[QuadList] RCA Quad and TCR-100 action at KTXL, 40, Sacramento in 1985

[Tim Stoffel]

On Fri, 2008-10-17 at 09:05 -0600, Joe Owens wrote:



> 
> There is a stunning loss of humanity in broadcast evident in the
> near-perfection of what arrives in peoples' homes nowadays.  The
> "Please Stand By" slide no longer exists... and its kind of sad in a
> way, because the viewership understood then that people were involved
> in putting on the show.  A modern, automated station or broadcast
> might be lovely and seamless and might be just what the advertisers
> want (or is that really true?), but all they get now are the plastic
> hairdos that read the news.  Frankly, I see all the billboards around
> town extolling the virtues of these fabricated celebrities being your
> best friend and all.... but the reality is that they are becoming more
> irrelevant by the minute.
> 
The modern technology still has a lot of humanity in it. I find keeping
a network of 35 computers talking to each other in video, audio, RS422
and Ethernet to be a challenge in a different way. There are plenty of
nailbiting moments when you are dealing with a box that suddenly starts
doing its own thing. The ground loops of the old cabling has been
replaced with the return loss of modern cabling. Stuff still goes wrong
with distressing regularity. Take master control operations. A fairly
simple automation system driving one channel is not to be compared to
the 'hydra' many automation systems today have become. These system may
switch four or more channels to air simultaneously, maintain an equally
busy record system with both videotape and severs, and often other
things. Even with simplicity built in as much as possible, and motivated
operators who make a genuine try to make the automation meet or exceed
its capabilities.

The point where I will probably jump off the bandwagon is if and when
all operations are done solely by general purpose computers. We are a
long ways from that!

Tim Stoffel