It happened again last night. I’m back the 60s again, spinning records at WCOS in the old studios on the second floor of the Cornell Arms. I sit down to the console to start my show, Mike Rast is just finishing up the news and I need to cue up the first song in the 15 seconds or so left before it hits the air.
Only there are no records, no carts, no reel to reel tape machines; only some weird looking machine sitting in front of the board for the music. There are some funky looking little disks lying all around it but either they are not labeled or I’ve never heard of the songs on them. I’m frantically looking for something to play when I hear Mike say “… and that’s the news on Fun 14 and now it’s time for music and Johnny Foxx!”
There I sit in a panic. What in the world am I gonna do. To make matters worse, Woody the program director is working in the production studio next door. He is looking at me through the big glass window. He has that look on his face that says, what is the problem, do your show already.
Almost everyone I know who has worked in radio tells a story about a similar dream. We collectively call it “That Dream!” It is a dream that almost never happened in real life. We’ve all come close, but never really got to that point of no return.
Left: a Gates ST 101 Spot Tape machine. The one thing that is different about my dream these days is that none of the equipment is the same as what we used back in the day. Back then, the studio had the familiar records and turntables, cart machine and reel to reel recorders. I think it is my return to radio from television in modern control rooms that have none of these that causes this new wrinkle in the dream where they are replaced by some foreign contraption. On the old Western Electric audio board at WCOS we used nearly every knob it had for all the different audio sources we had available; 2 turntables, 3 cart machines, 4 reel to reel machines 2 microphones a phone line, and a funny gismo called a Gates ST 101 Spot Tape machine. These days at WUSC-FM we have 4 microphones, 3 CD players, 2 turntables, an automation source, a phone line and a remote receiver called a Marti. One of the turntable inputs can be rerouted so the DJ can play a computer or a smart phone through it. Since all my music is on my laptop, the number of board inputs that I use is reduced to one or two microphones, the laptop, the automation and the phone line. Going a step further; for the shows I do from my home studio, I usually use only two inputs, one for the studio microphone and one for everything else (songs, jingles, commercials and liners) from my laptop.
Lest you think that fewer audio sources make it easier, that isn’t necessarily so. Having everything on a different input gives the DJ greater flexibility in creating the sound he or she wants present on the air. For that reason, some stations connect their automation computers to the audio board through up to three inputs so their live DJs can create better mixes. There are certain things I used to do that simply can’t be done these days with fewer inputs.
A DJ friend of mine was moved by her company from a station that had three inputs from the automation to another in the same group that had only one. She really missed the three input configuration for commercials, jingles and songs.
It seems a mite unfair that I am still having this dream since I am still doing live radio shows. The other folks that complain about it have hung up their headphones many years ago. It also seems that it doesn’t occur much in younger radio folks who work in station that do block programming where they only talk after every 3 or 4 songs. Even the folks that play CDs in block programming don’t seem to be afflicted. Hmmm, maybe it isn’t radio but old school radio that causes these dreams! A little nightmare every now and then is worth it all. OK, everybody repeat after me; “We’re playing the top of the pops and the cream of the crop for all you cool cats and hot kitties out there!” Oh MY!
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