March 2, 1981 – Zanesville, Ohio, USA
Larry Gober turned to his sales manager. “This is it. Another big step forward for WYZV radio.”
The sales manager had been working at the station a lot longer than Larry and he handled all the ad sales. The only person he managed was himself. “Yep, I guess we’re looking smack dab at the future,” he said to Larry.
They were both staring at the wall-sized Autoplay computer robot. It came with four reel-to-reel audio tape players and two metal decks stacked full of 8-track sized cassette tapes. One of the reel-to-reel players was spinning and the song being broadcast could be heard from speakers built into the Autoplay. The player and song stopped and a lever pushed one of the cassettes into a slot. A commercial for one of Zaneville’s car dealers played. Another cassette was pushed into a second slot. The station’s jingle played. Then another reel began to spin and the station was back to playing music.
“I’ve been watching this thing for a week and it still amazes me,” said Larry. “It all seems to work nice and smooth.”
“So what happens when nobody’s watching? That’s the big question,” said the sales manager.
“Were about to find out. I mean, that’s why I bought it in the first place,” said Larry.
“And you trust it?”
“It’s the future, whether I trust it or not.”
“I’m not sure what your old man would have thought of this,” said the sales manager. “He was all about spinning records and having DJs talking to people. This is kinda the opposite.”
Larry gave his sales manager an annoyed look. The sales manager had shown the same skepticism when Larry had made the move away from records. For the past year, they had been getting their music from a company based in Los Angeles. Every week, a new reel-to-reel tape arrived filled with the latest hits. There was no more worrying about which records were popular and where to get them. The people in California handled that much better than someone in Zanesville, Ohio ever could. Larry was still deciding what to do with the large record collection stored in the station’s backroom. Maybe they would have a massive record sale and raise some much-needed cash.
“Anything we have to do before we leave?” asked the sales manager, whose eyes were still on the Autoplay. “Any buttons to push to let it know it’s on its own?”
“Nope. We just walk away,” said Larry. “It’s set to shut the operation down at midnight.”
The sales manager sighed. “I guess a Monday night is the best time to try it. Even if the worst happens and you get a lot of dead air, Monday nights are pretty slow when it comes to listeners.”
“Yeah, don’t remind me,” said Larry.
They both backed away from the Autoplay and walked through the station’s main office. Larry turned off the overhead lights but he still had a view of the indicator bulbs shining from the Autoplay. He followed the sales manager out the front door and then locked it.
“See you in the morning,” the sales manager called. “I’m sure it’ll be okay.”
Larry got in his car, started the engine, and turned on the radio. It was tuned to WYZV and music was playing. No one was in the building and things were still working. So far, so good.
Owning and running a radio station was not Larry’s first choice for his life’s work. It was his dad’s pride and joy and Larry was supposed to go off and make his own name for himself. But then his dad died way too soon and Larry felt like he was stuck with the station.
WYZV had been stagnating, or even getting worse, for years. Larry decided that if he had to be in charge, he should at least try and pull in more listeners. More listeners meant more advertisers and higher ad rates. If Larry made the right moves, the station could do more than simply break even.
Larry had found kind of a mentor in nearby Columbus, Ohio. Columbus was a much bigger radio market than Zanesville, and his new friend, Saul, owned three Columbus stations. It was Saul who had pushed Larry to give up on records and switch to the Los Angeles tapes. They were supposed to attract a younger audience.
Larry readily admitted that Saul was right about the tapes. There was a new energy around WYZV. More teenagers seemed to be listening. It was cool to be tuned in. When Saul first told Larry about the Autoplay, of course he paid attention.
“The industry is changing fast and you have to keep up or go under,” Saul had said.
“Don’t you think people will always want their own local stations?” asked Larry hopefully.
“Sure, but you’ll need to be more efficient to compete. Ad dollars are going to get spread a lot thinner. You need to cut your biggest costs. What do you spend the most on?”
“Salaries. All the DJs,” replied Larry.
“Exactly. Autoplay can cut some of that cost. Rather than pay someone to flip switches and rotate cassettes, let Autoplay do it. It’s like in the Jetsons cartoon.”
“It really works like that?” asked Larry.
“It doesn’t make any mistakes like a human DJ does. C’mon, this is the space age. You have to keep up!”
Saul was fearless in a way Larry could only dream about.
Larry’s favorite part of the Autoplay pitch was the idea of getting rid of some of his DJs. Most of them were weird and annoying. They never cut their hair and they snickered to each other about Larry behind his back. They loved talking about their favorite bands and they considered the California tapes an assault on their freedom to choose music.
Larry knew he could not lose all the DJs. He needed some of them for the morning and daytime shows. That was when WYZV had most of its audience calling in and it was best to have some interaction with live people. He also needed a few DJs to voice the commercials that filled up the racks of cassettes.
Who Autoplay made obsolete were the DJs on the night and weekend shifts. They did not do much on-air talking and they also gave Larry the most trouble. All of them were barely out of high school and without any career ambitions. They treated the radio station as a place to hang out. Larry had caught all of them entertaining girlfriends or mobs of buddies while they were supposed to be on-air or paying attention to the tapes.
Larry had threatened to fire all of his night and weekend DJs at least once. He found it intensely satisfying when he called them together and announced that they were being replaced by the Autoplay.
“Where are we supposed to go?” one of them asked Larry obnoxiously.
Larry did his best to sound sympathetic when he said, “I’m sure there are a lot more opportunities out there for you. In the long run, you’ll end up thanking the Autoplay.”
In addition to the station, Larry had inherited some money from his father when he died. It took all $50,000 of his cash reserves to purchase and install the giant Autoplay computer robot. Larry did the cost calculations many times. If he no longer paid the expendable DJs, he could save $25,000 a year. The Autoplay would pay for itself in two years.
On the night of Autoplay’s first solo run, the road to Larry’s house was icy. Snow was falling and reflecting in his car’s headlights. He thought of the armchair in his living room. It sat right next to a heater vent. He would soon be there, mindlessly watching television.
Larry’s radio was still tuned to WYZV. Songs and commercials were transitioning smoothly. Then the singsong WYZV jingle played. After one second of silence, the jingle played again, then again. “WYZV. WYZV. WYZV.”
“What the . . .?” Larry pulled his car off the road and stopped. Maybe he was hearing some temporary glitch. If he gave it a minute, it might go away.
“WYZV. WYZV. WYZV.”
Something was stuck. This was worse than dead air. Anyone tuned in had to be laughing before changing the channel. Larry growled and turned his car around on the slick road. His frustration and anger grew as he got closer to the station.
“WYZV. WYZV. WYZV.”
The sound was like ice water dripping into Larry’s ears. He drove faster than he should have and did not stop until he had rolled up the sidewalk outside of the station’s office. He jumped from his car and ran to the door. He fumbled with the lock and then the lights. He raced over to hear, “WYZV. WYZV. WYZV,” coming from the Autoplay’s speaker.
Larry looked over the computer frantically. The technicians who had installed it had showed him how to cut the power, but that was supposed to be a last resort. Turning the machine back on might take hours or even days. The front panel had so many knobs and buttons. Larry thought he knew what they did but it was easier to think when your radio station was not melting down. He quickly inspected the reel-to-reels and then the cassette decks. Everything looked normal.
“WYZV. WYZV. WYZV,” kept playing.
Larry wanted to find the cassette with the jingle and rip it from the machine. He would find a hammer if it came to that. Before resorting to punching the deck, his eyes returned to the metal plate the technicians called the control panel. Maybe there was something unusual about it that he had not seen before.
One of the buttons on the panel had a green light above it that was blinking. He had seen that light before but it had not flashed so regularly. Maybe the new flashing pattern meant something? Maybe the button was important. If he pressed it, what did he have to lose? Could the result be any worse than hammering the cassette deck or cutting the power?
Larry took a deep breath and pushed the button. A lever in the cassette deck moved. The jingle stopped playing. The Autoplay seemed to take a deep breath of its own and then the wheels of a reel-to-reel player spun. One of Larry’s favorite new songs played through the speakers.
“Aha! Yes!” Larry shouted to himself. Then he pointed accusingly at the Autoplay. “You were supposed to run by yourself without any mistakes. You screwed up!”
Larry dropped into one of the office’s rolling chairs and growled at the computer despite the fact it was playing a favorite song. He reached for a phone and dialed Saul’s home number.
“Hey Larry. Something wrong? Why are you calling me at home?”
“The Autoplay screwed up. The first time I left it alone it got stuck playing our jingle over and over again. I almost had a heart attack running back in here. I saw this flashing green light and hit the button below it.”
“Oh yeah, the reset button,” said Saul, cutting Larry off.
“The reset button? No one told me about a reset button.”
“Sometimes the Autoplay gets stuck. You hit the reset to get it going again.”
“Why didn’t the installer guys tell me about it?” demanded Larry.
“Well it’s not supposed to happen so I don’t think they like advertising it. Kind of a downside to the whole thing.”
“Yeah, just a little,” Larry said sarcastically. “So when does it happen?”
“Hard to predict,” said Saul. “We get a reset about once a week, but you never know the day or the hour.”
“I wish you would have told me about this,” said Larry miserably.
“Ah, you just have to adapt,” said Saul. “I hire a minimum wage kid to babysit the machine. They watch the light and push the button if they need to.”
“I still need to have someone here? I thought the Autoplay was supposed to work on its own.”
“You don’t need DJs anymore,” said Saul encouragingly. “You can train a monkey to press a button if you want to.”
Larry sighed into the phone. “Anything else you forgot to tell me?”
“No, no. The things run great as long as the guys come out and keep them serviced and calibrated.”
“What guys?”
“The guys from Autoplay. I’ve got them coming out every six months.”
“How much is that going to cost me?” Larry asked in a voice like he had been kicked in the stomach.
“About $12,000 for the year. But they send out a whole team and the price includes any replacement parts they need.”
“You’re kidding me! I can’t believe you talked me into this. You must be getting a commission from Autoplay!”
“C’mon Larry. It’ll pay off in the long run. You gotta think five and ten years out.”
Larry hung up on Saul and found a calculator. He ran his salary calculations, substituting minimum wage employees for what he was paying his night and weekend DJs. If he added in the maintenance costs for the Autoplay, it came out to almost exactly $25,000 per year. He would not be saving any money after all!
Larry looked angrily at his new computer robot. It would not be paying for itself. It had moved in and taken over. The buttons, lights, and levers represented his entire inheritance.
Larry was not sure whether or not to leave the Autoplay by itself, but eventually hunger and depression got the best of him. He did not want to be anywhere near the station. He got in his car and switched off the radio. If the Autoplay got stuck again, he did not want to know about it, at least for one night.
He made it home safely, and after finding his armchair, Larry resigned himself to spending the next few days hiring high-school-aged button watchers. They would replace his more expensive, post-high-school DJs. At least he could look for kids who were less mouthy and weird. Then he thought of the shelves full of records in the backroom. Maybe that sale he was planning would pay for the Autoplay.
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