STOP THIS PARADIGM SHIFT, I WANNA GET OFF!
I've been thinking
about the number of times in the last few years that we've seen a complete new
technology that has come along and shaken up the familiar. A statement like that demands an example. Let's take microphones: there was a time
when, if you wanted a high-quality microphone for broadcast or recording work,
it would be a velocity microphone with a ribbon inside. Something along the lines
of a 77DX or even a Model 44.
Mics for rugged applications would always be dynamic. Then along came the condenser mic, in large
element configurations for high-end work (Neumann and AKG, among others), and
low-cost electret versions (e.g. Sony) for portable use. This led to the almost instant demise of the
ribbon mic, primarily because the ribbons were always fragile (ask anyone who
has ever blown into a ribbon mic), while the large element condensers seem to
take a lot of abuse and retain their original specs. But the high cost of the condenser mics meant
that there was still market room for the dynamics.
Something snapped a
few years ago, however. Several new mic
manufacturers came on the scene (Connaught Labs, and later, Rode), and whether
through new manufacturing processes, or aggressive marketing, they drove down
the price of the big condenser mics dramatically. In an interesting marketing move, AKG
introduced a bunch of new condensers at low prices, while keeping their traditional lines at the old prices. And cost-cutters like Behringer appeared, and
now nobody seems to know what anything is worth in the mic field. Ribbon models are long gone, and now maybe
the dynamics are headed in the same direction.
Who can tell?
Another example would
be in video camera technology. From
image orthicon to vidicon to plumbicon, each generation was a further
refinement in camera tube technology, each building on prior experience with
camera tubes. Then along came the CCD,
and ten years later, they don't even make plumbicons anymore.
In 1975, every
newsroom had a Model 26 Teletype, soon to be replaced by an Extel printer
(first application I ever saw of the Intel 4004 processor), receiving
five-level Baudot code via 20mA current loop from the local CNCP
Telecommunications office. (Talk about
obsolescence--every noun in the last sentence except for "newsroom"
is a thing of the past!) Of course the
teletype printed everything that came over the wire, and each printer used up a
jumbo roll of newsprint (and a couple of ribbons) every day or so. Incredible waste! Every couple of months, the newsroom would
press all hands into lugging the next truckload of teletype rolls up into the
newsroom.
Well, we did the best
we could, without PC's and hard drives, with our
From tubes to
transistors to VLSI, from carts to hard drives, from the telecine chain and the
film gate to the latest server, by way of quad-head and helical VCRs and a
bewildering variety of tape formats, we've embraced and later discarded more
disparate technologies than we can shake a stick at. And what are we left with: a microphone, a
chunk of cat 5e cable and an IP address.
And a
transmitter.
For the
moment.
The struggle to
remain relevant, in an age when every teenager has his own radio station on
iPod in his shirt pocket, and a home PC can store, edit and forward a week's
worth of video (with or without the commercials), is the eight-hundred-pound
gorilla that the programming department needs to take on and wrestle to the
floor.
The way to remain
sane, in engineering, is to recognize that, whether we're talking about radio
or television, it's all about the programming.
It always has been.
And as station
engineers, it's our job to provide the interface between the creative force of
the programming department and the now-almost-constant paradigm shifts wrought
by evolving technology. To absorb the jolts of change and translate them into symbols that
a programmer can (perhaps) understand.
May we live in
interesting times!