Re: [ARSCLIST] "Aircheck" history

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi David:

You bring up an interesting point because ALL tuners from ye olde days drifted somewhat -- be it 
enough to notice within an hour air-check or not. But the original services were somewhat 
labor-intensive: keep the tuner tuned, change a disk every 15-20 minutes, etc. Once 7.5IPS tape came 
along, it got to be less labor intensive. I'm surprised a place that was changing disks anyway 
wouldn't keep the tuner working. They must have been going by meters and not listening (happened 
more frequently than you'd ever want to imagine -- including in disk mastering).

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, February 10, 2006 12:38 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] "Aircheck" history


> Tom Fine wrote:
>
> > Thanks for all the research Rod! And others too. This is fascinating. I wondered why so many big
> > band performances were captured in air-checks, but I think I now know -- the transcriptions were
> > made by and/or for the sponsors, who would generally sponsor an entire program. Studios in NYC 
> > that
> > did a lot of commercial work often offered air-check service, which was recording from a tuner in
> > the control room to a professional quality tape or disk.
>
> Or in the case of Melotone Studios, a tuner that nobody bothered to check and which drifted 
> constantly.
> I've heard some ghastly work from them, on a series of airchecks of Nelson Eddy programs which 
> someone
> paid the studio to record (in the days before home tape recorders).
>
> Sometimes a client or publisher would order up an aircheck of only one song, possibly as proof of
> publication (?). In one famous case, a songwriter was given a copy of a broadcast of her song, 
> played as
> a favor by an orchestra leader she knew, and the aircheck was given to a fellow named Dorsey. Ruth 
> Lowe,
> Percy Faith, "I'll Never Smile Again". The disc still exists.
>
> dl