Notes for satsignon.ogg

This is dubbed from the tape used for the Saturday sign-on
of WTBS, opening with Rock'n'Roll Memory Time.  The
show ran from 1960 to ????, and this tape was used from
about 1962 through 1964.

The announcer at that time was George Hippisley '62 (K2KIR) and
the board operator / platter spinner was Bob Clements '64 (now
K1BC, then W2TOX/K1YKB).  The theme was Wild Weekend.  George was
the original announcer for the show, starting in 1960, and Bob
was the engineer from about the third week of the show.  We both
passed it to others after spring term of 1964.


Interesting things about this tape:

    The time tone is 640 Hz, an homage to the on-campus AM
    frequency of 640 kHz.

    Behind the opening words, you can hear the infamous steam
    pipe that heats the Walker Memorial building, said pipe
    passing just above the ceiling of Studio A.

    George sounds a bit annoyed or frazzled reading the copy.
    That's because this was about the twentieth take.  In those
    days, we had no digital audio workstations.  It took us many
    takes to get the announcement to end, the time tone to be
    inserted and the music to hit the first sax note at the
    correct time, all manually.

    The tape says "the time is three PM".  Earlier, doing this
    live, it was read as "Eastern Standard" or "Eastern Daylight".
    We decided we weren't going to do two versions when we finally
    decided to just tape the sign-on.

There's more history of RnRMT available elsewhere.

Bob Clements, '64