[QuadList] NBC Control System

[Dennis Degan]

			On Apr 6, 2009, at 3:14 AM, Phillip G. Shaw wrote:

 > I was never in Burbank...  my sources John Fishettte (SP) VP of 
Operations &  Steve Orland, aka "Flat line" when he messed with SC. 
They had the same channel Packages and Automation as NY. I think Bob 
Butler (NY Labs) also updated the Burbank Sky path at the same time as 
NY.

			I say:

	Bob Butler was the one who gave me the tour when I visited NBC NY the 
first time in 1976.  He also gave me the white papers, some of my most 
valued possessions.
	I'll be scanning the rest of them soon for all here to enjoy.  I don't 
think there will be any copyright issues with them since they are 33+ 
years old and the company that issued them is more of a memory than 
anything else.  If I hear from Thompson corporate, I'll take them down. 
  But I don't expect there will be a problem.  The white papers describe 
systems that are obsolete for several equipment generations now and 
have been replaced long ago.
	I now work in the exact location that Skypath NY once occupied and not 
far from where the master grid once was.
	Back in 1978 when I first worked at NBC, I recall that there was a 
special signal modification in place that allowed one studio control 
room to be fed into another.  It was needed mainly for the Today Show 
since that show used (and still uses, part-time) a "sub-control room" 
for handling recorded video material, mostly videotape back then.  The 
modification involved delaying the entire sub-control room's output 
enough to equal a single scanline's delay, then replacing composite 
sync with correctly-timed sync from the live-air control room.  This 
would result in the additional blanking of one horizontal line (or 
would it be half of a line?), which had to be replaced somehow to 
please the FCC at the time.  The method used to replace the 
newly-blanked out scanline was what I don't remember, but it was 
clever.  This was done before frame synchronizers became common, 
although they were available starting around 1975, as previously 
mentioned.

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