How Were Relays Accomplished?

[vectorczar]

Greetings to the board,

Long-time OTR fan. I've recently taken to WWII news broadcasts (CBS World News Today, D-Day broadcasts, etc).

Question: How were relays from remote sites carried on the networks? For instance, in a D-Day broadcast, the program was carrying music from a ballroom in Roanoke, VA. How was the feed from Roanoke transmitted to New York City (or network headquarters) for rebroadcast?

Thanks,

czar

[Lou]

Early on, remotes from distant locations were handled via multiline telephone. The low-bandwidth phone audio was not tooooo different from the low bandwidth reproduction on many AM stations.

Other (non-musical) remotes were pre-recorded on Electronic Transcription disks. Music was a problem both because of the low fidelity / bandwidth, and some rules imposed on the Musician's Union.

As technology improved, some remotes were taped (thanks to Bing Crosby's effort to get open reel tape recorders accepted by the industry), and others were handled by short wave radio transmissions.

I'm going to guess the D-Day remote was carried by telephone.