TD1_01: Sign On
LegendarySurfer
will be posting excerpts from my book in-progress.
The title is: "TRIBAL DRUM: The Early Years of Freeform Radio"
Chapters thus far:
1. Commercial Roots
2. Non-Commercial Roots
3. Wolfman Jack
4. WOR-FM
5. KMPX-FM
It's mostly history, but contains some personal memories, as well. The
following is one of those personal memories about signing on. It's
been a decade and more since I performed such duties, so any feedback
you all have on what I'm leaving out or have fuzzy would be greatly
appreciated:
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You sign on to broadcast facilities basically the same way -- no
matter what the station, no matter how the broadcast signal is
delivered. But, you have to understand the differences between them.
In the case of KCAB, we're talking about differences in radio between
AM and FM, since KCAB was an AM and FM operation in the daytime and
strictly an FM deal at night - at least to the devilishly late hour of
11:00 p.m.. You had two transmitters, one for each type of signal you
were going to send. So, you needed to fire up both transmitters. Their
broadcast signals were delivered in different ways. With Amplitude
Modulated - AM - radio, you can set a transmitter with a tower just
about anywhere and people can listen to you. If your AM tower's on the
other side of a mountain from where you are, and it's got enough power
behind it in the transmitter, the signal will still reach you. A
program delivered using The Major's Frequency Modulation - FM - is
different. FM broadcasting is line of sight. You have to basically be
within view of the broadcast tower to hear the signal. If there's a
mountain between you and the FM tower, forget it, you won't hear it.
This all being understood, you sign on an AM/FM combo taking these
things in mind, even if it's just way back in your mind. The
transmitters, you turn on. Back in those days, you had a lot more
tubes within the transmitter itself. With tube technology, it is
always a good idea to let the filaments warm up before you put them
into a stressful situation like having those tubes drive a broadcast
signal. So, you fire up those transmitters to basically warming the
tube filaments, first. The more tubes, the longer the warmup. You can
let them warm up for a while, but usually it only took about a minute
before they were ready to go into broadcast mode. There were rules
against having a transmitter on the air but not broadcasting a
program, so you had to get something going fairly soon after you
actually fired up the transmitter after the warming period.
You had an extra step with FM, because you needed a studio transmitter
link (STL) to get the transmitter signal up to the FM tower. FM towers
go on mountains or very high buildings. Putting them close to ground
level was self-defeating, since line of sight was best achieved by
having the sending end highly elevated. KCAB's AM tower was in the
back lot behind the studios. But the FM tower was up on the nearest
mountain, so you needed the STL to get to send your program to the
transmitter.
I queued up a record, grabbed the legal ID sign-on cartridge and
slapped that in the tape deck to get ready to play. While things were
warming inside the AM transmitter here at the K-CAB studios and the FM
transmitter up top the local mountain, I checked the teletype machine
which I turned on first thing I got up off the couch. OK, so maybe
that's more than a minute, I guess. Didn't hurt to have the filaments
good and warm when you turned on the transmitters! At any rate, I
finally got to the point where I could turn on the transmitters, did
that, and then took meter readings, noting the time and signing my
name for each entry; sometimes just an initial.
Everything was now up and running.. I was now ready to do my rookie DJ
magic behind the Collins control board and wait for Bob Mack to roll
in, cigarette in one hand and a Dr. Pepper in the other. He'd always
be late, but he knew I wouldn't mind. I was what later became known as
an "intern" - a newbie trying to break through, working for free,
learning what he could while doing...