[BC] Finding NEMO (a remote possibility?)

[Tom Bosscher]

Tom Taggart wrote:
   >If that's the green GE stereo console, I've got a picture of that. 
Ended  up in Toledo, and I remember rebuilding it.

    If that is the unit from WOOD-FM, it would have a red pushbutton 
that was drilled into the cabinet, very close to the last, or second to 
the last pot on the right.

    When I started to work at WOOD, the morning show with Bruce Grant 
was simocasted. Yes, the FM was the Schulke monster, and Mr. S was 
always screaming about having that morning drive show on HIS fm, but way 
too much money was to be made. Anyway, the AM had 18 minutes of cash 
register rocking commercials an hour. Schulke only allowed 8 on his 
stations. So the engineer sat in the FM control room, and four times an 
hour, broke from the AM, with a wave of the hand from Bruce Grant. Funny 
thing, the other ten spots on the AM made it to the FM all morning long, 
but WOOD-FM would tell Schulke that they were only "running" the 8 
spots. The other units were "given" to the favored clients. The national 
AM buys were always covered on the FM.

    As I was saying, the FM would break away. Even as a lad of 18, I was 
stunned that the engineers would pull the spots from the ATC-55's, and 
run them manully on the two cart machines in FM control. We had a whole 
automation system that could handle the break away. I explained to Jerry 
VanderSloot how we could use the automation, and that thought was so far 
outside of  "we've always done it this way", that I was not allowed to 
do it.
    At a ham fest, I found one of those nurse call pendant type 
switches. I ran a cable to the automation start, buried that pendant 
switch where I knew the other engineers would never look, and wired the 
automation out to an unmarked and "unused" input to that GE. So now when 
I ran that morning show, I would use the  Gates "dial direct and save" 
automation. Well, at 8 am there was a separate newscast for the FM, and 
those folks noticed that I never had any carts out, and I would just 
lean back, press my little pendant switch and flick off the AM studio feed.
    I got hauled in to Jerry's office for that. "That's not how we do 
things here!"  However, he let me keep the pendant switch. Within a few 
weeks, the other engineers came out of the cave, and they started using 
it. Turns out that now we could let the automation handle the 8am 
news/spot load automatically while we had to do the 8am AM station 
pattern change, which used to require the PD to be there to help with 
the logistics. After six months Jerry asked me to put the switch right 
in the console.
    Just like I had suggested.
    And now you know, the rest of the story.

    If you can scan the picture of the console, I would appreciate a copy.

    tom at bosscher.org

   
       tom bosscher