CKNW Newsroom 1980

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CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby radiofan » Sun Jun 23, 2013 9:29 pm

Image

CKNW's Newsroom (Pilot and Co-Pilot positions) at 815 McBride Plaza in New Westminster 1980

Thanks to John Mair for sharing this memory!
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby Neumann Sennheiser » Sun Jun 23, 2013 10:30 pm

A typewriter and a rotary dial phone.
No need for carbon-dating; this picture is era authenticated.
"You don't know man! I was in radio man! I've seen things you wouldn't believe!"
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby Anotherwpgguy » Sun Jun 23, 2013 10:45 pm

Those sure look like Magnacorder tape transports ..... yikes.
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby Mike Cleaver » Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:21 am

Nah, they're the worst so called pro tape recorders ever made, Ampex 500s.
The company that made the first and some say the best tape recorders really dropped a stinker with these.
I've never met a radio engineer who didn't describe these with a string of four letter words.
Another historical footnote, the CN/CP Broadband desk set, used to distribute radio network feeds such as Contemporary News, back in the day.
Much better quality than telephone and even most land lines, distributed over the cross Canada microwave network.
Olympia manual typewriters, the newsroom standard, probably all caps and the BN Extel printer, which produced the noise most kindly described as "duck farts." tm: Dick Smyth.
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby tuned » Mon Jun 24, 2013 2:41 am

If I remember correctly the the door on the left went to the CFMI control room and the door on the right into the news booth.
The 500's were not a step up from the 600's. There were also a couple of those dodgy decks in the AM control room along with the crappy five slot cart decks. I think NW was the only station that used them. Everyone else had the ITC's.
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby Mike Cleaver » Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:57 pm

Yes, any of those multi-deck cart players were great at saving valuable space in control rooms but if the one motor that drove all the decks failed, you were up s**t creek without a paddle!
ITC made the best ones, the triple deckers, you could slide out the individual decks and repair them without affecting the other two.
Same with the amp and control boards.
I don't recall the brand of the five slot jobs but we evaluated them at CHUM and they were absolute junk!
There was a lot of great analogue equipment built for broadcasting before computers came along but there was a lot of crap too.
Ampex Cue Mats, 12 inch floppy discs that you tried to shove into a machine, the Gates recorder/player with the 12" wide belt that you slid the head along to find the proper track, those Ampex 500 reel to reels, not to mention some of the Rube Goldberg processing for on air and the "box o' tar," the infamous Kahn Symetrapeak and those stupid 2" tape loggers.
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby tuned » Mon Jun 24, 2013 3:00 pm

I think the five slot ones were Spotmasters. What really made them suck is that you had to push a button to release the cart. Most stations had a pair of three slot ITC's and I never remember them breaking. My favorite "rube goldberg" contraption was the tape delay at CJOR. It was basically a tape obstacle course right beside the main deck. The problem was that people coming into the control room had a habit of bumping into it and causing tape to spill on the floor. To get into delay was another bit of tricky business. You had to load a fill cart into the single slot spotmaster and then hit a switch at waist level which would get you in and out of delay. The control room speaker was a giant floorstander which was a convenient place for people to sit. I take that back about "rube goldberg" contraptions...the award for that goes to the peg board QM/FM tape automation system.
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby jon » Mon Jun 24, 2013 6:18 pm

tuned wrote:I take that back about "rube goldberg" contraptions...the award for that goes to the peg board QM/FM tape automation system.

The rumour around QM when I was there (1971-72) was that the automation machine was IGM (Bellingham) Serial #000005 that had originally been used at CJQM AM & FM in Winnipeg, when they first came on the air, November 1, 1963. Those pegs were pretty high tech for 1963.

My only real complaint about it was that the silence alarm shutoff switch was right beside the main power switch. And, when you realized your mistake and powered the unit back on, it would generally jump 2-3 events forward.

By the time I arrived, the infamous Cart Carousel appeared to have been fixed as I never heard of it failing in the year I was there.
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Re: CKNW Newsroom 1980

Postby Jack Bennest » Tue Jun 25, 2013 5:41 am

Down memory lane picture for me.

I never sat in the pilot's chair but can remember working with Lumpy and a few others when co-piloting on the weekends.

Ashbridge, McKitrick, McMaster, Barker - the ones in the pilot chair.

That folks ......was 40 years ago - I would be 26 - really hard to believe
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