[BC] putting phone calls on the air

[Peter Smerdon]

Art Reed wrote:
> "Party Line" as discussed here before, was on the air from the mid 
> fifties until Ed King's death in the early 70's, probably 1972.  
8< ---- snip ----- >8
> On the other hand, modern hybrid technology was definitely not available 
> at that time.  We took our news feeds over the phone, but the technology 
> used was the phone coupler, and the push-to-talk button in the handset. 
> That was in 1973.

Here in Australia, we were (legally)putting phone calls to air from 
sometime in the mid to late '60's.

Like (I suspect) the US, it was a regulatory thing here - from two 
aspects, the privacy issue of people's phone calls being recorded or put 
to air without their knowledge/consent, and the safety issue of 
uncontrolled connecting of customer provided equipment to the phone line.
Recording/airing of phone calls was allowed about 1966-68 provided a 
short "pip" was put to line every 15 secs to alert the other party that 
the call was being recorded/broadcast. This was done with a telco 
supplied box called a "recorder-connector" which was initially the only 
way to _legally_ connect external audio equipment to a phone line. The 
"recorder-connector" also provided the safety isolation.
The problem was that this was a receive-only box, so sending audio back 
to the caller was troublesome, and usually had to be done by tapping 
into the phone circuit somewhere.
Soon enterprising broadcasters were adapting the tried-and-true telco 
hybrid transformer (2-wire to 4-wire, or simplex to duplex)for this task.
Two of the big radio networks in Australia launched programming in the 
late sixties based around putting listener phone calls to air. The 
Macquarie Radio Network's "Open Line" programming used technology 
developed by their engineers called the "Telephone Integrator" which 
used a transformer hybrid, a recorder connector, and sophisticated (for 
its day) ducking, gating, and caller AGC. This gear was designed and 
built at the flagship station 2GB for all network stations. It had full 
type approval by the PMG department (the national telco at the time) for 
connection to telephone lines.
The Major Network used a simpler system based around an early Swedish 
speakerphone called the Ouijaphone. They just tapped off the speaker 
signal and let the phone do all the work. A recorder-connector bridged 
the line to provide the warning pips.

I worked at the Brisbane stations of both these networks in the late 
sixties/early seventies, and the perception was that we were just 
following what was happening in the US with broadcasting phone calls.

Of course this was expensive gear and only used in the on-air studios.
There were still the "unofficial" couplers with PTT buttons on the 
newsroom phones. This audio was always highly edited, so you could 
always say that the missing pips (on the aired audio) was lost in the 
edits, if it ever came up.

Cheers,

=============================
Peter Smerdon.

Radio 3mp - Easy Listening
sen-1116  - Let's Talk Sport

Melbourne, Australia.
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