Sunday, December 28, 2008

Downstream

So, how did you do on last week’s quiz? That’s great.

Not only did we have pen-and paper quizzes in the classroom, but there were hands-on quizzes in the lab workshops. Remember a few weeks ago the crazy camera movement quiz Propel had on the floor of the television studio? That counted as a quiz. And even if that activity wasn’t a graded quiz, the material learned from it would be possible topics for a later quiz. Of course, the camera movement game would not have been undertaken only for show – there would have been a reason for us participating in it. Aside from some strange fancy of Dr. Propel’s, that is.

All our quizzes came back to haunt us at the end of the semester. That’s when we students faced the dreaded “Final Exam.” I learned early in my freshman year to ask – if the instructor did not make it abundantly clear – if the final would be cumulative or not. If it was cumulative then everything from day one in the classroom was fair game for the test; it not, then we knew to focus on material since the last major test.

Dr. Propel smiled and said cumulative, as if that were a surprise. It wasn’t that bad because a few of us that were both in the class and put in time doing radio news or sports got together and pooled our resources. We put together a fairly comprehensive study guide of vocabulary terms and list questions (e.g. name two of the five FCC commissioners) to prepare ourselves. Of course this sort of thing worked great for the classroom final exam.

Not as much for the lab final, where we corralled into Studio 3 and waited our fate with Dr. Propel. He had us sit in a row of numbered chairs along one side of the room, though either the third or fourth chair had been pulled out into the center of the studio. We took our seats but were told not to get too comfortable as we’d be up moving around a lot during the next 90 minutes (the length of time designated for each final exam). There was little surprise when Dr. Propel explained he had another “fun” activity prepared and, just as before, we were supposed to be quick and on our toes when participating.

Our final would be to prove our mastery of the audio and video equipment by both operating it and answering questions about its role in the radio and television environment. When we began, the first student in the row was called forward; Propel then instructed everyone to move up a chair (this meant the person who originally, and reluctantly, took the third chair in the middle of the room was now against the wall in the second chair, and the person in the fourth chair now sat unhappily in the center of the room).

The first student was directed to follow Propel into the control room. There he was to cue a record on a turntable and identify its parts (e.g. motor, cartridge, etc.). He or she was then sent back to the studio and took a seat at the back of the row; the next person in line was called forward. This next person was asked to properly thread a reel-to-reel machine and record his or her voice. Then the following person had to operate the camera and zoom in on the person seated in the center of the studio. Another person had to record something to cart. Then the next person had to mix his or her voice with music from a CD and record this to a reel-to-reel. The subsequent person had to move the camera according to Propel’s instructions. And so on.

Those of us in the studio were always moving from one chair to another. Sometimes we were in our chairs for only a few second (Propel had asked something either relatively easy or the task at hand took very little time) or sometimes it felt like minutes crept by slowly. Through this cycle each student would be tested on some aspect of each equipment, though it differed for each person (discussing it afterward, another student and I discovered that while I had to mix my voice and music from a CD and record to cart, this other person had to mix voice and music from the turntable and record it on the reel-to-reel).

At any rate, I still remember to this day the one thing I faltered on. I was able to get through most everything without issue except for the downstream keyer. After doing something with the video switcher, I was asked the name of the last, or final, keyer in the switcher. I choked. I had no idea. The only reason why I remember the answer all these years later is because Dr. Propel began giving me non-verbal clues. It was like a bad game of charades: he sat in his chair and pretended he was casting a fishing line. My mind went blank, mostly as I tried to figure out what on earth he was doing. He then moved his fluttering hand away from him; this, I could only guess, was supposed to be a fish.

I finally said I didn’t know the answer.
“Downstream keyer,” came his answer.
“Fine, now what were you doing?”

The clue was that I had to cast the line “downstream” to catch a fish. I would not have guessed that in a hundred years. But such was the final exam (which I passed) and such was the final time I interacted with Dr. Propel.

And yes, we also had to spell potentiometer.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Downstream
(Morris Gould)
Irresistible Force
From the album Global Chillage
1995

Sunday, December 21, 2008

Newsbreak: You know you’re breaking my heart and you’re taking me down

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
Trade barriers among the Pacific Rim nations are coming down. Indonesian President Suharto says the leaders of the 18 Asian and Pacific nations gathered in his country for an economic summit have agreed to drop all trade barriers among themselves within the next twenty years. President Clinton was calling for the bigger industrial economies of the region to drop trade barriers by the year 2010 or earlier. Suharto said at the conclusion of the summit that human rights were not discussed.

Tropical storm Gordon is passing between Florida and Cuba as it heads for the Gulf of Mexico. Sustained winds are about 50 miles per hour and forecasters expect a lot more rain today. The storm hit Haiti over the weekend killing 100 people. Heavy rains yesterday disrupted telephone services, cut power to more than 200-thousand people, and force the space shuttle Atlantis to land in California.

Showers today with highs only in the 70s; cloudy and humid tonight with lows in the 50s. Currently it’s 66 degrees.

That’s the news for this morning. Today is either Tuesday or Thursday and we’ve had to deal with the bothersome Bob and the Big Dog or laidback Mike and James.

About midway through the semester the news staff was asked by our director, Troy Meadows, to take our scripts into the newsroom when we were done. The idea was to allow the next newsreader to see what was used the previous hour and then “update” anything for the next hour. Apparently, for me to have all my scripts, I did not follow this practice, or I did and managed to still retrieve them a day or two later. I tend to think I just kept the scripts because nothing I read would ever need updated. All my stories were international and probably of little interest to those listening. I don’t think I ever met who did the news after me, either; on Mondays I was out the door to class and on T-days I usually wanted to get into Propel’s class a few minutes early.

Why? Probably to look over the last notes we took to prepare for a quiz. Yeah, we’d probably had at least one quiz a week, sometimes one on both Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Now it’s your turn.

Take out two sheets of paper...it’s time for a quiz.
  1. Define broadcasting. [Sowing of seeds by scattering them over a wide field.]
  2. The pulling apart of thinning of vibrating air molecules, creating low pressure or partial vacuum? [Rarefaction.]
  3. The changing of energy from one form into another? [Transduction.]
  4. Anything that interferes with the communication of the signal from the source to the receiver? [Noise.]
  5. The height of a sound wave? [Amplitude.]
  6. A contest is a lottery if it involves what? [Chance, consideration, and prize.]
  7. Monaural literally means? [One ear.]
  8. The sound source coming closer to the microphone and increase of bass response? [Proximity effect.]
  9. Substance or device through which a signal is channeled? [Medium.]
  10. What controls the output level for each channel? [Potentiometer.]
  11. Which pick-up pattern is the most directional? [Hyper-cardioid.]
  12. The scale to measure the relative loudness of amplified sound, where 0 is used as a reference level for the proper audio output level? [Volume Unit meter.]
  13. What is the phone number of the FCC? [202-418-0200.]
  14. One of the biggest problems with carts and/or cart machines? [Don’t cue automatically.]
  15. What wave-form is a representation of the original signal? [Analog.]
  16. SESAC stands for what? [The Society of European State Authors and Composers.]
  17. The 3-pin cable and connectors used in audio? [XLR.]
  18. The laser in a compact disc player uses what substance? [Gallium arsenide.]
  19. Plug-in connector are also known as? [Jacks.]
  20. In Communication 136, if you had no absences you would enter the penalty area on which tardy? [Your eighth.]
  21. What is the variable electromagnetic field which affects the particles on a recording tape, thereby recording or erasing information? [Flux.]
  22. What is the address of the FCC? [1919 M Street, N.W., Washington D.C. 20554.]
  23. Which is vertically propagated? [AM Radio.]
  24. The Chairman of the FCC? [Reed Hundt.]
  25. What is the most common format of non-commercial radio stations? Second most common? [Classical. Religious.]
  26. How many classes of AM radio stations are there? [Four.]
  27. Radio stations are licensed for how many years? [Seven.]
  28. The process by which radio waves weaken as they travel through space? [Attenuation.]
  29. The FCC wants DJs to know what? [Know how to give/receive EBS test, perform station identification, read meters.]
  30. Announcing songs already played on the air is what? [Back selling. Come on!]
Time's up!

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Question
(Rick Johnson/Tony Pomilla)
Temper Scarlet
From the album The Crayon King
1996

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Newsbreak: Reach Around Rodeo Clowns

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
Senator Phil Gramm said Sunday he would file this week as a Republican candidate in the 1996 Presidential election. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Gramm said he would file papers with the Federal Election Committee this week to “put the legal structure in place,” although he does not expect to announce his candidacy until March.

OJ Simpson’s lead attorney Robert Shapiro is looking for ways to personally cash in on the media frenzy over Simpson. NewsWeek reported in its November 21 edition that Shapiro obtained a powerful Hollywood agent to field book and television offers. It later quoted the agent Ed Hookstratten as saying he sounding out writers to ghost write a book for Shapiro.

The English Channel tunnel – Chunnel – is open for trains now. Hundreds of people left Paris, London, and Brussels today in high speed trains that ride the rails of Chunnel. Round trip prices range from 152-to-311 dollars. The Paris to London trip is about three hours.

Cloudy this morning with scattered thunderstorms later today, highs in the upper 70s; the rain continues into the night with lows in the 50s. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 66 degrees.

After the Tuesday and Thursday morning newscasts there was just enough time to eat a cereal bar for breakfast, find the latest edition of the Screed, and head upstairs for 90 minutes of Dr. Propel’s class. Unlike M-days when my mornings were stacked with classes, T-days consisted of only two classes that were hours apart from each other.

Something called College Mathematics was my only other T-day class, held from 2-3:30 in one of the many similarly-named Academic Classroom Buildings (this one being dubbed ACB4). The instructor was the stereotypical college “prof,” an older, heavyset man with wispy gray hair and glasses who wore sports coats and vests but never ties. He went by the handle Dr. Cornelius Kirk – and yes, the pretentious phrase “by the handle” was very much the way he talked. But due to Dr. Kirk’s maturity and seniority, many students perpetuated a nickname they had been passed down from previous years: Captain. Therefore I had Captain Kirk for college math.

(I was actually surprised that midway through the semester that some of the smart alecs in class, two of whom I eventually likened to beavers, actually started calling Kirk “Captain.” This was a no-no. First off, throughout the semester Kirk corrected any student addressing him with a title other than “doctor.” He wasn’t Mr. Kirk, he was Dr. Kirk and had the degrees, the dissertations, and the domineering personality to back it up [he only used the first two examples in his clarification]. Secondly, it didn’t take much to irritate Kirk and after the third or fourth “Captain,” and the laughter and giggles that naturally followed, he peered over his glasses and pointed a pudgy finger toward the back corner. In no certain terms he told them to knock it off.)

Kirk’s class was essentially a cheaper, no-thrills version of the two algebra classes I had taken in high school. Most of the topics Kirk touched upon were familiar, though we had not gone into the same level of detail in high school; however many of the students had apparently not had a math class in a number of years and were constantly asking questions, often time about some of the simplest concepts. Like graphing a line. If anything stands out all these years later about Kirk’s class it’s that no one seemed to know how to graph a line. I won’t pretend to be an expert about algebraic equations – neither now, in Kirk’s class, or even in high school – but I thought this was one of the fundamental basics that everyone could muster. I was wrong.

The only other thing that stands out is Kirk’s penchant for ridiculous phrases (such as “by the handle”); hands down the one he used the most was “workhorse equation.” About midway through the semester we began a long, strung-out unit on matrices after, I assumed, Kirk gave up on everyone’s inability to graph lines. I forget the details but there was some basic expression that we all needed to know that would help us out later down the line. Weeks later, after we had flown by the easy lessons and were dealing with matrix addition, multiplication, transposition, or something, Kirk reminded us of this “workhorse equation” as the one that would solve all our problems. This “workhorse equation” was referenced frequently, with Kirk’s unabashed enthusiasm for it another target for the beavers.

I must have given the two class clowns the nickname “the beavers” when I failed to think of another animal to degrade. They were older than most other students, probably in their late-20s, and not at all a fan of Captain Kirk. One reminded me at the time as a possible beatnik: slicked-back black hair, pointy facial features like a jutted chin and sharp nose, and very outside-the-norm dress. Both lived for aggravating Kirk to no end, either by mocking his mannerisms, cracking jokes, or making him repeat something that he’d already discussed repeatedly. After going on about the rules of matrix multiplication for twenty minutes, one beaver would casually ask, “So you can't multiply a 2x3 and a 4x1 matrix?” An infuriated Kirk glared in their direction and barked back that “For the nth time – no! – I've said you can't do it!”

Even though the beavers irritated him Kirk was generally well-disposed with all the students and would go to great lengths to help them understand the topic at hand. While commendable, this generally led to extensive and drawn-out discussions that more often than not made Kirk forget what his original point was.

Besides the beavers, the only other student I remember all these years later was one I dubbed the Waddler. He waddled through the door and then waddled to the far side of the room, all the while that song by Dion played in mind with the lyric “he waddles around an’ around an’ around....”

Thankfully, this was the only math class I had in college and after this semester I never saw either the beavers or Captain Kirk again. However in my later years as an undergrad I did sort of miss courses like this – those with non-Communication majors. After seeing the same people day-in and day-out it was a nice change to see a bunch of students with different majors all taking a core class.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Beaver
(Quentin Jones/Wendell Jones)
Reach Around Rodeo Clowns
From the album Whip It Out
1997

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Newsbreak: Twenty-four Seven

Good morning...it’s 7 o’clock and this is an FM 89.3 newsbreak:
Tom Foley lost twice election night: he lost his post as Speaker of the House, but it got worse when he conceded defeat to GOP newcomer George Nethercutt. Foley, a 15-term congressman, becomes the first speaker to lose re-election since the Civil War. Even if Foley had won had won his election in Washington State, the Republicans would still control the House, making Georgia Representative Newt Gingrich the pick for the speaker’s chair.

Today Jordan’s King Hussein makes his first public visit to Israel. His trip makes him only the second Arab leader to visit in full view of the world. The king will exchange ratified copies of the Israeli-Jordan peace treaty at a cultural center today with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

Partly cloudy skies today with highs in the upper 60s; fair and cool tonight with a low near 44. Currently, at 7:02, it’s 50 degrees.

I’ll be honest: a few weeks dealing with Dr. Propel felt more like months. And months after the school year started it felt like a lifetime of reading, writing, listening, viewing, and being quizzed in Dr. Propel’s introductory class had flown by and I was more than ready for his class to end. Whatever happed in his class – anything discussed, anything written on the board, anything viewed on the monitor, anything hands-on we did in the introductory lab course – was fair game for what Dr. Propel lovingly called the “regurgitation.” This was, of course, the dreaded end-of-the-semester final test. And don’t think for a minute the test, much less this guy’s regular pop quizzes, were restricted to broadcasting.

What was one of the first things driven into our head far back at the start of the semester? Ah, yes: Dr. Propel’s office location and telephone number. This was not the sort of “memorization” that I had expected in college. Honestly the concept of office hours was new to me, as high school teachers had a designated classroom that served as an oversized make-shift office when needed. Not so here. Every instructor had his or her own office whose size and shape correlated to his or her position in the department. In short, the new guy got the three-sided room under the stairs and the head of the department got the spacious area with coffee maker and “secret” entrances.

The actual occasion when the instructor would be found in the office was also something lost on me – I really didn’t care when Dr. So-and-so or Dr. Whosis would be in their office. I was not making plans to stop by. But office hours were something nearly every student clamored about, though I found this comical. Many students circled or highlighted the days and time on the syllabus. It went without saying that many never utilized these office hours until late in the semester when, to be fair, obtaining an A was all but impossible and coming in to schmooze with the teacher wasn’t earning either of them (the instructor or the student) any brown-nose points.

Anyway, Dr. Propel was in office 247. He repeatedly bragged he was the only radio/television instructor on the second floor (the rest of the offices belonging to print journalism instructors), though how and why he ended up where he did was never discussed or mentioned. By what can only be called pointless coincidence his phone extension was 1365.

The importance of all these numbers was lost as we students read the syllabus (and later watched Propel read the document in character. This was always a hoot, watching a fellow of infinite jest recite “serious” class rules in his nasally sing-song voice). With his trademark half-toothed grin, he eventually asked one session early in the semester if any of us caught on to what made his office and phone number special or unique. Our answer, in unison: no.

He couldn’t keep the secret any longer. You didn’t pronounce his office “two forty-seven,” you pronounced it “twenty-four seven” – as in twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, we got it. And from there it didn’t take us long to bridge the “three-hundred sixty-five days in one year” mantra that was abbreviated by his phone extension. Dr. Propel was ecstatic about this fact and his attempt to hide it from his students erupted in giddy fashion that day in class.

You see, this is one of those trivial moments from college...this, the correct spelling of potentiometer, the inane theme song of Mentos candy, and on and on....

- - - - - - - - - - - -
24/7
(Gerald B/T.J. Jackson/Taryll Jackson)
3T
From the album Brotherhood
1995