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Saturday, June 09, 2007

Before Cue Tones

One of the engineering trades had an interesting article on digital splicing for local cable ad insertion. In the history section of the article it says: "Since the beginning of local advertising insertion, broadcasters indicated that an advertising avail was coming by broadcasting a series of in-band dual-tone multifrequency (DTMF) subcarrier audio cue tones."

Well if the author is just talking about cable insertion, well then he's correct. But the rag has the word "Broadcast" in its title, not cable, so I'd like to wax poetic about the first system of local ad insertion - GEC.

Yes, GEC - those three chimes that were sounded at the end of every NBC network radio program, telling the engineer at the local radio affiliate that his nap was over and he had cue the local announcer to read those local ads!

Posted by Techmanager at 1:50 PM
Categories: TV Engineering