What Radio Broadcasting Taught Me About Recording

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My first job, and really the only time I have ever worked for
someone else, was in radio broadcasting. While in high school, I
started working as an engineer, on weekends, at WPEN, an AM/FM
station in Philadelphia. The station was founded in 1926 and the
studios where I worked were built by RCA in 1947. Little had
changed by the time I started there in 1966. The AM transmitter
site was several miles to the west of the city. It was one of the
first directional AM stations in the country, and that site was
built in 1936.


Back then, radio stations were operated by engineers, who were
the de facto producers of the radio program. The “air talent” did
not have any equipment in the studio except a microphone. The
engineer made the program flow by operating the microphone,
turntables, tape machines, and radio network sources. At least
that was how radio worked in major cities.


Back then, radio stations and recording studios were very
similar, both in equipment and facilities, and in the creative
dynamic. I was fortunate that WPEN was still practicing “old-time
radio” when I was there. The station had 13 engineers, 11 studios
and control rooms, and carried two national radio networks. The
largest studio occupied the entire first floor of the building
and was set up for a live audience. About ten years before I
started working there, that studio was where the predecessor of
American Bandstand originated, before it moved to TV. Now it was
the home to a live-audience talk show at night, which featured
top names in politics and entertainment.


During the broadcast day, programming originated from five
different studios, plus there were several well-equipped
production studios/control rooms used for recording commercials
and other program elements. One production studio had a
disc-cutting lathe, which is where I first learned how to cut
lacquer discs.


There were people working there that went back to the station’s
inception in 1926, and I tried to learn as much as I could from
these people who invented broadcasting.


I learned about working with talented people, both on staff and
as guests, and how to make an audio experience flow naturally to
provide the best experience for the listener. I also learned
about equipment maintenance, and how to construct reliable
equipment in-house.


This job also provided me with the income necessary to start my
own recording studio, which had always been my primary goal. But
working in radio back then was exciting, too. In this episode, I
talk about what I learned at WPEN, and how that experience helped
me learn the craft of recording.


email: dwfearn@dwfearn.com
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