I'll go out on a limb and suggest the whole thing is a prank.  Keep in mind the release date of this doc.

I listened to the first 10 minutes and it just sounded too "professional" and with the levels just right and everything nicely compressed to be recorded in some guy's house on a cassette deck.  Especially the audio that purported to be in a car.  Likewise, dubbing all those cassettes when he was up to 30ish listeners a day would have been a killer task.

I'm thinking the audio version of the 1957 spaghetti harvest.  There just seems to be something a bit askew about the whole thing.  It was nicely done, though.
 

Last edited by Peter the K (April 2, 2017 12:51 am)

Hello. My name is Mark Talbot, I am the creator of 'Second Side Up'. I wished to respond to each contributor to this
post individually, but regrettably find that I can't reply that way, so please excuse the length of this correspondence
as it addresses all concerned, in one 'hit' : that's why its so long! Thank you.

 Hi Radioactive.  I chanced upon Sowny.net  by accident and after having read the posts that you instigated, decided to respond so as to clarify some of the points that were raised.  To start at the beginning, I am indeed the narrator on that 'pretty weird documentary', and appreciate your turn of phrase because, as the Producers said, 'Second Side Up is a unique part of Media History with regards to its format and duration'. Consequently, you weren't the first person to raise an eyebrow at the whole concept of the project. The shows origins actually date back earlier than what you quoted (1974) to 1967, when I was aged ten. I was simply fascinated at the idea that you could capture sound, and so recorded birdsong and pop music, and through my love for the latter, quickly developed a longing to present it.  A small listenership was already established in 1974, one that grew gradually larger throughout that decade, and meantime my output had broadened somewhat, in that, aside of presenting the music (requests, etc) I also began including OBU's (outside broadcasts), and SSU became the long established 'Magazine Programme' that it was then,
and is now known for. The audience grew year on year throughout the 1980's and although I had around 40 regular listeners, it must be borne in mind that three-quarters of them only had a copy of the show once a week, or a fortnight., and that the majority had copies of the same programme, which was  mastered on reel-to-reel and then dubbed off onto 90 or 120 minute cassette tapes. Once heard, they simply posted the tape back with a list of requests. Second Side Up was retired around 2003/4, but went through a renaissance in 2011, after which it was shelved again with only an occasional one being created when particular friends and fans of my 'old ways and yesterdays' put the thumbscrews on me! With regards. Mark Talbot. London. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Hi Splunge. Its Mark Talbot from 'The Second Side Up Cassette Radio Show'. I wished to respond to the comments that you posted on 02/04/2017. 'A vision from long ago' ? This might be open to all manner of interpretation but if I'm correct, and based on what else you wrote, you are reflecting upon what became of radio output over the decades? I quite agree with what you concluded. To begin with, the fact that corporations, such as the BBC, now seek to contract academics and alike, and to no longer employ in-house trained staff that rise through the ranks to become whatever might be their chosen pursuit. I did actually become a Broadcaster/Researcher for the BBC in the late 1980's, and the early signs of the way things were going, and have become, were even apparent back then. This was all put down to modernising and streamlining of  the corporation, whereas in reality, it was a cost-cutting venture for the most part, instigated by non-media personnel, such as accountants. Up until the mid 1990's (or likely earlier), the BBC, in this instance, relied on its long-serving, purpose-trained staff to produce its output, and they were rightly applauded as being among the best at their craft in the world. Those that were the cream-of -the-crop got what they rightly deserved with promotion, etc, and this applied equally to those 'On-Air' as well. However, as you rightly say, '[color=#333333] the corps, and even the indies, are looking for people they can mold into their vision based on format.'. This was the coming of the 'New' Media Age, where everyone [/color]had to conform to some given corporate identity. The days of  the Kenny Everette's were long gone.  [color=#333333]Please trust that I am being sincere in that, what I have expressed here is merely observation, and [/color]is in no way sponsored by any form of bitterness or alike. Yes, I did work for the BBC for a time, but not in my preferred capacity. I was more of a reporter than anything else, whereas I courted the aspiration of simply hosting my own show on one of the local stations. When I did apply to the BBC [color=#333333]via [/color][color=#333333]audition tapes in the early 1990'[/color]s (after leaving them) I was told that my work was 'very good', but that I sounded 'too commercial', and that they thought that I'd be better off applying to the ILR/Independent Local Radio networks. I was somehow never that enamoured by the prospect and so concentrated on the next best thing - Second Side Up. With Regards. Mark Talbot. London. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Hi Peter The K.  Its Mark Talbot from 'The Second Side Up Cassette Radio Show'. I wished to respond to the comments that you posted on 02/04/2017.  Ref 'I'll go out on a limb and suggest the whole thing is a prank.' No one was pulling your leg! It was a genuine biographical account and the air-date was purely coincidental. Trust that the BBC would never devote thirty minutes of prime time listening (9pm on a Saturday evening) to something that was some form of April Fools Day entertainment. It wouldn't be deemed as 'Proper!'. You mention that you listened to the first 10 minutes and thought it just sounded too "professional".Well thank you very-very much, for it only confirms that I did manage to achieve what I set out to do, namely that of producing a professional, studio-standard radio show on cassette tape.You might appreciate knowing the following facts and details.*Most of the equipment used to produce the show was all high-end/audiophile Sony equipment.*The SSU (Second Side Up) excerpts used on the BBC broadcast were not the original copies,  that is, not the master tapes - they weren't available. They were second, third, and in some instances, even fourth generation dubs... that is, the segments that were heard were often copied from tape-to-tape several times. Here is an example of how this would come about :  1) I would do an OBU = an Outside Broadcast. This would involve taking a portable professional, field-report machine to   record the desired links between the music (that would be mixed down later back at the studio). This then was the narrative and in this case, the first tape recording.   2) Back home I'd take the desired soundbites and dub them between the music tracks, more usually mastered onto reel-to-reel at 7.5 or 15ips. This was then a second generation tape.   3) The completed 90 or 120 minute show would then be transferred back onto cassette for my audience to hear. This was the third dubbing.   4) I still had a couple of hundred copies of my old shows on cassette tapes (I recorded 1000s) and it was these that the BBC wanted copies of, and so I transferred them - recorded them copies, onto cassette tapes = this was effectively the fourth dubbing, and the majority of the BBC Bx is made up of such material.
 So as you'll see, when you say it was 'professional', that is so, because I was fastidious about standards - all standards, not only technically, but everything to do with the creation of the prog.  You assumed that the BBC Bx was suspect because 'The levels (are) just right and everything (too) nicely compressed to be recorded in some guy's house on a cassette deck.' Well allow me to explain this a little. The fidelity of my recordings is as described above, but what you fail to consider is the work done on those recording by the BBC. They are experts at it!Yes, of course its compressed - that's the preferred way the majority of such establishments like to do things these days, but that being the case, even from the mid 1970's I used to use some of the worlds best 'limiter' circuits (to avoid clipping, signal overload and tape saturation) and microphone attenuators (variable filter type) when in noisy environments, so compression is nothing new. And do remember, the Bx was a digitized rendition, which enabled all manner of technical wizardry to be performed during the (re-)production to bring the best out of the tapes.   =12px...Which neatly leads on to your comment ' Too professional', especially the audio that purported to be in a car.'=12pxThe fact is it was, and in 'cars' and a van as it happens... recall the exhaust scenario -as described by old school pal Steve (then a Royal Marine) as we shouted above that ear-bashing racket. If you listen again you'll hear me even mention that... 'I'm going to switch (from-20db) to a Normal DB attenuation but its gonna get awfully noisy on here'. And yes. I was using a compression limiter at the same time. That was back in 1981, the same week that my conversation with my sister, Alison, was recorded in the 'Sloop Inn'. Around ten years later I recorded Cynthia, my then partner, as we trundled through Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire in her Triumph Acclaim car.=12pxThe recordings are authentic and actually, on a technical point, it'd be next to impossible and far =12pxharder to create those recordings in a sound studio, using a backing track and a script!All the soundbites were subsequently mastered on a Sony TC-153SD Cassette-corder. =12pxAnd finally...  'Likewise, dubbing all those cassettes when he was up to 30ish listeners a day would have been a killer task.' =12pxNot so. Firstly, my audience didn't number 30-ish, but between 40-50, and more on a couple of occasions, that included a number that were abroad. No single listener ever listened to a new edition of the show on a daily basis. It was weekly or fortnightly as a standard. The majority of listeners received a multi-dubbed copy that was mastered on reel-to-reel and then transferred onto cassette. It was no pain to do either, as I had at least a dozen cassette decks at any one time=12pxand frequently knocked out 3-4 copies in one sitting, ie, I could easily make 4 x C90s in 90 mins. I did do bespoke editions of SSU, - that's individual shows for particular listeners, especially if they sent me reams of requests, but overall this format accounted for a select few people mostly. =12pxWhat was a 'killer task', to coin your expression, was the creation, maintenance and updating of the music library which consisted of 1000 C90 cassette tapes containing some 30,000 tracks of music. I even had recordings going back to the 1890's. A bit eccentric? May be, or just a passion. What was a pain was keeping the indexing system up to scratch. The archive was indexed by both artist and title separately... but that's another story. =12pxWith regards. =12pxMark Talbot. London.

Splunge wrote: "the broadcast schools don''t teach creativity or individuality any more, they want grads to conform to set parameters. it's kinda sad that way.  the corps and even the indies are looking for people they can mold into their vision based on format." 
Splunge - you and I have had severe differing opinions in the past and today is yet another example.  Have you ever audited a broadcast class anywhere recently?  I doubt it.  I have been a part time professor at Seneca@York for 9 years and the one thing that all the professors at Seneca there do (and I'm sure at Humber as well) is promote individual creativity.  I sometimes have to push students to go out of their comfort zone with assignments.  'Think outside of the box', I tell them.  Don't mimic what you hear on the radio today, use your creativity and create something better, something unique...something that stands out.  Those are the students that will become the next generation of GREAT communicators...because personality radio is not dead...YET.  Tarzan Dan in Calgary is no cookie cookie communicator.  He's unique, yet he follows the station format and still stands out.  TD would fit on any format and still be unique communicator.  There are many examples of this across the country.  

Do you even listen to the radio?   I do and I'm quite encouraged for the future, especially by the calibre of broadcast students coming up.   

SPLUNGE THEN WROTE:  "further, i have to ask why there are no substantive Canadian archives dedicated to airchecks, news items, interviews, or whatever to preserve them for historical purposes."
Don't know where YOU'VE been for the past decade or so, but have you never heard of rockradioscrapbook.ca? 
It's a free site created by Dale Patterson, who originally launched SOWNY oh so very long ago.  Dale has Canadian and American airchecks, jingles, newscasts, historic montages, radio stories etc.  Dale's been working on this site for well over a decade.  I often play my students airchecks from there all the time.  

I'm also the chairman of the non-profit Canadian Broadcast Museum Foundation, which collects and preserves radio and television archives (both CBC and private broadcasters).  The CBMF has been doing its thing successfully since 2001.  

So as you can see, there's lots going on 'out here in radio land'.  You just need to pay attention.

As for Mark Talbot's 'Second Side Up', I listened to a sampling (and intend to listen to a whole lot more) and was VERY impressed.  As someone who also loved audio and radio at 10 years old, I applaud what he's accomplished.  

Last edited by Doug Thompson (May 20, 2017 4:49 pm)

Hello Splunge.

'As for Mark Talbot's 'Second Side Up', I listened to a sampling (and intend to listen to a whole lot more) and was VERY impressed.  As someone who also loved audio and radio at 10 years old, I applaud what he's accomplished.'

Thank you for your comments, they are very much appreciated.

Ahhh Mark, that wasn't Splunge who made those comments above, that was me.  I was that 10 year old kid who fell in love with radio and audio.  I made it to Toronto radio by the time I was 18 and have continually worked in the industry.  I write and direct television documentaries these days, but that's really only radio with pictures.  
I enjoyed your work and wish you the best.

Doug Thompson 

Last edited by Doug Thompson (May 21, 2017 9:01 am)