The Broadcast Cart Machine

[@Techmoan]

Anyone interested in hearing the backing music for the Kenny Lyn spots - here it is in full: kzbin.info/www/bejne/anaYcot8Zbdlqqc ALSO - Here's some of Kenny Everett's carts kzbin.info/www/bejne/enLWqqt7h92Ki6s

[@IronPlant]

Yeah. I would like a copy of the adverts and the big recording too. Little bits of period specific work like that are very interesting.

[@generalardi]

Thanks. This would probably have been stuck in my mind for the better part of my life. :D

[@Musicradio77Network]

gsedinburgh The Wednesday, Thursday and Friday jingles were originally came from WCBS-FM during its progressive rock days in 1969 through 1970 when it was called pre-oldies until it became an oldies station a few years later in 1972. The jingles from its pre-oldies years at WCBS-FM is posted on Don Swaim's website. The last several jingles were from the pre-oldies years while the rest were from the mid to late 1970's when WCBS-FM was in its first several years as an oldies station. You can hear the "Wednesday" jingle played while the singers were saying "WCBS-FM" and the other jingle missing is the jingle singers sang "There's a whole lot of Wednesday going on, WCBS-FM!!!" That is not part of the package, it needs more jingles like "Monday" through "Friday" from WCBS-FM from the pre-oldies years. If you have not heard it. Take a listen. There's also the last batch of jingles from its progressive rock years are on there if you are interested. donswaim.com/wcbs-fm-Jingle-package.mp3

[@spiff2268]

Thanks for the link MTN. That was pretty damn neato.

[@Musicradio77Network]

spiff2268 You're absolutely welcome. I've hear the "Tuesday" jingle during the package which was the last batch of jingles during its progressive rock years where the singers went like this "WCBS-FM, what a nice thing to do, on a Tuesday." They did the same for the Wednesday jingle as heard in this cart minus the words "WCBS-FM". That's kinda interesting to hear if you are a New York Radio nut who are fans of WCBS-FM during the pre-oldies period. Remember Bill Brown? He was the first PD of the station in 1969 until it went oldies in 1972 until he ended in 2005 when the station flipped to "Jack". During its pre-oldies years are Bob Lewis (aka Bob-a-Loo), Steve Clark, Bobby Wayne (aka "The Wizard") and many other jocks? You know what I mean.

[@Nostalgianerd]

Getting hold of a Radio 1 cartridge which you likely heard in the 70s. How cool is that?

[@Ch0rr1s]

More like scary. I would be minus 20years old at that time. If I heard that and remember the 70s I'd be possessed or something 😝

[@Alexander_l322]

Well he paid for it in licensing fees lol

[@ntilewills5679]

Kennylynn - one word. He lived in Tunbridge Wells back in the 70s and did a little with the hospital radio there. He also run one of the most successful mobile discos in the south east at the time. Finally he ran the short lived Kennylynn School of Broadcasting, which advertised in the early Capital Radio in London. That name is a blast from the past !

[@cm603]

Are there any recordings of this 'Kennylynn' show?

[@dan3a]

Nice copy paste from the digitalspy website

[@BlitzHopB]

@@dan3a Well at least he informed us, unlike you.

[@dan3a]

@@BlitzHopB he could have at least put credit.

[@BlitzHopB]

Dan3a Oh like anyone does that, please leave us alone with your nonsense

[@UXXV]

You could make a 30 minute video about an electric tin opener and I'd watch it. Keep up the good work.

[@Jamato-sUn]

UXXV don't give him ideas

[@patricaristide7678]

spot on! never thought I'd be interested in more than a few of these videos, because of some personal nostalgia etc. Well now I'll dream about that mesmerising Kenny Lynn jingle with a Gakken WorldEye playing somewhere in the background. And I almost bought a Sony field recorder.

[@lawrencedoliveiro9104]

I’m sure he’d find some suitably interesting vintage tin opener, operated by steam-driven solenoids or something ... ;)

[@FerraristDX]

I could watch him make a 30 minute advert for squarespace :p No hate, he deserves the support from ad companies.

[@filminginportland1654]

UXXV hah me too. Love this guy.

[@jackfrost9728]

A machine from the 1950's that can play a cartridge from 1996. Amazing. Someone finally did something right with tech!

[@xylemphloem]

I like the old warm grain/haze these give to sounds/music. I would love to use these for modern music making

[@intensecutn]

That's only due to exponential technology advances. And example of that, is compact cassette tapes. They were released in 1963 and were commonly used up until the late 90's. That's about 40 years. Compact discs, aka CD's were released in Japan in 1982, and were used up until 2010's. That's about 30 years. MP3 players were released around 2000, and would have been lucky to have been used for 10 years. The exponential advancement of technology means technology is obsolete faster with each passing year.

[@iaing]

Bit of trivia, when we were recording on them we'd put them in a splice finder first, then play a few seconds past the splice. This meant if the splice was going to break, it would do it after the cut played, and also you wouldn't hear the dropout as the tape ran over it. There were 3 tones. When you pressed record that basically was your 'stop' tone, so the deck knew when to start. There was then 2 other tones, one was generally used to mark the end of the track, which would disconnect the play head and if equipped fast forward to the start mark. Disconnecting the play head meant you didn't hear the 'blip' of the start of the track when it cued up. The second tone tended to be used to fire the next track, so it would be added at the fade mark or when you wanted to trigger the next cut for a smooth segue.

[@dougle03]

Stop on, multideck Sonifex units used the second trigger tone. I remember wiring up a triple that was used for adverts...

[@MasterGeekMX]

"Wednesday is all over everything" FLIPPIN 'ECK MARTIN! YOU SPILLED THE WEDNESDAY AGAIN?!?

[@Milamberinx]

Don't worry, there's a whole lot of Wednesday going on.

[@sadesurbex2816]

Sounds like a strange euphemism

[@Musicradio77Network]

@@Milamberinx WCBS-FM

[@WiggysanWiggysan]

I have no problem with these kind of adverts. I'm really pleased that TechMoan is growing so large. He certainly deserves it.

[@alanlansdell7533]

I agree, some of this tech is expensive, the more techmoan can buy, the more we can watch.

[@BertGrink]

l agree with you both :)

[@rogerb5615]

Exactly!

[@dragonbutt]

Growing so large.

[@Feuerspray31]

Growing large usually means monetizing, begging for subs, giveaways, and more but lower quality content. My favorite example is Cinemassacre. I used to adore that channel, now I can't stand it. I'm not saying that's happened to Techmoan yet, but it could.

[@toddreinhardt8979]

I worked on the air for 37 years. You warmed my heart.

[@alanarmstrong6099]

I discovered your channel about a month ago. I really enjoy the older tech you review. Many years ago (1988-1998) I worked in small-town radio here in the US. All of the material we broadcast came from a microphone, telephone, turntable, reel-to-reel or cart deck. We used carts for ads and jingles/liners. We had a small electromagnet that was used to blank out a cart so it could be re-recorded. One of the local car dealerships would call in and record a series of ads for different cars he had on the lot. Sometimes a spot would run 25 seconds, sometimes 45 seconds. Sometimes he had 3 cars to talk about, sometimes seven. And he often had re-takes. We recorded them onto reel, made notes to know which ones had re-takes and how long they were. They were then all recorded onto the same cart...so they would rotate evenly each time his scheduled ad aired. The WORST thing in the world was to miscalculate the length and have the cart run out 5 seconds before the last ad was done being recorded. Or to miss a re-take. You had to blank the entire cart and start over from scratch. I should add that we had a triple-decker in the broadcast studio and two single cart models very similar to yours in the production studio. Every now and then the triple-decker would go on the fritz. We would have to move the two single decks into the main studio and if you had several 30 second spots that were recorded onto 70 or 90 second carts, you would have to manually stop them and put them into a "cue up" stack. When the ad break was over, you spent the next several minutes getting your carts cued up to be played again.

[@filminginportland1654]

Alan Armstrong well if you ran out five seconds early, you could just re-record the cart, no? Waste all of a few minutes, or am I missing something? I always LOVED radio, especially small town radio. What part of the country? We had lots of small stations I liked here in Oregon and Washington.

[@Genshi]

I grew up with these machines! My Dad was a Radio DJ and Program Director, and as a kid during the summers of the early to mid 1970s, I would go to work with him; with my "job" being to erase the old Jingle carts with the demagnetizer.

[@TonyP9279]

We had a 3-cart deck in the college radio station where I DJ'ed. The carts have TWO cue tones: One cues it to the beginning of the jingle and a second one triggers the next cart player.

[@TracksWithDax]

Really? What happened with them then, were entirely new jingles put on them or something?

[@russellhltn1396]

@@TracksWithDax Exactly. Jingles, ads, promos, public service announcements, station ID, any short bit that needed to be aired that lasted between a few seconds to a few minutes. Yes, some stations even put songs on there as a early move toward station automation.

[@jonnycando]

I worked at a station where we had 4 of these in the main studio (one old Spotmaster and three newer Broadcast Electronics) several others were floating around in production rooms. I would put a commercial cart in each one, and punch the start button on the first and they would play in turn. There was a bump tone encoded at the end of each spot, that with proper wiring would signal the next machine to start. We cut and wound the tape by hand so that there was only enough for the recording that was on it at the time. Now it's all on a computer hard disk. Oh for the day when you had to actually work!

[@dunebasher1971]

The remote port will simply be to facilitate wiring up remote start, stop and record buttons so that the operator doesn't have to press the buttons on the machine itself. The signalling used would be simple voltage triggers. Fast recue, plus the automatic triggering of another player, are not supported by Techmoan's deck - it's too old and basic. To do those required the ability to record secondary and tertiary cue tones, which were at different frequencies to the primary cue tone, with the deck being configurable to do different things when it detected them. Typically, detecting a secondary cue tone would drop the player into fast recue, while detecting a tertiary cue would fire the next player in the sequence. However, at one radio station I worked at, the Chief Engineer developed a clever system whereby the leading edge of the secondary tone fired the next player, and then the deck jumped into fast recue when the secondary tone stopped - so one tone was doing two things.

[@filminginportland1654]

Neil Forbes or tune out because they don't care to hear automation lol

[@filminginportland1654]

Dylfun Many, many stations go through the automated period in larger markets even. Computerized made it even more common. Up until recently, you'd STILL hear stuff-ups during the day on flagship AM news stations, with two spots playing at once or a spot and a liner both playing at once. But for music stations anyway, it always lowered ratings. Most stations are at least partially automated now, even with live announcers.

[@filminginportland1654]

Neil Forbes Failure of automation never caused them to stop using it, here!

[@keithbrown7685]

who says?

[@EzeeLinux]

Your Radio One jingles were from around 1969. I recognize the jingle package. It's from a company called PAMS. )

[@andyward8062]

From Dallas, TX. (PAMS)

[@SiriusXAim]

Indeed. Radio 1 was a copy of Wonderful Radio London, which introduced the swinging PAMS jingles to the UK. Now they're called JAM Productions. Not the robotic voice was done with a device called a Sonovox. @techmoan you should do a video on one! kzbin.info/www/bejne/ZmfEhqVuq5iJg8k

[@andyward8062]

I purchased their "converted" 8 track 1 inch Ampex recorder system in 1987-8. In Mesquite, TX.

[@SiriusXAim]

@Superb Media Content Creator. You had a show? Do you have any airchecks from that show?

[@kingbee1500]

PAMS was the boss of the jingle business for years, particularly 1960-1970. Who from that era doesn't remember?

[@andreww2098]

Radio one is 50 years old this year, you may want to send them a copy of those jingles, in typical BBC fashion they probably don't have a copy anymore !

[@Simufreund309]

Do you mean with that, that the BBC throws away their own old jingles?

[@emilytakesphoto]

Simufreund309 i can't tell if your being sarcastic, but if not, yes,the BBC likely find not retain jingles.

[@Simufreund309]

No, I wasn't sarcastic.

[@lilliputmoss]

They throw everything out apart from the old diddlers.

[@Techmoan]

and we know who's responsible. kzbin.info/www/bejne/l2TQpomHhrKkiJY

[@Zogger568]

>whole lot of friday going on damn thats a good jingle

[@coffeehigh420]

I'd say so!

[@Musicradio77Network]

It just says “Whole lot of Friday going on, WCBS-FM!” from 1970 during the pre-oldies format when it was progressive rock.

[@maradona108]

I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE

[@JanBabiuchHall]

The Prodigy

[@mark314158]

The Crazy World of Arthur Brown - I bought the single...

[@50sts]

....LORD OF THE GAME

[@SoundJudgment]

"I'll see you burn!!"

[@TheSpyt67]

fuck that im the lord of the game, i rule this empire.

[@pandagaming4907]

"I AM THE GOD OF HELL FIRE AND I BRING YOU!" Kenny lynn

[@TheBrickson98]

Panda Gaming lmao this got me too

[@FrostMonolith]

For those who will be looking for this 19:20

[@simon51209]

The original source for that audio - minus the Kenny Lynn bit - is the song Fire by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown (1968)

[@kalebtrollsalot9737]

@@simon51209 this song was made famous recenlty for its cameo in the christchurch shooting livestream

[@winiary_taniegruzy]

That was a big The Prodigy throwback for me.

[@asdf11985]

anyone think of bigclive when you saw the tester?

[@JDtheEE]

Senor Bob I did as soon as I saw that Red Quick Test!

[@jaunedoeuf9287]

yes sir. bigclive is the master of the tester ;)

[@pileggitech]

I did!

[@NaoPb]

I did, yes.

[@nekomasteryoutube3232]

I did :)

[@GoofyOldGuyPlays]

lol, I remember those so clearly. I worked in radio for about 8 years. One of my jobs included working at a "semi-automated" radio station. I was live from 6 am until 10 am, then "pre-recorded" on two additional stations until 3 pm. Out station was semi-automated, which meant we had real-to-real machines for most of our music. They (6 different machines) were engaged via a specific program that started each machine in a specific predetermined order. Each machine was started using an "AUX" tone on the tapes...an inaudible tone the computer recognized as a signal to begin the next item on the list. I would record my voice-over or out-tro to each segment on a cart, knowing which song was listed next on the predetermined playlist. I literally would sit by my pool, listening to myself on the radio throughout the afternoon. (being rebroadcast on the other two stations, their machines could interpret the AUX tone as well.) I'd have to call in if I heard that my tape miss-queue to the wrong song and ask them to "playthrough" whatever was missing to catch up to my voice-cart or the music. (we even had live time-checks via prerecorded time carts that would automatically advance one cut every minute and randomly play between songs or even my voice clips to update the listener.) They were a common way to play commercials, of course. Each tape would stop at the beginning of the commercial after it was played. The AUX tone was what stopped the playback. When I recorded commercials, the first thing the recorder would record was that tone, so it know when to stop after playing. The same thing was used in my pre-recorded shows. I would press the button to start the AUX tone, which would start the next song...and continue playing (both my voice and the actual song until I released the button) which would stop my voice cart and allow the song to continue playing, thus queue up my next voice clip for the next segment. It actually sounds much more confusing that it is. So many times I had to re-record because I didn't completely erase the cart, removing that AUX tone, and it kept starting the music reals before they were supposed to.. And that AUX tone (you call it a cue tone) could be heard if you listened real close. Kind of a "brrrrrrrrrrrp" sound. Kind of sounded like your radio just farted. Gawd I miss working in radio.

[@mikemadden2729]

So THAT"S how those awful radio stations worked! I was driven to alternative college & community radio in the early 1970s. Jingles come from the Devil, straight from the Bowels of Hell! Weird, finally being able to see the Devil's equipment, LMAO!!! Having Homo Sapiens in the station to play CDs & records is a cool concept.

[@thomasmezei3231]

Love it! "real to real machines". Priceless :)

[@Milamberinx]

@@thomasmezei3231 through the unreality of the human mind.

[@jacobyunderhill3999]

That sounds magical. I started in radio in 2009 which was the worst time to start in the history of the industry. Would have been amazing to work back in the day. Still loved it though. Did my own version of what you did. I would "voicetrack" my four hour midday show in about 30 minutes and then spend the rest of my day producing commercials and imaging. Left after two years when i realized I could make about 10x $$ as a programmer. Industry is a shambles. Sad.

[@ThatSockmonkey]

I still work in radio (started in the late 90s) and I'm very grateful for computers. I jumped in to explain program vs spot carts and programming departments etc etc but you did it for me and much better than I could have. I DO NOT MISS CARTS! Having working in a programming department, I do not miss making carts. Mind you, 90% of radio jobs are completely redundant these days. Radio stations certainly aren't the dynamic workplaces they used to be.

[@darkstarnh]

Memories. My job as a sound engineer in TV in the 80's involved a three player stack cart machine and a wall rack covered with sound effects carts. Our news at the time was shot on film and a lot of was 'mute' (no sound) so we had to add effects live on air with about 20 seconds to prepare. The capacity for hilarious mistakes (accidental and deliberate) was legendary. Then along came video news cameras in the mid 80s and spoilt all the fun.

[@Wouter395]

Awesome video! Don't listen to the haters, there's no problem with you making some money on a video you've been preparing for weeks and planning for months.

[@jasont9294]

Great work as usual Techmoan. I went down the rabbit hole: Kenny Lynn -> Frank Pourcel -> David McWilliams' original version of 'Days of Pearly Spencer' and have been listening to that endlessly since yesterday. Can't believe I've never heard it before. What a tune!

[@onedeadsaint]

loved the Kenny Lynn "impression"! great video! absolutely love this channel!

[@thetelegothika5327]

The bit where you do your Kenny Lynn impression (with the creepy lady jingle) reminds me of a bit in Alan Partridge where DJ Dave Clifton's "nightclub" radio show consists of pre-recorded lady sounds played out on cue! Anyway, really interesting stuff! Fantastic video as always! I was told once (by an inebriated ex-broadcast engineer who'd been laid off) that TV commercials played out on ITV and Channel 4 were also played out on cartridges. I haven't found any evidence of this though.

[@nbreeden]

Another fun and interesting video. Techmoan is one of my favorite channels. Proud to be a Patron of the channel.

[@denshi-oji494]

That was quite interesting. I think the last time I saw a Cart Machine was about 1974. I had never had a chance to actually play wirh one though, I just liked going to a couple local radio stations when I was young and talking with the DJs in-between their talking on the radio. I knew the tapes looked much like the old 4-track cartridges, but I was unaware they were so close, and never thought about that they could be compatible! Thanks for the great videos!

[@OhFishyFish]

18:50 that's just what I've been looking for! I run a post-apocalyptic role-playing game for some friends and I wanted them to stumble upon an abandoned radio station building that's been playing some creepy music on a loop for the last 20 years.

[@getstew]

Great memories! I work in radio and loved this format. And yes, it was very common for station to everything on cart (all music included).

[@richardb4313]

Our local radio station used to do everything on these carts. They rarely would play records live on air, and the studio was set up to mix and play from several cart machines for music, ads and jingles. As each cart was ready to go, there was no fumbling or time wasting, and the result was a pretty slick operation even though this was a very small station. At night the entire studio was automated, with sets of 24 cart rotating carousels loaded with music and ads playing pre-programmed sequences for 6 hours. Old carousels pop up on Ebay now and then.

[@Suddenlyits1960]

@Techmoan,Thanks for sharing this video with us. That vintage Spotmaster deck is really neat and hearing the tapes was the icing on the cake.

[@cjc363636]

I'm 17 years old again at a small AM radio station in 1983. Thanks for the memories! EDIT: THe Fidelipack cart! With the silly metal arm that helped keep the roll uh, rolled up. I'd taken a lot of these apart to fix rattling wire arms!

[@JoeHamelin]

I was 17 in 1977 but I hear you! Got me a test tape and went around the state making nice change aligning cart decks.

[@pzeller1]

Lol, I'd forgotten the rattle. Thanks for the memory.

[@iPelaaja1]

So close to 500,000 subscribers! The channel definitely deserves a lot more..!

[@PlayButtonPone]

I work at a local talk radio station near me, and the computer system is very simular to the later cart systems (even found a Cart from the late 90s in a drawer, and also they still have a minidisc player in the rack), the system is all manual (plugging in commercials into a slot, and it runs off Windows XP). They are switching to a new system right now.

[@arcadely]

I used to host a show on our university radio station (URN in Nottingham) back in the day and I can confirm that as recently as the late 1990s broadcast carts were still in use there. This was from autumn 1997 through to summer 1999. As you suggested we mainly used the carts only for jingles and adverts, although there were some background loops for talkover segments as well. The cueing mechanism was, perhaps, surprisingly reliable, which allowed you to back-time dry voice jingles over the introductions of songs so that they'd finish just before the vocals kicked in. Inevitably sometimes it would go wrong and you'd get either silence or a random fragment of audio half-way through the cart's track, although this can only have happened to me a couple of times over the two year period (usually one show a week during term-time, although sometimes two or more). Music was almost always played from CD or vinyl, although occasionally you'd get a demo in on standard compact cassette. The station's output was recorded onto long-play VHS tapes, and we'd also use VHS for playing a "music marathon" when there were no shows scheduled. It was an interesting transitional time though - we were starting to make more use of play jingles directly from a computer, whereas previously we'd only had a PC to use for editing jingles and suchlike in Soundforge, before they were recorded on to cart for broadcast use. Although it was the beginning of the MP3 era, and actually by the time I left we were within months of the boom in sharing MP3s due to Napster, we didn't use them for broadcasting music whilst I was there. Anyway, long story: all of that to say thanks for sharing this video - brought back a few memories.

[@truecrimescotsman]

Have found some info on Kenny Lyn / Kenny Lynn / Kennylyn. He was a popular mobile DJ and had a residency at Sherry's in Brighton in the 1970s. He owned a record shop in Brighton in the mid-late 1970s and early 1980s in York Place Brighton, just around the corner from the technical college. Kenny was said to resemble Harry Enfield's "scouse character" like the footballer Terry McDermott.

[@6A8G]

Thanx so much for this. We used carts like this quite a lot on the stations at which I worked in the 1980's. The big carts were used in slightly different decks as delays for Racing Control (horsies) & Sports Roundup. There was an extra head at the left hand side. It's a pity your machine doesn't stop - it should - it has the heads to do it but the beep doesn't seem to do what it's supposed to. There was a different frequency beep - 150Hz I think - which had two functions. This was set at the end of the programme/jingle. When the beep started it energised an external relay which "pushed" the play button of another deck. When the beep ended, the capstan sped up thus fast forwarding the tape back to the stop beep. Good system but its maintenance was high by today's standards. Thanx again, John Roberts Wellington New Zealand.

[@NevilleStyke]

BITD Kenny Lyn record shop, 20 York Place, Brighton. During the Saturday Night Fever craze Kenny Lyn took over the Birds Nest (then called Dalrymples) and turned it into Mr K’s, it had Brighton’s first lit up dance floor.

[@swabby429]

Cart machines were daily tools in my career in radio. Spotmasters Tapecasters, and ITCs are the most rugged pieces of gear I can think of. You can imagine the amount of abuse these things weathered day in day out for decades.

[@braien334]

Kenny is the man, whoever he is.

[@JoeyRetroRockets]

My dad was a morning-drive DJ for most of my life. Hearing those Radio 1 jingles made my heart long to go back in time when as I boy in the early 70's, I would go to work with him during the summer. They sounded so much like the PAMS jingles used in the US back then. Thanks!

[@rexoliver7780]

The cart with the Penny Lyn material is a Marathon brand cart.The radio station chain I worked used these carts-for everything from jingles,ads,and music.The Marathon company supplied carts to museum display sound systems.We also "rebuilt" these carts ourselves at the station-cleaned them out and reloaded with fresh tape and those pressure pads.Stereo carts often had phasing problems between the channels-the program would fade in and out on mono radios-esp AM.The Marathon carts were more consistent in solving this problem.

[@sellersgarner]

Just saw these both while watching "Frasier" , and in an urban exploration video, in which the explorer found a still-powered 90's radio station, pretty trashed but with all the equipment intact. He went to a wall and picked one of these labeled "Megadeth" and thought they were 8-Tracks. Always enjoyed this channel a great deal, great video as always.

[@360MIX]

Hello Clive... 4:44

[@exulan9570]

360MIX i was looking for this comment xd

[@bloqk16]

I remember those days of radio when those carts ruled the music radio airwaves. Cuing up records on turntables was a diminishing artform by the 1980s. But, I did have a friend that worked as a radio presenter in the early 1980s (back then called disc-jockey) where the station abandoned the music carts to vinyl LPs when the format went from contemporary hits to album oriented Rock (AOR). The cuing up of the vinyl records didn't always go smoothly.

[@fluffskunk]

The DJ having his little harem is one of the creepiest things I've ever heard from an old, long-lost tape.

[@pointblank2890]

That advert was unobtrusive, fitting, and (surprisingly) fun to listen to at the end. Cheers on making everything smooth and high quality as always, Matt.

[@oldsmagnet]

Back in the mid-80's, I toured a Canadian radio broadcast station (CHAB, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan) - their entire library was carts, they had one room that was basically a giant cart server room, and (if memory serves) some form of computer interface in the DJ room, that would control the carts (think CD changer on steroids...) In the thirty years since then, this is the ONLY time I've ever seen any reference to the Cart format. Cool vid, :-)

[@adamb3196]

I toured CHAB/Moose Jaw in 1995. By that time, the station was playing music off of CD but cart's were still being used for jingles, commercials, etc. I myself started working in radio in 2000 and cart's were still very much in use for newscast audio clips and daily features. By mid-2001, everything was switched to digital and the cart decks were retired.

[@OliverKiellCameraman]

The best DJ example you did there!! I too wondered what the gaps were in the goodbye jingle.

[@dennisdaily5463]

My GOD, what memories. I must have rewound 10,000 carts during my career. What memories. Thanks for having this and the one on the RCA large cassette machine.

[@hmbpnz]

Your channel is one of the best, and it just keeps getting better: ads or no ads. Another spectacular show, sir. Thank you.

[@MattOGormanSmith]

I remember those Radio 1 jingles. Definitely 1970s. Maybe you should email a recording to them for their nostalgia cupboard. There's only Tony Blackburn and Steve Wright left from that era, and they're on Radio Quiet now.

[@ethanlamoureux5306]

This brings back memories. Back in 1990 I discovered a bunch of stuff that had been taken out of a small radio station in 1973. There were a few pieces of equipment, along with boxes of carts and reel to reel tapes. The equipment was all made in the 1950s and included a couple of full track ¼" reel to reel recorders designed for mounting in an equipment rack, with the electronics (with octal base tubes and a very rugged and heavy design) in one unit and the mechanism in a separate unit. I found the manual for one of these machines, and the specs were quite impressive for the time, as these were true high-fidelity machines. There was also a cart machine which was for playback only, it was a very simple machine with a lever on the right like yours. I was able to use it to listen to some of the carts and discovered the cue signal on one track with the program signal on the other. The machine had an output for the cue track but didn’t have any internal cuing mechanism, so I assume it used an external cuing unit. Many of the carts had multiple spots on them with a cue signal at the start of each one. There were a lot of commercials on short reel to reel tapes, and I assumed that these would normally be dubbed onto carts for broadcasting, then when the time for the ad was over, the cart would be erased and used to record another spot or several related spots. Usually these multiple related spots would be found on one reel to reel tape, recorded one after another. I didn’t find any music to speak of, other than jingles and such, but I did find a DJ demo recorded on a reel to reel, where a DJ at the station had recorded several times the end of one song, his announcements, and the beginning of the next song. Presumably the DJ made the tape as part of an effort to find a job at another radio station. The unique sound of the beginning and end of each recorded spot told me the demo was recorded on one of the machines I was using to play the tape, or an identical model. It was interesting to hear portions of songs that were current at the time, which was 1973, the year the station removed their 1950s era equipment and replaced it with new equipment.

[@VintageStuff]

The Kenny Lynn jingles are catchy! I hope someone is able to unearth more details about his show!

[@PcKaffe]

There was a soundbit from Arthur Brown - Fire. (I am the god of hellfire and i bring you..) that song came out in 1968 so that narrows the timeperiod down pretty good.

[@johnfrancisdoe1563]

PcKaffe So anywhere between 1968 and 2017 then.

[@PcKaffe]

Well this is radio we are talking about, they tend to keep to the trends. So it's very likely that it's just after 68.

[@alexamegiddo2083]

John Francis Doe well it’s a mono tape and most studios around the 2000s started switching to completely automated queue systems.. plus there’s obviously some progressive rock style going there so I would say 69-75 would be the era.

[@VitorMadeira]

Every single video of yours that I've watched was an 100% pleasant experience. Man, thank you so very much for your high standard quality when preparing your videos. Cheers from Portugal.

[@aaronz9687]

In 1999 the radio station I worked for still used carts. By 2001 the station moved and started using computers. There was a "harddrive" cart machine that was of course used ,from some other station. There was a DOS automation computer system,that had to be updated for Y2k!

[@filminginportland1654]

Aaron Z Yeah lots of stations kept them for quite a while. I had a DOS automation system that was floppy based, running on an IBM PC that I played with as a kid, along with several cart carousels. Fun times.

[@dougle03]

Many stations phased them out for the DAMMS digital cart system - A computer the size of a room was installed in engineering and a small white controller was added in the studio. This was about the time national adverts were delivered to the station via DAT Tapes too!

[@dougherbert7899]

I worked in radio from 96-2000, at a mid level station that never made all that much money. Carts were still used for almost all content, all the carts and machines felt pretty old at the time. Planning for the digital transformation was just starting when I left.

[@ronniejanuszki]

So glad Squarespace is sponsoring creators like yourself. I have also been an SS customer, except I made the site for my nonprofit only recently.

[@jobriathboy]

i've got to say, i just absolutely LOVE your enthusiasm... i would LOVE to do what you do, but i doubt i'd have the energy to execute it nearly as well as you consistently do... i tip my hat to you, good sir!

[@BrettsPlay]

I love this video. 1. I finally know what Roz is doing on Frasier, and what all those things on all those racks are. 2. So cool that the NOS 4 track was a Jimmy Smith album!

[@WarfareHD1]

Here I am a 23 year old young adult watching a middle aged man reviewing something I have no idea about and never had experience with while drinking my tea at the kitchen table.

[@DijaVlogsGames]

AirsoftWarfareHD What a fascinating life story.

[@colinjohnston8519]

Who gives a fuck? And what has age got to do with anything??

[@purrbox7514]

Everybody loves a bit of techmoan, it's so relaxing watching his videos. He's the David Attenborough of technology.

[@bandombeviews6035]

I'm 13. You're not that special

[@texarcana2002]

and you're half as special.

[@timothystockman7533]

I worked at many stations during the 1970s and 1980s, with cart machines from Tapecaster, Spotmaster, Sparta, Gates, SMC, ATC, and ITC. We used them for everything from jingles to news reports to full songs. A station where I was the chief engineer during the mid-1980s had almost 100% of the audio we aired come from cart. At that station (WKHY) we had 2 ITC 3-slot stereo cart machines in the main air studio feeding 6 channels of the mixing board. The carts were recorded (in the production studio) using an ITC series 99 machine. The cue track uses a 1 KHz (primary) tone to mark the beginning of cuts. There is also a 150 Hz (secondary) tone that is used to mark the end of cuts. The secondary tone starts when at the overlap point where the next program element should begin, and ends at the point where the audio on the current cart ends. You talked about a cue function. Of course all cart machines would stop, cued to the beginning of the next cut at the beginning of a 1 kHz cue tone. The only machine I have experience with that had a more sophisticated cue mechanism was the ITC series 99. After the end of the 150 Hz secondary tone, it would go into fast forward looking for the primary tone, which was much higher than 1 kHz because of the increased tape speed. Some machines also had an 8 kHz tertiary tone, but there was no standard use for such a tone. Also, some machines would output the cue track audio to a modem which decoded an FSK burst with logging information. If you really want to see some interesting applications for NAB carts, check out the 24-cart carousel machines made by SMC, or the 48-slot Instacart (both of which I've worked with). Gates also had a 55-slot machine, which was not very popular. These 24, 48, and 55 slot machines were used as part of automated program playout systems. Often, a program automation system would have a time announce sub-system consisting of 2 cart machines, one for odd minutes and one for even minute. For minutes when the time announcement was not aired, at the end of that minute the system would switch to the other deck and play past the unaired announcement. This way it was all ready to go with the correct minute hen called upon. Due to the large number of announcements on each time cart, it was mandatory to use the largest cart, which IIRC had 45 minutes of total recording time.

[@ichabaudcraine2923]

This is awesome. I'm a bit obsessed with jingles, they used to creep me out as a kid with all the layered harmonies and stuff.

[@stevefaul1710]

Greetings from Ohio. That round-backed cart from Toledo is one of the early ones, possibly dating back to 1958 when the format was launched. They disappeared quickly as the rectangular carts where easier to grasp by the busy DJ and easier to label. The cue tone detector circuit is in the player, and probably needs some capacitors replaced. The cue tone is 1000Hz.

[@chinnyvision]

There was a digital successor to the tape cart, believe it or not there was a floppy disk cart system! I worked at a station that still had one in use in the early 2000's in the production studio. As I recall it wasn't quite full CD sample rate but sounded good enough. Steve Wright liked carts so much that he used minidiscs in the same fashion. When Radio 2 moved studios about 12 years ago they had to put a minidisc player in for "Love The Show" to use.

[@fhowland]

Demon CD machines! It was basically just a CD in a cart

[@dorontsur]

Wonderful presentation. What I appreciate about these recordings is that until you've made a video on them, no one would've heard them since the last time they were broadcasted. This has a cultural and archival importance to me. Thank you as always Techmoan.

[@Shermanbay]

Techmoan, I wonder if you have ever run across a continuous carousel cart player? In the 1960's, I had a friend who DJ'd at a FM station and I saw his setup. The station was semi-automated, quite progressive for the time, and was in two small rooms in an office building. The main room, about the size of a large bathroom, housed 2 carousel cart players; each carousel could hold a few dozen carts in a horizontal-axis wheel arrangement. They could be programmed to play cart #1 from Carousel #1, then cart #1 from Carousel #2, than back to Carousel #1, which had finished advancing the previous cart and cued up the next. Each time the switch was made from one Carousel to the next, the wheel rotated one notch, and eventually made it back to the beginning. Carts could be inserted and removed at any place on the wheel, and the rotator skipped over empty spots. The DJ could pause the system to make a live announcement, but rarely did. Most DJ chatter was pre-recorded, even the time announcements. I'm not sure what kind of carts these were, but it was an FM station, so they probably held stereo tracks.

[@JGlaister]

I worked at an automated FM station. We had our music on open-reel machines, but the commercials were on carts in rotating sequential carousels like you described. They later upgraded to allow four carousels that allowed random searching for a particular cart.Time checks were on a dedicated cart machine that advanced one track each minute so that it played the correct time when called upon by the sequencer. One announcer accidentally recorded a 30-second spot on a 5-minute cart. It took so long for it to advance and rotate that it threw the whole system out of sequence every time it played.

[@filminginportland1654]

Shermanbay I got a few of those from a local radio station just after they went all computerized, in 1995 or 1996. I played with them for a while, but never got it working. Came with the original IBM PC (from 1981) that ran the thing (though the carousels might have been older than that). Very fun for a kid who loved radio to play with. Also got endless varieties of old carts and 5" reels from radio stations who threw them out to play with. Fun fun! At least I had a broadcast reel to reel deck to play the reels on (an old Magnecord from 1967 with 7.5 and 15 ips - sounded FANTASTIC!). I could have scored all sorts of very nice Ampex reel decks from one station in eastern Washington who had gone digital. I got there a couple weeks to late - they threw them all in the garbage!!! Those go for literally _thousands_ of dollars, as they were high end decks. Way nicer than small town radio should have. Also remember when our old movie theater threw out their original tube amps from 1946 when they went modern in 1997. I WISH I took them from the garbage heap, as there was some very nice stuff in there. Even some Altec tube amps, those green face models that are so nice, that studios still use now! The LDS church likes to use them for their chapel organs too, even now, because they sound so good (they always have great sound systems for speech and organ music).

[@filminginportland1654]

Big DogCountry ok so THAT is how he did it pre-computer! I only ever saw the ones with the original IBM PC's (floppy only) running them. That's what the one I had to play with had. Which I think had the same BE carousels as that picture had. BE was everywhere!! Love the look and feel of the big, old analog equipment. Love using it in the studio when I can (recording studio). Still prefer the sound and limitations it imposed on the recording process. Pro tools has NOT advanced the actual art of music production. I like to use my external hard disk multitrack from 2001 - the old tascam MX-2424. The transport works and feels like a reel to reel, so you can use it like that during recording to limit the distraction of pro tools and DAWs. Still sounds fantastic at 24/96. And you don't have to worry about computer crashes, viruses, plugins, licensing, updating the OS and every plugin to go with it, constant version upgrades, etc. Hit record and it's recording, every time. Bulletproof! 9 and 18 GB UW SCSI drives are getting harder to find, though :(

[@YujiUedaFan]

Big Country, I can't see that image!

[@ThatsViews]

Radio England, or Swinging Radio England, an American owned offshore radio station had a Carousel installed on their ship in 1966, way before the BBC got tech equipment like that.

[@aaronazz]

While doing an internship at the local TV station (late 90s) it was my job to record the evening news anchor reading the days news highlights, usually in the early afternoon. I was using an Otari 1/4" deck to record then bounce the best take (usually only one to choose from) to cart afterwards. I'd then take the cart to the radio station for them to play to air throughout the afternoon. The audio quality from the cart was surprisingly good. Hidden underneath the main mixing console was a bulk eraser for erasing the reels and carts. It looked like a giant VCR that would hum loudly as you waved the media around inside. Those were the days - no regard for the large electromagnet at groin level! Ah well, thanks for the reminder :-)

[@novafawks]

Hey Techmoan, gratz on 500k!! That's a whole heck of a lot!!

[@novafawks]

See you at a million~ :D

[@Techmoan]

Thanks...I hope I'm here then.

[@patrickwombacher210]

Techmoan over 1,000 comments in 2 days ?!? U in the Big-Tyme Now ! 😎

[@filminginportland1654]

Techmoan oh you will!!!!!

[@button-puncher]

A "kettle" power cord... I got a bit of a laugh out of that. In the US most people would call it a "computer" power cord. The first and most common place that those IEC plugs were used in the states. Great video. Blast from the past. A bunch of people probably hear those bumpers thousands of times. At the TV stations that I worked at, we had Digicarts. Same physical size but they had an internal hard drive or a zip drive(!) for playback. We had a couple cart decks but nobody used them anymore. I do remember these multi-sided spinning wire racks full of carts.

[@TheAgeOfAnalog]

This is the best channel on KZbin, bar none.

[@danyf3116]

A very good friend of mine was a radio DJ and lord knows how many hours I spent with her in the studio. She'd be playing the baseball game and load the machine so it would play the commercials when it was cued by the mother office. Thanks for showing me this souvenir of my youth.

[@AudioMobil]

I have several boxes of cartridges from our community radio station here in Ulm. Unfortunately none of or old cart machines is working anymore.

[@ColtGColtG]

hope you can find someone to donate a working machine or repair an old one so you can convert those bits of your local history to something accessible!

[@FromTheRoomOfLittleEase]

One of the best subjects I've seen on techmoan, very interesting, thank you. Those recordings where fascinating. I used to wonder about these machines when seeing radio d.j.s in movies and television turn them on and off.

[@OPTIONALWATCH]

20:33 I do hear a male voice immediately after the female voice says "goodnight darling" but it is very, very low. My mind could have been playing tricks on me though. I have my earplugs on while listen to your channel all the time :-)

[@TheBcoolGuy]

Luis Donado I hear it too.

[@cysioland]

As he said, this is probably a bleed from an earlier recording.

[@tony6974]

Usually they recorded a dialogue with a backup actor/director and the actor in the actual mic. Then the radio DJ would fill between lines with his own voice. I still notice that on some radio spots and jingles here in Brazil. To simulate a conversation, you know.

[@daveR0berts]

I do believe your hearing lyrics to the song that is being spoken over.

[@ash_aiden]

I heard it

[@larrygall5831]

That recording of the women saying goodbye over and again was likely played at the end of "Kenny Lynn's" show. Maybe he'd be telling everyone the shows over, thanks for tuning in, while this tape played in the background ..likely at a slightly lower volume.

[@SeraphinaPZ]

Your voice always reminds me of James May meets Ashens presenting us with technology.

[@orderofmagnitude-TPATP]

Lol ~ great comparison.

[@sjhart14]

Those Echomatic cartridges were made in my hometown! I've never heard of them; I seem to learn something new all the time about Toledo. There are tons of people named Cousino here and even several other businesses that use the name. I can't find a trace of this companies existence left except a small blurb on wikipedia about the inventor and an address that doesn't match any current building.

[@coffeehigh420]

and after 1,000,000 machines, we finally get to hear the large tape play at the proper speed. NICE I LIKE!

[@DreitTheDarkDragon]

19:10 - that strange feeling when you're born in 1992, but somehow feel like you know that sound really well and life would be much better during that time period. Just...it sounds like people enjoyed everything much more than nowadays.

[@Flojoe6274]

I loved this. I used carts at a radio station a long time ago. I miss them - they were convenient. Great memories. I marvel at how easily you repair these and other technical items. There's this woman called Rinoa Supergenius who also repairs older tech on her channel. She's good enough you might find her interesting.

[@filminginportland1654]

Flojoe6274 I'll check her out, thanks! Fellow woman techie, after my own heart. I loved analog tape too. Wish I could find an excuse to run a radio station using turntables, carts and Denon CD carts, with analog console. When DJs actually were DJs :)

[@siliconinsect]

We still have these at WRUW-FM 91.1 Cleveland. Nobody uses them anymore on a daily basis but we're celebrating out 50th anniversary and need some of this old material. Cool video! If you're ever in Cleveland, OH and want to play with a "proper" radio station...

[@jon_collins]

Regarding the carts with music; They used these carts in the radio station my dad maintained in the early 90s in Western Australia for their fully automated robotic system for ads, jingles AND music. The system was very old by that stage (it had a paper tape reader on it for programming, though not in use by this stage), it had two banks each with a robotic X/Y mechanism for picking and placing tapes from it's respective library into one of it's several cart machines in the bottom row (see the scene from 'Hackers' but for these carts instead of video tapes). From memory it was called "M.A.R.V.I.N.". Those music carts you have may be from a similar system.

[@xeokym223]

How the HELL did those things not get tangled and jammed up on the regular?! Man I love your channel, it's fascinating. I can find out all about this stuff without spending loads of money to buy them. I like new technology but I love the old stuff just as much. I've got a lot of videos to marathon through :D

[@ambrose1435]

That Kenny Lyn outro really tickled me. Goodnight Maureen!

[@tronus98]

Neat! My grandpa was one of the founders of International Tapetronics Corporation. They designed a bunch of CART machines that were used in the radio industry. He (Jenkins) designed many (if not all) of their machines.

[@tronus98]

You have some of their units in this video!

[@vinylmisfit2165]

I absolutely adore those jingles! They're just little hidden treasures, quite cool that after all these years they've been heard again. :)

[@marcg210]

came here from the reditune when you got me thinking about my time in radio. I wondered if you had done the broadcast carts we used and yep...here it is. I remember them very well back in 1987-1989.

[@marcg210]

we had a degauss machine to wipe them by the way,,,

[@christianhale1192]

"Resort" to sponsorship? Guys, he is getting paid to make the videos we like by companies who do not have a stake in the products he covers. More money means more time he can put into the videos (or not--for his back catalog alone he deserves to rake in some) and a better end product for us (for flippin free!)

[@alexe8375]

plus all this vintage audio stuff costs hundreds, which i doubt he makes back (or only just does) off youtube preroll and banner ads

[@filminginportland1654]

alex E yup, totally

[@filminginportland1654]

alex E he deserves it

[@kevinwilliams7521]

Thanks for reminding me of 20 years i spent doing Hospital Radio. I have 50 of my original programme jingles, celebrity comments etc and have wanted to play them again. Your video gave me the incentive to by a spotmaster jingle player and recorded. Thanks. Do you do a video on diskette players ?. we moved from cart jingles to diskette jingles in the late 80's.

[@CardboardSliver]

You're one of the very few people who I'll watch the ad plugins for.

[@Simesnz]

So glad you did this one, Mat! It takes me back to the late 80s when I presented a show on a closed loop hospital radio station in Bournemouth. We had a couple of later model jingle machines and used to have lots of station idents and even songs (Stevie Wonder's 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' was on high rotate!). They were great machines - very reliable and good sound quality. Thanks for taking me back!

[@colbortson]

Have you considered uploading recordings of all this stuff on something like archive.org?

[@zshall48]

I'd love to hear the whole tape too! Reminiscent of the K-mart tapes

[@NaoPb]

I'd like that :) .

[@AuntieFan]

I worked weekends at WHLM in the mid-'80s. One of my jobs was board operator of the Sunday Morning Quarterback show. While the sportscaster, Jim Doyle, gave the on-air rundown of all of the area's Friday night high school and Saturday college football games, I sat across the glass in the booth opposite with the audio console, four cart machines and about 40 or more carts with field reporters' commentary from the games as well as the commercials we were to play during the very quick hour broadcast.

[@hugoknapp]

4:48 Someone's been watching bigclivedotcom 👀

[@Lively_1185]

Menwith Films ???

[@catfish552]

He does electronics teardown videos, pretty often using a Quicktest device like that one. A great channel by the way, entertaining, funny, and oftentimes even educational.

[@fredblonder7850]

Whoa! Serious case of deja-vu here. In 1974 I worked as a DJ on a pirate radio station (Don’t ask.) and we had the exact cart-machine you demonstrate here. I had a bad experience with it once. It apparently wasn’t properly grounded. I was speaking into the mic live over the air, while resting my right hand on the front-right corner of the cart machine, with my thumb on the “Play” button, which I would press as soon as I finished speaking. The machine chose that exact moment to short-out and I’m getting 120 volts in my hand. Somehow I didn’t scream into the mic but actually pressed the “Play” button. The cart machine functioned perfectly despite the case being electrified. I cut the live mic then jumped out of my chair yelling, while the cart continued to play. The machine was never repaired, but from the on I took care to only touch it by the plastic controls.

[@EposVox]

Clever idea adding the SquareSpace to your clock :)

[@CarlosPerezChavez]

It's the attention to details what makes the difference

[@AndrewBrZa]

I have a box of broadcast carts somewhere with music and jingles on. They were in use till the late 80s/early 90s when PCs running specialised broadcast software really starting taking their place. could load one of those small carts with up to 12 minutes. The station I worked at also had all their music library on those carts, It was a bugger when the last person to play it had not fast forwarded it back to the beginning, so I always kept a song ready to go in the last player. The modern carts had three tones. The primary tone was the start of audio, and we used to use a secondary tone to send it on to fast forward, and in some instances fire the next cartridge player. Never used a cart that used the tertiary tone.

[@m4xwellmurd3r]

did Big Clive tell you to get one of those testers? haha

[@meandmyEV]

I was lucky enough to work as a board operator and weather announcer for a radio station when I was a teenager in the 80s so this really brings back memories! It doesn’t surprise me that many carts were blank. It was standard practice at our station to have an intern or low paid worker like me to blank out carts. The device to blank them out was just a huge magnet. You would just hold a button and swipe the cart around on the surface. I returned to radio in 2001 and by then all of the carts were gone and everything was digital, which was way more convenient but also not as much fun. It was a challenge to start those carts in a way to make the station sound tight.

[@LongLiveStopMotion2]

Can you start using that jingle you made for all of your video intros, and use the Kenny Lynn outro as your outro music? I really like that music and the woman saying good night.

[@BobBell808]

I'd like to add a little to the early history about the whole 4 track cartridge. My father was the lawyer for the Lear Jet Corporation back in the early 1960s. The original Muntz 4 track player, appealed to Bill Lear as a potential music system for his new Learjet he was building in Wichita, Ks. Dad and Bill were close friends and when he found out we were going to take a trip to Mexico in the Summer of 1962, (or 1963), he installed in our car a new prototype 4-track player based on the Muntz Stereo-Pak. We had a handful of tapes which mostly sounded like elevator music. I can vividly recall how amazing that stereo sounded in the car. I still remember that trip for two reasons: I became terribly sick while we were in Mexico City with what I found out, decades later, was hepatitis A and the incredible sound of listening to the 4-track stereo in our convertible. I thought it was so cool to have this brand-new, high tech equipment in our car. After the trip the engineers from Lear Jet removed the prototype machine for evaluation. Soon after Bill developed the 8-track cartridge system. I remember seeing one of first 8-track machines during a visit to his headquarters. It wasn't that many years later when I had an 8-track player stereo in my bedroom and, when I learned to drive, an 8-track in my car. It was really neat to have front row seat to the development of this mainstay of music entertainment technology