A radio automation timeline
This timeline/bibliography gathers some primary sources relevant to the history of automation in American broadcast radio, including cultural works that depicted or responded to radio automation. If you know of something that belongs in this list, I’d love to hear about it: andykstuhl@gmail.com
| 1953 |
Russell Tinkham, the Midwest District Manager for Ampex, presents at the NARTB engineering conference and explains the company’s technique for automatic programming in radio stations using 25 Hz tones. Conference paper via University of Maryland Libraries |
| 1954 |
Broadcasting · Telecasting reports on the Vandivere Automatic Sequencer, writing, “The age of automation—that art of worker-less factories which has industrial management crackling these days—is coming close to broadcasting.” |
| 1955 |
Ampex prepares a tape reel with short musical selections interspersed by 25 Hz cue tones to demonstrate their automatic programming system. |
| 1955 |
“Automation Steals the Show”: Earl B. Abrams reports on the 1955 NARTB convention, highlighting Ampex/Tinkham. He notes the connection between automation and remote transmitter control and mentions Paul Schafer, who would build his first automation system the following year and go on to play a large role in popularizing both technologies. |
| 1956 |
Edgar Vandivere explains his automatic programming approach using multiple cue frequencies to trigger different functions. |
| 1957 |
Ampex measures automation uptake: “The responses to a mail survey of 2735 broadcast and television stations were analyzed to determine the extent to which tape recording is presently used in routine broadcasting.” |
| 1958 |
Muzak announces their plans to release the “Muzak Radiomation Programming System” that will combine “fully automatic radio station operation with up to 24 hour-a-day musical programming.” |
| 1958 |
The Muzak Radiomation Programming System becomes Programatic Broadcasting Service and readies for commercial release in 1959. |
| 1960 |
Paul Schafer produces an in-depth demonstration and advertisement of the Schafer 1200 automation system, dubbed “Sylvia” in the video. |
| 1961 |
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) and automation service International Good Music (IGM) announce a re-education fund to support radio engineers displaced by automation. |
| 1966 |
In a panel on automation at the NAB engineering conference, IGM’s Lee Facto argues that station owners should approach automation with “the idea that they want to get more control, management control. They can’t control their disc jockeys. They are always playing the wrong kind of music. Getting this kind of control is a very valuable thing and automation can do this for you.” Conference paper via University of Maryland Libraries |
| 1973 |
In American Graffiti, set in 1962, famous rock & roll DJ Wolfman Jack plays a station technician tasked with loading pre-recorded tapes of Wolfman Jack into a cartridge player. |
| 1976 |
Station WCFL, owned by the Chicago Federation of Labor, abandons its rock format in favor of an automated beautiful music package from TM Productions. |
| 1977 |
Max Neuhaus performs Radio Net, an ambitious live radio artwork using National Public Radio’s phone line distribution system and custom automatic devices to recieve and mix whistling sounds from callers. |
| 1977 |
JoAnn Roe Burkhart, of automation service IGM, surveys and celebrates automation use: “The key word mentioned by top programmers using automation is ‘creative,’ the difference between dead and live sound from the machinery.” |
| 1978 |
Mark Ford, a sound engineer for automation service Drake-Chenault, produces a montage of every number 1 single between 1955 and 1978 as part of Drake-Chenault’s special feature “The History of Rock n Roll.” |
| 1978 |
Broadcast Engineering runs a cover feature on radio automation (including a very incomplete timeline-to-date). |
| 1980 |
For TV station KPIX in San Francisco, announcer David McElhatton leads a five-part series on the state of the industry and devotes the final part to automation. |
| 1980 |
A plotline in WKRP in Cincinnati hinges on the revelation that a competing station is automated. |
| 1982 |
Former DJ and music director April Feld writes in Billboard that the radio industry “has aligned itself with the machine, with the numbers, with the consultants and their research, and in doing so has created a melee of boring sounds and boorish disk jockeys.” |
| 1984 |
Lance Leupold surveys a range of microcomputer applications in automated radio and proposes a design for an automation system that could use computer resources for more creative musical programming. Thesis via University of Minnesota Libraries |
| 1991 |
In Radio World, Alan Freeman lays out some of the technical considerations for radio automation with hard-drive audio storage that he had navigated in programming the Digital DJ automation software for The Management. |
| 1992 |
The CBS program “48 Hours” documents the format switch at WIBU in Poynette, WI, from locally-oriented polka music to a Satellite Music Service feed using Digital DJ. |
| 1994 |
The Simpsons airs a joke about the “DJ 3000” automation system replacing radio personalities. |
| 2002 |
Fred Gleason, working as an engineer for Salem Radio Network, begins development on Rivendell, a free and open source radio automation suite. |
| 2002 |
Wobbly (a.k.a. Jon Leidecker) uses samples from promotional recordings for automation service Broadcast Programming International as interstitial tracks on an album. |
| 2005 |
Radio and automation entrepreneur Dave Scott retires shortly after selling Scott Studios to California-based ad technology company dMarc. Google will acquire dMarc in 2006. |
| 2008 |
Jeff Shaw of KDRT-LP Davis authors a handbook on practical radio automation for small, volunteer-run stations through the anti-corporate Prometheus Radio Project. |
| 2008 |
Product Manager William Irvin presents Google Radio Automation, a “third-generation” successor to Scott Studios products, on the NAB convention floor. |
| 2009 |
Google pulls out of the broadcast radio market, selling its automation software to WideOrbit and shifting its focus to streaming audio. |
| 2018 |
Anna Friz and Emmanuel Madan release the final version of their radio/transmission artwork The Joy Channel. It depicts technological capture by corporations and sabotage by radio amateurs in a dystopian future. |
| 2021 |
Radio engineer Todd Edwards restores a late-1970s automation system in his home. |
| 2022 |
My radio artwork 25 Hz intersperses recordings from radio automation and sound art history with re-sonified cue tones. |