No thanks to the internet where we can at least here bits & pieces of this again. The internet scoops all news sources.

Alas!

It's unlikely NIS would've survived much past the start of CNN in 1980.

Radio engenders bittersweet memories. BTW NBC was also the first radio network. I also miss Mutual, which had some great sounders. I was a part time board op at the old WLOL-AM here in Minneapolis when it had the first talk format here. The console was an RCA "consolette" similar to what Disney used. for film sound mixing in those days. Ah, such memories. Then a WLOL-FM classical music DJ slot opened up. I did that for a couple of years. If you want, you can Google and read my "What Does A Classical Music DJ Do? on the internet. I hope you will get some laughs out of it. I love sharing broadcast days memories with people. Best, Jim.

I was working at the last commercial classical music station in Minneapolis. NIS was a radio person's production delight. Authoritive voices. I liked the cello sounder.

Yes, this was recorded in-house at NBC Radio Central in New York for posterity.

Yes As a then-college sophomore studying communications in the DC area, I used to listen to it on WRC, which was NBC's only AM O&O to carry the network. I liked it, but in retrospect, it never had a prayer of surviving in the Washington market WRC picked it up because it was getting hammered in the ratings with a Top 40 format that included Willard Scott working afternoon drive (he'd literally rush out of the studio at 6 p.m. sharp to head to another part of the building to do the weather on WRC-TV's evening newscast However, there already were two other well-established all-news stations in the city (WTOP and WAVA), plus NIS was also on WIYY-FM just up the road in Baltimore Ironically, several years after NIS' demise, Alan Walden wound up at WIYY's sister station - WBAL-AM - as its morning news anchor for something like 20 years

I have an NIS aircheck from a West Springfield, MA station which may have been their only penetration in the state. Even in major cities where NIS did get an affiliate they weren't hooked up on the best station in the market. In New York they were on the former WNBC-FM (which changed its call letters to WNWS-FM) which had always been a dumping ground station. NBC should have taken a chance and put it on the powerful 660 WNBC-AM frequency which at the time was in a bit of a middling format trying to challenge WABC on music but still carrying at late night at least one remaining talk show from its old talk format of the late 60s.

WCOP -AM was the NBC radio affiliate at that time and their FM...WTTK was a Rock/Country hybrid. WCOP carried the newscasts at the top of the hour; WTTK rebroadcast it on a 20 minute delay. WTTK was automated. which may explain why one night when I was listening, a glitch happened and instead of playing the tape delayed newscast, WTTK instead was airing NIS for about an hour or so until somebody figured out what happened and the music came back on. So...NIS DID have a Boston affiliate, if only for about an hour.

Sorry about that. The reference should have been to KSPD, which was the Boise, ID NIS affiliate.

I think they stuck with NIS to the end as did other stations that continued with an all-news format afterwards.

@@epaddon WRC-AM in Washington flipped to Talk.

Yup, but this was before my time. It was passed down by another veteran there.

I wish I could help you with that Sounder Request... but my 2-Track R/R copy of the NBC NIS Sounder Package was 'destroyed' back in 1999 in a Basement 'Flood' of the Washing Machine overflow... which took out many of my taped-copies of such personal Archive material. A shame, too.. .as I had lost a clean copy of ALL the Musical Sounders that NIS made and used in the 1970's. 1999 was just before the time where I could digitize such audio and video material and make audio file-backups of everything I had on tape (*sniffles*). Needless to say, that 'laundry-room' mishap... hastened my acquisition of the computer-equipment necessary to back up the surviving material from that point forward.

Oh Gosh! Thanks for the reply, Steve. That was so cool an arrangement. It could have been all lower strings: cello and double bass, now that I think of it. AHA. What I could try is use MuseScore computer app I have to try to bring back that memory. Reminded me a bit of how "All the Lonely People" by the Beatles started. in turn, that sounded a lot like Pohjola's Daughter by Sibelius. Same low strings scoring. Whew! That was all on my mind, Steve, so there ya go. Ain't music the greatest?

You might be referring to the specific NIS Sounder which we used to regularly use for the local daily 'Traffic Reports' during rush-hour. It was chosen because of its 'fast pace' Rush.. Rush.. Rush... tempo... indicative of busy car traffic racing around the City streets and Expressways each day. So yes, it got a lot of play locally here, too. Speaking of music from that time in general? A great personal mystery of mine is to try and find out why the older musical recordings of that time-period.. always seems to play 'faster' than normal when played today on any medium... Radio... CD... MP3.. even old-tapes themselves. It seems all such old music recordings, regardless of format.. sound at least a half-step higher in key or tone, than what we remember listening to them 40 years or so ago. This is a mystery... or a technical problem when trans-coding a well-known song selection to another medium or digital-file. The TIMING of the song remains the same.. but the PITCH.. is always higher than it should be, as if the recording was being played faster than normal. It can't be a physiological phenomenon with hearing or memory, but no one has the answer. >.> I know some radio-stations are guilty of speeding up their song libraries to sneak in more breaks during the hour.. or to increase their commercial appeal to their younger audience. But that doesn't explain WHY many different outlets seem to do this, especially ones who don't profit from it. Ahhh well, the mystery continues.

There was a zip file of 9 NIS sounder files totalling 72 minutes on a website that is now defunct but which was still up last year and I did grab all of them. Is that the same as what you lost?

Yeah. It was one of those 2-Track tapes that was sent to each affiliate station to copy and make Broadcast Carts out of them, to be used as the background sounders for their local segments. That's what the copy I had was dubbed from. 72 Minutes definitely sounds like a complete package. The various one-minute background-sounders... show openers... segment openers... closers... bumpers... bulletin transition-cues... etc. That's really lucky for you to have found all that preserved on a website in good quality!

You mean, it sounds ahead of its time? The track is from 1977.

Yeah but just why does it sound like a news report from 2018

The sounder? What? I don't understand what you're getting at, but this presentation is better than ANY that is done today, or in 2018.

Amen. As much as I admire and respect NPR (I used to work the board at the statewide NPR-member public radio network here in ND a while back), I do have to frankly concur that most of NPR's newscasters & reporters do seem to have quite thin & reedy voices compared to the bold, wide, stentorian, and quite authoritative announcers of commercial radio in comparison. Especially Alan Walden and all the other NIS anchors/presenters. And NIS' quite majestic and creative sounders are the icing on the cake, and really help to underscore that authoritative vibe, especially their main sounder as featured at the very end (very John WIlliams-eqsue, much like the music he'd later create for NBC News, i.e. "The Mission"). The "funky clavinet" version at the beginning of this newscast is my favorite as well.

@@RyanSchweitzer77 Indeed. I had in mind some hysterical Nancy Boy sounding creature that comes on NPR around 9 or 10 am. Ultra-liberal Trump basher. Then there are the shrill hysterical nasal nosed women that bash Trump. I don't give any money to his outfit, nor MPR. I was a deep-voiced classical music DJ for WLOL-FM, which was coveted by Bill Kling ("Klingon") that became KSJN in St. Paul. We gave him as many LPs as he wanted when we were cleaning up and signing off the elevator music. Then years later, Billy got his 99.5 FM spot on the dial. They are also a haven for fruity voiced males. One guy sounds like he needs an internal nose job.