarts on each. That was a noisy room. When they went to satellite, I modified the right-most column on two of the machines (one AM and one FM) to have a separate audio output that was connected after the switcher. The twelve carts in that column were divided into groups of four - each group held a jock's backsell, image and return liners. The automation could then select a group to run from a time-of-day relay pulse scheduled when the jocks changed. This routed the liner closures to the proper group during the day without having to change carts and allowed for the random closures to place the liner audio on air without having to be in the program log.
 
Kent T said:
If Bill and I had the choice, we would have had the IGM Instacarts installed when the Stereo 80 was ordered. They were an optional. <snip>
Click to expand...

I installed a second-hand Instacart-based automation system in the mid 80s. It was pretty beat. ;D
We called the system "FRED" (F-ing ridiculous electronic device). We were using it with a satellite feed of Transtar's "Format 41," where the 'local' announcer station ID bits were on multiple carts, and they were fired from the same-voice DJ right before he would say something live at the network, in an attempt to sound local and live (nice try, but no banana).

At any rate, an Instacart deck would slip cue every once in a while. It was pretty funny to hear, every 20 seconds or so, "There's nothing quite like 16 AM!"
You had to have a sense of humor with that thing. Yes, nothing quite like it, LOL!

Kind Regards,
David
 
some great stories about mechanical automation guys! :)


someone asked me recently if anyone actually kept tapes of the beautiful music format. I have some radio arts and drake chenault tapes of rock/pop formats, but never came across the beautiful music format anywhere. I'm guessin most of that stuff was tossed in addition to the automation systems themselves. shame. would have been fun to see one work, as I was too young for that.
 
Hi:

I worked at WBYU-FM in New Orleans in the early 1980's. They ran Schulke, then Bonneville Easy Listening.

We had an IGM 500 system. Fun to operate!

It'd be fun to transfer a set of Schulke tapes to HD and play the format on Part 15.

Thanks for all the automation stories.

Dan
 
Is it possible for me to get a copy of one of the Schulke tapes for old time's sake to remind me of days of old? If so, please chime in!
 
Wow. This thread takes me back. Back in the 80s, I had the pleasure of playing nursemaid to a Cetec/Schafer 7000 at WQMZ (ex-WQMC) in Charlottesville, VA.

This particular system had two sets of three "AudioFile" multi-cart decks, which were a maintenance nightmare. The capstan shafts would bend with regularity. The traffic girl pushing a cart just a fraction of an inch too far into the slot would jam the "elevator". If the cart slot locks got sticky the spring-loaded arm would "slam-dunk" a cart into the deck, often knocking something out of alignment. The elevator cables slipped. I hated these things.

The music came from four ITC-750 reel-to-reel players, and they were generally trouble-free -- except for that one fateful night when the night DJ decided to be "helpful" and clean the plastic pinch rollers with vita-drive, turning them to play-doh.

The computer itself, stone-age marvel that it was, generally kept right on ticking. The few times it didn't tick, though, you were in for a real troubleshooting adventure. I remember one particular frantic round-trip drive to Marion, Virginia, home of Bob Dix and his sidekick Kevin Soos, who were the wizards of Schafer, to get a spare part while a very bored jock played "beautiful music" manually.

Still -- to this very day -- when I hear a Mallory Sonalert beeping, I almost jump up and run to see what "c-looped."

Scott
 
Kent T said:
Is it possible for me to get a copy of one of the Schulke tapes for old time's sake to remind me of days of old? If so, please chime in!
Click to expand...

ditto....I have some radio arts and drake chenault pop rock reels I can dub and trade.....dub to digital anyway. don't have enough analog tape to spare...LOL!

funny someone mentioned the old ITC 750 machines. I have one myself, was mono, but I had two mono's and built one of them into a stereo record/playback machine with a few modifications and new stereo heads. very high maintenance overall. rebuilt the capstan a few years back. been tweaking it recently to get it working, haven't used it much of late, but seems to be working good lately.
 
First job - 1995-1997 - WWJM (then 106.3)New Lexington, OH
Schaefer 902-programming 12 hrs of next day on the ol keypad was a daily task
6 cart carousels
6 reels
2 DATs for currents. Had old Jones Z format, they stopped sending reels, so we dubbed currents onto DAT, EOM wired to kick like sec tone, was pretty flawless.
2 TASCAM tape decks to catch AP etc
Guy had some old Win 95-based automation system in there, never got on air while I was there. Don't even remember what it was called. We did use it for editing. As far as music on reels, 25hZ is hardly sub-audible when some redneck with 300w to his 10" in the trunk hears it lol. Tape broke? Cut the song outta the :'( reel, scratch it off the cuesheet hangin on the end of the cabinet! Never to be heard again!
 
My first on-air gig was at a station running an ancient Schafer 800 setup that had been modified extensively. We had two racks of Studer B-77s running music; an Instacart ran the spots. The system was tied into a Wang 10 minicomputer to program the traffic. It all actually ran surprisingly well except for evenings and overnights (which were voice tracked) - the woman who tracked those dayparts would routinely thread her reel inside-out so that the tones wouldn't be detected. If you were listening, you'd hear an entire five-hour airshift's worth of tracks run at once, sounding as if they were being played through a pillow... and then, carrier for hours until someone noticed.

Ah, the good old days :D

-- Doc
 
Enjoyed hearing fellow war stories on old automation. My email is kentteffetellerathotmail.com! Subsitute the @ sign for at. Digital audio on CD-R fine. Email me for contact info.
 
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