Concept Productions

In an earlier post I talked about the BMI music service on 10 inch reel to reel tapes and the Harris System 90. The big drawback to the BMI music service, was the fact the announcer's voice tracks were recorded with the songs. So every time a song played, the same voice track played. On a system with only 5 reel to reel tape decks, some of the same songs played repeatedly in a week's time - and that meant the exact same voice track played repeatedly in a week's time.

Then Jerry heard about a new automation music service near Sacramento, California. This system used major market air talent for the voice tracks and laid down a 4 digit code between each song or voice track. The 4 digit code did NOT play on the air, it was in between the end of one track and the beginning of the next. At least it wasn't SUPPOSED to play on the air. The system had a controller hooked to 3 reel to reel tape decks.

Each hour was formatted with a certain number of current, recurrent and gold country songs and there was a printed music log that listed the songs and artists for a week at a time.

The way the system worked - the announcer voice track was coded to match either the current or gold country song in each 15 minute segment. The codes had to match between the voice track and the song, or the Concept controller would engage a relay and not let the voice track play until somebody got the codes lined up again.

So the announcers had a daily 3 or 4 hour radio show - complete with artist information, date relevant trivia - as each voice track only played once at a specific time of day according to the format, and some of the announcers used sound effects and comedy bits to liven things up. They would also record CUSTOM liners once a week to be interspersed during music without a voice track - and these had local market information about specific community events, sports teams, meetings, etc.

It was really a unique system - at a time when all of the big automation music service companies only had "canned" voice tracks recorded with the music. Former Fresno, California PD Dick Wagner was the head of Concept Productions. It was a small automation music service compared to some of the big guys like TM, Century 21, Drake-Chenault and Bonneville. But it was the only service that offered real localized major market voice tracking for any size market via the Concept coding system.

Current song tapes were changed weekly - so the top 40 or so country hits wouldn't play in the same order from week to week. Recurrents were updated monthly to keep them fresh, and the gold tapes were updated occasionally. The gold library had maybe 30 or 40 10" reels of tape, so it was a pretty good variety and didn't get repetitive.

I learned about stereo phasing about this time - where the tape playback head needs to be lined up perfectly perpendicular with the tape, or you'd get phasing problems. When you combined the left and right audio for a mono sum channel - errors in phasing would become apparent because the mono sum would be muffled compared the the stereo mix. This was important in the 80s, because not all radios were stereo - and the music had to sound good in stereo or mono or the listener would hear songs with no high frequency material, like cymbals or high notes, if they weren't listening in stereo and the phasing on a tape deck was off slightly.

Phasing was challenging, because the tape heads when the tape was recorded and the tape heads when the tape was played back had to be aligned alike, or the phasing was off. At some point I began to notice that some tapes from Concept had phasing problems and I would get on the phone and call Dick Wagner. We talked about using test tapes to get the stereo phasing matched up - and he'd re-align tape heads at the recording end, while I'd re-align tape heads at the playback end.

I'll bet Dick Wagner got tired of hearing from me in the 80s - because every time we'd receive a tape with phasing errors, I would be on the phone to let him know it wasn't right. They would cut a new tape and we'd be OK again for a while. He eventually found he had some recording machines that stayed in alignment better than others, so the tapes for KWWR were produced on specific tape decks on his end.

KWWR purchased the same tape alignment test tapes that Concept was using, so by hooking up an oscilloscope to the left and right channels, playing some test tones of 10, 12 or 15 khz, the phasing alignment could be calibrated. But hooking up a scope was pretty inconvenient. Fortunately the System 90 had a mono sum channel so phasing could be checked by listening to a tape pretty quick. The System 90 also had a single VU  meter to aid in aligning tape deck levels and phasing.

I think this is where my tinnitus got its start. I regularly used the 10-15 khz test tapes to check the alignment of our decks. Sometimes I'd just plug a set of headphones directly into the tape deck and I could hear when the alignment peak was at maximum to get phasing just right. But this was also playing 10-15 khz tones in headphones at a much too high volume level. By 1990 I noticed the ringing in my ears never went away and it gradually got worse. Tinnitus is somewhat subjective - each person with tinnitus may hear slightly different sounds.  Some people hear crickets, some people hear birds chirping, and I heard 10-15 khz test tones non-stop day and night. The tinnitus is annoying and through the years since I first noticed tinnitus I have avoided loud sounds like concerts, fireworks or other extremely loud sources - or I made sure I had ear plugs to protect my ears. But I digress - as I often do, so let's get back to Concept Productions.

The system was simply amazing. Each announcer had a daily shift. People in this area thought the announcers actually worked at KWWR. Joey Michaels did 5-10 AM, Mike Rogers 10 AM - 3 PM, Gary Alan 3-8 PM, JT Bear 8 PM to 1 AM and Alan Gentry 1 AM to 5 AM.

And they had major market personality. Joey Michaels was a small guy with a big voice, and liked to call himself Magnum PeeWee (after the TV show Magnum P.I. which was popular at the time). As a sound effect with some jokes, he used a bicycle horn that sounded amazingly like the station's Bids for Bargains horn.

Mike Rogers ended each air shift with a unique way to say goodbye - "Well the boss is going to unchain my left leg from the turntable so I can toddle on out and terrorize the town."

JT Bear told jokes frequently that would border on being off color - but they always stayed family friendly. There was a short segment not for on air use before each days air shift. I remember JT Bear once commenting that he could be dead for two weeks but still be heard on dozens of radio stations.

After a few months, we hooked up a reel to reel recording deck with a 25 Hz generator  (25 Hz was the End of Message cue to signal the automation it was the end of a song or voice track). First, I took over the 3-8 PM daily shift. So after Joey Michaels and Mike Rogers each day - it would be Gary Leonard on KWWR. Since I actually was local, my voice tracks were more localized than the Concept announcers and the illusion of having a major market staff sounded great on the air. We couldn't use the 4 digit code in between voice tracks to keep everything matched up, so it was up to the on-air person in the studio to make sure the voice tracks and music tapes stayed in sync.

One weekday afternoon the station actually received a phone call from David Allan Coe. He was traveling by bus on Interstate 70 and had been listening to KWWR for a couple of hours. He said it was refreshing to hear our announcers talk about life and country music - when many smaller markets had canned music services. I even recorded a short interview with him and played a couple of his songs that day around the interview, with him introducing the songs. But I didn't have the heart to tell him we were automated, too.

Eventually local  announcers took over air shifts, so we had Chuck Thomas from 5-10 AM, Brian Gann (who had a heavenly set of deep pipes for a voice) from 10-3, Me from 3-8 and Greg Holman from 8 PM to 1 AM.  We kept Alan Gentry on the overnight voice tracks up until After Midnite with Blair Garner debuted in 1993 to fill the midnight -  6 AM time slot. Thanks to Chuck Thomas and satellite delivery, KWWR was there from the start with After Midnite.

Local voice tracking was done on a daily basis, so a DJ would come in 40-60 minutes ahead of his on air time, and record voice tracks for that day.

Dick Wagner had a subscribing station about 30 minutes outside Louisville, Kentucky with a Harris System 90 that frequently wasn't running like it should. The station was threatening to drop Concept Productions unless a solution could be found. Dick asked if I'd fly to Louisville some weekend to get their System 90 straightened out - he'd pick up the tab for the air fare, the hotel and I'd make $600 to boot as a consulting engineer. So I flew out of St. Louis on a Saturday afternoon and would return Sunday afternoon.

As I've talked about here, the System 90 had a problem with integrated circuit sockets that regularly needed "massaging". So I spent a few hours near Louisville "massaging the sockets", replacing a few bad ICs and getting their System 90 back in to top shape. His station there was happy, Dick was happy, and I was happy.

When I got to the airport in Louisville to fly back to St. Louis that Sunday morning, the airport in St. Louis was fogged in. So my 45 minute flight was delayed about 5 hours until the fog lifted back in St. Louis lifted. One highlight of being stuck in the Louisville airport was I noticed the Smothers Brothers - who apparently were also stuck at the airport for a while. I didn't try to approach Tom and Dick Smothers, they looked like a couple of every day people stuck in an airport, but it was pretty neat watching them hang out at the airport.

Back home, KWWR sounded like a million bucks and radio was fun, like it's supposed to be. That was an amazing time to be in small market radio.

So it goes.