Aircheck

Aircheck is the radio industry term for a recording that has dual meanings: a demonstration to show off the talent of an announcer or programmer to a prospective employer, and an archival record of content broadcast over-the-air made for legal archiving purposes. With evolving technology, the term came to be applied in the television industry as well. A scoped (short for "telescoped"—by analogy with pressing the ends of a hand-held telescope to reduce its size) 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. The term is also applied by some to recordings made "off-the-air" by listeners, using consumer or semi-professional equipment. These airchecks became more common with the advent of commercial cassette recorders.

Aircheck is the radio industry term for a recording that has dual meanings: a demonstration to show off the talent of an announcer or programmer to a prospective employer, and an archival record of content broadcast over-the-air made for legal archiving purposes. With evolving technology, the term came to be applied in the television industry as well. A scoped (short for "telescoped"—by analogy with pressing the ends of a hand-held telescope to reduce its size) 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. The term is also applied by some to recordings made "off-the-air" by listeners, using consumer or semi-professional equipment. These airchecks became more common with the advent of commercial cassette recorders.

History

One of the oldest known surviving airchecks consists of a 15-minute broadcast by Bing Crosby on Los Angeles station KHJ and 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 at the National Archives. The recordings were made by RCA Victor at the request of rival network NBC, which apparently wanted to monitor the then-rising young singer. The sound of the recording suggests that it was made by placing an open microphone before a high-quality radio (a method known in the radio trade as a "mic-feed"). An example of the high quality of many of these archived broadcasts is a recording of Dan Taylor on 66 WNBC New York during the station's weekend "Time Machine" format from January 16, 1988, the final year of WNBC's existence as a radio station from Airchexx.com.

References

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1346733524 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.