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"The Lost Art of Backtiming"

There was a station I used to listen to in the '70s that was Classic Rock (ok...back then it was AOR) on the FM side and Top 40 on the AM side. Both stations carried the same local newscast, which was promptly started at the TOH. The AM and FM stations, with their independent formats, would simulcast the same song that lead to the TOH.

Thus, the FM DJ would tell the AM DJ that he's going to play (for example) Lido Shuffle at :56.20 and has a :06 intro. Both the AM and FM DJs had to backtime their shows to simultaneously hit the :56.20 start of Lido Shuffle. I witnessed it once as a guest in the FM studio. I was in awe.

dr
 
Doc,

Would that have been KGB-FM San Diego and KGB San Diego?
(Just to keep the simulcast legal ID, uh, legal. None of that
"AM & FM" stuff. ;))

And was Wizard Lew Rogers involved in any of this?
 
Backtiming comes in to play every weeknight at 7 on K*LUV...sometimes more successfully than others...
 
Backtimimng was made much easier for a lot of us when Century 21 sent out those quick reference binders that sorted your musc library by TIME.

When I was 18 I spent about 4 miserable months in Brady, Texas. The station wasn't bad, just a bad place for an 18 year old single male to live when the the median age of the population was like 57.

During my shift we had to backtime to :20 and :40 past with VSA, to :55 with TSN and then grab ABC at the top of the hour.

Sprinkle in any variance betwen four clocks, it makes you thank God for songs that faded.
 
There was always a challenging fun to backtiming. My favorite backtiming story was the time the jock used Beginnings by Chicago. The heart of the song ended just in time for the recorded ID and ABC Information news. The jock kept the song going underneath the news anchor, the last two minutes of Beginnings is a mariachi jam that sounded wonderfully bizarre under ABC news.
 
I recall KRGV in Weslaco cheating when trying to hit NBC at the top of the hour. If the song was short they hit a cart that shouted ''Instant Replay!'' while the jock lifted the needle back a few grooves. It gave them enuf pad to get to the the top of the hour ID. They also had a variation called ''Sneak Preview" that would let the jock use a few seconds of the song that was coming up after the news.
 
longtimelistener said:
Does anybody on this board even remember the art of "hitting the posts"...
Click to expand...

There were several threads on it a few months ago which grew out of the
creation of the 98WRC Control Room site.

Many if not most of the posts lamented it's apparent fall from grace, as it
has been replaced, at least in part, by "ten-in-a-row-and-zero-talk." ::)

Now if we can only hide this discussion from the Old Gringo. ;)
 
longtimelistener said:
Does anybody on this board even remember the art of "hitting the posts" before the vocals started when doing an intro over the beginning of a record?
Click to expand...

Pardon the attitude.. but IMHO good radio died years ago.. the pulse is still there but very faint.
 
I worked at Jones Radio Networks for about 6 months as a side job and I got pretty proficient at hitting the drop-dead time of :59:50 for the local legal into the top of the hour. The problem with that gig was getting up at 2am to be in Denver by 3:30am for a shift at 4. I missed it really badly once. I finished the song on time but the computer didn't auto-fire the tone for the legal ID. Thinking nothing of it I started the top of the hour song and 1 minute into it, lo and behold, the id fired.

Yes, I was, for one minute, one of those satellite jocks who made an affiliate sound like crap :)
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
Doc,
Would that have been KGB-FM San Diego and KGB San Diego? (Just to keep the simulcast legal ID, uh, legal. None of that "AM & FM" stuff. ;)) And was Wizard Lew Rogers involved in any of this?
Click to expand...


You got it! You get a gold star, go to the front of the line.

dr
 
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