Our Very First Broadcast
Here’s a blast from the past: the logs from our very first day on the air!
Picture it, Huntington Beach, November 20, 1972. 4:00 p.m.
KOCE begins its very first program: The Electric Company, two seconds late.
What you’re looking at above is a log kept by the operator on duty that fateful early evening. We love how reading his notes provides some insight as to what he was thinking. In the left column, for example, you’ll notice that Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was supposed to start at 4:30 p.m. It started 18 seconds late and subsequently he cut the following promo from the schedule, presumably to get the programming back on track.
And while we don’t keep handwritten logs any more, we still track all of this information; we just do it the same way people do everything else nowadays: computers.
Using a computer program, our lovely broadcasting folks schedule everything that will go out over the air: programming, interstitials, underwriting spots, etc.; and the start and length durations for each element. Essentially this amounts to creating a playlist, which is exported to automation. After a day’s programming concludes they receive an “as run” log, which is reconciled against the “as planned” log (the playlist).
These logs provide us with detailed and accurate information about what we broadcast on any given day.
Fun Fact: See how our colleagues back in the '70s were tracking programming up to the second? We can now track it to the frame!
And last but certainly not least, enjoy “The Menu Song”—a scene from The Electric Company. Yes, that is absolutely Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno you’re watching. They both starred in all six seasons of the show.
