Early days of localizing automation

KXEO was automated with country music when I started in 1978. This was long before personal computers with their big hard drives and digital audio would become the norm in later years. Most music was on 10" reels of tape. When a tape ran out, you put the next tape in numerical sequence on the tape deck. The tapes were stored tails out - that meant when you loaded a tape deck, you had to rewind a tape entirely and then cue it up for it to be ready to play.

Every time a reel of tape was used, the songs would be played in the same order. But by using multiple tape decks, you could mix up the order of songs somewhat.

The station used an automation tape service located in Bellingham, Washington - BMI. I don't recall what the BMI stood for. It was not the BMI that does music licensing with ASCAP.

Each song had an announcer on either the beginning or the end, and the tapes were played so it appeared these guys had air shifts. They had big, booming voices with generic names - like Don Harris, Bill Jackson, Phil Thomas, etc. Every time a particular song played, the same announcer voice track played with it (since they were on the same tape).

The whole thing was localized with time tapes and weather tapes. The same guys that did the announcing on the music reels, also recorded big cartridge tapes with the time. They recorded generic weather, so you could have them saying "The weather should be sunny and pleasant today."  The time tapes were advanced by the System 90 at one minute intervals, so just about anytime in the hour, the actual announcer from Bellingham on the music tape could announce the current time.

A few music tapes like current hits were updated every couple of weeks, others once a month or longer.

But some of the music tapes got old real quick. When an announcer said something like, "There you have Billy Crash Craddock, who drives the biggest, ugliest orange cadillac you'll ever see." and it aired multiple times a week, and for weeks at a time. It may sound like neat trivia the first time you hear it, but after the 7th or 8th time it got old.

When it worked, it sounded pretty good. KXEO had large market announcers on its little thousand watt signal in Mexico.

When it didn't work - it sounded just plain awful. And it didn't work FREQUENTLY. Static in the guy wires would cause the time tapes to run and run and run, so when things settled down, the time wasn't synchronized.

If you did'n't get it synced back up in time, you'd get a phone call like, "your guy better check his clock, because it's wrong!"

But country music only ran until October of 1978 on KXEO. Then the GM flipped the formats from AM to FM and FM to AM. The sleeping giant KWWR had been beautiful music (aka elevator music or Muzak) for a decade with virtually no advertising, while KXEO had been country music with news and sports. In October of 1978 the formats were switched.  Country music was put on KWWR and beautiful music was put on KXEO. The switch took place in October, because at that time, October was Country Music Month, I believe some kind of tie in with Nashville..

We got a few phone calls but weren't by any means swamped with calls. People in Mexico were upset their beautiful music FM with no commercials was gone, replaced with country music. But people all around mid Missouri were happy to have country music on the FM dial. There was no competition for country on FM at that time, KWWR was the only FM country station around.

But that's the way it was back then. KXEO had been the money maker up until 1978 with KWWR just tailing along behind. Then KWWR became the money maker and KXEO was left to waste away. Beautiful music on an AM station - that was some stupid programming.

Thank goodness for change - BUT - KXEO changed formats 6 or 7 times around 1979-1980. Big band music from the 40s, popular songs done by other bands, popular songs done by the original band, middle of the road music - some popular, some timeless - solid gold rock and more. It took the dawn of a  new millennium  for KXEO to finally find its niche.

So it goes.

Is it cold in here, or are you just glad to see me?

This map can't possibly be correct? Check out the cool breeze in Tulsa.

Spotted a few days ago on Channel 8's web site. I've got a screen saver that pulls in weather images from the Internet and the 31 degree reading in Tulsa caught my eye. I'm guessing that's the kind of thing they'll fix before the news at 10.

Apparently, it's not that unusual for there to be erroneous temperatures on the map.. Check out the jacket-weather temps in Kansas City and Birmingham.

So it goes.

Be careful out there

Phishing is a popular way for scammers to try and get personal information from you. It may seem like a harmless link from a friend in an email, or a fake notification from Facebook, but there are ways to tell if it's legitimate or fake.

One good test is to hover your mouse over the link or button. Does it really go to the domain it claims to be from or is the link to some phishing site?

Ed Bott at ZDNet has an excellent article on phishing, including samples of real and fake messages.

Don't be fooled by phishing. Never click on a link or button in an email or message, unless you know where you're going.

So it goes.

You may need a different antivirus program

So what's the best antivirus program? And to refine that question further for those of us on a tight  or nonexistent budget, what is the best FREE antivirus program?





PC Magazine has recently done a review
:

Why should you try something different from what you currently have installed? Some of the malware and virus authors write their crapware to specifically disable some of the mainstream antivirus programs like McAfee and Norton. Once the antivirus is disabled, there's no telling what they can do with and from your computer.

One of the most popular FREE antivirus programs is AVG from Grisoft Software. I have used that one and it seemed pretty good.

Another FREE one comes from Avira. Also good and generally gets good reviews and high marks for detection rates.

And currently I'm running Ad-Aware Pro Internet Security.  (not the FREE version, but I got it FREE).

There are others that are FREE, but these are the ones I've actually used. Why do they provide a FREE antivirus program? The catch with most of the FREE versions is they don't have all the features of the Pro or Premium version of the same software. So once you try the FREE version, you might be inclined to spend some bucks on the Pro  or  Premium version. The FREE version may also have "nag" screens to encourage you to upgrade to the Pro or Premium version.

And with some of the FREE versions, you may actually be offered the Pro or Premium version at no charge through TRIALPAY. TRIALPAY has literally hundreds of introductory offers from companies and manufacturers. Most require a credit card, even if the introductory period is FREE.

For example, one of the TRIALPAY offers is for Netflix. Although it was supposed to be FREE to try, two days after signing up for the free trial, my card was charged for a month of Netflix service. But that's the exception - most trial offers that have a no charge trial period, really are free of any charges.

When I went to download Ad-Aware Internet Security FREE recently, I was offered the Pro version at no charge through TRIALPAY. I chose to get PEOPLE and ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY - no risk and no charge for the first 8 issues. If you don't cancel the subscription before you get all 8 issues, your credit card will be charged the regular annual subscription fee. So far no charges during the risk free trial, and I've got Ad-Aware Internet Security Pro installed.

Most experts advise against running more than one antivirus program on a computer - but I've run the free ones from Microsoft (Windows Defender and its replacement, Microsoft Security Essentials) in addition to another  antivirus program with no problems.

Some malware threats are detected by both programs, but Microsoft Security Essentials has missed a few in my experience, so I wouldn't try to depend on Microsoft Security Essentials by itself.

FREE is good and Pro or Premium versions through TRIALPAY may be FREE or close to FREE. While the old saying is "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" - it's nice to discover FREE things once in a while that are really FREE.

So it goes.

Cutting edge

As early as 1981 the station had a 10 foot C-Band satellite dish out in front of the building.. That first dish was provided by UPI (United Press International) and was a fixed position dish, it could only be pointed at one satellite. It used an LNA at the feedhorn and a low noise block down converter at the receiver to amplify the satellite signal. We received UPI's teletype news service via satellite and UPI Radio News. A unique aspect of UPI Radio News was that it contained no national commercials. So any ads that played before or after UPI Radio News were local. Prior to satellite delivery for data and audio, phone lines were used to get that information to radio stations - and phone lines were a monthly expense. Satellite delivery had no monthly expense.

It wasn't too much later that The Missouri Network and The Brownfield Network moved to satellite delivery. Much better audio quality than phone lines and no ongoing expense. Fortunately, radio was being served by one main satellite, WESTAR 3, and all the big networks, including what later became Learfield were on the same satellite. Later the networks would move to COMSAT 4 at a lower angle to the south than the WESTAR satellite.

The station added Mutual News in December of 1986. Mutual had national commercials and actually paid the station a monthly fee to air those commercials (based on ratings). That fee was called compensation and most networks eventually got away from compensation - and provided their services on a barter basis. Mutual News later become Westwood One and CNN Radio News and believe it or not, the station was still compensated several thousand dollars a month up until about 2008-2009

The great recession caused the bean counters at Westwood One to stop compensating stations in small markets - and suddenly, that regular income stopped. The compensation was tied to ratings, and through the years varied from as low as $20,000 annually to as high as as $43,000 annually. And it was paid monthly. Losing that hurt. A lot.

But being on the "cutting edge" with "state of the art" technology sometimes meant things went very wrong on the air. Mutual was fine up until July or August of 1987 when the temperature exceeded 90 degrees. Then we started losing the satellite signal every day about mid-morning. The solution? Put ice on the low noise block converter behind the dish to cool it down. The uber-smart people that designed the Fairchild satellite receiver used capacitors in the low noise block down converter that were affected by hot temperatures. So the block down converter was sent back to Fairchild to have the capacitors replaced with ones  that weren't affected by heat. I think Fairchild was based in Arizona. So you'd figure they would be on top of the heat of the day thing. Apparently not.

Later satellite receivers used LNBs, which combined the function of the LNA and block down converter into one piece of equipment located at the feed-horn and they weren't susceptible to high or low temperatures affecting their operation.

It's been said that if you live on the "cutting edge", you'd better learn to deal with bleeding. We had a lot of bleeding in those early days of satellite delivery.

So it goes.

Keeping Otto Happy

Not our particular system 90,
but one I found
on the Internet

Long before the advent of personal computers, some smart people in the broadcast equipment business came up with a dumb computer (by today's standards) to run an automation system. A rack of reel to reel tape decks, 24 cart carousels to play commercials, and a couple of tape decks dedicated to the station ID or weather were all controlled by those dumb computers.

The station here had a Harris System 90 for KXEO and a Harris System 90 for KWWR. Keeping Otto (Auto) happy was close to a full time job before they were finally replaced. Each tape deck source had a source card in the System 90. A red LED on the front of the card indicated when that source was ON and there was a toggle switch on the card to play the source into an audition circuit. Stations had Program and Audition circuits. Program was the on air chain, audition was used for things like recording music or voice or "cueing/previewing" audio prior to going on the air with an audio source.

Each audio source used an EOM (end of message) tone to tell the automation to start the next audio source. For the 10 inch reels of music tapes, the EOM was a 25 hertz tone. For Carts (Cartridge Tapes) the EOM was a 150 hertz tone that was not supposed to be on the audio track. EOM tones were supposed to be inaudible, but if you listened on a good enough system, you could hear the 25 hertz rumble and the 150 hertz hum regularly. Not just our stations, but almost any automated station.

This is closer to actual size than the one below.
Some IC's were about an inch long, sone half an inch.

ICs have a wide (side) part of the leg,
and a very narrow (front) part of the leg.
The thin part has just a fraction of the
surface contact area as the wide part.

The Harris System 90 was a DUMB computer. And I mean that in the best possible way. (not really). Uninterruptible Power Supply? Don't think so - the station had a 12 volt car battery (like the one that starts your engine) tied to each system to save the memory if the power failed. But since this was a dumb computer, the power fail circuit usually didn't work.

And the Sytem 90 functioned with RAM, random access memory, which would dump if there was a power failure or static in the tower guy wires.

In the design of the System 90, some "genius" at Harris used IC sockets that said "Made in Brazil" that grabbed the integrated circuit chips on the short side of the leg, rather than the long or flat side of the leg. So a little corrosion would cause an IC to stop functioning properly. ICs and sockets produced corrosion naturally over time. Harris had a term for what you needed to do to the circuit boards - "massaging the sockets". That meant pulling each IC out of its socket and putting it back in to restore contact. On a large circuit board with 50+ ICs, your fingers certainly got a workout from massaging the sockets. Eventually massaging the sockets didn't work.

So when Otto "dumped" - either by storm or poor contact, the entire day of automation programming for each station would have to be manually entered at the respective System 90 terminal. The GM's son worked nights for a time and got pretty quick at reloading the programming - he could have both systems back up and running in under 45 minutes. It took the rest of the staff much longer to re-enter the automation programming. The system relied on EOCs and EOBs to keep things on track. (End of cluster - the area in memory for commercial and music tape deck events, and End of Block -the end of an hour of programming and the beginning of the next. There were 3 ring notebooks with format sheets to show which event numbers got EOCs and EOBs as well as the audio source to make it sound like a radio station. And we weren't called DJs back then, we were known around the station as "programmers".

There was a light switch in a back room that powered a neon sign on the east end of the station building that said "KXEO Your Neighbor of the Air". The sign was not functional when I started in 1978, but there was a note taped next to the power switch that said "Turn this on and DIE". Seems when the neon sign got flaky, it would cause the automation systems to get flaky - starting and airing multiple tape decks at random. So they had stopped using the sign by 1976.

The AM tower was just behind the studio building, and it was isolated from ground to allow the AM signal to radiate. There were insulators on the guy wires spaced every so often. That spacing was a function of the wavelength of the KXEO signal.to keep the guy wires from absorbing all of the AM signal. But during thunderstorms, static electricity jumped across almost all of the insulators creating a pop-pop-pop sound, and a pretty light show with every thunderstorm that rolled by. That static electricity also caused the automation systems to get flaky, requiring manually playing a 10 inch reel of tape on both the AM and FM until Otto was happy again. And the static electricity jumping across the insulators usually started just before it would rain. Once it started raining, the light show stopped.

So with both stations automated, it was possible to leave the main studio for extended time periods. Each System 90 had a printer that used 4" rolls of paper. An automation event that played properly would print in black. If a source failed for some reason, it would print in red and you'd have to make up the commercial manually.

I was told our facility was "state of the art" for broadcasting. Maybe not in some respects at the time, but it soon would be.

So it goes.

Transmitters are like computers

There will  always be debate over whether you should leave a computer on all the time, or turn it off when you''re not using it. My experience has been that it's best to leave them on, because sometimes certain parts don't like the jolt of being turned off and then on - one part in particular would be the hard drive. They seem to last much longer when they run 24/7 as opposed to being cycled off and on. But that's not the "green" way to run a computer.

Transmitters are like that, too. When I first started working at the station, the AM and FM both signed on at 5 AM and off at midnight. All too frequently, one or the other transmitter would not come on at 5 AM, and the chief engineer would get an early wake up call. There was one summer, when we were short on staff, and both stations signed off at 6 PM on Sundays. "Normal" Sunday sign off was 10 PM.  I can't imagine a station doing that now. The summer we signed off at 6 PM, we caught some flack from area pilots who were used to using KXEO as a homing beacon to find Mexico.

One important part of sign on and sign off was station identification, station ownership and power in a pre-recorded announcement. At sign on that was followed by the Star Spangled Banner. At sign off, the pre-recorded announcement was also followed by the Star Spangled Banner. There was a morning man at the time who would stand up from his chair and put his hand over his heart when the Star Spangled Banner played at sign on. There was also a flag pole out in front of the station, and on the station program log near sunrise time it would say "Raise Flag" and then near sundown time "Lower Flag".

The station actually had a full time engineer in 1978 - responsible for keeping all of the electronics working. From cart machines (cartridge magnetic tape) to audio consoles to automation systems to transmitters  - there was usually something for the engineer to be working on.

The last full time engineer employed by the station supposedly was caught by the station owners making out with one of the phone sales gals in the basement. I don't know if that's true or not, but he was fired shortly after that. And that was the last full time engineer the station employed.

The engineer was already in trouble with the GM. It was 1979 and an FM station down the road in Fulton had gotten knocked off the air. They had a similar transmitter and our engineer offered to help get them back on and went to Fulton to work on the transmitter.  There was nothing major wrong at the station here, but the GM was furious when he couldn't find the engineer.

The GM in 1978-1979 ate nails for breakfast and breathed fire. His management style was supervision by intimidation. If you rubbed him the wrong way, you'd likely end up with a new arse hole. He was downright mean to  people. He once told me, "it's not a democracy around here, it's a fracking dictatorship, and I'm the dictator!"

His wife soon started working for the station, too. That's when it got interesting. She would zero in on somebody and all of a sudden that person wasn't worthy of further employment. I saw numerous employees fired by the wife/husband machine. And then she zeroed in on me and I confronted the GM about it.

I told him it appeared that "his wife would zero in on somebody, and before long that somebody wouldn't be working here anymore and I was concerned, because the current somebody is me." He said he thought I was mistaken but would "take it under advisement." She left me alone after that. The pair of them got caught by the owners trading advertising (90 second ads for a local home improvement store) for personal stuff - like new carpet for their house - and the wife/husband duo was soon gone.

A couple of years later, the new GM discovered I had a knack for fixing things (and had minored in electronics) - and suddenly I was the assistant engineer. The GM at that time knew electronics, so he was the chief engineer and I was his assistant. It wasn't very long until I was the one being called first when something was broken or wouldn't turn on - and soon had the title Chief Engineer along with Operations Manager. That was the start of being available to any of the staff 24/7/365 for any reason. Was there more money with that added responsibility? Not much. And looking back, not nearly enough for  being tethered to the station 24/7/365.

Frequently I could take care of technical problems by myself, but occasionally I would have to call the GM at 2 in the morning to get a transmitter back on the air.

McMartin step/start and overload circuit. Each relay
had a pair of transistors and a diode that could be blown,
keeping the transmitter OFF.

The station upgraded to a McMartin BF-25K transmitter in 1980, giving the FM an effective radiated power of 100,000 watts. The McMartin had a tendency to fry its step/start circuit - the circuit that cycles everything on at the proper time and in the proper sequence. It would do that when it was turned on at 5 AM. It also did that sometimes during thunderstorms. We became pretty adept at replacing some transistors and diodes associated with relays in the step/start circuit.

Transmitters have long had what's known as a "Jesus stick". (Not using the stick you'd soon be "talking to Jesus.")  It's a grounding stick to make sure all the big capacitors are discharged before you go sticking your head into a transmitter to work on it. There are lethal voltages or current in many transmitters - and they're designed to drain that voltage off when they're shut down.  But in the broadcasting industry there have been many stories about a GM or engineer being electrocuted and killed by a transmitter if they weren't careful. I probably came close to touching the wrong place at the wrong time on numerous occasions, but I never got fried.

The McMartin used 3 tubes to produce 20,000 watts of FM power, a small IPA tube (intermediate power amplifier), the driver (medium sized power tube) and the final PA (power amplifier) tube.The final power tube in the McMartin BF-25K operated with 10,000 volts and 3.5 amps of current. If a capacitor held on to that voltage or current and you touched the wrong place in the transmitter you'd be toast pretty quick.

Apparently the BF-25K was a new design, because at some point, a larger power resistor was added to the circuit to drain off the residual voltage when the transmitter was shut down. This made the step/start circuit fry much less frequently, but it still happened.

We maintained the audio chain, sometimes
running tones of different frequencies on the air.
(ya, I know that's a TV test pattern)

Sometime in 1980-1 the station went 24 hours a day. The transmitters then ran all the time, except when shut down by me late Sunday night for maintenance on a regular basis. Frying the step/start circuit became infrequent - usually only during a thunderstorm. The AM and FM transmitters ran much longer between failures when they were running 24 hours a day instead of being shut down at midnight and back on at 5 AM. And I breathed a sigh of relief.

So it goes.

Float the studios on rubber and use sound proof doors

KXEO is still in the original studio building from 1948. Additions were made later to accommodate a larger staff but the studios have remained nearly intact from a bygone era.  Modern amenities were added to the studios through the years, but the underlying construction remains unchanged.

Earl Dougherty told me that KXEO had a pretty special studio foundation. As the building was located on a busy road (which turned into Highway 54) - great care was taken to isolate the studios from the surroundings.

Rubber was used between the foundation and the framing of the studios - to allow the studios to "float" above all of that road noise.

Each studio had a solid door with a small window and an interesting feature at the bottom. There was a rubber strip at the bottom of each studio door, controlled by a button on the hinge side of the door. When the door was closed, the button was pushed in and the rubber strip dropped down to further isolate the studios from any outside noise.

Although the doors were still there when I left, the rubber strips along the bottom of most of them had become non-functional, where the little button had eaten its way into the door frame over the years.

There are fairly large double pane plate glass windows between the 3 original studios, and the glass was installed at an angle to prevent reflective sound problems.

Little extras to make all of the studios immune to outside noise and control the sound captured by the main microphone in each studio.. And all of that care for a little AM station that gave Mexico a voice for its leaders, administrators, schools, sports teams and the whole community through the years. But it is sad to see KXEO largely ignored by the current owner - and it has been largely ignored since at least 1978.

The receptionist area has a house speaker system and a switch to play either KXEO or KWWR. One time many years ago the receptionist had it switched to KXEO when the owner came back from lunch. The owner came promptly into my office and said, "Shouldn't OUR station be playing up front?" Well-duh!

So it goes.

I went to junior college at an amusement park

Click on picture for larger image

Well, not really, except it is true that Forest Park Community College was built on the site of the famous Forest Park Highlands.

A St. Louis landmark, the Highlands was open from 1896 until 1963. Long before Six Flags and Worlds of Fun, Forest Park Highlands was a magical place for young and old alike. There is a wonderful web site here: http://www.forestparkhighlands.com that has a lot interesting photographs, videos and history of the Highlands.

My older brother played baseball in the summer. Khoury League, American Legion, you name it, if it was baseball in the summertime in St. Louis, my brother, Bill was part of it in the years around 1960.

Dad helped out coaching and my mom would be right there in a lawn chair, watching all the action.

So I knew about the Forest Park Highlands even before I started grade school. (Many grade schools held their annual school picnics at the Highlands.) My brother played baseball on some of the baseball diamonds just across Highway 40 from the Highlands in Forest Park.

There was a huge roller coaster called the Comet. And the Comet had sounds. Even across Highway 40 and on a far baseball diamond, I could hear the sounds of the Comet. As the coaster's cars were pulled up to the first drop, there was a familiar clickity-clack-clack of the chain drive. And then a brief bit of silence when the cars were at the peak. And then dozens of screams of delight as the riders enjoyed the first drop

But at my first school picnic there, I was too short to ride the Comet (and probably too scared, too).. The following year I was still too short as well as the  year after that - but - I was getting taller. At the school picnic in 1963 I just knew I'd be tall enough the following year to ride the Comet - but that never happened because of the fire.

Forest Park Highlands was a wonderful place to spend a day in those summers of the early 60s in St. Louis. You'd be so wound up when you got home at night that it would be hard to fall asleep. But sleep came - and dreams of riding the Comet.

July 19, 1963, Forest Park Highlands almost completely burned. The Comet did not burn and rubber was later put over the tracks to discourage anyone from trying one last ride. But the park was destroyed and there would be no plans to rebuild it, so it just faded into memory. But aren't those some wonderful memories?

So it goes.

Those Amazing Stories

Some of the old-timers in small market radio, and they're becoming fewer and fewer due to age, have or have had some simply wonderful stories to tell about radio broadcasting in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

Earl Dougherty had interesting stories about remote broadcasts that only got on the air because of a piece of tape and a wire, patching around bad parts to get a transmitter back on and much more. I wish I had written down some of his stories. His eyes lit up when he described in graphic detail how Yankee ingenuity was the only reason some broadcasts went on as planned, as far as the listening audience was concerned. The listener had no idea of the trials and tribulations that had occurred prior to a broadcast.

Kirby Allen, longtime voice of The Mexico Bulldogs, also had some very interesting tales about doing ballgame broadcasts way back. One I recall was about getting shocked from the microphone every time he touched it at one game, so in addition to figuring out how to do the game without holding the microphone, he also had to make sure his lips didn't touch the microphone. Kirby would tell stories like that and just laugh and laugh at it being amazing they survived some of those incidents.

Larry Weller had some strange stories regarding Earl Dougherty and Jerrel Shepherd. Separated by some 30+ miles, the two were rivals back in the 60s. Moberly had "red rover" remote vehicles, while Mexico had "red wagons". Moberly had Big K News (the K's from the AM and FM making a BIG K), Mexico had Double K News. Both men can be credited with some interesting achievements in small market radio - making money with events and broadcasts that had not been done before - some out of necessity and some out of glory.

Jerry Johnson had interesting stories, too. Like building the Bauer 1,000 watt AM transmitter from a kit in the 60s. The Bauer was still the backup AM transmitter in 1978 and frankly, sounded better than the Harris MW-1. But to build a radio station transmitter from a kit - it sounded like an amazing accomplishment.

Yes the stories were great - I only wish I could have dedicated time to record more of them "for posterity". The men involved could have written volumes of books about their adventures in small market broadcasting.

Which reminds me there were also women involved in some great small market TV and radio broadcasting in the 60s and beyond - women like Alvina Britz at Kirksville. I got to meet her once back in the 80s, but never got the chance to hear her interesting tales.

It's a side of radio that many people in the business now don't think about. It's a side of radio that many people at the time did not even know about - those great feats accomplished by small market broadcasters in the interest of serving the public interest and possibly making a buck or two.

Stories that will be forgotten all too soon because no one involved realized the significance of what they were doing at the time.

But I think that's human nature. To  not realize the depth or magnitude of what you're involved in at the time and then getting too old or not having an interest in writing about it later on. And that's a shame.

So  it goes.

Remember when ....

When I first moved to Mexico in 1978, private line monthly residential phone service from Southwestern Bell was $9 a month. At the time, residential phone services were being subsidized by business customers to make phone service affordable for the consumer.

Once the breakup of AT&T started in 1984, the cost of phone service shot up fairly quickly. In my case, residential phone service went from $9 a month to $20+ a month, and eventually higher than that. No longer could AT&T leverage business customers as a way to provide affordable residential phone service. I always thought President Ronald Reagan was responsible for the breakup of AT&T, but that process had actually started much earlier:  the Bell System divestiture, or the breakup of AT&T, was initiated by the filing in 1974 by the U.S. Department of Justice of an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T.

Prior to 1984, there was only one company providing long distance services nationwide:  AT&T. There, too, residential rates were offset by AT&T's business customers. Before the breakup there was no "choosing" a long distance carrier - there was no plethora of long distance rates to wade through - we just had long distance services from "the phone company" and they worked.

At the time of the breakup, the government portrayed the breakup as being good for consumers - no longer would AT&T be a monopoly. I remember Southwestern Bell (in fact all of the Bell operating companies) as far back as 1970 using the slogan, "We may be the only phone company in town, but we try not to act like it," playing on the fact that the phone company knew it was a monopoly.

Was the breakup good for consumers? It's safe to say, "of course not". Residential phone services went up in price, long distance charges went up in price and business phone services went up in price. Thank you Feds for really screwing up phone service costs in America.

Prior to the breakup, radio stations frequently used a "phone loop" for things like remotes from a distant location. A phone loop had no dial tone, it was basically a pair of audio lines from point A to point B. Locally phone loops were used to provide a daily broadcast from the Central Missouri Livestock Auction, as well as rotate among churches in the ministerial alliance for a Sunday morning live church service broadcast.

A phone loop was something on the order of $25 a month prior to 1984. But then came the breakup of AT&T, and suddenly that same phone loop was going to cost $250 a month. The station could no longer afford to provide the phone loop as part of its broadcast service and the Sunday morning church service broadcast became history.

Phone lines were routinely installed and uninstalled for broadcasts like ballgames prior to 1984, because it was an affordable and cost effective way to bring distant games to the local radio audience. Those costs went up and quickly stations were scrambling to find alternate ways to provide remote broadcasts.

At the station here, a thousand foot tower was constructed in 1985 - a major upgrade for the station. As part of that construction, a Marti remote broadcast system - using VHF/UHF frequencies to send remote audio over long distances - was included with the new tower.

Marti remote broadcast systems had actually been around for quite a while at that point, larger stations used them to provide studio quality audio from remote broadcasts - providing sound quality that was not possible over phone lines or loops.

That Marti antenna was put 800' up the tower here to provide about a 75 mile radius for remote broadcasts, IF you could get the remote broadcast antenna up high enough and pointed in the right direction.

Eventually (around 1990) the station here installed a 40' telescoping mast in the station van, to aid in broadcasting from remote locations. That system was wonderful when it worked - but if you were covering any very long distance - it became a matter of IF the system would work from point A to point B.

One year, there were remote broadcasts from the Warren County Fair to the studios in Mexico via that Marti system. The following year, when the weather was different, the Marti system did not work over that great a distance. The year after that, I believe the system worked from there - so we never knew whether it would or wouldn't work until we tried it.

Once we started hitting more remote areas where the system wouldn't work, and with the high cost of maintaining that telescoping mast, the station soon moved to cellular phone service for remote broadcasts.

Over time, things like the breakup of AT&T, and later the consolidation of broadcast companies and  consolidation in other industries have been portrayed as being "good for consumers". In hindsight, we know better.

So is it any wonder, one of the most terrifying phrases you may ever hear is: "Hi, we're from the government, and we're here to help!". :)

So it goes.

Michele Bachman may surpass Dan Quayle

So it's America where anyone can aspire to be President. But it looks like Michele Bachman needs some serious coaching or tutoring on thinking before speaking. We haven't seen as many gaffes by a national politician since Vice President Dan Quayle. He was the nation's VP 1989–1993 under George H.W. Bush.  Here's a refresher on some Dan Quayle-isms:

"The holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history." How about World War II history?

"I have made good judgments in the past. I have made good judgments in the future." Is that right?

Addressing the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," he said, "You take the UNCF model that what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." No comment.

Then you have this year's Presidential hopefuls on the campaign trail - and Michele Bachman blames her "busy schedule" for the gaffes. But they're right up there with Dan Quayle's gaffes. Here are a few from this past week:

"There’s a fear that the United States is in an unstoppable decline,” Bachmann said. “They see the rise of China, the rise of India, the rise of the Soviet Union and our loss militarily going forward."

Um, the Soviet Union disbanded in 1991, so she must have meant Russia?

"You can’t do better than Elvis Presley,” Bachmann said, “and we thought we’d celebrate his birthday as we get started celebrating the ‘Take Our Country Back’ tour.”

Actually it was the anniversary of Presley's death this month.

Earlier this year, she was addressing students in New Hampshire, when she said, "You’re the state where the shot was heard around the world in Lexington and Concord."

Probably referring  to the first shots fired in the Revolutionary War which occurred in Massachusetts. Oops.

Bachmann also attributed interest in her misstatements to the news media.

Or look at it this way, "the truth is out there" (to borrow a phrase from the X-Files), but apparently it misses Michele Bachman more than most..

So it goes.

Will wonders never cease

For those who may think I'm all bad -

After several months of the clock being 15 minutes behind on the TuneGenie plugin on the station web site, I emailed the folks at TuneGenie to see if they could help. They contacted the station and got the time straightened out. Surprising to me that no one at the station thought to ask for help.

"Thanks for the head up Gary, we've contacted Michael and got the time back up to speed."
-KS, TuneGenie

If I could do more to fix problems with the station web site, I would.

So it goes.

Amazing radar

Weather Underground has some amazing radar images available (free). Like this one today from their

WunderMap®

So it goes.

You don't know what you've got till it's gone

There's a song that goes something like, "you don't know a good thing till it's gone". There are many events and people from my childhood that wouldn't have much meaning or definition until later in life. In fact, when you're a kid, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.

It was 1960. I was 4 years old. Next door was a boy about my age, who went by Chippy (as in chip off the old block). Chippy was unique. He had been born with his feet turned backwards, and had undergone numerous surgeries to correct that major problem. He had casts on both legs from his toes to his knees that had rubber pads on the bottom, so Chippy got around very well. His little toes stuck out the end of both casts. The biggest problem for him with the casts was not being able to scratch an itch. Chippy was my first neighborhood friend and I didn't see him as being different - he was just like me, with casts.

If I remember correctly, Chippy told me the casts got changed every 6 weeks. I can't imagine what it must have been like for him - most of the other kids around treated him like he was an outcast. To be born with such a major problem with your feet, and then have kids your same age treat you like you're some thing - it just boggles the mind.

But Chippy had a fantastic attitude. He was always happy. I hope some of that positive attitude rubbed off on me. Chippy never acted like the casts were a handicap for him - he generally did all of the things boys that age do - including hitting a ball with his dad in the backyard.

I thought the summer of 1960 would never end. We had great times playing army in the backyard, playing with cars and trucks and tricycles and worms and rolly polly bugs. The Big Wheel had not been invented yet.

The days seemed long and I couldn't wait for the next day to get back out playing with Chippy.

And then .... a neighbor owned a Great Dane. They would routinely walk the dog past our house and let it poop in our yard. It was a lot of poop every time. (Great Danes have very large feces. I remember thinking at the time, "that looks like a people turd.") The dog pooping in our yard made my mom furious. One day, after the dog had pooped in our yard, she got some paper towels, scooped it up and put it between the door and storm door of the dog owner's place. They saw her doing that and called the police.

Chippy's mom  said,, "Gary, you better come up here" and we went inside upstairs in their apartment. The front window was open so Chippy and I kneeled on the floor to be inconspicuous and we could see and hear what was going on out front.

My mom was explaining to the police officers that the neighbor's dog was frequently allowed to poop in our front yard and they just left it there and she didn't like it. The dog's owners said something about my mom being a "crazy lady" and should be arrested. The police got everyone calmed down and told the dog's owner's they should not let the dog poop in our yard ever again, and that Mrs. Leonard was not a crazy lady. The dog's owners were still mad, but they left and went back inside.

A short time later Chippy and I went back outside to resume playing. I thought, "score 1 for mom!"

The next  year I turned 5 and started kindergarten. I went to Wade Public Elementary School. Chippy went to a nearby catholic school. Some time later that year Chippy and his parents moved away.

Fast forward to 1965. I was watching "Lost in Space" on TV when the phone rang. I grabbed the phone before my dad did and the voice on the other end said, "Is this Gary?" I replied, "Yes." He then said, "you probably don't remember me but this is Chippy." OMG, I couldn't believe it. My friend from a few years back was actually calling me to "catch up". We talked about various things for a while, Chippy said his family had moved to Michigan and I asked, "where's that?" (having never been out of Missouri). Then we said goodbye and I went back to Lost in Space.

Being 9, I didn't think to get his phone number or address and that was last time we ever talked. I don't know what ever happened to Chippy - but his friendship was priceless and unfortunately, would not be matched again in my life.

So it goes.

Trip down memory lane

While cleaning out some files, I ran across this little gem (the home page displayed the current date, so even though the site is from December 2002, it's displaying the current date):

Most of the site from December of 2002 is available here:  http://grandallusion.com/c96/index_122102.html

The site even had a button and a link for local weather back in 2002!

Good old Weather Underground.

If you click on the link above to see what the site looked like, the Weather Underground button still works.

See, it's not rocket science. :)

So it goes.

The Great Ballpoint Pen Caper of 1964

This is a silly story, but it really happened. I've changed the name of my friend to protect the guilty.

It was 1964. We were 8 years old. Ron and I hatched this really stupid plan to shoplift a couple of ballpoint pens from Famous-Barr at Chippewa and Kingshighway. If we each had $15 ink pens - just think how much better our handwriting would be. And the other kids with plain BIC pens would be envious.

So after school one weekday we met at Central Hardware on South Kingshighway. The plan was to buy something inexpensive to get a Central Hardware sack, take the bus to Famous-Barr, and shoplift a couple of expensive pens from the stationery department.

Step one went fine - we had our sack from Central Hardware and got on the bus to Famous-Barr. When we got to the stationery department it was really crowded. So we decided to look around for a while and wait for the crowd to thin out.

We had to look very suspicious - two 8 year olds hanging around the stationery department for over an hour. I'll bet we stood out like a sore thumb.

The crowd finally dwindled down a bit and we made our move.  Up the ink pen aisle, we each grabbed a pen and slipped them into the Central Hardware sack. We did it! We then headed toward the exit.

About 15 paces toward the exit and a man and woman came up behind us and grabbed us each by the arm and said "you're coming with us, boys." Uh-oh. The jig was up.

They took us down a long hallway and into an office.  There they asked us to dump the contents of the bag out on the desk. I did. Then they picked up the ink pens and said "What are these?" Well, uh, uh. "We know you boys stole these in the stationery department, we watched you do it." We both  said we were really sorry and would never do it again.

Then they said there were calling our parents to tell them what happened. First they called Ron's house. I think Ron's mom told him he would get an ass-whooping from his dad because Ron started crying. Then they called my mom. She told them "spank  him good and send him home". They said the spanking would be left to my parents.

They told each of us to never come in to Famous-Barr again without our parents and then escorted us to the exit.

I thought to myself, "it could have been worse".  Yeah we could have been taken to jail and locked up. But they just called our moms. That wasn't so bad.

By the time I got home, mom  had already forgotten any details about what happened. So when dad got home, she had me tell  him what happened. I made something up about Ron getting caught taking something and Farmous-Barr sent us both home and that was that.

Ron and I never talked about The Great Ballpoint Pen Caper of 1964. His parents didn't let him hang out with me the rest of that school year. We were never really friends again after that, even though we both attended the same grade school through 8th grade.

I would never forget The Great Ballpoint Pen Caper of 1964. And it did teach me to never try that again.

So it goes.

My first two wheel bike

The Climatron, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis

I don't know why, but I have quite a few memories from when I was 4 or 5. We lived on a street that was all of one block long, bound on the south end by Shenandoah and the north end by Flad. In the middle of the block was our two family flat and the intersection with Cleveland that ran west. There was no house or apartment in front of our house, just Cleveland, which was one way away from our house. Behind our house on the other side of the block was Alfred Avenue which ran the length of the backside of The Missouri Botanical Garden.

Commonly referred to as Shaw's Garden (in honor of Henry Shaw.who was only 18 when he came to St. Louis, and became one of the city’s largest landowners by age 40. Working with leading botanists, he planned, funded and built the Missouri Botanical Garden, which opened in 1859). The delivery entrance for trucks was on Alfred a few blocks away, and the 79 acres of Shaw's Garden made a wonderful summertime playground as long as we didn't get caught by the employees. They tolerated us as long as we didn't tear anything up.It was always warm and humid in The Climatron, even in winter. The flowers throughout the garden were beautiful. There was a Desert house, a Rose house and numerous other types of displays that we could walk through. But The Climatron was my favorite place to go.

And would you believe, I punched in the address and Google returned a picture of the front of that two family flat. That was home from the time I was two until I went away to college.

I was 4 when I wore out the tires on the hand me down tricycle I had. For my birthday, Dad got me a two wheel bike with training wheels. It looked like this:

It wasn't very long until I wanted to try it without the training wheels. With an audience of several neighbors and my Mom, Dad held his hand on the back of the seat to get me started down the alley on just two wheels. He said I was doing great. About that time I looked back and saw that he let go of the bike about 20 feet ago and I was on my own. As I looked back, the adults yelled, "look forward, look forward!". Me and the bike crashed to the concrete of the alley.

Although I had a few scrapes, what was most upsetting were the scratches in the paint on the bike and bent fender. My new bike. Dad was able to bend the fender back in place, and in our garage he had some red paint to touch up the scratches. It was as good as new. I rode that bike hard. In the alley, on the sidewalk and occasionally into the street. It's a miracle I was never struck by a car. One winter I even tried to ride that bike in the tire tracks in the snow on the street. That didn't work too well, I decided I needed snow tires and I put the bike back in the garage until spring.

So it goes.