Radio broadcast .. (1922-30)

FEBRUARY, 1927 DIAGNOSING AN INFERIORITY COMPLEX 391 the table lamps. Out of sight, out of mind, it is said. But for broadcasters there could hardly be a worse motto. Shows generally lead to it. Hence if they are wise, program managers will go easy on booking great spectacles; they breed grand flops on the air. Personal Note by the Author IN HIS scintillating radio column, which vies with the tabloid newspapers in amusing me on Saturday afternoons, Zeh Bouck implied recently that I was not educable, having been in radio eighteen years without showing signs of cultural eminence which would put me on a par with Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Upton Sinclair, and the M. Bouck himself. The observation is correct, but Mr. Bouck is wrong as to the cause. The fact is that recently I had my brain taken out and examined by a committee of distin- guished craniologists. Doubts had begun to assail me. The superb confidence which has enabled me to dominate door- openers, women (with exceptions), soda clerks, and radio announcers, began sud- denly to waver. I reflected that I was not yet a vice-president of something or other, that several of my classmates at the various institutions of learning from which I have been expelled now live on sweller streets than I do, that I do not possess a Minerva limousine like Bouck's, and have not been nominated for public office. With this inferiority complex gnawing at my lights and liver, I was impelled to have my brain thoroughly tested. Placed in a Riehle machine, it withstood a tension of 24,000 pounds before the frontal lobe broke off. Holes were drilled in the remaining section and the borings analyzed. The quality was found to be much better than that of street-sweepings or orange peel. "A good brain," was the report of the doctors. "It compares favorably with the bean of a radio columnist. All it needs is a little re-rivetting. This done, you will be competent to teach chiroprac- tic, pretzel varnishing, or broadcasting." What, then, is wrong? The blame must be cast on radio itself. The harrowing experiences of trying to eliminate static, reading a bug at thirty words a minute, answering the questions of friends whose receivers are out of order, and keeping cockroaches out of the condenser trans- mitters—such are the real reasons why I am uneducable. I have been beaten over the head too much; my ears, inured to watts and watts pouring from loud speak- ers, are no longer sensitive to the still, small voice of learning; my eyes, dazzled daily by studio luminaries like Mary Pickford, Queen Marie of Roumania, and the Hon. Norman Brokenshire, can no longer perceive twelve-point type; nor have I the patience to track knowledge, what with split sentence change-overs and modern pauseless programs. I'm a martyr and it is unseemly for my friend Bouck to jibe at me. Anyway, am I so dumb? I have, after all, sense enough left to cadge some free advertising in the eminent journal adorned by the great mocker every week, into whose columns I could break my way, otherwise, only by committing a murder, marrying a lady of sixteen or sixty, or turning Mohammedan. Technical Operation of Broadcast- ing Stations 14. Studio-Field Change-overs THE broadcast listeners hear a "change-over" as the transition from a studio program to one picked up in the field, or vice-versa. One an- nouncer is heard to stop talking, and the other takes up the new program. To the broadcast operator the "change-over" involves a switching operation. There are a number of ways, differing both in program effect and technical methods, of swinging a change-over. The discussion here will deal principally with the technical aspects. Fig. i shows a simple layout for affecting change-over operations between field and studio. The studio microphone, M s , feeds its own amplifier, A, the output of which is connected to the first of succeeding stages of amplification leading up to the modulators. A line amplifier, A L , similar to the studio amplifier, but taking its input from a wire line, has its plate tied to that of the studio amplifier, so that the output of either amplifier goes to the modulators. At the far end of the line there is a microphone M f , a remote control amplifier of from two to six stages, and auxiliary equipment. The object of the field amplifier is to permit riding over line noise, but the audio energy reaching the station is, as a result, much in excess of the output of the studio microphone, so that an artificial line or "pad" is required ahead of the station equipment to cut down the level coming in on the line to the necessary degree. Switching facilities are also re- quired, so that any one of a number of pairs may be connected to the line ampli- fier stage in the control, but these are re- presented in Fig. i merely by a double-pole double-throw switch between the line and 'RECENTLY i HAD MY BRAIN TAKEN OUT AND EXAMINED'