Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nlh | Hacker News Reader

Great article (I'm a fan of the show.) If I may turn the discussion toward something a bit more HN-relevant, a few questions:

* The engineer in me is always intrigued by the operations of the show. Does anyone have any details on the equipment / software they use? I tried to gleam some juicy stuff from this shot:

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/07/31/arts/31STERNJP1/3...

But the blur effect makes it hard to make anything out.

We get to hear littles glimpses of things in the Gary-to-Howard banter ("Howard check JD Page 3 in Blue").

* Any sense of what Fred uses on his end? He obviously has a library of clips from the ages that he can pull up pretty quickly.

* Does he get real-time feedback / jokes / stuff from his writers / Benjy? Does that work over IM, or are people handing him slips of paper?

The database and internal messaging is at least in part customized IBM software. Howard is friends with IBM Lotus Vice President Jeff Schick and talks about him occasionally. They also seem to use RCS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Computing_Services) Prophet/NexGen software.

As for jokes, I know they don't type (neither Fred nor Benjy can type quickly), and I don't think they hand over pieces of paper (Fred and Benjy sit behind the guests now) -- I believe they have cameras on Benjy and Fred's paper with a live feed to a monitor on Howard's desk.

Slightly clearer view here:

http://famousworkspaces.tumblr.com/post/21326452092/howard-s...

I don't have any solid answers, but...

* You might have some luck browsing http://www.bhphotovideo.com/ to try to match up the hardware. B&H has a lot of Pro-sumer and straight up Pro products, in addition to all their consumer stuff.

* In radio parlance, devices/software that lets you store and play various clips is called a "soundboard". Or at least it was last time I knew anything about radio... might have newer terms now that everything's definitely digital.

Like I said, nothing solid, but this might help you look into it a bit more.

Jeez... Downvoted for attempting to help? Rough crowd.

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