1980s radio studio recreated for ABC TV Show Frayed
25 November 2021 · News · Technology News
John Maizels takes on the challenge to recreate an old radio studio for the ABC.
The brief: build a 1980s country radio studio for a segment in a comedy/drama series.
What come...
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During the '80s I was hosting talk back shows on 2GB in Sydney and John's recreated studio brings back a lot of memories. The digital world has certainly made things a lot easier for presenters, but we did have a lot of fun in those days! It was even more basic back in the '60s when talkback first came in and I was working with John Pearce on 2GB hitting a gong to cue network stations to rejoin the main broadcast!
Barry Eaton RadioOutThere.com
In the last photo was a ROLA reel-to-reel taperecorder.
It is highly likely that the ROLA machine was made in Australia along with other magnetically-related items such as ROLA loudspeakers. Open any Australian-made consumer electronic items such as a TV, radio or stereogram, it was likely that the loudspeakers were made by ROLA.
ROLA was spawned by the British ROLA company which originated in the US.
Sources:
http://waywiser.fas.harvard.edu/people/8658/rola-company
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/British_Rola
https://www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_hersteller_detail.cfm?company_id=7922
Interestingly, RME panels were made in Australia by RME which was owned by WESGO (2WS, 2GO). They had plans to export their panels to the world particularly Asia and the US,
source: https://www.afr.com/companies/wesgo-to-expand-radio-equipment-manufacture-19871119-k2if2.
It appears that RME has been sold to an overseas interest whose focus is from panels to interfacing audio information to and from networks and computers. There is little evidence of Australia's beginnings,
source: https://www.rme-audio.de/company.html
Thank you,
Anthony of researching and exciting Belfield
Sadly, I didn't see the comments above for 18 months.
Barry Eaton: the gear in this studio would have been in use in the 80s. The Soundcraft desk probably wasn't released until the early 90s, but it was close enough. The AWA BAC-1 definitely was around at that time, but on last legs since most stations would have upgraded to RME, PKE or other desks made to support AM Stereo (and maybe FM...).
Anthony: that Rola was definitely made in Melbourne (they all were, as far as I know) and was ex-ABC who had squilliions of them. Ironic, given that (anecdotally) the ABC was responsible for Max Byer being forced out and selling to Rola after the ABC returned an overly large number of the red 77-Mk1 machines post 1956 Olympics. Byer was a genius, changing our thoughts about form-meets-function to create a product that should have been world-dominant. We also had a number of other Australian manufacturers with unique and wonderful product: eg Commonwealth Electronics (turntables) and MBE (unique pickup arms and cartridges, designed specifically for broadcast work).
Another driver of development in Australia was Graham Thirkell, who was at Rola (and Plessey, when they took over the business). Graham was responsible for early cart machines produced for the 68 Expo, then the CT80 series that were another mainstay of the local industry. And, of course, Cuemaster, without whom the Australian industry would have had to import a lot more lower-quality cartridge machine product from the US, and who took over the 77 lineage from Plessey.
The explosion of mono-to-stereo conversions driven by upgrade to AM Stereo triggered birth of RME, and a number of other also late-lamented makers of consoles - mostly all good electronically, and some good operationally but equally some downright poorly thought through and hazardous.
Thanks for the links. I think the German RME might be unrelated (but impossible to tell from their website). The AFR story still exists, but you have to be a subscriber... and I'm not. The link throws a 404, but search engines find the article if you use the keywords "WESGO TO EXPAND RADIO EQUIPMENT MANUFACTURE".
The Radiomuseum link is particularly (if incompletely) informative, and gives the background on the transition of Rola from assembler to manufacturer. The Byer "takeover" date meshes with the post-Olympics stories that I've been told.