[QuadList] This has to be a record

[Dennis Degan]

			On Mar 30, 2009, at 10:43 AM, David wrote about Burbank Transmission:

 > It was there also that the worlds first frame synchronizer, the NEC 
FS 10, was installed (one full rack!). It was used to fully synchronize 
the incoming main NYC network feed, for either West Coast delay 
recording (which was particularly helpful when the 2" VTR's were 
recording non-sync video switches), or live insertion into the West 
Coast distribution.

			I offer:

	This is a 1975 picture of an FS-10, installed at WSM-TV in Nashville:
		<http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisdegan/558110461/>

			David:

 > As far as the round robin was concerned and Mountain Zone delay, I 
believe that KOA in Denver delayed KOB, KTAR, and other Mountain Zone 
stations feeds. That must have made for a very horrific day for KOA as 
this was only a one hour delay, meaning as soon as the one hour 
recording was done, immediately zip that tape back to the top and hit 
play. This would be quite a feat on any first or second generation 2" 
VTR.

			I say:

	Well, I know from experience that a 1-hour quad tape cannot be rewound 
to the beginning in the 1 minute available between the Network ID and 
the start of the next feed.  I don't think even an AVR-1 could do that. 
  If there was only a 1-hour delay, it had to be done with 2 sets of 
tapes, allowing cueing of the beginning of the show.
	Wasn't Mountain Time 2-hours' delayed from Eastern Time?  I know that 
most Central Time stations often aired programs at the same instant as 
Eastern Time stations (thereby avoiding the need to delay the feed), 
but it really wasn't necessary for Mountain Time stations to only delay 
their feed by 1 hour.  They could have delayed it by 2 hours which 
would coincide the Eastern feed time with local (Mountain) time.
	As a related side note, I remember NBC itself would do a half-hour 
delay of the 6:30pm feed of Nightly News as you've described to enable 
a second feed of the program airing immediately after the first at 
7:00pm.  There would be 4 recordings made of the show; 2 'short' 
(primary & protection) and 2 'full' (also primary & protection) 
recordings.  The short recordings (which usually ran through the first 
commercial break) would be rewound after that commercial break and 
cued, ready to start at 7:00pm.  The 'full' recordings would only be 
rewound after 7:00pm, making them complete recordings of the show.  
They would be cued to start at the beginning of the second show segment 
and run to the end of the program.  These tapes would be the ones saved 
for archiving (at least these were the ones that MIGHT have been saved; 
not all of them were, of course).

			David accurately speculated:

 > They must have had some scheme where they were recording on a second 
VTR just the first five minutes or so at the top of each hour to cover 
the rewind transition of the main zone delay deck of that show. But can 
you imagine the machines, manpower, and head wear needed to run any 
stand-alone one-hour delay center in 2" days? It would have to be at 
least a 20 hour per day, seven day a week commitment. One can see the 
"blessing" of today's zone delayed, hard drive based equipment.!

			I agree:

	Not only the manpower, equipment, etc., but the fact that this system 
had to be in place in several locations: Denver, Burbank, and any other 
station that wanted their own delayed feed which differed from the 
norm.  I once visited a TV station in Birmingham, AL where they did 
their own Central Time delayed feed of the Tonight Show.  Ordinarily, 
their feed would air locally at 10:30pm but they wanted the show to run 
at 11:30, as I recall.  So they did as described above, making both a 
'short' recording and a 'full' recording to allow for the 1-hour delay. 
  But what made this more difficult for them was that they did not run 
protection recordings (that would have tied up every VTR they had 
in-house), running the risk of a clogged head on-air and not much to do 
about it.  Furthermore, in those days I think the Tonight Show was 
90-minutes long.  The station would have to record the 'short' tape for 
at least 30 minutes (probably more like 45 minutes) in order to allow 
enough time to record the rest of the show.  Without doing this, it 
could not have worked because after a 1-hour delay, the Tonight Show 
would be beginning while the last half-hour was still being fed in.  So 
that 'short' tape HAD to playback long enough to allow for the 
completion of the second tape's recording plus its rewind and cue-up 
time.  Now THOSE must have been fun days.   ;)

			Dennis Degan, Editor-Consultant-Knowledge Bank
	  				NBC Today Show, New York