On The Air

On The Air was Originally Posted on January 19, 2013 by lavarock

Decades ago I was a DJ on the air. Actually, I like to say that I was an “Air Personality” because I did more than intro records and read the news. I also reported on life as I saw it, not unlike this blog does.

I had my share of listeners, many tuned in because I didn’t sound like the other people on the air in that area. The area was Appalachia, known for it’s logging, coal mining and bluegrass music. Unlike many locals who sported what I called a “country accent”, mine was more general radio neutral having come from “up north”.

It was an interesting area and when I first started we played a combination of country, easy listening and rock. We tended away from strong bluegrass or heavy rock, however at times would feature some bluegrass from local bands.

When I was there we didn’t have a “Music Director” but would keep the themes within the above categories. Two of us went to a couple radio programming conventions and we learned what the “big stations” were doing and were able to bring the station into more modern programming. For example, we tried to vary instrumentals and male and female artists to try to keep from playing two male vocals after another.

At the time we used a combination of records and tape cartridges (they were similar to 8 track tapes). On the records or tapes were would time the intro and outro and had them written on the item. Thus if we had 30 seconds of weather left and a record we were staring, we could start the record 15 seconds before we finished reading the weather, bring the musical intro up under our talking and as we finished the weather, the singing started.

A similar trick was used when we introduced the President for a speech. We would be told that he was to start speaking at 30 seconds after the minute and we would talk and end at about 298 seconds with something like “Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States”. A second later he starts speaking.

I also would do a few “remote broadcasts” where we would have one DJ at a remote location and I would be at the station running the board. The event might be a monthly broadcast, a grand opening or what have you.

We also were a station in the “Cincinnati Reds Radio Network” and would carry their game broadcasts. Timing was important because there were certain cues they would give telling us when we would insert our own commercials and station ID’s.

We subscribed to UPI News and carried their audio feeds (the President, news, and so on). UPI used tones and we could pop the audio feed up on the board, in a monitor mode, set the level and keep working, sort of like listening to a radio while you work. There would be audio cues such as “news hits in 1 minute” which allowed us to set audio level. At about 10 seconds to the feed there would be a BEEP tone. After the tone, we would throw the switch and start lowering the volume of whatever we were doing and at the second their feed started and ours would be cut off. Meanwhile we would ready (on monitor) the next music to play. If we were coming out of news and doing the weather I might pick a 30 second intro song, start it as the news ended, open the mike, read the weather and as I stated the current temperature, the vocal would start.

This was known as the “Drake” format to always have something going, never have a pause and keep the energy going.

Some stations would take their turntables and adjust the little rubber wheel underneath that ran the actual platter. They shaved a bit off of the wheel so that the turntable ran faster. Thus a 45 RPM record would run at perhaps 48 or 50 rpm. Although the speed change was not very noticeable, when you listed to them and then changed to another station, the other station sounded like they were just dragging along and not very exciting. We didn’t do that, but we did push as much music as we could into the hour.

Sometimes I would spin a yarn or tell stories, all the while thinking about what I would say next and ensuring I would not be off-color.

The reason I bring this all up is that I just spoke with a guy who worked with me at this station. He will be calling the basketball game at my old college (a branch of the University of Virginia). Unlike when I was on the air, I can now hear these stations on the internet. I wish we had that capability when I was there.

So here I am, listening to a friend on the radio, talk about the college I used to attend, and some of the commercials are for companies I advertised way back when.

I gave him our current weather after he told me they had 5 inches of rain which turned to heavy snow. Since some of the team lives off campus, the coach was unable to hold practice.

Snow and ice. I seem to remember them

Here it is 80 degrees outside, yet is still below freezing up the mountain here, just 45 miles away.