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Old 02-02-2012, 10:48 PM
Rinehart Rinehart is offline
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Automation of Broadcasting Gear

Hello All,
For anyone who doesn't know already, I'm researching a book about nascent American television broadcasting. The first phase of the background reading for it concerned the technology of the time, and this is now largely completed--superficial, but enough to start with. Many thanks to all the people who took the time to answer my questions. I have moved on to the second phase which is concerned with the business aspects of TV--how network time is sold, the nature of affiliation agreements, and so on. Today I came across something in Successful Television and Radio Advertising by Seehafer & Laemmar (1958, McGraw-Hill) which I had never heard of before, and that is that in order to save on staff salaries, television stations began to automate the some of the hardware. By presetting the start and stop times of things like film projectors with a control console, you could play all the filmed commercials for an evening's broadcast without actually having a technician in attendance; slide projectors could be similarly controlled to do the opening credits of any station-produced shows, etc.
Does anyone know when this technology first came on the market, how much it cost, and how widespread was its use?
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Old 02-03-2012, 11:27 AM
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Electronic M Electronic M is offline
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I'd think that the film could not be completely automated as if the film broke, jammed or stopped working for some reason they would need someone there to put up the technical difficulties slide and get the projector and film working quickly.
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Old 02-04-2012, 08:54 PM
Rinehart Rinehart is offline
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No, you are right that you would still need some technicians on duty--FCC rules mandated how many and what kind--but the idea was to reduce the number; during prime time or any other time that the station was broadcasting a network feed, there was little to do until the station ident and the local commercial when you would get a brief flurry of activity called the Panic Period. Not a good use of the high-priced talent, that.
Now, this book is about TV as a business: affiliate deals, ratings numbers and what they mean, time sales, and so on, and only has a brief section concerning the hardware, but that section is accurate, and he cites some specific examples of TV stations that have automated their control rooms.
Trouble is, I can't find a mention of this kind of automation technology in Abramson's History of Television, 1942-2000, or Dicky Howett's book, or the 2nd edition ofDonald Fink's Television Engineering, or indeed anywhere else.
Seehafer & Laemmar seem to imply that at the time of writing, 1958, its use is rapidly growing, but no-one else mentions it. Any suggestions on what this might mean?
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