It just doesn’t have the same ring as Disk Jockey or DJ. However, that would be an apt description of the person who plays the hits on most radio stations these days.
It is mostly just drag and drop the next element into the play deck if anything needs to be done at all.
Technics SP-15 Turntable
I remember when DJs actually jockeyed disks, it was a sight to behold. Back in the day when everything was on vinyl except the commercials, which were on the cart, the DJ had his or her hands full. Most of the songs were in the 2:30 to 3-minute range, so while the song was playing, the next song had to be cued up on the platter, the old song needed to be put back into its sleeve and shelved (most of the time), check the log to see what was on deck, pull the next commercial stop set, answer the phone and god forbid if the Program Director called on the hotline and it rang more than 3 times. And hopefully, the head wasn’t too far away, that coffee went somewhere, after all. While all that is going on, timing, audience interaction, hitting the post, and sounding fun. In spite of what Howard Stern says, it was not easy.
Today, of course, if there is even a person in the studio, they may glance up at the computer screen every now and then to see when the next time they need to talk. Otherwise, they would be engaged in talking on the phone with their girlfriend, texting, surfing the internet, or watching a baseball game on TV.
On this, the 98th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, some radio history is in order. Before broadcast stations, radio was mainly used by ships at sea sending messages in Morse Code to coastal radio stations. These messages could be routine; we are on schedule, we are carrying such and such cargo, request port clearance, etc. They could also be urgent; the ship is sinking, we need medical advice, etc.
RMS Titanic, April 10, 1912
Most of these early radio stations were owned by Marconi Company, which later became RCA. One of the first Marconi Stations was in Wellfleet Cape Cod, the original call sign was MCC (for Marconi Cape Cod) later changed to WCC.
On April 14th about 11:45 pm, the Titanic struck an ice burg and sank about two and a half hours later. The RMS Titanic call sign MGY was equipped with a radio transmitter at a time when ships were not required to be. Sadly, the finer details of distress procedures for radio-equipped ships had not been worked out. After this incident, radio distress procedures were codified and the SOS evolved into an internationally recognized distress signal.
On the night the ship sank, the Marconi employed radiooperators were sending routine traffic to Cape Race, Newfoundland radio. Because the radio apparatus used spark gap transmitters and crystal radio receivers, interference from other ship stations often caused problems. Earlier in the evening, a Titanic radio operator had strongly rebuked the operator from the closest ship, the SS Californian, telling him to “Shut up, shut up, I am busy; I am working Cape Race.” At about 11 pm the SS Californian operator retired for the evening and the Californian never received the distress call. Sadly, this incident probably led to the high loss of life because the Californian was just over the horizon to the west and would have likely been able to rescue many of the passengers before the Titanic sank.
Coast Guard radioman Jeffrey Herman has a good SOS story from the late 70s. Being stationed in Hawaii, he was on duty late one night at Coast Guard Radio Station Honolulu, call sign NMO.
John Davies, the radio operator on board the Eriskay also has a story about receiving an SOS while at sea. Fortunately, that one turns out a little better.
I remember one night, hearing an automated SOS on the international lifeboat frequency (8364 kHz). I imagined some poor guy cranking the lifeboat radio not knowing if it was going out or not (I was right, it turns out). We heard him on Guam and DF’d him to off the coast near Australia. We notified the Australian authorities, who diverted a nearby ship that picked 26 survivors up the next morning.
I am sure there a quite a few old CW (morse code) radio operators out there that have similar stories. By the 1990s most maritime communications had moved to INMARSAT, and CW and coastal radio stations became redundant.
The end of commercial Morse Code in the US came on July 13, 1999, when KFS, the last coastal radio station, signed off. Most of them have been scrapped and the valuable coastal land sold off to developers.
The development of broadcast radio was a direct offshoot of these radio stations. AM radio, or rather AM technology was developed by ATT as an adjunct for their long-distance system. ATT used High Frequency (HF) voice circuits to span oceans for several decades, up to about the mid-1960s. Amateur radio operators began fooling around with voice broadcasting, using ATT’s patented AM technology around 1915 or so, after tube-type transmitters and receivers became available. Somebody realized that money could be made with the new-fangled radio contraption and commercial broadcasting was born.
I followed this link to this site called “SurvivalRealty.com” and saw this article about what looks to be a former ATT microwave relay site in Utah turned into a residence. The site is much smaller than the former ATT site in Kingston that I profiled in this post. Still, that is a Western Electric tower and those are KS-15676 antennas.
Former ATT microwave site turned into a residence
If I were that guy, I’d take those antennas down a scrap them. Looks like the waveguides are already gone. I might have tried to put some windows in while I was renovating it. It would drive me crazy to live in a house without any windows. I guess if one were waiting for the big one, windows might not be a desired feature of a survival bunker.
I wouldn’t really call it a “communications bunker” though. I’ve been in communications bunkers, they are mostly underground and are much more robust than that building. Still, it is built better than an ordinary commercial building or a regular house. It would take a special person to live out in the middle of nowhere like that.
Back in the cold war days, the federal government took emergency warnings quite seriously. So much so that they spent about $2 million in 1972 to build a LF (low frequency) radio station WGU-20, in Maryland designed to integrate into the public warning system. This was known as the “Last radio station” because it was designed to operate after nuclear armageddon. Using the first all-solid-state AM transmitter designed by Westinghouse, the station transmitted on 179 kHz (power 50 KW) with a loop that stated:
“Good evening. This is WGU-20, a defense civil-preparedness agency station, serving the east-central states with emergency information. Eastern Standard Time seventeen hours, twenty minutes, twenty seconds.”
The greeting would change to “Good Morning…” or “Good afternoon…” as appropriate.
One small problem arose from this system, no one had long-wave receivers. The government attempted to persuade manufacturers to market, and the public to purchase radios that would only receive periodic tests or that they were likely going to die in the next 15 minutes. It was a tough sell from the start.
Military planners decided that they might integrate the DIDS (Decision Information Distribution System) information gained from surface-to-air radar that would give the approximate impact areas of incoming ballistic missiles. The idea was, the public would then know which areas to “avoid.” It may have appealed to the military mind, but most others didn’t quite see the value in it, especially since reaction times would have been 10 minutes or less.
Plans were to build several of these radio stations throughout the US operating on Low Frequency, which would have replaced the EBS over-the-air daisy chain system that remains in effect today with the current EAS. Unfortunately, the public never bought into the concept, and around 1990 or so, WGU-20 was turned off for good. The nearest thing was to have to it today is NOAA weather (or all hazards) radio.
EBS and EAS have never had to work in a time of emergency and if the circumstances are dire enough for someone to attempt to activate EAS, it is very likely the system would fail.
