NAEB Newsletter (Apr 1952)

PUSH BUTTON RADIO RELAY IN MICHIGAN Flint, Michigan, will have one of the first twelve push-button radio stations in the nation when WAJL (FM) returns to the air this month under the auspices of the Uni¬ versity of Michigan. The station was given to the University on February 19 by an anonymous donor. The University Broadcasting Service has applied to the Federal Communications Commis¬ sion for permission to operate WAJL entirely by remote control from Ann Arbor. The commission is studying the request and a favorable answer 4 believed forthcoming in the very near future. Under the plans submitted by University engineers, the entire control of WAJL would be by micro-wave signals from the main studios in Ann Arbor. The University now operates WUOM, a UU,000 watt (ERP) FM station broadcasting on 91*7 megacycles. A special FM receiver installed at the WAJL transmitter will be tuned to WUOM's frequency. Leading off from this will be a sensitive chain of relay switches which can be tripped only by a supersonic tone signal coming over WUOM. When a WUOM engineer wants to put WAJL on the air, he will press a button, which will transmit the supersonic tone for a fraction of a second. In Flint, a relay will trip, power will flow into the WAJL transmitter, and the station will be on the air. At the Close of the broadcasting day, the station can be turned off the same way. According to F.C.C. secretary, T. J. Slowie, only eleven authorizations for remote control FM stations have been issued throughout the country. Some of these are not yet on the air. When the system is approved, station WAJL will carry the current schedule of Univer¬ sity of Michigan educational, sports and musical programs. The normal broadcasting day will begin at 12 noon and continue until 10:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. A segment of each day's schedule will be devoted to programs for daily classroom lis¬ tening in Michigan's rural schools. Several hundred rural schools already are using these shows and station WAJL will become a vital link in transmitting the series to new areas. Sport schedules and special events will be aired over the weekends. KUOM RECORDS FOR VOICE OF AMERICA KUOM staff members and station facilities were put to work for the Voice of America April h to help produce and record a musical salute from thp Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra to Florence, Italy. The program was a regular Minneapolis Symphony concert given at Northrop auditorium on the University of Minnesota campus. Chief Engineer Berton Holmberg and engineer Larry Larson tape-recorded the program while Northop Dawson, Jr., program-production director, assisted Walter Ducloux, VOA music chief, in production. The concert included an intermission program with short talks by Minneapolis' Mayor Eric Hoyer, Antal Dorati, orchestra conductor, Baron Carlo De Ferrariis Salzano, the Italian consul general from Chicago and several Italian-Americans. According to Ducloux, the aim of this music good will gesture is to demonstrate that America has a high quality of cultural as well as industrial production. "It's a kind of people-to-people diplomacy," he said. The tape will be sent to Florence for broadcasting and will be heard throughout Italy over Italian national radio facilities. The program is one in a series being worked out by the U.S. Department of State in which major orchestras of the country are saluting a number of important European centers.