![]() CBS-TV stopped going "BONG" at the top-of-the-hour in the early 1980s, but CBS Radio has continued the hourly "BONG" ever since. (I was a big fan of the Mystery Theater in the 1970s, and dialed around late at night to hear numerous CBS Radio affiliates carrying Mystery Theater at various times). I'm glad that the top-of-hour "BONG" will remain! I first remembered hearing the "BONG" on CBS-TV in the mid-1960s, when I was about 5 years old, every weekday morning before "The Captain"! I then noticed it every hour on CBS-TV, and then later on CBS Radio. I suspect similar difficulties with distant landline-connected downlinks also delayed CBS and possibly other nets from eliminating such in-band signals for many years. (Many stations at the time had their 6 foot or bigger dishes with satellite receivers at their transmitter sites.) Mutual ultimately quieted the bee-doops by modifying the square-wave signal generators (which originally came from similar equipment used in the two-way radio industry) to send barely audible, but easily detected, sine-wave signals instead. The problem was that stations that received their net feed via landline from a receiver located somewhere else other than their studio would be out of luck. Signals like that, which were on all the networks in some form, were also used to alert stations about upcoming news bulletins.īack when Mutual first converted to satellite (25 years ago), there was talk of a plan to silence the "bee-doop" signals with inaudible, subchannel controlled relays at the sat receiver. ![]() No details on whether there were any "holdout" affiliates relying on the audible chirps either (considering networks, not affiliates, usually provided the StarGuide receivers), or if they were just included for nostalgic purposes, or perhaps for any affiliates staffed with live board operators.Īnother radio tech fixture gone off to wherever dead tech goes to die. But we'd have to find it hard to believe CBS was still using old-fashioned cart machines for these functions up until yesterday. Not much else came up in our search, so we're not sure exactly how true that is. The bongs were automatically sounded by a clock, but the chirps were manually hit. If the ad was nationwide there was an identical cartridge in each of the four machines. ![]() If there were split-ads that were heard in only part of the country there might be different ads in the machines on the same bank. They had a bank of three sets of four cart machines for the ads, one machine for each of four segments of the country. The chirp before the bong might start the jingle. The producer of the newscast who sits in the studio alongside of the newscaster had a toggle switch on the table to sound the chirp. It can be used by stations to switch equipment, but it actually was used in the network control room to start cartridge machines. Trying to find more history and details on the CBS News Radio chirp, we found a rather plain looking page called "S ome History of CBS," which provides the following: ![]() But with the advent of digital satellite feeds over the past 10 years or so, many of those tones have been replaced by contact closures, digital signals that basically perform the same purpose, but don't make any sounds on-air. It's the chirp cue tone just before it that's being retired.įor decades, local stations relied on the networks to send various tones in order to trigger various elements. In an apparent response to a listener's question, a few moments later, Scott tweeted:įor the record, the top of the hour "bong" or "boing" remains. In 140 characters or less, that's basically the story. NATIONWIDE - If you catch the top-of-hour news on WIBX/Utica, WTNY/Watertown, WHCU/Ithaca or any other CBS affiliate, you'll notice something missing today: those quick little "chirp" tones that had been part of the newscasts for more than three decades.Ĭ first learned about the change through one of the local radio personalities we're following on Twitter - who re-tweeted the message from WCBS afternoon anchor Steve Scott:Įnd of an era: Familiar chirp tone from CBS Radio goes away Monday after 30+ years. ![]()
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