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VOICE TRACKING HAS ALWAYS BEEN---BACK IN THE DAY IT WAS CALLED "TAPED"

E

Early Byrd

Not long ago I was discussing the whole concept of voice tracking with a young radio guy who has always known digital production. It reminded me of the days when I'd listen to the old WMEX (1510) here in Boston, and on the weekends would often hear the DJ say the phrase "recorded and transcribed" over the intro of the first record he played on his shift. It was either an NAB rule (or a maybe an FCC rule) that programs that were recorded were supposed to indicate such, and any recorded program that used previously recorded pieces (e.g., records) were supposed to mention that is was also 'transcribed'.

WMEX, for one, didn't have part timers for the longest time...their full time weekday talent was heard 7 days a week, because owner Mac Richmond had it so that they recorded their weekend shows during the week for playback on either Saturday or Sunday. Of course, when this happened, they couldn't do contests have or any on-air interaction with listeners, but that's how it was. If I remember, there was always live news on the weekend, and so the newsman on duty would be the one who was responsible for the tapes the DJs had recorded. At certain points they would do live weather reports, and, of course, the news when scheduled. Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg's Saturday night show was recorded, I believe, and because there was no newsman on duty at night during playback, his show was played from the transmitter site in North Quincy by the then-required transmitter engineer on duty.

If I'm wrong on any of this, please feel free to correct me.
 
And in addition to this type of "voice tracking", automation was used during this time. Cart and reel to reel based automation systems were in common use before the advent of the PC based digital automation we know today. You are right, all of this stuff people complain about as a new development has been in use for quite a while. Yes, it is more common today but it isn't anything new.
 
You didn't indicate a time frame when your example took place. I would put the beginning age of "analog" automation (carts, etc) around 1960 or a bit later.

Introducing programs as being "recorded and transcribed" was going out of favor by then as I remember history. In small markets we continued to say it because we had this vision it made us sound professional and "hip".

I remember people from that era maybe pre-recording a 15 minute program, maybe even an hour long program.... out in the hinterlands where I was at the time. I have no idea what "the big boys" in NYC, Boston, Chicago may have been doing prior to that, but my guess that even in cities like that the practice would have been limited to very few personalities and very few stations.

Which raises the question? What year did tape recorders become widely available in radio stations?
 
Some years back, former WBZ-1030 air personality Jay Dunn (who has since passed away) was interviewed by David Brudnoy about the station's history, and Dunn said that in the middle 1960's, he and all of his fellow DJ's were doing live shows six days a week, but that three of his fellow announcers (Carl deSuze, Jefferson Kaye, and Bruce Bradley) were heard seven days a week.

According to Dunn, DeSuze would tape his Sunday morning shift (7:30-9:30 A.M.), Bradley would tape his Saturday afternoon show (2:30-6 P.M.), and Kaye would tape his Sunday-evening "BZ Hootenanny" show during the preceding week.

I would think that during these hours, the news anchor on duty did weather reports.

I don't know how these shows were done, but I could have seen the three aforementioned DJ's just tape their comments on reel-to-reel tapes, while an engineer on duty would play the tapes back and play records in such a way that the DJ appeared to be live in the studio, taking over the start of the record ("Saturday afternoon here on BZ; I'm Bruce Bradley with the Beatles' new one, from the film 'A Hard Day's Night', 'I'm Happy Just To Dance With You'".
 
At WBZ/FM and WEEI/FM we called "AUTOMATED" using an IGM 770 Instacart system that had banks of 48 cart slots to hold tunes on stereo cartridges up to 10 1/2 minutes. Carts could also have voice tracks placed in order that would go on per the program log or punch cards. It sounded fine, except if a cart misfired with an extra pulse tone , the hour would be out of synch. the system actually delivered some pretty hefty ratings. Gone from the charts....but still in our hearts.
 
And who can forget the primitive voice tracking on WCGY 93.7 "The Rock Garden"? "That was Billy Crash Craddock, 'Rub It In' ... and before that, 'Shannon,' Henry Gross." Or the trainwreck of a system at WTTK 100.7 (TK-101) that kept inserting song IDs in the middle of songs or played two songs at once!

John H. Garabedian and Don Kelley used tape at WGTR 1060 as well. It was usually pretty smooth and "live"-sounding, but occasional glitches did happen.
 
I never had to tape a show or any segment thereof back in the day on my show but have had to mind a cart/reel to reel based automation system on another station in the same building where I worked. In a related topic, I often think of the days when you were almost always live and going for the perfect aircheck. Now with tracking it's what you want it to be before it even airs.
 
One of my first radio jobs was board opping so the "voice tracks" could be played back. They were laid down on a reel to reel, I sat there and played the carts and CD's and punched in the voice tracks at the appropriate times on the log. Manual voice tracking!!
 
WNTIRadio said:
One of my first radio jobs was board opping so the "voice tracks" could be played back. They were laid down on a reel to reel, I sat there and played the carts and CD's and punched in the voice tracks at the appropriate times on the log. Manual voice tracking!!
Click to expand...

But you didn't tell us WHEN. ;D

That's part of the on-going conversation. When did the industry finally give up the "recorded and transcribed" verbiage.... and just how early did the industry here and there do something that could be called voice-tracking, and then when did voice-tracking actually become wide-spread.

Curious minds have to know.
 
I always enjoyed the "voice tracking" on the earlier incarnation of WEEI-FM when they were doing the Rock based "Young Sound" with Dick Provost...from around 1969-1972....and in competition with "Rockin Stereo 106.7 WBZ-FM" during 1972...which I always thought was the very best year of WBZ-FM....before that god awful "station that has teenagers talking" phase..



cs1366 said:
At WBZ/FM and WEEI/FM we called "AUTOMATED" using an IGM 770 Instacart system that had banks of 48 cart slots to hold tunes on stereo cartridges up to 10 1/2 minutes. Carts could also have voice tracks placed in order that would go on per the program log or punch cards. It sounded fine, except if a cart misfired with an extra pulse tone , the hour would be out of synch. the system actually delivered some pretty hefty ratings. Gone from the charts....but still in our hearts.
Click to expand...
 
cs1366 said:
...the hour would be out of synch.
Click to expand...

Ha...that was always the pits when that happened. I remember using an early digital/pc based voice tracking system. The tracks were on a computer which interfaced with a CD jukebox for the music. Sounded fine when in sync but if something happened you had the wrong voice tracks playing out of/into the wrong songs.
 
When? Try 1995!!

Voice tracking has always been around in one form or another. It was easier to get the high priced talent on weekends or nights by paying a board-op to run their tracks. Or if a station was lucky and wealthy at that time, they had an automation system that ran on hard drives.

Prior to that, there were all sorts of automation systems using cart carousels and reels. As previously mentioned, keeping them in the right place on the log was challenging at best. Pitched a few Scullys into the dumpster a few years ago at a station. Before everyone says "but I would have wanted one!", no you didn't. These looked like the they were dragged behind a car, the heads were shot and the rest wasn't worth fixing up.
 
Voice tracking was in use at US radio stations in the '40s, before reel-to-reel magnetic-tape recorders found their way into radio-station control rooms (CA 1952). It worked like this: On one side of a 16"-diameter "ET" (electrical transcription) was a 15-minute broadcast that used popular songs of the day introduced by a staff announcer hired by the sponsor of the 15-minute program and/or the sponsor's ad agency. Some stations objected to running these programs because they sounded canned. So the other side of the ET contained just the music and blank tracks where the record intros and commercials appeared on the first side of the ET. In the mailing package that contained the disc was a printed script of all of the voice tracks on the first side of the disc. Announcers who were good at it, would read the scripts during the silent tracks and would hit the post perfectly, giving listeners the impression that the program was truly locally produced. Announcers who were not so good could make quite a mess out of the operation, leading to some pretty good parodies by people like Bob (Elliot) and Ray (Goulding). I remember one parody in which the announcer got one track ahead of the script, resulting in each tune being introed--but not as a back-sell--right after it had played.

Also, some of these programs contained interviews with featured performers. When handled well, these would sound as if someone like, say, Ella Fitzgerald was actually in the studio of a 250-watt station in a town of 9000 people.
 
During the start of Beatlemania I think there were discs where you, the DJ, could interview the Fabs. You'd get either a record or reel to reel and you would ask the questions (off a sheet of paper), and they'd respond. I think the same type of thing was put out when David Bowie did his Serious
Moonlight tour--you got to interview him.

Bob and Doug MacKenzie's comedy album had a bit called "You Are Our Guest" with the same
thing. The listener would read questions and the hoseheads would respond.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBvAENl9ZsY
Here, a 13 year old from Saskatchewan does it.
 
raccoonradio said:
During the start of Beatlemania I think there were discs where you, the DJ, could interview the Fabs. You'd get either a record or reel to reel and you would ask the questions (off a sheet of paper), and they'd respond. I think the same type of thing was put out when David Bowie did his Serious
Moonlight tour--you got to interview him.

Bob and Doug MacKenzie's comedy album had a bit called "You Are Our Guest" with the same
thing. The listener would read questions and the hoseheads would respond.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBvAENl9ZsY
Here, a 13 year old from Saskatchewan does it.
Click to expand...

When I did mornings, there was a prep service that would include those types of interviews every so often. Never used them because it was so very lame and cheesy.
 
Joseph_Gallant said:
According to Dunn, DeSuze would tape his Sunday morning shift (7:30-9:30 A.M.), Bradley would tape his Saturday afternoon show (2:30-6 P.M.), and Kaye would tape his Sunday-evening "BZ Hootenanny" show during the preceding week.

I would think that during these hours, the news anchor on duty did weather reports.

I don't know how these shows were done, but I could have seen the three aforementioned DJ's just tape their comments on reel-to-reel tapes, while an engineer on duty would play the tapes back and play records in such a way that the DJ appeared to be live in the studio, taking over the start of the record ("Saturday afternoon here on BZ; I'm Bruce Bradley with the Beatles' new one, from the film 'A Hard Day's Night', 'I'm Happy Just To Dance With You'".
Click to expand...

Add Dave Maynard to the list...he'd do part of his Sunday mid-day shift live, part would be pre-recorded (since I believe he hosted a show on channel 4 that coincided with his radio shift). The taped shows were recorded in their entirety...one Sunday during Dave's shift I remember the tape playing back off-speed, everything was off...the music, his raps, commercials. Apparently some one went and got him after 20 minutes or so because he potted down the recording in mid-song, made some comment about the turntable being fast and finished his shift live.

Yes the newsman did the weather, for some reason he also did the legal ID at the top of hour (which was done live over the news intro bed...the jock would do it during live shifts).

Not sure when the practice at 'BZ stopped, they changed the jock line-up in late '67/early '68 and I didn't listen as much after that.
 
Oldbones said:
Add Dave Maynard to the list...he'd do part of his Sunday mid-day shift live, part would be pre-recorded (since I believe he hosted a show on channel 4 that coincided with his radio shift).
Click to expand...

Community Auditions? But that was taped, too. Was it taped on Sundays for replay on some future Sunday?
 
I believe that the FCC rules at the time required that the ID had to be done live.
 
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