[BC] question for you engineers

[Jeffrey Kopp]

>[Donna:]  Sometime in the late 1930s, "America's Town Meeting of the
>Air" began putting listeners on the air from distant locations.  How was
>this done?

It appears they were quoted or paraphrased by announcers. In one clip
from 1935, a listener's question is read (and may have been mailed
rather than phoned, as the intro mentions mail):
http://www.ssa.gov/history/1935radiodebate.html

I couldn't play the 1941 and 1945 RealAudio clips offered at
http://www.umkc.edu/lib/spec-col/ww2/postwarworld/now-hear.htm and
http://www.umkc.edu/lib/spec-col/ww2/1939/now-hear.htm though the
RA clips at SSA worked fine. There may be other clips on-line.

Googling on the show title + telephone brings back a number of sites which
mention ATMA, but one first mentions that call-in shows of that era were
accomplished by an announcer repeating the caller's remarks. It describes
a wee-hours call to Barry Gray by Woody Herman in 1945 as possibly
aired directly, and tentatively credits it as as the first:
http://members.aol.com/Mikewats/talktalk.html

The source of these Gray mentions (including C-SPAN,
http://www.c-span.org/C-SPAN25/timeline_a.asp) seems to be Carla
Gesell-Streeter's "Talk Radio History" at
http://www.radiotalk.org/history.html which is now "closed." However,
it remains in archive.org's Wayback Machine at
http://web.archive.org/web/20060811013552/http://www.radiotalk.org/history.html
See the citations thereon.

Searching on Barry Gray brings back a ton crediting him for having the first
call-in show, and his Wikipedia bio (yes, I know what many of you think of
WP) claims his famous first call by Woody Herman was accomplished by
simply putting the receiver to the microphone. This technique does not
surprise me; indeed, I seem to recall having heard that 40 years ago.

A page by Ken Mills http://www.kenmillsagency.com/talk/history/chap2.html
expands on this a bit, claiming the popularity of his ad-hoc presentations
prompted the development of circuitry to air calls electronically. The
Woody Herman call was on WMCA; shortly thereafter Gray moved to
WOR. My guess is a broadcast interface was refined there, as the
Herman call subsequent ones on his after-midnight program were
impromptu and most likely unauthorized, and WOR was noted for
technical and programming innovation.

Two-way phone bridges were certainly possible prewar (international
calls went by shortwave, after all) but may have been awkward for
broadcast use. I'd guess your theory that policies probably prevented
their use is correct. http://www.talkers.com/greatest/8rgray.htm
cites "legal aspects" as well as technical considerations.

While I've seen kines of Dave Garroway calling people in the 1950s,
I have a feeling incoming calls from the public weren't put on the air
much (if at all) until tape recorders were modified into delay units. The
first homebrewed units appeared in my market in the early 60s, but
probably earlier elsewhere (though I'd guess a few years after
1945, as the very first tape recorders were too scarce to kludge up).

I note that Gray's calls on WOR are described as interviews; his
shows may not have included incoming calls from the public.

I do recall a very small-town station here in Oregon had a call-in show
done live from a minimal storefront remote with no delay in the mid-sixties.
When I asked how they could put calls on the air without any delay, I was
told they simply scolded anyone who got out of line! It was an isolated
town where everyone knew everybody else, and some civility could
therefore be expected. (Boy, are those days gone.)

Further digression: I remember being told in about 1970 by our local
public station's engineers that they'd attempted a video delay by
stretching 2" tape between a pair of adjacent Ampex quads, presumably
for the call-in shows they aired occasionally, but had found it impractical.
(They bravely soldiered on without by careful call screening.) I'd bet
some station did it, though.