"The Lost Art of Backtiming"

[MikeShannon914]

Cute article in Radio World: http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0044/t.15841.html

Interesting points below, if you don't have time to read the entire article. I'm sure there's a few of us left who can still relate:

"Modern announcers voice-track over computerized ramp countdowns or send MP3s voiced from another state. Even some "live" music announcers sit in the control room while playing back their own pre-recorded, error-free "ad-libs" to make sure that they sound perfect.

[EDIT-profanity]

[EDIT-post truncated because originating material is copyrighted and citation exceeds amount permitted under Fair Use.]

 

[Britchesthedog]

Yes sir ,nothing like radio , live local, original, warts and all. Just sanitized homogenized cure for insomnia sufferers everywhere.

 

[DavidKaye]

Cute article in Radio World: http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0044/t.15841.html

When I was a DJ I did backtiming one better. I backtimed songs in order to meet the network news, often a vocal of all things. The reason I could play a vocal was that I selected a song that I could play whole. I adjusted my patter so that I could start the song on time. Thus, no fade-ins were necessary.

I got so good at this that I could play a song, do a stop set, do my patter, and meet the start of the final song perfectly. It didn't hurt to be able to do live IDs with some leeway in how many station slogans to use to fill up the odd 5 or 7 seconds that might be needed to stretch.

 

[Dr. o Fun]

Having worked in a news/talk studio for two decades, I had many occasions where I needed to backtime. I became quite proficient at adding and subtracting minutes and seconds.

Math in Base 60 is cool .. a little nerdy .. but cool.

dr

 

[DFWPT]

Having worked in a news/talk studio for two decades, I had many occasions where I needed to backtime. I became quite proficient at adding and subtracting minutes and seconds.

Math in Base 60 is cool .. a little nerdy .. but cool.

dr

We backtime the news every hour at KEOM

fun Base 60 math!

 

[CrankyYankee]

Then there was the "Murphy's Law" aspect of backtiming that would make you think f-a-s-t.

You've selected just the right lenght song...figured out how much chatter to talk the record up, you start the turntable, and...you forgot to change the speed!

The record is playing too fast or too slow and it's really obvious and you have to yammer/stammer over the
intro to reach over and change the speed and make like nothing went wrong.

 

[TrapperJohn]

Add in the challenge of the studio clock that wasn't synched to the atomic clock and the amount of time off increased every day. I used to call a time number in California just to find out how far off the studio clock was before calculating song length and "patter" time.

 

[Al Timiter]

I remember one time the time listed on the record was exactly one minute shorter than the actual length! That was embarassing...had to dump the song.

Then one time when I was off by about 7 seconds. The network open was about seven seconds as well. So, I let the song finish, gave a quick id and said "and now CBS News..." and joined just as the first story was about to be read. The average person probably didnt know or care....

Loved those days of thinking on your feet and flying by the seat of your pants.....

 

[Tom Berg]

My favorite backtime was when I had to play "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" (long version) into ABC news at the top of the hour, plus the 10 prerecorded station ID.

EPIC!!

 

[radiophiler]

I left radio over nine years ago. This thread on backtiming brings back some memories.

Learning about backtiming on my college's full signal FM by having to fill local breaks in NPR's All Things Considered.

My first paying radio job at a Satellite Music Network affiliate - we had to make local commercials fit the network breaks and then fire a five-second local station liner that was recorded by the network jock. Also, reading local news and weather at the top of the hour to hit the network join - it was either five or six after, I can't remember.

Then, off to a Music of Your Life station where the format provided custom instrumentals to help hit network news at the top of the hour. Start them at the right moment in cue, fade them up after the last vocal, and they end right on time.

A jock I worked with at another station who had an uncanny knack for playing songs WITH VOCALS and still hitting CNN news at the top of the hour with enough time for the pre-recorded ten-second station ID.

Working at a station where I anchored news blocks and having to hit CBS News at the top of the hour by reading a headline sweep and finishing with the legal ID. Hitting that CBS tone dead on was a source of great pride.

 

[Inventor989]

At my first job we had to backtime to Mutual news on the half hour...and at the time, we did not have any sort of synchronized clock, so we had a system. The morning guy would measure how far off the clock was during his prep hour before he went on air, and posted it on the bulletin board. Throughout the day, we would update the measurement if needed. We then tried to out-do each other backtiming cold end songs into Mutual. Best one I ever got off was ":We're An American Band". Nothing better than backtiming a cold end song into network. A rush like no other!

Now, if we could have had a network line that was better the phone quality...

 

[bub]

Late to the party, but has anyone had this type of experience?

I'll never forget the time I was jocking on a Sunday morning at the first radio station I ever worked at and while getting the Sunday morning programming ready for after 9:00 AM, totally zoned out and forgot to load a song after the previous song ended. With dead air and in a panic, I grabbed the very first cart I could get my hands on...Don McLean's American Pie - all 8 minutes and 29 seconds of it. I figured I would have to dump the song at the TOH. Without looking at the studio clock, as divine Providence would have it, I loaded and started it at 8:51:20 AM. You do the math.

I don't think I can ever duplicate that experience again on a bet.

 

[fredcantu]

The morning guy would measure how far off the clock was during his prep hour before he went on air, and posted it on the bulletin board.

We had an analog wall clock that happened to have a loose glass face. We marked the second the network hit with a piece of tape and rotated the glass accordingly.

 

[billyg]

It really has become a lost art with voicetracking. I worked in country radio and even into the early 90's there were plenty of 2:30-3:00 minute songs still around for backtiming into top of the hour newscasts. (Patty Loveless' "Chains" comes to mind).

I remember playing Hank Williams Jr's "A Country Boy Can Survive" every saturday morning newscast. There was about a 4:15-4:20 gap between shows from the Oklahoma News Network and ABC news and that song fit perfectly. And the ONN was one of the sloppiest ran networks in the 80's. Sometimes their newscasts started 5-20 seconds late. Really embarrassing to pot up the network feed after timing it out right and hear nothing...

 

[Tom Berg]

Then, off to a Music of Your Life station where the format provided custom instrumentals to help hit network news at the top of the hour. Start them at the right moment in cue, fade them up after the last vocal, and they end right on time.

I remember this as well...deadroll the cart at :57 and the music would end cold at 59:53...just enough time to say "This is the sound of the music of your life. WTUX-Indianapolis...its 8 o clock, CBS newstime."

 

[bub]

Then, off to a Music of Your Life station where the format provided custom instrumentals to help hit network news at the top of the hour. Start them at the right moment in cue, fade them up after the last vocal, and they end right on time.

I remember this as well...deadroll the cart at :57 and the music would end cold at 59:53...just enough time to say "This is the sound of the music of your life. WTUX-Indianapolis...its 8 o clock, CBS newstime."

As long as you didn't say, "It's 5 o'clock somewhere."

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Add in the challenge of the studio clock that wasn't synched to the atomic clock
and the amount of time off increased every day.

The old W.U. "Naval Observatory Time" clocks were reset only once a day,
at 1200 ET, via a pulse sent down the wire. The local wire chief was supposed
to monitor and confirm this. (Of course if the local wire chief left two years
ago and was never replaced, well...and there's a great posting about that
somewhere which I saw on the web a few years ago.) I wonder what the
drift factor was by the time you got to 1100 ET the next day?

I remember one time the time listed on the record was exactly one minute shorter
than the actual length!

I recall the (commercial) Capitol 45 of She's A Woman (Beatles) stated it was
2:25, but actually ran 2:57. Don't know about the promo copies.

Working at a station where I anchored news blocks and having to hit CBS News
at the top of the hour by reading a headline sweep and finishing with the legal ID.
Hitting that CBS tone dead on was a source of great pride.

Bong!

Same source of pride amongst TV types--especially difficult when you had to
come out of the net with a film or 2" tape that was on at least a five-second
pre-roll--then getting through the ID (generally slide/cart) and taking the net
in black just before the bong (with the usual video "roll" from local to network
as they were not in synch).

 

[MikeShannon914]

SO glad you folks enjoyed this article!!! I didn't know if it'd still strike a chord with anyone or not. I don't have much to add on a personal level...I do still have some notes I kept from a Sunday night 20 years ago running the board at KDNT, where you can read where I feverishly was working out the math for every single spot, jingle, network news hit, etc...It was just too much to work out in my head, and I'd never been trained to hit the mark before. The log was completely useless. I was reading all the carts for the exact timing (and hoping to God that they'd been played back to the cue mark by the last user,) and adding in the length of various prerecorded show segments, etc...which was useless one week, as the show itself was mailed in on faulty cassettes that played the show fast, then slow, then muffled, etc. Perhaps if the PD hadn't put the fear of God in me that EVERYTHING had to be perfect, I might have actually learned the art by making a few mistakes and finding a system that worked for me. To be real honest here, it was that fear of an inability to ever get my timing down perfectly that turned me off of radio for many years. I still haven't mastered it, and grateful that it's not an issue with traffic...I have a window to keep within, but a little short or long is hardly ever an issue. Now there were plenty of chances to practice it later on at BizRadio, and it helped out a lot...but I made sure I always had filler music cued up on the 360 just in case!

 

[grantchester]

Backtiming made me a fan of Chet Atkins. At one station I had about a dozen instrumentals I programmed into the automation system for the final song before the top of the hour. That doesn't count, does it?
Worst backtiming mishap was my first week at another station. I played all the songs on the format sheet, and had time left over, so I grabbed 'Jessica' by the Allmon Bros. I figured I'd fade it out after a minute or two. The next jock came in and was waiting for the top of the hour to begin his shift. Played all of Jessica, and still had two minutes left... which is how much I had when it started! The clock battery had died.
Oh, brother!

 

[TrapperJohn]

Of course, if Tom Berg has to backtime today, he can just have R2D2 do it! You still have your little robot, don't you?