How Profane Was That?

How Profane Was That? was Originally Posted on April 23, 2013 by lavarock

In the news is a North Dakota news co-anchor who was fired on his first day for dropping the “F” bomb on the air. The video I saw was him standing next to his female co-anchor. She is staring the broadcast and he appears to be clueless that they have just gone on the air. He is mumbling to himself, practicing what he will be saying.

Been there, done that, but without the profanity. Yes, I also have the t-shirt.

In high school I was a DJ and also helped build the transmitter. When I did my show, I was very careful what I said and how I said it. It was definitely amateur time, however, being at a military school, you were under more watchful eyes (and ears) then anywhere else.

Years later I attended college and had my own radio show. Although the AM station was fairly low power, the transmitter and antenna being 1,000 feet above everything else caused our signal to really get out. Although we were in the coal fields of Kentucky and Virginia, we also had a good following because we were somewhat progressive in our music, unlike the country-based programming of our competition.

Using what was known as the “Drake” format, we would talk over the outro of a song, and continue talking up until the singing started on the next song. Because the music and talk ran together, there was no dead air. Because of the timing, I would would often write down what I wanted to say and would practice it a few times to get it all in within the time allotted. I was very careful to ensure the microphone was off.

Oh there were times that I might have accidentally turned it on at the wrong time, however I cannot remember a time when something illegal or profane went out. There may have been a time or two that a caller issued a profanity on the air, but we would squash that pretty quickly. We did not have a 7 second delay. I made one once using a tape recorder we had, but it only give us a second or two delay and suffered in quality. With today’s technology, a 7 second delay is very simple using memory cards.

There had been a few cases where a song lyrics and something that followed were humorous or odd, but still, nothing I remember as profane.

When I would tell a story or just talk about an upcoming event, I was always reading and thinking a few words ahead of where I was at the moment. I tried to be very aware of what I was saying and how I phrased it. Today’s “shock jocks” don’t care, but we did.

This photo was taken in our “downtown” studios. To my left are two boxes with a phone on top. The boxes are the equivalent of 8-track tape machines, specifically for radio and TV stations. They had a set of stereo tracks and a track for tine queues. The tones could be used internally in the unit to stop the machine and/or close a set of contacts to start the next machine.

The telephone was a stan
bdard desk phone, but was connected to our console in front of me. We could throw a switch and put a phone call on the air live. Also, the board and knobs for volume of each input with a detent in the full counter-clockwise position. That detent allowed us to put the audio onto a cue channel so we could listen locally before raising the audio onto the broadcast path.

The UPI Audio channel also came in to the board and we would put it in the cue channel and actually listen to the cue channel in our headphones while talking (multitasking) so that when the 5 second tone appeared telling us we were 5 seconds from program, we could segue into the news by bringing up the volume of that channel and stop talking. This is how I could introduce the President for a news conference. We had just enough time to say something like “… and now the President of the United States, Mr President…”.

We were also a “Cincinnati Reds” station carrying the ball games. There was a specific schedule of when they would turn the broadcast over to us for our local commercials and station identification. One such cue was “…This is the Cincinnati Reds, Radio Network!…”. we then may have 2 minutes and 20 seconds to get commercials out of the way and do our station ID and return the listeners to live action.

While radio had it cues and some were obvious, television also had their cues. A typical cue during a live or recorded soap opera was that the actors would stop at a very dramatic point and the organ music would come up and come to a “stinger” of some sorts.

During old movies you might see a square blink in the upper right corner of the screen, signalling a reel change. If I remember right, it blinked 5 times then was off for a couple seconds then came on steady and then the screen would go dark. The steady light was when the other projector should be running and ready to be put online for a seamless transition.

While early tones might have been single tones, it was after the telephone company began using touch tones that the industry began using them also. Touch tones were designed to be unique dual tones that were easily decoded and not subject to false triggering. Because they were in the voice band, they needed no special processing or handling, except to keep them out of the broadcast audio path. You may hear these tones on occasion during certain TV shows and appear as a string of dialed digits.

The ability (or is it a curse) of having to think half a sentence ahead also comes into play when I have had to “MC” an event. I am always thinking ahead to ensure I don’t say the wrong thing.