Audio and Video News Services

Audio News Services

Audio news services appeared as effective means of analog sound recording made them possible. The earliest began in the 1950s as more and better reel-to-reel audio tape recording equipment became available, and as equipment prices dropped. The innovation of audio tape cartridges and cassettes in the 1960s and 1970s made the handling of sound recordings much easier for stations to use. Early automated radio station operations relied on such technology where music and advertisements could be preprogrammed, allowing occasional inserts of live news and other features.

Both United Press International (which was first, in 1958) and the Associated Press initiated audio services to serve their radio station subscribers with recorded hourly newscasts and sound actualities they could insert into their own news. Stations received a daily menu of recorded stories and features from which they could select. For the first time, even “local” radio news from smaller markets could feature a variety of audio features from across the country and around the world. Audio quality was a problem as the news agencies used telephone lines for distribution. AP Radio began in 1974 and became a 24-hour allnews operation two decades later. UPI Audio became the UPI Radio Network with extensive hourly feeds to local stations, but closed in 1999 as the parent agency began to wither.

Government agencies quickly joined what became an expanding audio services bandwagon. Many federal agencies maintain sources of sound bites and scripted reports for news media use (though others can also use them). The U.S. Department of the Interior, to cite one example, provides recordings concerning the national parks, as well as Native Americans. The Department of Education offers recorded reports on all aspects of primary and secondary education. Availability of such audio reports makes their use by broadcast stations more likely.

One type of specialized audio service that dates to the 1930s is the production and distribution of sound effects. While early stations and fledgling networks produced needed sounds in the studio (as in the network March of Time series), by the late 1930s, prerecorded sound effects of all types were coming on the market for use by radio journalists and others as needed. Indexed collections of 78-rpm discs provided almost any imaginable sound effect. Most were used in drama—news was more traditionally conceived by most radio broadcasters as using only sounds that might be actually present, and not added later on.

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