You all remember the “Venus Flytrap” scenes from WKRP in Cincinatti; the ceiling lights are turned off and a single lamp with a dim bulb is glowing in an otherwise darkened studio. Yup, the cool studio was the dark studio where everything got a little intimate. Great scene; but it was not very accurate for most of the old time radio stations of the rock and roll era.
At least the ones that I worked in; in fact almost every one of those old control rooms were lit by 48 inch long fluorescent lights in the ceiling, not exactly the epitome of Venus Flytrap’s sexy lighting.
But when you consider what a Radio DJ had to do back in the day, fluorescent lighting was almost a must. We had to see what we were doing. We had cart labels, record labels and program logs to read. We had transmitter readings to take every thirty minutes and a transmitter log to fill in. We had news and weather copy to read off of teletype paper and commercials and PSAs to read out of the copy book. But what took the most light was queuing up those records. The 45’s were hard enough, setting the needle down on the outside groove took a good eye, a young person’s eye. But working at a station that played albums required much better vision; laying the needle down in the space between the song tracks took plenty of light, really good vision and a steady hand.
Sometimes you needed bright light just to stay awake on long late evening or overnight shifts. When I first started the overnight shift at WCOS, I thought it would be cool to turn off the lights in the main AM control room but leave them on full in the production studio and the FM control room on either side to shine through the big 4 by 8 foot glass windows that separated the three. I got the idea from April Black who did the show before I took it over in ‘65. But I quickly found out that I could almost fall asleep in the middle of a song. This was my first radio job and I had yet learned to pace myself. So about 3 AM I would turn the control room lights up full and turn off the ones in the other rooms.
In the remote control room in the parking lot at Doug Broome’s drive in on Two Notch at Beltline we had the usual fluorescent lights. In the early evening they seemed relatively dim compared with the setting sun, the restaurant lighting and the headlights of all the cars as they entered and left the restaurant. There was also a lot of traffic on the road 20 feet in front of the booth as the evening traffic and the cruisers whipped back and forth, driving to and from between us and the other radio station’s booths around town.
But, as the hour grew late, things changed; traffic thinned out, storefronts up and down the street became dark, and the parking lot was quieter, except for the back row of cars where the heavy making out was going on. But they didn’t want lights either. This late, it seemed that my little corner of the rock and world was white hot. I would be getting a little sleepy as my hamburger, fries and coke settled in. I needed a little more caffeine to round out the night. Let’s see; another coke and a slice of strawberry pie and the bright lights overhead would just about do it. I remained bright eyed and bushy tailed until time to pack up the records and drive back to the station.
The need for all this light diminished when records and tape cartridges were replaced by CDs and automation systems, so some of my control rooms in this century had sexy lighting. Fluorescent lights were replaced with dimmer controlled incandescent ceiling spot lights that highlighted the audio board were in. I finally had my “Sexy Venus Flytrap” studio. Unfortunately, I never got the chance to do a music show at that station, my work there was limited to producing and voicing commercials. But it was such a cool studio.
The control room at WUSC-FM has fluorescent lights in the ceiling. But doing a late morning show doesn’t really lend itself to a darkened studio, anyway. Besides, there is a big window directly behind the DJ that streams in the morning sunlight. Sometimes too much sunlight warms the place up in the summer. Thankfully last year they installed pull down shades in the windows so we could keep the summer sunlight at bay. Until last year, I would turn off the control room lights to keep their glare off the keyboards to the automation and DJ Assist computers. But alas, when they installed the security camera in the control room, they put lock boxes on the light switch so now I’m all squinty eyed when using those keyboards. I must admit that I kinda like the glow of sunlight on that audio board, as long as it is not on the three computer screens that these old eyes have to read.
What about my home studio, you may ask. Well, because you can no longer easily find incandescent lights, I do have a fluorescent light, but it is a color temperature adjusted CFL that makes it seem like an incandescent. Only one of the four radio shows I do in there is done at night. The last half hour of that one is a segment called “The Romantic Interlude.” The pace changes with the music and, at last, I am doing my “Venus Flytrap” thing in my sexy studio. Life is good. Oh MY!
No comments:
Post a Comment