[BC] Talking about automation taking you off the air

[Chris Gebhardt]

Mike McCarthy wrote:
> Yeah...I forgot about Funeral for a Friend.  That's 10 minutes.  Peter 
> Fampton, Do You Feel Like I do at just over 15 minutes.
> 
> MM
> 
> At 08:51 PM 2/19/2006 -0500, Radiofldude at aol.com wrote
>> When I was at WQMA.. I once put in Hotel California and some long 
>> elton  john
>> song.....

See, and you would think that automation would take care of all of this 
for you.  Just have the autopilot handle it, right?

Worked for a CHR in the Caribbean in the early 90's that had installed a 
state-of-the-art UDS-II.  It ran nominally in "Live Assist" mode.  We 
didn't run jocks overnight - just let the UDS handle it.  This worked 
great on weekends, esp. Sundays after a hard night of partying because 
the UDS would spin from overnight programming right into Casey's Top 40.

One day I'm on the Sunday morning shift after Casey, and I'm running a 
little late.  Uh-oh, here comes the top of the hour ID.  The one with 
the music bed where you're supposed to be bright and cheery and talk 
about the great stuff coming up in the next hour.  OK, so I missed that. 
  Nobody listens to that anyhow - probably nobody noticed.  Get to the 
station, run upstairs, put key in lock... uh oh... where's my key?

Had to go back home and get it.  On the way back, here comes the :15 
break.  In Live Assist mode, the UDS would just sit there on a live 
break and wait until you give it the go ahead.  Yup, it will dutifully 
wait until you've told it "I've finished talking now, go ahead to the 
stopset."   And it dutifully sat there on the break for about 2 minutes 
of dead air until I got in the door, sprinted through the office, jumped 
Dukes of Hazard style over the Otari and smacked F5.

Lucky for me, the event from the night before had everybody safely 
tucked in bed until roughly noon.  I never heard about it.  Of course, 
if there are any Z99 alums on the board... well the statute of 
limitations must have run its course by now!

At least I could honestly tell the consultant I held that break down to 
no more than 2 thoughts.

Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
chris at virtbiz.com | (866) 4-VIRTBIZ