[GreenKeys] broadcast 28s

[John Beckman]

Charles, I was around model 28s in the broadcast biz for forty years. 
The small radio stations used United Press because it was cheaper that 
Associated Press. The first radio station I worked at ( WTYC, a thousand 
watt daytimer in the back of a hotel) was so small (how small was it?) 
that there was no room for the TTY except in the toilet.  I made $25 a 
week and had a day off every two weeks. After my Saturday off, when I 
would go in on Sunday mornings of course the damned machine had jammed 
around midnight and the toilet was filled with chewed up teletype 
paper.  At sign on  we did a  five  minute newscast, so when the jammed 
machine gave me no copy I'd run out into the hotel lobby and snatch a 
news paper for material to fill those five minutes.

At WSB-TV they had at least five 28s in a row in the news dept - all the 
news sources including Reuters and others I'm not familiar with, and in 
an adjacent room WSB radio had duplicate machines because there was no 
interchange between the radio and tv personnel.

In my weather office at WSB-TV I had four 28s. NOAA weather wire, an 
interoffice wire between WSFOs for forecaster discussions when every 
town had a weather "bureau," one from the Severe Weather forecasters in 
Boulder, and one from FAA. At one time they built a "box" for them to 
hold down the noise because sometimes we broadcast during severe weather 
from the forecast room. All those wonderful 28s were replaced by little 
ticky-tick light weights in the 70s. I wish I had been in RTTY at the 
time - I would have taken them all home with me. When I got into RTTY I 
had to go through Bell Public Relations to get an almost new 28ASR, 
which I  lost custody of in a divorce.

The little printers still used 5 level code (because the weather lines 
were still Baudot) but they had a "Datacap, Inc. Model 2853 " plastic 
box interface with ribbon cable from it to the printers.

In all those years I never saw a model 33 in a broadcast environment. I 
retired from the biz in 1995 so I suspect everything is satellite driven 
today.

John, W4BTX