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 (telescoped) aircheck usually contains only segments where the announcer is actually talking, along with a BIT of the music or commercial on either side. In an unscoped aircheck, all programming is left intact and unedited, including music, commercials, newscasts, jingles and other on-air events.

Another category of airchecks are those recorded "off-the-air" using consumer or semi-professional equipment. These airchecks became more common with the advent of radio-cassette recorders.

The oldest known aircheck may be of KHJ in Los Angeles and Bing Crosby on the CBS network from September 2, 1931. It was recorded by the RCA Victor company of Hollywood and is fully documented in the Victor files in the National Archive. The recordings were made at the insistence of NBC, which apparently wanted to monitor this rising young Crosby fellow. The sound is such that it's reasonable to conclude that the recording was made by placing an open microphone before a high-quality radio. This recording is available online at REELRADIO [1].

[edit] Methods

Airchecks 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 regulatory purposes (e.g. to provide an audio record that commercials ran as logged or to confirm aired content after allegations of 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 microphone is turned on and then goes into pause when the microphone goes off. In the '60s and '70s reels of tape were used for these "skimmer" airchecks. Later it was cassettes. Today many stations use minidiscs, recordable CDs or computer digital recordings for aircheck creation.

Airchecks made by listeners, generally with consumer-grade equipment, are often lost to poor quality copies made with tape machines that are not aligned to the recording machine. Many airchecks were made to record DX reception, which often included fading, static and interference.

[edit] Uses

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. Many such airchecks were made in the 1960s by DJs who then sent them to troops in Vietnam, and a surprising number have survived. 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.

More surprising numbers of airchecks have survived from listeners during the Top 40 era, many who recorded talented DJs to learn how to be DJs, and many who recorded Top 40 music because it was cheaper than buying the 45s.

[edit] For television

Airchecks are also used in the Television industry, mostly for billing purposes. An aircheck is the only accurate record of what aired on a TV station. Stations generally maintain airchecks for 1 year.

Generally, airchecks are recorded by the Master Control department of most TV stations, and are recorded on VHS. The standard is 3 8-hour tapes per day, one per each shift. On this tape contains the Video of the On-Air receiver at the station recording what actually broadcast, usually there is a time-of-day graphic superimposed over the video to keep track of what aired and when it aired.

In fact, local TV programs were not recorded until the early '70's, when video tape became available to consumers. One early reference of a television aircheck is The Real Don Steele TV Show [2], from KHJ-TV, Los Angeles, in The Real Don Steele Collection at REELRADIO.

[edit] References

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