I'm Giving You This One for Free
I will soon be teaching my first class on radio to the young aspiring professionals of the future. Yeah, it's scary, I know, poor kids... Anyway, as I start to think about how I can help these young minds understand how they can become marketable air personalities who actually have a prayer of finding work in this post-consolidation, all automated and voice-tracked world that we are in, I think there are some basic dos and don'ts that you need to understand in order to be successful in the business. And considering that these students are going to pay several hundred dollars per credit hour to get this information, consider yourself lucky that you can just see this right here for free on my blog.
DO give time checks. The first hint I get that the DJ is not live? No time and temperature. You can't guess what the temperature or time will be when you pre-record a shift, so you can't do it. So if by some miracle, you do have a live air shift, give the time and temperature. It sounds a little jive, but it takes only a couple seconds to say "1:28, 73 degrees in Syracuse", then you go into what you were going to say over the song or after the song or whatever. And the listener recognizes that yeah, it IS 1:28 and it IS 73 degrees outside, and boom... instant feeling of connection! It doesn't take much to establish that, really.
DON'T give double time checks. Time checks sound a little jive, double time checks sound A LOT jive. Want to see a radio guy cringe? Let him hear an announcer say, "It's 2:43, 17 minutes before 3:00". It's a digital age, we think in terms of time a certain way, doing it both ways is just showing off and sounding like it's typical DJ schtick.
If you're going to be a talk show host, DON'T be a "bomb-thrower." That's what I call the Limbaughs, Levins, and Hannitys of the world who seem to say things just to infuriate and anger the opposite end of the political spectrum. As I've said here recently, their routine is no longer working... in NYC alone, Limbaugh has lost 1/3 of his audience, and Levin and Hannity have lost over 1/4 of theirs. Local is starting to come back in talk radio, people are sick of fiery rhetoric and gravitating to moderate voices like Michael Smerconish. I have no problem in principle with "shock jocks", but the best (Stern, Imus, the early Limbaugh) never made the statements they did to PURPOSELY anger people; it was part of the show, they were just being themselves! Now it seems like with their audiences slipping, it is now in vogue for right-wing talk radio to intentionally feed opposition anger to keep their core audience playing the role of loyal defenders. I'm too exhausted with this nonsense to defend them anymore.
However, DO care about your content. Think about what your listeners want to talk about. Read the newspaper, watch the local news, talk to your neighbors. All of these things would fall under a two-word phrase that seems to be largely forgotten about in the radio biz: "Show prep." DO SHOW PREP. And within doing show prep, there is the somewhat contradictory premise that you should prepare a lot of material so you can change topics smoothly if nothing is catching fire, but be prepared to toss those extra topics aside if you have something that catches fire with your audience. And it doesn't just happen to talk show hosts. Live DJs and non-political hosts have the same things happen; I know this from experience. On one particular night, I wondered aloud about the lyrics to "Toxicity" by System of a Down, and the phones rang all night with listeners wanting to join this suddenly esoteric (for an Alt-Rock station) discussion about song lyrics.
And finally... DON'T use your radio station or network of stations to forecast a coming apocalypse. By now, everyone knows about Harold Camping, the 89-year old owner of Family Radio, who broadcast and advertised the message far and wide that the Rapture was coming on May 21. He even had it down to the hour, and when a minor earthquake struck New Zealand, another one hit California, and a volcano in Iceland blew its top, he may have even had people really believing. However, it's May 23, and I'm still here, and he's still here, and there are no reports of people ascending to Heaven, and the world is not a ball of fire and devastation right now. The saddest thing about this is hearing about the people who gave up their live savings, quit their jobs, and devoted their lives to preaching about the end of the world, only to have it not happen. What happens to these people? No doubt they're on suicide watch right now because they truly threw their lives away over a ridiculous prediction... unless they agree with Camping's revision that we went through a "silent" Judgment Day and that October 21 will truly be the end of the world.
Even worse is the fact that this guy managed to rake in some $18 million dollars from these poor suckers, and that he owns some 66 radio stations, with which he was able to reach all those people who gave him all this money. Now god knows we've had our share of hucksters and televangelists over the years, and Oral Roberts' whole "give me money or God will call me home" thing was fraud of the lowest level. However, I think we've now seen fraud of an even lower level, especially given the fact that Camping wrongly predicted the end of the world in 1994 and PEOPLE STILL BELIEVED HIM THIS TIME. Say what you will about Glenn Beck and other right-wing talk show hosts, they're not telling you to give up your lives to spreading their predictions of doom across the globe.
This is misuse of the public airwaves, plain and simple, and even though there may not be a constitutional remedy within the FCC's reach, I would love to see a rush of FCC complaints against Camping and Family Radio to rival what followed the Janet Jackson incident at the 2004 Super Bowl. If you really think this guy has perpetrated all kinds of wrong here, call the FCC. Let them know Camping basically used the public airwaves to defraud people. Those 66 radio stations could certainly be used to serve the public interest in far better ways. It's kinda rough to come down hard on an elderly man like this, but with great power comes great responsibility, and even if he truly believed what he was saying, the fact is he was irresponsible.
DO give time checks. The first hint I get that the DJ is not live? No time and temperature. You can't guess what the temperature or time will be when you pre-record a shift, so you can't do it. So if by some miracle, you do have a live air shift, give the time and temperature. It sounds a little jive, but it takes only a couple seconds to say "1:28, 73 degrees in Syracuse", then you go into what you were going to say over the song or after the song or whatever. And the listener recognizes that yeah, it IS 1:28 and it IS 73 degrees outside, and boom... instant feeling of connection! It doesn't take much to establish that, really.
DON'T give double time checks. Time checks sound a little jive, double time checks sound A LOT jive. Want to see a radio guy cringe? Let him hear an announcer say, "It's 2:43, 17 minutes before 3:00". It's a digital age, we think in terms of time a certain way, doing it both ways is just showing off and sounding like it's typical DJ schtick.
If you're going to be a talk show host, DON'T be a "bomb-thrower." That's what I call the Limbaughs, Levins, and Hannitys of the world who seem to say things just to infuriate and anger the opposite end of the political spectrum. As I've said here recently, their routine is no longer working... in NYC alone, Limbaugh has lost 1/3 of his audience, and Levin and Hannity have lost over 1/4 of theirs. Local is starting to come back in talk radio, people are sick of fiery rhetoric and gravitating to moderate voices like Michael Smerconish. I have no problem in principle with "shock jocks", but the best (Stern, Imus, the early Limbaugh) never made the statements they did to PURPOSELY anger people; it was part of the show, they were just being themselves! Now it seems like with their audiences slipping, it is now in vogue for right-wing talk radio to intentionally feed opposition anger to keep their core audience playing the role of loyal defenders. I'm too exhausted with this nonsense to defend them anymore.
However, DO care about your content. Think about what your listeners want to talk about. Read the newspaper, watch the local news, talk to your neighbors. All of these things would fall under a two-word phrase that seems to be largely forgotten about in the radio biz: "Show prep." DO SHOW PREP. And within doing show prep, there is the somewhat contradictory premise that you should prepare a lot of material so you can change topics smoothly if nothing is catching fire, but be prepared to toss those extra topics aside if you have something that catches fire with your audience. And it doesn't just happen to talk show hosts. Live DJs and non-political hosts have the same things happen; I know this from experience. On one particular night, I wondered aloud about the lyrics to "Toxicity" by System of a Down, and the phones rang all night with listeners wanting to join this suddenly esoteric (for an Alt-Rock station) discussion about song lyrics.
And finally... DON'T use your radio station or network of stations to forecast a coming apocalypse. By now, everyone knows about Harold Camping, the 89-year old owner of Family Radio, who broadcast and advertised the message far and wide that the Rapture was coming on May 21. He even had it down to the hour, and when a minor earthquake struck New Zealand, another one hit California, and a volcano in Iceland blew its top, he may have even had people really believing. However, it's May 23, and I'm still here, and he's still here, and there are no reports of people ascending to Heaven, and the world is not a ball of fire and devastation right now. The saddest thing about this is hearing about the people who gave up their live savings, quit their jobs, and devoted their lives to preaching about the end of the world, only to have it not happen. What happens to these people? No doubt they're on suicide watch right now because they truly threw their lives away over a ridiculous prediction... unless they agree with Camping's revision that we went through a "silent" Judgment Day and that October 21 will truly be the end of the world.
Even worse is the fact that this guy managed to rake in some $18 million dollars from these poor suckers, and that he owns some 66 radio stations, with which he was able to reach all those people who gave him all this money. Now god knows we've had our share of hucksters and televangelists over the years, and Oral Roberts' whole "give me money or God will call me home" thing was fraud of the lowest level. However, I think we've now seen fraud of an even lower level, especially given the fact that Camping wrongly predicted the end of the world in 1994 and PEOPLE STILL BELIEVED HIM THIS TIME. Say what you will about Glenn Beck and other right-wing talk show hosts, they're not telling you to give up your lives to spreading their predictions of doom across the globe.
This is misuse of the public airwaves, plain and simple, and even though there may not be a constitutional remedy within the FCC's reach, I would love to see a rush of FCC complaints against Camping and Family Radio to rival what followed the Janet Jackson incident at the 2004 Super Bowl. If you really think this guy has perpetrated all kinds of wrong here, call the FCC. Let them know Camping basically used the public airwaves to defraud people. Those 66 radio stations could certainly be used to serve the public interest in far better ways. It's kinda rough to come down hard on an elderly man like this, but with great power comes great responsibility, and even if he truly believed what he was saying, the fact is he was irresponsible.
posted by Dave | 5:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home