Let me introduce you to an old friend, the MD. And in this case, MD does NOT stand for Medical Doctor, but MiniDisc, a device for quick recording of audio tracks. Once upon a time, MDs were the new best friends of radio news departments. Now, the few of us who still use them can’t wait to see them go. And it won’t be long.
The farewell opera for the MiniDisc is written in two acts. The first act is courtesy of Sony, the creator of the format in the early 1990s. Sony hoped MDs would bump audio CDs off center stage, but the format never really caught on with consumers, a whole lot like what happened with the Beta videotape format: professionals loved it, amateurs were unimpressed.
So Sony announced a few years ago that it would no longer make or sell the MiniDisc players, effective in the second half of 2013. Few tears were shed. When you think about all of the ways computers and smartphones have been improved to do nearly everything we require of electronics, no device that requires detachable media really has a place in today’s world.
The second act of the opera is written here at JPR. We recently shifted over to a new central computer system to store all of our audio—at least the stuff that isn’t live. And one of the features of the WireReady system is its ability to take the place of the MiniDiscs.
There’s no wistful goodbye. MDs were loved by reporters and newscasters when they arrived, because they removed the need for messing with piles of cassette tapes for field recording, and giant reel-to-reel tapes for studio recording.
And they do have their merits: MiniDiscs record digitally like the bigger audio CDs, you can move the tracks around on the disc in a different order, and they don’t snap and stretch like tapes.
But they do get snagged. Oh, do they get snagged. We have lost much productive work time because the little darlings go IN to their playback machines easily, but sometimes refuse to come OUT.
Broadcasters are inventive people... deadline pressure requires us to think fast. So most of our MiniDisc players are surrounded by paper clips in various stages of bent-ness. Because when you hit EJECT and the disc stays put, the paper clip becomes a handy pry-bar, and can often be the device that makes the difference between a freed disc and a missed newscast.
That’s one technique. The other is to have ANOTHER disc handy, to shove into the door on the playback deck upon EJECT, fooling it into releasing the original disc. You really have to perform these maneuvers with the microphones turned off, because the process usually includes a few swear words.
It’s easier to laugh about the incidents now, because we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Also because years of experience in broadcast news have given many of us priceless tales of equipment issues and failures...everything from the time a classical piece on record got stuck because someone left a coffee cup next to the tone arm, to the days when we stuck pieces of paper into reel-to-reel tape recorders to mark the places where interviewees said interesting things... when the piece of paper came out on rewind, you knew you’d found your place.
I’m struck by how much things change in our business. Digital audio recorders don’t even have moving parts these days, and you can transfer a 20-minute interview from a field recorder to a computer for editing in seconds.
But the more things change, the more they stay the same. A cliché, sure, but so very true for us: it’s still all about conveying the human voice and musical notes over the airwaves, to soothe or entertain or create a greater understanding of our world. The mission does not change, only the tools.
And thank heaven for that. Rest in peace (rot in hell?), MiniDiscs!
Geoffrey Riley began practicing journalism in the State of Jefferson nearly three decades ago, as a reporter and anchor for a Medford TV station. It was about the same time that he began listening to Jefferson Public Radio, and thought he might one day work there. He was right.
