THIS IS A RECORDING

posted by James Reel

    We have a shortage of relief announcers here at KUAT-FM, or at least a shortage of relief announcers willing to work on holidays, when we full-timers could actually use some relief. Hey, my first two shifts as a relief announcer here in 1976 were Christmas Eve and Christmas afternoon; that’s the sort of scheduling you sign up for when you’re a fill-in employee. But these days we just can’t seem to find qualified people who’ll take the undesirable shifts. So afternoon guy David Harrington and I are putting in some extra hours over the Thanksgiving break, in exchange for either money or comp time to be taken at a later date.
    Unlike David, I managed to get Thanksgiving Day itself off, but I agreed, besides working today, which is a university holiday, to come in Sunday morning as well. Then I had a brilliant idea: Why not record the entire shift ahead of time, and have it played back automatically, the way we do the concert programs in the evening? All the music and my announcements will be stored in hour-long chunks on a computer hard drive, and the computer will be programmed to play the various elements back on a particular schedule. I had to take a crash course in modern computerized audio editing—I haven’t done this sort of thing since the days of razor blades and splicing tape—but the process isn’t difficult, once you get the blasted permissions to save the blasted files where they belong. Ah, computer security; access would probably have been easier if I were a hacker rather than a staffer.
    Anyway, if you hear me when you wake up on Sunday morning, don’t panic and think that it’s Monday already. And don’t bother to call me here at KUAT, because I won’t be here, even though my voice will be. If you have a question about the music, wait until the next guy comes in at 11. Enjoy the weekend; I plan to.