Aircheck

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In the radio industry, an aircheck is generally a demonstration recording, often intended to show off the talent of an announcer or radio programmer to a prospective future employer. A scoped aircheck usually contains only segments where the announcer is actually talking. An unscoped aircheck is simply where all programming is left intact and unedited, including music, commercials, newscasts, jingles and other on-air events.

If airchecks were made at a radio station, they can be recorded directly off the air (from a tuner or modulation monitor), from the pre-air feed that goes into the transmitter (which usually has been modified by the station's processing), or directly from the on-air console before the station's processing has been applied.

Some radio stations used "logger reels" for airchecks. On these large reels of tape would be recorded the air signal at super-slow speeds. These reels were kept by the station for protection purposes, such as to prove that all commercials ran as logged or that the station aired no inappropriate content. After a time, these logger reels would be reused or discarded.

Many airchecks are made by the announcers themselves on a recorder that begins recording when the mic is turned on and then goes into pause when the mic goes off. In the '60s and '70s reels of tape were used for these "skimmer" airchecs. Later it was cassettes. Today many stations use minidiscs, recordable CDs or computers for aircheck creation.

DJs use airchecks to critique themselves, sometimes with the Program Director listening along with them to provide suggestions for improvements. Announcers keep some of their airchecks as "audio snapshots" of their career.

Airchecks are also recorded at radio stations to send to clients to show how their live commercials, remote breaks or contests sounded.

Some airchecks of older radio programs are highly prized by collectors, due to their nostalgia value. For example, "baby boomers" often enjoy listening to airchecks recorded from "Top 40" radio stations in the 1960s and 1970s, particularly if they are airchecks of the same stations that the person listened to when they were a teenager or young adult. Another class of aircheck has to do with transitions between formats, where recordings are made of the final hours of an old format or early beginnings of a new format.

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