The broadcast professionals thread!

I worked at a pro-audio store, helped setup a couple concerts (general sound reinforcement stuff) and produce music...?

www.soundclick.com/joshhunsaker

I'm actually potentially going to be working with a studio after moving to Medford Oregon I suppose too.

mjg12 said:

It amazed me how they always got things working under extreme pressures, or got my tape deck revived after dropping a can of diet pepsi on it, or unfroze my computer...well, you get the picture


Melanie

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Got my '1st Phone' when I was 17 years old. My first job at small station was engineer assistant and talent. I had to fix my own accidents.

Cadillac Kid said:

Got my '1st Phone' when I was 17 years old. My first job at small station was engineer assistant and talent. I had to fix my own accidents.

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I really didn't have many "accidents" but it was nice to know the engineers were always there!

when technology failed...

One time, when I was anchoring the afternoon drive news with my news director...our teleprompters went. I was always in the habit of printing out a newscast, just in case, but we had some breaking news (can't remember what it was now ) But we were scrambling to get on the air. I freaked out (quietly, of course) while he improvised the newscast by reading the descriptions of the cuts on the cart labels (remember those?).

I left in 2002...before digital recorders, etc...

Cell phone interference with the tape decks was epic sometimes...good to see that is no longer an issue.

Just over 5 years now as a volunteer at our public radio station. Did get to see the transition to the digital/ satellite age. I am just now finishing my junior year (at age 60) toward a degree in journalism. It started out about 10 yrs. ago as a hobby of collecting antique radios. If I can't work this old body like I used to as a mechanic, truckdriver, laborer, at least I get to keep the brain active!

I DJ for a pirate radio station that I also run and engineer at.

The rest was deleted because a member told me it was the best idea.

Darklife's original un-edited post brought back a memory of a visit from the FCC.

I worked for a FM Station that was owned by a guy that was a bit of a broadcast rebel. The format could be described as 'Americana'. We had several connections to KFAT-FM.

One hot summer afternoon, the continuity director opened the studio door and said that a guy from the FCC was in the lobby. I grabbed the program and transmitter log and quickly got them up to date, signing my name at least six times.

I went to see him in the lobby and he asked to see the logs and handed them back to me and said to follow him. Parked outside was a White Ford van. Inside the dimly lit vehicle were racks of monitors and scopes. Dane took a seat at a rolling office chair on a linoeum floor in front of the monitors, closed the door and carefully tuned in our signal. He spend a good hour looking at the details of our spectrum.

He handed me his card and pointed out that his name was printed in 'Blood Red ink' . Dane Erickson 'Federal Communications Commission, Field Operations Bureau, San Francisco FM/TV Specialist'.

We only received a citation for my FCC license not being displayed in the station.

That is the story of my vistit from the FCC.

I got bit by the Radio Broadcasting bug when I got a chance to DJ at a low watt college station in 1980.

I followed that gig by signing up for broadcasting classes at Brown Institute on Lake Street in Minneapolis.

Next, I got a part-time job with WCAL AM & FM at St Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. I got a chance to try my hand at many aspects here - from reading news to running the board for the live programming, recording NPR programs off the satellite for later playback, plus producing some of the Sunday morning programming for the AM side.

Through a contact at Brown Institute (now known as Brown College) I got a part time gig as a studio engineer at WDGY (1130 AM) in Bloomington, MN during the Minnesota State Fair. I babysat the studios and transmitter while they broadcast live from the fairgrounds across town.

My first "real" radio job once I graduated from Brown was at 1450 KLMX in Clayton, New Mexico, USA. For part of my tenure there I was also the "news director" which meant I had to attend city council meetings until late at night so I could write a summary that could be read on the morning news show. I also did a little sports play-by-play for a local high school.

Through a personal recommendation I moved to KVGB AM & FM in Great Bend, Kansas. I started at the very bottom rung (late night shift on the FM side) and moved up through various shifts to finish up doing mornings on the AM side.

More recently I've made some moves towards doing some voice-over work. But that's a story for another thread . . .

After getting an FCC license in 1974, I did a couple of short radio tech stints in the 70's.....WMCX-FM and WHFS-FM.
Never made anything resembled a living wage, so I moved on.

Steve

I was taken "under the wing" at the ripe old age of 8 by a family friend who was the owner of an AM in Mississippi (WAPF) and an Amateur operator. I was hooked. 14 years later was doing work at KLSU and WRKF in Baton Rouge, and doing production / remote work for Creative Sound.

Cadillac Kid said:

Darklife's original un-edited post brought back a memory of a visit from the FCC.

I worked for a FM Station that was owned by a guy that was a bit of a broadcast rebel. The format could be described as 'Americana'. We had several connections to KFAT-FM.

One hot summer afternoon, the continuity director opened the studio door and said that a guy from the FCC was in the lobby. I grabbed the program and transmitter log and quickly got them up to date, signing my name at least six times.

I went to see him in the lobby and he asked to see the logs and handed them back to me and said to follow him. Parked outside was a White Ford van. Inside the dimly lit vehicle were racks of monitors and scopes. Dane took a seat at a rolling office chair on a linoeum floor in front of the monitors, closed the door and carefully tuned in our signal. He spend a good hour looking at the details of our spectrum.

He handed me his card and pointed out that his name was printed in 'Blood Red ink' . Dane Erickson 'Federal Communications Commission, Field Operations Bureau, San Francisco FM/TV Specialist'.

We only received a citation for my FCC license not being displayed in the station.

That is the story of my vistit from the FCC.

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Great story! On a related note that may be of interest to you and else....
Take heed one and all to a great read n' roll down memory lane to re-absorb the many "juicy" tidbits of great free-form radio.

"Jeremy Lansman owned a low-wattage, listener-supported free-form radio station with his mostly absentee partner, Lorenzo Milam, in a seedy, decaying neighborhood in St. Louis. Jeremy was a radical, a ****-stirrer, an electronics genius and a free thinker. Lorenzo was brilliant, crippled, angry and odd. In the communal hippie ethos that was suddenly everywhere, the station owned a washing machine and invited everyone in the community to use it–free."

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A top notch scribble about how genuine "seat of your pants", listener supported radio lived back in the day. A must for anyone who was there back when and/or is a fan of the birth of Americana.

Living outside DC in the 1960's I heard "Harden & Weaver" on WMAL AM. I wanted to do that! My dad got us in on a Saturday morning to meet them as he also installed their phone system, and had talked with them several times. i saw just 3 people! Where were the bands that played the music? Records!!! Wow! what a wake-up call to a 7 year old.

By 13 years old, and listening to pop/rock/top 40, I still wanted to do radio. I bought a "Phono Oscillator" from radio shack. I hooked it up to the chain link fence, which connected to all the other fences in the neighborhood, and soon, MY radio station was on the air. I used a mouthpiece from a telephone as the mic, and it also picked up the sound from our record player, or my cassette player. The record library was mostly moms top 40 45's from the mid 1950's through 1964.

By the time I was in high school, Disco and portable disco systems were around, and I spun records around DC as "The Mad Hatter". I hated disco but it paid money. I also got into pro audio, and joined AES. I had already got my 3rd class Radiotelephone, I had installed several large disco systems in clubs, and was working part time helping the engineers do radio station studio upgrades. One of those stations was WHFS-FM.

I was listening to WHFS-FM which was a very cool progressive station in Bethesda MD., They had a contest called "Radio Activity" where you wrote down a 2 hour playlist. If the DJ's liked your list you got invited to do it live. I was the only 3 time winner! I could stop by any time and the DJ's would let me pick 'em and spin 'em. They generally played 5-? cuts before telling you what you've heard. They had over 350,000 LP's and singles in their library. In their last year at their old 102.3 freq, I would take a Revox B77, my Fons TT with a MA 2002e cart and DB Systems preamp and headphones on nights when I wasn't spinning dance music at clubs and record stuff from their library.

Now I work supporting AVID systems and Final Cut Studio apps for NASA TV personnel.

I still miss the spinning of vinyl, and the fun of picking whats next.

Yes, I did my time...saw alot of changes, too.

Started at a small Ohio station at the tail end of 1988, had no experience except that I knew alot of music and was always interested in audio. I'm still amazed I got hired, but it was a small-town station. Not power wise though -- the FM was 100,000 watts, the AM a "daytimer", signed off at sunset, different times throughout the year.

When I started, the FM was elavator music, the AM sort of adult contemporary. FM ran off four big 10.5 inch reel machines controlled by some archaic automation system. You should have seen the board...no sliders, just bigass knobs and a couple VUs.

I worked the AM in the mid-day, recording the farm report on an Otari 5050 and reading the noon news in addition to playing 45s on two awesome Technics turntables (installed in custom cabinets including a plywood box filled with sand -- you could pound your hand down as hard as possible right next to table and no effect whatsoever!).

Later, I worked through alot of transitions -- we went CD automation, "Classic Rock" when that genre was just beginning. I went from recording on carts to hard drive. Lots of cool stuff...

Got out of the biz around '98 or so. Now a geologist.

oblomov said:

Yes, I did my time...saw alot of changes, too.

Started at a small Ohio station at the tail end of 1988, had no experience except that I knew alot of music and was always interested in audio. I'm still amazed I got hired, but it was a small-town station. Not power wise though -- the FM was 100,000 watts, the AM a "daytimer", signed off at sunset, different times throughout the year.

When I started, the FM was elavator music, the AM sort of adult contemporary. FM ran off four big 10.5 inch reel machines controlled by some archaic automation system. You should have seen the board...no sliders, just bigass knobs and a couple VUs.

I worked the AM in the mid-day, recording the farm report on an Otari 5050 and reading the noon news in addition to playing 45s on two awesome Technics turntables (installed in custom cabinets including a plywood box filled with sand -- you could pound your hand down as hard as possible right next to table and no effect whatsoever!).

Later, I worked through alot of transitions -- we went CD automation, "Classic Rock" when that genre was just beginning. I went from recording on carts to hard drive. Lots of cool stuff...

Got out of the biz around '98 or so. Now a geologist.

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Cool.. And now you're dealing in classic Rocks!

I knew that was a softball !