ContactOde to The Cart Machine
"Play, Sec Cue, Fast, Stop, Play, Fast, Sec Cue, Stop ..."
The Cart Machine
NAB Cart Tape (1959)
We have a thing about cart machines and have amended this really delightful insight into the history of the heavy metal monsters that are responsible for playing so many jingles over the last half a century:
Introduced in 1959 by Collins Radio in the States, the cart tape format was designed for use by radio broadcasters to play commercials, jingles and announcements.
Cart Machines were not a consumer format! 8-track cartridges, though similar in size, will not play in a cart machine. In fact, the carts more resemble the early Muntz 4 track stereo cartridges where the pinch roller resides in the machine and not in the cartridge. Note also that the cart tape format offers better fidelity than the laterto follow 8 track cartridge, owing to it's wider track pitch & 7.5 ips (inches per second) speed.
Prior to the cart, commercials and jingles were often recorded on open reels, which always necessitated manual threading and cueing... both time consuming processes that were prone to operator errors and resulting mis-cues.
Mis-cues often resulted in the dreaded "Dead Air" and almost always in a pissed off client demanding a free re-airing of his commercial without it being "butchered".
Though no one in the broadcast industry will openly admit it, the ONLY reason for programming, is to entice people to listen or watch the commercials that ultimately pay for the business. All programming including the news, weather, trael, sport, comedy's, talk shows, phone ins and music etc are simply there to fill in the black holes between the ads. In the radio industry, it was the cart and whatever advertising they could sell to play on it that ultimately determined the success or failure of a radio station.
The time consuming threading/cueing process of open reel audio tapes, meant that usually a technical director was required to deal with such mundane tasks to free the DJ/Talk host to do what he does best, thus necessitating at least two personnel to pull off even a simple broadcast. With the advent of the cart machine, even a DJ/Radio presenter working alone on a Sunday morning for example, could do it all - especially in small markets where the budget for a technical director was simply out of the question.
Thus, in most cases, the burden of playing the proper commercial/bumper without mis-cueing, rested with the DJ/Radio personality. Like an answer from Heaven itself, the cart tape solved all those issues, by eliminating those two time consuming and error prone steps. Now a DJ merely "popped" a cartridge into the machine which would cue itself to the exact starting point and he'd simply hit "start".
The entire operation was now 'virtually' idiot proof. Then for the next 30 or 60 seconds, all the jock had to do was to either "cue up" other carts, answer the phone, read the paper, figure out what to say next or reflect on the meaning of life!
Many Cart recorders did not have full erase heads, necessitating the use of a bulk eraser, should the tapes be targeted for "re-cycling" for other uses. Some cart bulk erasers also incorporated "splice finder" logic, to aid in quickly locating the endless loop splice, which by default, was usually always the cue point.
In general, cart machines were built like tanks... (They had to be - as they were in constant use 24/7).
Because of the high mechanical reliability and audio quality demanded by broadcasters, the cart machines were not cheap... averaging £1000 per player and $2500 for a player/recorder (Note: and that was in 1980's pounds!)
Though still in use today, most stations have switched over to computerized digital technology for day to day operations.
But even the computerised playout systems have some for of 'cart rack'
as part of the program.
RIP - Cart machine, 1959 - c.1998.
This text was amended thanks to the website Videointerchange.
