16 July 2011

A Higher Education

Coming from the School of Hard Knocks has its advantages. There is also a downside: gaps in knowledge. Take my old radio career. I was not a rube. I picked up a lot on the job, but I always felt something was missing. In 1983 I was trained by someone who himself had learned on the job—no formal broadcast education. He was opinionated and ill-informed in a lot of ways. His attitudes and beliefs rubbed off on me, this impressionable 17 year old. Most of my real education came from the trade journals of the day, including: Billboard, Radio World, Broadcasting and countless other specialty publications; just like I had learned how to hear with a critical ear  from Stereo Review, Audio, Mix and EQ magazines.  For a while after graduation I interned at a very small recording studio supplemental to my disk jockey work. I assumed college would be redundant. After all, I was enrolled in the University of Life majoring in my own cherry-picked curriculum.

By 1989 I was at radio home number 2.  At this time the station hired a hot-shot station manager that was going to turn around our failing enterprise. The owners had, by this point, exhausted two other managers who had big dreams too. The station had been for sale since 1987 and I was ready to throw in the towel. The new guy was different. He had a real college education with a degree in communications—the only associate of mine ever with that distinction. Thankfully he filled in a few gaps in my understanding by patiently working with me. My on-air performance grew to the point that I no longer resembled the nervous  teen of only 6 years previous. I finally matured and sounded pro. In 1990 the station sold. The new owner never appreciated the best manager that station ever had, eventually demoting and firing him. By 1991 my role diminished, so I left as well.

By 1992 I was working with my favorite manager again, still learning from him. Regrettably, the station was on a weak signal in a very small town so all efforts were basically in vain. A year later radio home number four had become a memory.

Today, the public library and the Internet have become my university. Many of the remaining gaps are quickly filling; too little, too late. Now it’s all academic.

Stay tuned.

13 July 2011

Back to the Money Room

“This room pays the bills.” One of my 1980’s radio cohorts used to say. Amen to that; the radio production room is where the local commercials are recorded and prepared for broadcast (except the agency spots produced by outside studios, which are dubbed to another tape for airing).

Spending the majority of my radio experience in the religious format stations shielded me from the dishonest practices of my secular counterparts: payola, shady barters, etc. We had to fight for every dime of revenue and often leaned on the crutch of brokered time preacher show for an overwhelming majority of it. A good 30-40% of our day was preacher shows. That gave me plenty of time to hone my production skillset.

I learned an amazing amount in a short period of time on the analog gear of the era (not state-of-the-art even then.) My limitations were actually better for my development in the long run. 2011 digital whiz-bang gadgetry would have stunted my growth; I’m thankful in retrospect.


Having said all that, here is a concise look into my typical production method(s).

  • Start with the copy (or script of the commercial). It is usually typed, double-spaced and in all CAPS, read through a few times. In 1993, I began practicing reading copy into a small Panasonic tape recorder before the actual production began. Prior to this I would do a cold read or two into the Reel-to-reel in production. If I got it in one take: done. If not: record over and over again until “perfect.” The practice reads were a real time saver. Literally. 30 second spots had to run exactly 29.5 seconds 59.5 for a 60.
  • Then, choose a music “bed.” Most of my stations had purchased large libraries of cheesy royalty free background music and sound effects on vinyl albums. Many of the stations I worked for used real music, probably illegally, I plead ignorance.
  • Next, I set the levels. The vocal first with the ubiquitous tape delay echo. Then, the music bed (if any) set so it did not drown the messenger.
  • Now I would record to the “master” tape. ¼ inch tape running at 7.5 or (later) 15 ips.
  • With all of this assembled I would dub the master take to another tape, a broadcast cartridge (or “cart”) for use on the air. Although in later years, for better quality, I skipped the reel-to-reel and went direct to cart.

With all of this rigmarole taken care of, I forgot to make an archive copy for my demo reel. Often I would make cassette copies of the carts for posterity; they are few and far between. The cassette dubs were sometimes muddy third generation copies until I had the foresight of going direct to cassette simultaneously with the open reel or cart direct recordings. In the late 80’s I felt cassette was the best archival medium, due to the impending obsolescence of reel-to-reel. I have only a miniscule fraction of my total production output committed to the archive. With hard disk drives today I suppose all my commercials would be saved. God help us.

Stay tuned

12 July 2011

Say Again?

It’s summer, time for re-runs. For our younger readers: back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, new television shows were seen in a season that lasted from about mid-September (coinciding with new car model introductions) until late-May (when we all were excused from our studies for summer break.) During the summertime, TV repeated the previous season’s episodes; these shows were re-runs.

For a TV nut such as myself, summer was miserable waiting for the fall return of my favorite shows. On the flip-side, I seldom recall a show airing a repeat episode during the regular season. Today’s TV is different, re-runs are telecast throughout the regular season and new shows are regularly aired in the summer. Some of the new shows are exclusively premiered during these hot months.

Angie and the girls are enjoying the new season of Big Brother on CBS while I excuse myself to nap. I had rather sleep than watch this crap.  I can’t wait until September when the real season starts.

Stay tuned.

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