The first time I DXed KNX in the 70's, they were using the teletype. No idea when they stopped.
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On the AM, WINS Teletype is back.
- Thread starter L Chanon Gade
- Start date
check out these two sites,
or
this following site, at http://kiwisdr.com/.public/ ---- gets 1010 WINS good . . . this RX is located in NIANTIC, CT
here is the site,
make sure you are in AM mode on RX, often these RX's are in LSB or USB mode.
I heard the teletype sound return just now at this above site . . . I like it!!!
Sounds like GOOD OLD 1010 WINS!!!!!!!! They were NYC's FIRST RnR MUSIC STATION . . . Sept, 1954 !!!!
I know I said that many times before . . . I'll say it again . . . They were NYC's FIRST RnR STATION . . . Sept, 1954 !!!!
I noted as they do the news they mention often ... 1010 WINS is on 92.3 FM.
By the way that good OLD AM signal is loud because NIANTIC, CT is right along The Long Island Sound, good old saltwater and OLD AM signals.
excuse me . . . 1010 WINS --- THEY ARE COOL !!!!
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And a little bit of trivia here: Tom Rounds, the Poi Boy, KFRC PD and creator of American Top 40 had his first job out of college at WINS!
Isn't that cheating? 🤔
Why would that be cheating? All it does is enhance the chance of PPM detection in a talk based format where there are vastly fewer opportunities to insert the PPM "code".
If you grew up watching the Muppet Show as a kid, they used the sound of a teletype in their faux "news" segments.
Perhaps when the news department stopped using teletype machines?
How does random unidentified mechanical noise add a sense of immediacy? More like a sense of annoyance.
Maybe they should use the sound of a high speed train or an airliner taking off. Or perhaps the sounds of NASCAR or the Indy 500. Nat sound of rocket launches would work, too. Fast part of the William Tell Overture anyone?
The Muppet Show was produced from 1976 to 1981 when most newsrooms still had teletype machines.
Ponder, if you will, this 73-second clip of KZIA (1580) in Albuquerque in 1982 when it had a news/talk format. The noise in the background is, I believe, an Exel machine, which was a dot-matrix printer that UPI used in some installations in place of a standard teletype machine. The noise was faded out after about a minute.
KZIA.1982.04.29-GordonSanders.mp3
drive.google.com
While KZIA was a daytimer, it was first with a news/talk format in Albuquerque (KOB was still full-service adult-contemporary then) and Gordon Sanders, the anchor on this report, was one of the market's best-known newsmen.
I'm too young to remember its initial run, but I do remember it from later reruns, specials, and home video releases. Disney+ has been streaming The Muppet Show since 2021.
You can briefly hear the WINS teletype at 5:14 in this video I just uploaded, and then again at the very end:
Plus, a bit of the WBT "Smooth Jazz" at 5:52.
I was kind of kidding, but it does seem that stats should reflect listener preference and not technical tweaking.
BTW, how are there fewer opportunities to insert the PPM "code" in a talk format? I'd think it would be more likely to get buried in music. Just curious.
The listener is there anyway. All the teletype sound may do is offer the PPM gear to encode more often, allowing for fuller credit for the station.
I know of at lest one sports broadcaster who has increased a bit the levels of crowd noise during live play by play for the same reason.
The PPM code is "masked" by music. The presence of audio is what allows the PPM "generator" to insert the coding. If there is no audio, there is nothing to mask the encoding, so n o ID bursts are inserted. There has to be audio for the PPM to work. The encoding is purposely buried under audio to mask it.
So very necessary that on the lousy sports talk network one of my clients has on the air, that takes tons of pregnant pauses, I constantly get encode alarms because you can't encode a flat line.
I made my sarcastic comment about antiquated technology near the beginning of this thread, but I actually agree with this takeaway. The average person outside of the media business probably doesn't know what a teletype machine even is, what it sounds like, or even what a modern newsroom sounds like.
As my username strongly suggests, I'm a longtime believer in the power of radio to create theater of the mind and that's what the sound effect in the background creates here. The listener doesn't need to know what the machine noise is or even consciously notice it, but subliminally it sounds like the steady flow of information and the activity of a busy newsroom in the background. Many TV newscasts do the same thing visually, showing their newsroom with staffers doing their work behind the scenes.
A lot of people associate the tap-tap-tap-tap background sound with 1010 WINS too. It was a strong part of the station's identity for decades and I'd argue that New Yorkers haven't forgotten it and that it can still serve that purpose.
I listened to it just now on the SDR (from the other end of the country, the SF peninsula!). The teletype ticker is subtle, low in the mix, just the way it ought to be. If you mentally tune into it, you'll probably know what you're hearing. But for most of their listeners who, through choice or lack of alternative, still listen on 1010, it will be subtle enough to fade into the background noise and ignore.
But a talk based format isn't running dead air. Sure there are pauses, but it's attempting insertion 12 times a minute.
Is this really a problem for news-talkers getting accurate numbers? If so, why has there not been a fix, or a lawsuit?
The teletype seems to be in the audio chain before any AGC/compression on the mic. On announcers that speak louder, you hardly even notice it except during longer pauses in speech. But on the ones that are more softly-spoken, you can hear in the background most of the time they're talking.
p.s. I remember Rush Limbaugh used to rustle his papers a lot, and his mic would pick it up whenever he paused. Traditionally that's bad radio practice, but in his case, maybe that's why he got such good ratings!
p.s. I remember Rush Limbaugh used to rustle his papers a lot, and his mic would pick it up whenever he paused. Traditionally that's bad radio practice, but in his case, maybe that's why he got such good ratings!
in the old days we'd have put it on a pot with a big sticker showing where the level should be. it would be faded down going into a stopset and back up coming out. am i showing my age?
As far as a data burst that only takes a couple of seconds, it is. If the audio is not consistently there always, the PPM will not complete its coding.
And in casual speech, that may not give enough continuous audio for any insertion.
That is likely what they are attempting to find out. They can compare usage prior to the teletype with usage during this period and form a final decision.
The PPM offers full disclosure. If your station does not have dense enough audio, that is your problem. There is no way of "fixing" the encoding... it works adequately and Nielsen is expending it to other media, including TV.
wow. just wow.