Were later mono TV broadcasts recorded in stereo?

[brassplyer]

Audio from a 1974 taping of the Tonight Show, it's from an LP that was released of this particular broadcast, which predates stereo TV broadcasts and consumer video. LP is in mono.

Is it likely there was ever a stereo mix or were these shows mixed strictly to mono?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyznV7U9fUQ

[Trevor]

On 13/07/2018 1:08 PM, Brassplyer wrote:
> Audio from a 1974 taping of the Tonight Show, it's from an LP that was released of this particular broadcast, which predates stereo TV broadcasts and consumer video. > LP is in mono.
>
> Is it likely there was ever a stereo mix or were these shows mixed strictly to mono?

IF they ever did a stereo recording and mix, surely the LP would have
been where it ended up. So if the LP is mono, it's pretty safe to assume
there wasn't IMO.

Trevor.

[Scott Dorsey]

Brassplyer > wrote:
>Audio from a 1974 taping of the Tonight Show, it's from an LP that was released of this particular broadcast, which predates stereo TV broadcasts and consumer video. LP is in mono.
>
>Is it likely there was ever a stereo mix or were these shows mixed strictly to mono?

Short answer: no.

Long answer: Quad video machines had two tracks, but you couldn't run stereo
on them because the second audio track was very low-fi and sounded quite
different than the main audio track.

A few years later when Type C machines started to take over, you could get
stereo videotapes but hardly anyone ever did because the plant infrastructure
was all still mono since the broadcasts were mono.

Now.... there were three kinds of exception. The first exception was pretty
rare in 1974 but got more common as time went by. Some shows that were
very dependent on music would put timecode on the second audio track and
synch to a multitrack recorder. Don Kirschner's Rock Concert did this,
so did Austin City Limits. This allowed them to make a mix at their leisure
for broadcast. It was still a mono mix, but in the future it could be
mixed for stereo. (They were still invariably miked for mono, so there
would often be only one ambience mike and one audience mike and so forth.)

SOME shows ran a second stereo recorder without synch because they intended
on releasing the material on record and they wanted something that sounded
better than the crappy videotape audio, but they didn't have the need or
budget for full multitrack. I know at least one standup comedy special
where this was done.

And the THIRD kind of exception was those shows where everything was
lipsynched to playback anyway, either to commercial records or to
recordings specially made for the job. For example, the Lawrence Welk
band would go in and record to audiotape one day, and then go back the next
day into a different studio and mime their actions onto videotape.
Occasionally, since the original tracks were made in an audio studio with
a stereo console, some of these will turn out to be stereo. Often those
recordings were wiped and the tape reused the next week, though. So all
that is left today is the videotape.

I don't think I saw a stereo console in a video facility until the 1990s,
to be honest. Hell, video people were happy if they could understand the
words. Sometimes they were happy even if they couldn't.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[John Williamson]

On 14/07/2018 17:47, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> I don't think I saw a stereo console in a video facility until the 1990s,
> to be honest. Hell, video people were happy if they could understand the
> words. Sometimes they were happy even if they couldn't.
>
Going by what I've heard on the box lately, that last bit's back in fashion.

--
Tciao for Now!

John.

[Scott Dorsey]

John Williamson > wrote:
>On 14/07/2018 17:47, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
>> I don't think I saw a stereo console in a video facility until the 1990s,
>> to be honest. Hell, video people were happy if they could understand the
>> words. Sometimes they were happy even if they couldn't.
>
>Going by what I've heard on the box lately, that last bit's back in fashion.

Sadly I am not sure it ever went out of fashion. Although now we get
unintelligible mush in 5.1 and the synch is off...
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[brassplyer]

On Saturday, July 14, 2018 at 12:47:51 PM UTC-4, Scott Dorsey wrote:

> Short answer: no.
>
> Long answer: Quad video machines had two tracks, but you couldn't run stereo
> on them because the second audio track was very low-fi and sounded quite
> different than the main audio track.

Thanks for the detailed response.

[[email protected]]

On Thursday, July 12, 2018 at 11:08:29 PM UTC-4, Brassplyer wrote:
> Audio from a 1974 taping of the Tonight Show, it's from an LP that was released of this particular broadcast, which predates stereo TV broadcasts and consumer video. LP is in mono.
>
> Is it likely there was ever a stereo mix or were these shows mixed strictly to mono?
>
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyznV7U9fUQ

They didn't start mixing for stereo until shows started doing an FM simulcast. Late Night with David Letterman used to do this when it was on NBC in the 80's.

I believe the first stereo TV broadcast was The Ewok Adventure movie in 1984.

[[email protected]]

MTV was advertising "Broadcasting in Stereo 24 hours
per Day" as early as 1982 if I recall. I think the European
and Asian broadcast markets were way ahead of Show-Me!
country in terms of sound quality.

[[email protected]]

On Sunday, July 15, 2018 at 2:25:30 PM UTC-4, wrote:
> MTV was advertising "Broadcasting in Stereo 24 hours
> per Day" as early as 1982 if I recall. I think the European
> and Asian broadcast markets were way ahead of Show-Me!
> country in terms of sound quality.

MTV wasn't broadcasting. They were simul-cabling. <---That's a funny word, because you technically can't call it simulcasting over a piece of coax. The cable providers were supposed to the take the satellite stereo audio feed, and modulate it on a frequency for an FM tuner. I bet there weren't many cable providers that did this outside of major markets, or had an exciter to provide this service.