Re: [IRCA] Broadcast Automation

The thread about automation is of interest to me because I had looked upon it as a potential tool to make good local radio work! After working in Fort Worth, Houston and the Boston market, I was more interested in small town radio, and that's how I wound up in Mt. Vernon, Illinois. (Why I stayed for 11 years at WMIX is a whole 'nother story, primarily related to the establishment of my wife on the teacher pay step schedule and the discomfort a move would make to, say, a school district that preferred hiring lower paid beginners to experienced teachers higher on the step schedule.)

WMIX automated the FM station, first with the beautiful music format, then with country, and it was, if I remember correctly, related to the IGM system Rene describes. I can't really comment on the technical aspects because, as newsman, I never really touched the system. Later, after I'd moved to the newspaper in 1981, newer technology was established at WMIX, satellite replaced the reel-to-reel and cartridge tapes, along with digital, the AM and FM stations both were unmanned at night, and often one would hear, instead of Jim Bohannan's talk show the mutual voice cut feed, including, from time to time, a network announcer recording, re-recording and re-re-recording, until he got it right, the same promo or commercial.

If we had had the intestinal fortitude to buy a small town radio station somewhere, I would have explored an automation system that would have allowed the recording of flexible, personality-oriented local content that could have been done relatively quickly, giving the talent time to either sell or gather news and prepare short interview segments.

Of course, when I was doing that kind of speculation, it was back in the late '70s when most retail was still locally owned on on-street salesmen were more important than ad agency contracts. There are still a few examples left around the country where old style local radio works ... but it's apparently only in markets that are too far away from a metro to where a rimshot move can be made.

It saddens me to hear, via John Tudenham, that sometime NRC'er Al Germond, who built an operation in Columbia, Missouri, close to what I envisioned and made it successful for several years, has been sellling off his properties.

I believe one of the elements that militates against good local radio is the sad fact that the economic bottom line means that not only are radio stations consolidating into conglomerate-level chains, they're only following the lead of most retail operations. More advertising decisions seem to be made in New York or Los Angeles than in, say, Mt. Vernon, Illinois, Pampa, Texas, or Corvallis, Oregon.

All of the above serves as a synopsis of why an increasing amount of my hobby time is spent on genealogy than on DX.

Qal R. Mann, Krumudgeon