The busy life of a radio presenter in the early 1990s

For this blog I’m serving up an unashamed slice of nostalgia. A recent Facebook post I saw describing the equipment used in radio in the 1990s inspired it.

Giving a studio tour to an outsider in the 90s was a joy. Explaining all the things that were alien to anyone who didn’t work in radio. Records were either vinyl or on cd but you had to put them inside special cart holders and slot them in the player.

Jingles, sound fx and trailers were all on cart. Carts were big plastic lumps with a continuous loop of tape inside them. You had to use special machines to play them. Ads were on cart too.

Big reel-to-reel tape machines were on stand-by to play out pre-recorded programmes on quarter-inch tape.

Explaining all that specialist equipment to a visitor felt like you were guiding them through mission control at Cape Canaveral.

Nowadays a studio tour consists of pointing at a computer screen and saying,“this plays all our music, jingles, ads and pre-recorded programmes”. Most people have a mobile phone that can do all that and more. It’s no longer as impressive.

What I got thinking about was how much a commercial radio presenter used to have to do during each record he or she played.

Once a presenter had finished a link and closed their mic fader they had to:

Get the record they’d just played, put it back in its sleeve or cover. Re-cue any carts you’d just played (putting them back to the start) and put those carts back in place on a rack.

Get the next record out. Maybe from the playlist box, maybe from a pile of records they’d got out of the music library.

Cue up the next record on the deck or CD player. That meant finding the actual start of the track. If you were playing vinyl you also had to check you’d set the turntable to the right speed 33 1/3 rpm for albums and 45 for singles.

If you were going for a segue next you had to find a jingle or bit of production you thought would work. Preferably one you hadn’t played recently. Then rehearse the segue on pre-fade. After each rehearsal you’d have to re-cue the record.

You had to do your segue live so you had to be confident you could get it spot on both sonically and technically.

Oh and if you were doing this professionally you’d also check the sound level of the record as they varied enormously. You wanted it to be just right, not to loud, not too quiet.

If you were doing a link you’d maybe have to find a music bed to use (on cart).

Then, in those pre computer days, you would have to write down every detail of the track you’d just played. You had to do this on a form which was then returned to the music royalty societies. For every track you’d need to note down the title, the artist, the composers, the publishers, the record label and the record number.

The composer and publisher details could be anywhere on the record. In the sleeve notes of an album, on the cover, on the record label. Finding them was a skill although you started to learn the frequently played ones by heart. Lennon and McCartney were always published by Northern Songs. Prince wrote all his own tracks, Controversy Music was his publisher and he was on Warner Bros records.

You also had to note the duration you played each track for.

If an ad break was coming up you had to look at the paper ad log and find the right cart for every ad in the break. Typically there were 4 or 5 ads in a break in those days. You usually had at most 3 cart machines to play those 5 ads.

If your phone lines were flashing, maybe you were running a competition or people wanted a request, then you had to answer your calls. Obviously it paid to be polite and courteous. Listening to your listener while watching the track playing get closer and closer to the end!

While all that was happening you had to keep half an ear on the record that was playing in case it got stuck or started jumping as vinyl records could do. CDs got dirty thanks to all the handling so they were prone to skipping too.

You would have half an eye on the clock as well, back timing by writing out the sums long hand on a piece of paper.

And once that was done you had time to think about what it was you were going to say during your next link. The entertaining stuff you actually got paid for.

All that in the duration of a 3-and-a-half minute record. Every single time!

Soon computer systems would remove the need to log every detail of every record played. Then computer playout systems meant all your ads, records and jingles were right there waiting for you giving more time to think and breathe.

The bigger shows had help on hand and there were many shortcuts you could take. However the sheer enormity of what went on when the records were playing makes it amazing how much entertainment came alongside it.