[QuadList] This has to be a record

[DCFWTX at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/1/2009 1:51:30 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
DennyD1 at verizon.net writes:

> 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 C answers: I have a sales sheet for the FS 10. I will scan and submit 
to the group. I first saw that devise at the NAB in Houston in 1974 or 1975. I 
thought it was the neatest thing I'd ever seen.
> 
>       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


David answers: I believe that Mountain Time emulates Central time zone. 
Hence, they had to delay the East/Central feed one hour. That emulation still goes 
on today as far as I know. A friend of mine is running the production 
department at KOLD in Tucson. They used to use MII to zone delay. They were an early 
user of an HP (?) hard drive delay system in the 90's, getting off of MII ASAP. 
In DST months, I asked him why they didn't just take the West coast feed, as 
Arizona was not on DST. He said the commercials were different and they had to 
take the East feed. Hence, the delay scheme must go on.

One other thing about fast turnaround in 2" quad days: When the Tonight Show 
was 90 minutes long (with Johnny), it taped 5:30-7:00 P.M. sharp in Burbank, 
non-stop. It would playback (on a VR 2000) to the East at 8:30 P.M. That gave 
you 1.5 hours to fix the show if there was a major problem. If the show had to 
be cut for any reason (say a star said something or did something that had to 
be removed), the only way to accomplish this and to get into position for an 
8:30 P.M. playback to the East, was the physically cut that section out. The 
show AD was really on top of the show timings. If he/she knew from Standards and 
Practices that something was going to have to be taken out (say 5 seconds), 
the show was deliberately run 5 seconds longer at the end. As soon as taping 
ended at 7:00 P.M., all concerned would convene at VTR 14/16 for the splice. It 
was routine for editors such as Chuck Holder, Skip Hornbrook, and Bob Veech, 
to work under this kind of pressure, to make a perfect splice, considering the 
viewing numbers at 8:30 P.M.

This splicing routine continued till about 1982. At that time, one inch took 
over and the show had been shortened to one hour a year or so earlier.

David Crosthwait





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