Geff King said:
> On the Muzak thread - perhaps Mike Woods will weigh in on this one, as
> rumour has it he actually used to *work* for the Evil Ones...
It's true.
I'd have chimed in earlier, but I'm in digest mode these days.
I had a summer job with the Washington DC Muzak franchise back about 1970.
I was the Credit Manager. This is a big title for someone who calls up
the folks who are behind in the payments.
I'll tell you how things worked back then, but it's probably changed by
now.
There was a room with a bank of about six tape machines with 15 inch
reels. These started and stopped automatically. I'm not sure how they
were controlled -- this was long before there was a computer on every
desk. For fifteen minutes one tape would roll -- this was the "office"
program. Then it would stop and another would roll -- the "factory"
program. Muzak's theory was that it was most effective as an efficiency
tool if it was on for fifteen, off for fifteen. There were different song
selections for clerical and industrial applications. Most of our
customers, though, were restaurants and office building lobbies, and they
wanted background music all the time.
The music was broadcast over one of the local radio stations, using a
sideband or subcarrier or something technical like that. Every customer
had a radio receiver.
They were billed so much for the receiver, so much for each amplifier, and
so much for each speaker.
The account cards for each customer indicated the equipment they had, the
price for each piece, the total monthly billing, and the amount that went
to ASCAP and BMI. The bigger portion went to ASCAP. We used account
cards and typewriters then -- computers were beyond the grasp of small
business.
Every week we'd receive a shipment of tapes with this week's program.
We'd use a set of tapes for a week and then ship them to the next
franchisee.
We got a typewritten list of the program, with scheduled times, with the
tapes. That made possible some office games of "Name that Tune."
Sometimes customers would call in asking to know what song had just
played. I worked in the tape room and had my own private volume control.
I'd scan the day's program every morning looking for the two or three good
cuts they had so I'd know when to turn up the jams and have a boogie
moment. I remember I liked their version of "Vehicle," and there were a
few others that rocked pretty well. A few. Their engineers as a policy
trimmed out a lot of the low frequencies, so there was no way to have the
bass punch you in the gut.
And that's just about everything I know about Muzak!
-- Mike Woods
