While cleaning out a closet at home, I found a 3.5-inch disk with some interesting memos. When I left WGY in the spring of 1996, I made a backup copy of all the items in my documents folder. I figure it was an intelligent thing to do since I was still working for the same company in the role of Director of Engineering.
In those days, management wanted a precise accounting of all off-the-air incidents. The studio was staffed with a board operator who monitored the air signal at all times. Anytime the carrier dropped, there would be a note in the transmitter log. Those 5 second interruptions are likely due to thunderstorms. Lightning would strike somewhere nearby inducing an EMP on the tower. The venerable MW-50B would kill the PDM for a brief period as protection from VSWR. If I were at the transmitter site, the insulators in the guy wires would start crackling anytime a storm was within 10 miles of the site.
The helium balloon incident involved one of those metallic helium party balloons which escaped and ended up tangled in the 240-ohm open wire transmission line. This caused multiple VSWR trips for both the main and backup transmitters. I remember pulling up to the site and having a bit of a chuckle. By the time I got there, the balloon had mostly been burned into oblivion by the RF and the station was back on the air.
Another interesting item is our standard reception report form letter:
WGY reception report letter; name and address redacted because of the internet
These were printed out on WGY letterhead and mailed. I sent out several of them every week. I think the furthest away was Cape Town, South Africa.
Radio Automation Systems are nothing new under the sun. As Marconi tapped out his famous S, he was likely thinking “We should get a machine to do this…”
Broadcast stations have been installing different types of automation since the mid 1950’s and early 1960’s. It was touted as a way to free up announcers so they could do more important things.
While cleaning out an old studio/transmitter building and getting things ready for demolition, I found a stash of old product brochures for various automation systems from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. It looks like the previous owner used to go to the NAB every year. How many radio guys got their start on the overnight shift changing out reels? I know a few.
Gates automation system brochure, circa 1965
The Gates Radio Corporation had a fairly standard reel to reel system in three different configurations. These systems were pretty pricey in their day. According to the 1966 price list:
The Automate 244 cost $7,275.00 ($58,837.00 in 2020)
The Automate 484 cost $12,210.00 ($102,946.00 in 2020)
The Automate 1007 cost $17,150.00 ($138,799.00 in 2020)
Those are for stereo systems, mono systems cost about $500.00 less. Each one of those systems ran one station.
Gates Automate 244 events thumb wheel
The larger the system, the more events it could trigger. I have never run into one of these in the wild.
Long form satellite shows began to surface in the early 1980’s. Things like all news formats and overnight talk shows. I have had nightmares were everyone walks around saying “This is Larry King, you’re on…” while UFO’s fly overhead and next door neighbor, Jim Hightower, buries PCB’s in his back yard not more than 200 feet from his house.
Broadcast Electronics Control 16 radio automation system
Broadcast Electronics had the Control 16 system in the 1980’s that ran off of a very basic computer system that could handle 3,000 events with the standard RAM configuration and up to 9,999 events with additional RAM. This was ideal for multiple program sources; music on reel machines, satellite syndicated talk or music formats, etc. No longer were these machines simply running the overnights.
Schafer 90x radio automation system
Schafer is perhaps the most know analog tape automation, at least to me. I know of several of these systems that were in operation through the mid 1990’s. By this time, long form satellite music formats had become the rage. However, there were still a few stations using reel to reel music services.
I particularly like this flyer from IGM:
IGM (International Good Music) brochure, circa 1971
By the mid 1990’s, these tired old dinosaurs where being removed. Still, the mechanics of the operation were a thing to behold. It was nice because you could hear the relays snap shut after decoding a 25/35 Hz tone or one of the Mutual Radio be-doops. The cart-o-matic would chug through the break until the liner fired and then back to the bird. If there were any issues, one simply needed to stand there and watch which part of the machine malfunctioned.
Schafer logging system
Computer based systems like Computer Concepts DCS, Arrakis Digilink and Audio Vault came along, which got rid of the analog tape. Instead they stored audio on hard drives. Those early systems hard drive space was a premium, so usually at least 3:1 compression was needed to fit all the commercials onto the drive space available.
My first brush with Audio Vault was in 1994 at WGY in Schenectady, NY. It was a pretty good system if you could understand the .ini files. As the BE tech support guys used to say “You can program it to turn the coffee pot on if you wanted to.”
Nowadays, what used to be a studio location is more akin to a content distribution node. This rack combines music and commercials stored locally on hard drives with out of town voice tracks and serves as the program source for eleven radio stations.
Radio Automation, 2020 style
It works remarkably well, as long as the windows operating system stays functional.
Can a 50,000 watt AM station disappear from the airwaves and no one notice?
The answer is yes, if you live in the Albany, NY area. WDCD, 1540 KHz, (formerly WPTR) has surrendered its license to the FCC last Friday, September 28, 2018. Seventy years on the air and quite the legacy as a Top-40 station in the 60’s and 70’s.
Unfortunately, the station had fallen on hard times the last few years, being silent twice for long stretches of time. In the end, I suppose it was simply time to pull the plug.
This was my first CE gig in the early 1990’s. What I remember was, I had a lot of fun working there.
This was the radio station that I listened to (or rather, my parents listened to) when I was a very young kid. From this source, things like school closings, weather, lunar landings, news, sports and traffic could be heard. At one point, there was a guy called the “Traffic Hawk,” (real name Don Foster) who flew in a Cessna 172 east and west over main street in Poughkeepsie advising drivers of any slow downs in the area. That’s right, Poughkeepsie, New York, population 30,000, had it’s own eye in the sky, broadcasting live from the aircraft overhead. Actually, I think he also flew up and down South Road (US Route 9) in the vicinity of the IBM plant, which employed quite a few people in those days.
There was also a guy who tried to break the Guinness Book of World Records by staying awake the longest, this happened several times.
For me, it was the school closings. I hated school with an absolute passion. Everyday, I would ride the school bus and say a little prayer; “…please God, make it today. Make the boiler stop working, or the electricity to go out. Make the kitchen catch on fire or the roof to cave in. You are a great and mighty God and I don’t ask for much. Please destroy my school today.” Alas, God did not seem interested in this.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
WKIP first signed on in 1940 with the studios and transmitter located at The Nelson House, 42 Market Street, Poughkeepsie. That building is long gone and the location appears to be the parking lot for the Dutchess County Office building. Being neighbors with some influential guy from Hyde Park made for a nice dedication speech:
It signed on with a power of 250 watts on 1,420 KC on June 6th, 1940. Soon thereafter, it changed frequency to 1,450 KC as a part of the AM band shift brought about by NARBA.
Over the years, the station went through several ownership changes. The first major technical change came in 1961, when the station transmitter site moved to it’s current location, then called Van Wagoner Road, now Tucker Drive. The station increased power to 1,000 Watts and installed a direction antenna for daytime use. It is one of those rare night time non-directional, day time directional stations.
The directional antenna consists of two towers; tower one is 180 degrees tall (103.4 Meters or 340 feet) with 35 degrees of top loading. That is used for both the day and night time array. Tower two is 85 degrees tall (48.8 Meters or 160 feet) and is used only for the daytime array. This pushes the major lobe of radiation towards the north. I don’t know the reasoning behind that, but somebody spend a good amount of money to make it so.
Here is a air check from the early 1980’s. Weather on that day was “Sunny, cloudy, whatever… take your pick.”
Good old Steve Diner.
Today, the station looks like this:
The 1961 WKIP transmitter building with tower
When I was growing up, my cousins lived within walking distance of this. We used to come over than throw rocks at the tower when the station was unmanned on Saturdays and Sundays. At least, I think it was unmanned because no one ever came out and yelled at us.
WKIP backup transmitter, phasor and main transmitter
Mid 1980’s MW-1A still runs. The BE AM1A is the main transmitter. The phasor is the Original 1960’s Gates Phasor.
This video shows how the studios used to look, before they were rebuilt by Clear Channel Circa 2002 or so. At about the 2:02 mark, you will see the room pictured above as it looked in 1990.
The space between the video above and the picture below looked bad with nothing in it. It looks better now.
WKIP clock
That clock is a collectors items and belongs in a museum.
