Air/Traffic Controller or A/T was a computer program that was used by cable television companies to control analog advertising-playback equipment.
A/T was a large DOS (pre-Windows) software package that was used with analog (pre-digital) video-playback equipment, back when virtually all television was analog.
The name Air/Traffic Controller comes from industry jargon. In the TV business, commercials are "on the air" and the process of scheduling them is called "traffic". Air/Traffic Controller performed many routine and repetetive office functions automatically, reducing the workload on the office staff.
At its peak during the late 1990s A/T was used by over 350 cable advertising sales offices in the United States and on three other continents. It was licensed by most of the major cable interconnects in the US, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, Phoenix, Miami, and many others.
Our logo still looked like this...
This is how an industry trade magazine described us in 1992...
Our staff looked like this...
Our Offices looked like this...
Our advertising looked like this...
This is what our customers thought about us...
Trade Shows looked like this...
Our softball team looked like this...
Somewhere around our tenth anniversary ('97) we started using a new logo...
...and our computer screens looked like this...
Click here for lots more A/T screens.Unless you were in the cable ad business back then, the small print will be meaningless...
Texscan CSR-92... 94, 192, 294, 194, Prizm... Channelmatic AdCart and Logmatic, The StarNet Inserter, Ad Systems... CompuLink, Ad Manager, CMACS, INTABS, 20-20, Novar, Oasis, Columbine/JDS... IBM XT, Hayes 1200, Wyse 50, control-backslash, cue tones, prerolls, U-Matics... Continental, Comcast, Cox, Bay Cable (San Francisco), AdLink (LA), CAMA (Atlanta), RASCO/RAINBOW (NY), TCI (everywhere!)... CAB at the Mariott Marquis... Ed Dowd, Mike Ross, Mike Shofner, Mike Shofner-Ross, Marty Tilley, Judy Belisle, Ruth Marshall, Jeff O'Brien, Roger Heidenreich, Joe Fabiano, James Kelso, John Jerman, Philamon Lopez, Alan Sawyer, Paul Woidke, Jack Goldie, Bob Tuttle, John Lay, Wayne Hindmarsh, Wayne Ruting, Doug Rother, Pete Czornuhus, John Beard... Penny, Sally, Betsy, Kayla, Katherine, Stan!... and so many others.
Of course eventually, the bell curve did what bell curves do. The cable advertising industry's technology experienced a gradual sea change (so to speak) from analog to digital. As analog systems were replaced by digital systems, A/T was replaced by other software. The last Air/Traffic Controller site -- and one of the very last analog-spot-playback sites -- signed off on September 30, 2004.
Sixteen years is a respectable run for a program written in DOS / BASIC.
Now, during the same time period that all of that was going on...
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