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Last week, My Number One And Only Son Zach and I attended a "Bring Your HT Night!", a special how-to-get-on-the-air presentation for new hams sponsored by the
East Greenbrush Amateur Radio Association. It was through this group that Zach took his technician class amateur radio examination and subsequently became KC2VWY.
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While at the meeting, another new ham, and one whose name I am sorry to say I did not catch, approached me and thanked me for years of late night radio entertainment that I had provided over a local broadcast outlet. This new amateur radio operator was now a retired State University of New York policeman and was referring to a program that I had done in the 1980's variously entitled "The All Night Scene" and "East Of Midnight" which aired via
WROW here in Albany. For about six years, I got away with a lot of my own creative programming because station management simply did not regard late night radio in the same way they coveted their morning and afternoon drive time broadcast real estate.
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In a way, The All Night Scene was a precursor to the much shorter Random Access Thought program that is currently heard by way of
TWAUDIO and
This Week In Amateur Radio so many of the sound effects, music cues, voice clips and quirky writing and program development styles were transferred directly.
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Working in radio oft times means doing more than one assigned shift and many extra duties and one of those was occasionally board-opping
New York Yankee Baseball games. I am not a sports fan as such but I did enjoy running the games because in those days
Phil Rizutto was one of the game announcers who always made for enjoyable and certainly unpredictable listening. My air shift was something like 10 to 6AM, so the summer months guaranteed quite a few games. Each night as I would tool in to work, I would occasionally hear something subliminal on the air that only a fellow WROW staff member might detect if they were listening.
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Because baseball games are played outside and most stadiums are not enclosed, the threat of rain and thunderstorms is a factor which may induce a delay or result in cancellation. So in the studio, we had a special
broadcast tape cartridge or "cart" with a seventy second recording of ambient low level crowd noise that had been lifted from the Yankee feed prior to a game. On this same recording, there was also some distant organ music playing and this aspect is important.
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This cart could be used if a rain delay came up and the play-by-play was interrupted and everyone stopped talking, which was not unusual. Likewise, if for any reason, there was a loss of audio from the Yankee feed, at least the board-op would have another minute to decide whether to go back to regular programming.
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On the drive into work each night, I would often hear that distant organ music playing in the background. Announcer Joe Condon was mixing the rain delay effects with the real time crowd noise, largely for his own amusement. So of course, I continued doing the same into my air shift but I decided to take this theory several steps further. Over the course of a few weeks, I began to integrate other effects, such as the low turbofan whine of an approaching commercial airliner, the rattletrap sounds of elevated trains and classic castle thunder, which would begin to rumble in if the discussion of rain delays came up. For a split second, the sound of a high power Winchester rifle came to mind. But this was a family show. For me, the New York Yankees Baseball broadcast became an experiment in real time audio production.
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Great care was taken to keep these sweetening elements including the rain delay recording at extremely low levels, usually on the order of minus 30 to 50dB. Over the air, these added elements would flawlessly wander in and out, wrapping around the real time audio. And to be sure, certain sounds would be dropped if the home team were playing in a competitor's arena. Unless I had personal knowledge of the proximity of an airport or an above ground rail system, these effects would be sidelined.
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I kept up this shtick for several months until one evening music director Jim Gagliardi frantically called me at home to advise that Bill Patrick, our esteemed program director, had just received a serious complaint from a listener. The caller accused WROW of programming subliminal program content into the Yankee broadcasts. He spent a lot of time traveling as part of his job and was also a big Yankee fan. Because he listened A LOT, the caller became aware of the enhancements but most specifically the organ music. The listener was smart enough to do an A -B comparison between WROW in Albany and WABC in New York City and could hear the difference. This fella couldn't figure out what the music meant but he knew it had to be something sinister. Bill Patrick found himself bewildered and annoyed, then asked around but no one was talking.
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Jimmy scrambled and scooped up all the incriminating recordings and hid them deep within the bowels of his office which was not hard to do since Jim was a big time desk clutter guy. There was no free space to found so no incriminating evidence could be found. Fortunately Bill regarded the complainer as a nerd, a word which he liked a lot. But since this was the early 1980's, "nerd" was synonymous with "jerk".
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For the rest of the season, the New York Yankees played without benefit of sweetening and so was quite dull by comparison. The various transportation and weather effects were permanently laid to rest but I had made copies of the rain delay tape with the organ music and so on occasion...on occasion, it would be possible to hear something subliminal in
Adirondack Red Wings Hockey broadcasts heard nightly over WROW AM 590.
I made mention over on Facebook that I had been experimenting with laugh tracks and that just for the fun of it, I would be adding some of those sort of enhancements to future Random Access Thoughts, Files and the myriad promotional announcements(such as PODCARD/QSL/TWITTER announcements) generated for playback on TWAUDIO and This Week in Amateur Radio.The subject is not only one of the eclectic aspects of audio post production, but certainly one of the most interesting. So herewith, a compact list of bookmarks on the history and current state of the laugh track.
