I well remember sweating out timing into NBC news with no time calculator, just an analog darkroom timer, pen, paper, fingers and toes. But even the math-challenged among us seemed to get the hang of it.
As with most any combo in the real world, I have an FM which get's 90% of my daily attention, but the AM station now under my charge runs satellite, automation and a switcher, and the combination oft times doesn't like (or see) the relay closures. The automation's support's solution? "(Our automation) sometimes don't like or see relay closures... reboot the computer at least once a day." Symptoms include missing station drop ins and local spot breaks, newscasts, obituaries and ag reports; things that wouldn't have happened with young, ambitious, starving human kid DJ's with pride on the line.
PC's have no pride, just steely logic that sometimes falters somewhere in an errant line of code or a hiccup in line voltage. They are stuck in the weird ethereal world of solid state 0's and 1's which depend on mechanical devices to translate the programmed impulse into action. Computers do what they think they are told. How often, during a production session, have I spoken these words out loud: "Do what I'm thinking, not what I'm telling you to do!"
In 2012, as with most of broadcasting, we have improved to the point where we try to output 48 hours worth of programming a day with two-and-two-halfs people. Miraculously, sometimes it works. (That's probably about the same thing our PD at WJDX thought back when he depended on us wacky, unpredictable humans.)
