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Stations old 'teletypes' included here?

This is a sad story to read. Progress and technology improvements are inevitable ... but it always hurts to see the older entrepreneurs lose their life-long trade becase time has marched on (and over them). Worked for my great uncle who had a "TV and Radio" parts business ... and at the time I knew it was all about chips, but his business basically survived on selling tubes to business owners like the typewriter guy in this story who needed them for their customer base. Then it became that manufacturers would have repair people simply replace an entire card -- and his business became obsolete (luckily he sold it first!!!). Same way it still bothers me to see the espresso stand on the corner close because Tully's/Sbux have decided to seize that territory and that's that.

Obviously a LOT of parallels in the radio game here ... but it may end up being an interesting year. Between CBS and C/Channel, we're seeing they want to upchuck a bunch of properties because they find they can't effectively run all of them. Maybe more smaller, focused operators will be in the sub-100 markets and the pendulum will swing back a LITTLE bit to more of the "mom/pop" operators who still want to eek out a living with a community station. Unfortunately, the economics suggest almost the entire station will be bird-fed (appropriate topic for T-giving weekend) ... but at least we'll see a BIT of a return to the community focus. Maybe they can even hire a displaced typewriter repair person or uprooted barista to read the occasional newscast.
 
-- Are there any AP 'teletypes' still being used anywhere locally?

I believe the technology has passed by the teletype. They delivered copy at a blistering 300 baud, which roughly translates into less than 300 characters a minute.
In my days at AP Radio, I spent some time as the 'filer' (long 'i'), the person stacking the completed national stories in the circuit cue.. where they would wait along with each region's stories to hit the teletypes.
I had the power to move items to near the front of the line with an 'urgent' code -- or right up to the front with 'bulletin'.
And at the time, there was still the 'flash' command which would stop EVERY broadcast wire teletype in mid-story, ring the bell something like 10 or maybe 20 times, then type the flash.
The flash command was last used for the Challenger explosion in '86 - the JFK assasination before that.
You may remember the late 70's upgrade: Newspower 2600, as in a 2,600 baud rate. Pretty darn cool for the times.
Now, of course, baud rate is moot. There is no cue, as everything can hit computer systems instantly.
RJ
 
The day will come shortly when the teletype sound effect will no longer mean anything to listeners. As stupid as it sounds, we used to hook the teletype up at the State Fair (in WI) for people to see during a remote. They were much more interested in watching the teletype than they were in talking to just another DJ. I don't miss the damn things (paper jams, bad ink cartridges, boxes of paper, etc.) but it was more interesting.
 
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