10 Jan 2014, 6:50 pm
10 Jan 2014, 7:37 pm
I was interested enough to do it for a living for more than 30 years. Started at the age of 14 in 1975, when it was still a Mom & Pop local industry in the states; by the early 2000's the corporate entities had taken over virtually the entire industry and downsized it to the point that jobs were scarce as hen's teeth. I knew people who, like me, had done nothing but broadcasting their entire lives, who couldn't find work, lost homes, marriages and their entire identities and committed suicide as a result.
I miss it, but not like it is now. I miss the way it used to be, when it was still fun.
If you've ever watched the old sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, believe it or not, that show is the most accurate depiction of what working in local radio in the 1970s and 80s was really like that I've ever seen: The owners are family, the son runs the business, but takes orders from a meddling cheapskate parent, the Sales Manager is an egocentric womanizing douche with outrageously bad taste, the Program Director is clueless and has experience only in a different format but can't do his job right anyway due to interference by the Owner and the Sales Manager who are both idiots; the receptionist runs the place because the owners are too stupid to know what's really going on, and the air staff are stoners, frat boys and the occasional aging burnout from a larger market. Good times. 
Funny thing is, in 1979, WKRP aired a 'Christmas Carol' themed episode (called "Bah, Humbug"), in which the Ghost of Christmas Future shows the owner, Mr Carlson, a version of the radio station in which there is only a single employee left, operating the entire place from a tiny desktop computer console. Talk about prophetic. 
I did a little TV from time to time, in between radio gigs, Switching, Camera work and operating the Commercial Media Pool, but I never cared for it. It was too sterile and industrial and there was no music (it also required a good deal more interaction with humans, unlike radio, where I had the whole studio to myself). I'm still set up to do freelance voiceover work from home, if anybody asks, but I don't pursue it anymore.
auntblabby
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10 Jan 2014, 8:44 pm
10 Jan 2014, 9:22 pm
11 Jan 2014, 3:31 pm
I worked in local TV from about 1970 to 1975. Like Willard I started in high school. It was a blast! For a local station we did a lot of music production; I did the sound engineering so that is what made it rewarding. Later we stopped doing so much production and things got boring, so I skipped out and went back to school.
Sound work has since remained an interest. I briefly had a recording studio, focused on music demos, podcasts, and continuing education voice work such as books on tape, etc. I still have all my gear and occasionally fire it all up. Sometimes I get really bold and attempt voice-over, but the results are usually depressing. At least digital audio editing is much more fun than the old days of razor blades and splicing tape. 
auntblabby
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11 Jan 2014, 3:52 pm
Sound work has since remained an interest. I briefly had a recording studio, focused on music demos, podcasts, and continuing education voice work such as books on tape, etc. I still have all my gear and occasionally fire it all up. Sometimes I get really bold and attempt voice-over, but the results are usually depressing. At least digital audio editing is much more fun than the old days of razor blades and splicing tape.
you were so fortunate to get to do all that. I was wondering since you mentioned the manual editing block, did you ever have to razor out clicks and pops from old audio recordings? that used to be the way to do it before the first automated analog crackle suppressors and later the digital stuff.
14 Jan 2014, 12:02 am
14 Jan 2014, 12:34 pm
Hello Auntblabby,
I never did restoration of old records, so never had to deal with splicing out clicks & pops. Thank goodness - it sounds tedious as hell.
I did hear tales from old-timers about doing conversion of old audio tapes. I worked with an older engineer who swears he once had to do a tape transfer from a tape that was so old that as it ran across the heads and through the rollers the oxide separated from the acetate backing an spun-out into a pile on the floor. That would have definitely been a one-pass chance to get it right.
auntblabby
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14 Jan 2014, 12:42 pm
Hello Auntblabby,
I never did restoration of old records, so never had to deal with splicing out clicks & pops. Thank goodness - it sounds tedious as hell.
I did hear tales from old-timers about doing conversion of old audio tapes. I worked with an older engineer who swears he once had to do a tape transfer from a tape that was so old that as it ran across the heads and through the rollers the oxide separated from the acetate backing an spun-out into a pile on the floor. That would have definitely been a one-pass chance to get it right.that sounds worse than the ampex sticky-shed syndrome thing where they have to bake the tapes to get them to play. I have heard of tapes that shed oxide to the point where playback/transfer would have to be periodically interrupted to reclean the heads whose gaps got fouled by the shedding oxide. analog restoration of old optical film soundtracks presented its own challenges, in that the optical stripe would have to be examined through a scope to find scratches in the emulsion and a type of white-out [really a black-out] would have to be applied on the spot, hundreds of times in a reel to dull loud pops and clicks, before the days of electronic correction much less digital correction.
16 Jan 2014, 8:40 am
auntblabby
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16 Jan 2014, 8:07 pm
03 Apr 2014, 8:02 pm
05 Apr 2014, 11:04 am
05 Apr 2014, 6:04 pm
auntblabby
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05 Apr 2014, 9:44 pm
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