A bit or radio news nostalgia

[brwagenblast]

From the 1980s and earlier most radio stations had a Teletype somewhere in the station. In addition to providing the latest news, countless DJs and newspeople had ink-stained hands from having to change the ribbon.

WRNJ/Hackettstown still has a working machine in their lobby. For those who remember the days of the Teletype here's a nostalgic sound: http://shouts.at/RsJ

 

[Bill790]

I hated changing the ribbons on those things!

 

[FredLeonard]

I really miss the smell of teletype paper in newsrooms.

Actually, major stations had teletypes from the 1930s and almost all stations had at least one after World War II. AP was more thorough but the radio wire copy often sounded like newspaper copy. UPI was more broadcast-friendly. AP gave radio and TV people by-lines on state stories (which a lot of people got off on).

And nobody has come up with a computer-era expression to replace "rip and read."

 

[landtuna]

That's a slow one. You need to upgrade to an ASR-33.

 

[TheBigA]

They went to dot-matrix printers at one point, probably in the late 80s, and it was a huge improvement for the noise level in the newsroom. We actually built a sound-proof box at one station to hold the old teletype. Other stations kept them in a closet. That's where the first station I worked at kept it. But by the 90s, stations moved more towards the "electronic newsroom. The goal was to incorporate the wire story in the word processor, so your re-write (hopefully you'd re-write the story, not just read what they gave you) took less time. There were several kinds of news writing software...I remember BASYS and a couple others. That's when rip & read went away.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

countless DJs and newspeople had ink-stained hands from having to change the ribbon.

I worked for a year at a station in a college town. The station was thin on revenue and the co-owner who was responsible for operations knew how to stretch a dollar. When typing copy, he would make two or three carbon copies. (This was before computers, before Xerox copy machines.) And rather than buy typewriter ribbons, he would put a teletype ribbon on his typewriter. Crank up the striking power to get through to the last carbon... and type away on a greasy, squishy ribbon (he would put a bit of 3-in-One oil on the ribbon to get the last bit of ink out) and you had some interesting copy to read from.

I have a lot of nostalgia flowing in my veins, but there are some things from the old days that I DON'T miss!!!

 

[sack]

One of the first jobs I had in radio was at a dinky station somewhere in Northern NJ ( I don't remember the calls, sorry). The teletype was at the end of a hallway and would type so hard that the machine would walk itself down the hall. You had to keep an eye on it because it would go so far as to unplug itself,, so part of the job was to keep the teletype from unplugging itself.

 

[hubcity]

And nobody has come up with a computer-era expression to replace "rip and read."

I'm partial to "view and spew" myself.

 

[kevtronics]

Some radio talk show hosts love to make paper rustling sounds on the mic in order to emphasize a news article they're reading from. But I have to wonder if they're handling an actual printout of the copy they're reading, or if the paper is just a prop, and they're actually reading it from their computer screen.

 

[joshzz]

Some radio talk show hosts love to make paper rustling sounds on the mic in order to emphasize a news article they're reading from. But I have to wonder if they're handling an actual printout of the copy they're reading, or if the paper is just a prop, and they're actually reading it from their computer screen.

Rush Limbaugh always does it too.

 

[FredLeonard]

Rush Limbaugh always does it too.

Maybe he uses paid paper rustlers.