RCA TCR-100 Videotape Cartridge System, Sales Reel

Still have one of those old red carts laying around the house for show & tell from KTXL-40. They were being phased out in the early 90’s.

We got an ACR-25 at KVVU in Las Vegas in 1978, the demo from that year’s NAB. Prior to that we ran a 1″ dub reel for commercial playback that was created by dubbing spots off of 2″ reels.

I always remembering listening to the carts changed or knowing if a certain sound did not go the next spot probably was not going to air….also you could not run :10 sec spots back to back…

The TCR-100 Cart. They were made in :10, :20, :30, 1Min. & 3Min. durations. It used a foil marker attached to the video tape for beginning of tape for threading up in the machine. There was also 2 audio tones used. First tone was for Electronic Program Identification System (EPIS) and a second tone was to mark 1st video of the spot for playback. The TCR had 22 bins in its magazine to load the carts in. The machine could not play back to back :10 Sec spots. There had to be at least 12-13 Sec. to allow for the machine to thread up the tape & cue. These carts were not interchangeable with the Ampex version cart machine ACR-25. But all 2″ Quad tapes would play on all 2″ Quad machines if the video tape was un-spooled !

At short-lived WSWB in Orlando, we had a TR-70 plus a TCR siamesed to a TR-60. Lesson learned: If you try to record a program on the ’60 when the TCR is activated, you will lose servo lock and your recording will be ruined. Later in life, at WPGH in Pittsburgh, we also had a TCR. Just one, but engineering kept it going quite well. ONE engineer, and only one, (name was Merv) dubbed spots to cart, for uniform programming of start and stop cues. Our station breaks were flawless and clean. Now I see some networks where one or two seconds of a commercial starts, then is covered by the intended spot. Similar sloppiness at end of event. Shanking my head, people just don’t try anymore.

The one I worked with had EPIS so one day I entered Load me Kenny and the MC operator who would leave me one cart and leave looked at me and remarked “How did it know my name”.

NBC New York. The library spacer wooden blocks never played too well!
NBC News EJ tried a similar player for News stories on M2 cassettes. It was called Odetics. I remember listening to the loud CLUNK when Odetics dropped a cassette while loading!

Had one at Ch 6 Paducah KY. Held my breath everytime I hit the play button in a newscast. Tape ops always created a reel tape of each break with spots back to back just in case it failed or jammed. Which was often.

Tape? What’s that 😛 Actually, I came into the industry at the miniDV / DVCAM / BetaSP and HDCAM stage, so a few years before true tapeless file based workflows really kicked off. Finally, this is something that makes me feel young instead of old!

The TCR-100 was horribly noisy and not too reliable. The ACR-25 was a lot more expensive but it was amazing in terms of pre-roll time and the random-access programmability. One of ours at WTVT was nearly perfect other day; the other was problematic. But they were workhorses.

AAACCCKKK! Horrible memories! As missed spot reports approached eye level on my desk, I took the sales manager into the control room to watch as this monstrosity bungled break after break. You had to manuever the log to be sure the :15s were played FIRST, because the darn thing couldn’t cue them up and play them if they were elsewhere. And the physical jams! For years I kept one of those red 2″ cassettes on my desk with scratches and pits in it. I finally tossed it due to bad karma.