The following is excerpted from CONTEXTUAL PROGRAMMING: The Only Way To Win In A Competitive Market.
Unhappy vs. Not Unhappy
Whenever your Internet experience is problem-free — your computer doesn’t crash, your phone line or DSL or cable or wireless connection is working, and your software works properly — are you conscious of feeling really, really happy about the fact that you’re able to go online?
No?
How do you feel when your Internet connection doesn’t work? When your computer keeps freezing up? When — the ultimate modern crisis — you can’t access your e-mail??
Upset? Frustrated? Depressed?
In our normal state, we’re not happy; we’re just not unhappy.
For much of our daily lives, we find ourselves in one of two states: Unhappy….or Not Unhappy.
What pushes us from “Not Unhappy” to “Unhappy” most often is chaos.
The dictionary definition of “chaos” is:
“The confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms.”
Humans attempt to overcome chaos by imposing some semblance of order upon it. And Radio helps by providing listeners with a context to the events in their lives.
What Does It Actually Mean, Anyway?
“Context” comes from the Latin word, “contexere”: “To weave together.”
Do you ever sing along with the radio or with a music CD or mp3 player? If so, do ever you find yourself singing in falsetto to match the vocals of the song?
Yes? Why? You could sing it in your own register, in the correct key…Just an octave or two lower.
You sing in falsetto to maximize the synchronicity of context: to weave the sound of your voice with the sounds coming out of your radio or CD player or mp3 player.
Radio weaves together the strands of listeners’ daily lives into a context that helps fend off the chaos.
Listeners don’t ask Radio to put them in a state of Happiness. They turn to Radio in the hopes that it will help take them out or perhaps keep them out of a state of Unhappiness.
How’s this for a corny (yet, for a successful radio station, honest) slogan?
“Radio helps people feel they’re tuned in to life.”
Our jobs as radio people: To provide meaningful contexts for our listeners’ lives.
“Even for a pop music station, Dan?”
Do you know what you call a radio station that provides music with no context?
An iPod.
Here is where you can read the entire CONTEXTUAL PROGRAMMING.
September, 1994 (continued):
My last stop on this radio seminar tour was Oberhausen, where I conducted AIR PERSONALITY PLUS+ for NRW, thanks to PD Dr. Klaus Klenke and Music Director Jeff van Gelder.
Translation Booth
Unlike this trip’s other in-station seminars, this was done with simultaneous translation; some staffers listened to my English, others heard a German translation in their headphones. (My seminar at the conference in Leipzig also featured simultaneous translation.)
This is not as difficult for me as it might sound. The only real problem is that when I say something humorous, I have to wait seven seconds for the translators to catch up to see if the attendees laugh. (If they don’t laugh, then obviously the interpreters screwed up the translation of the joke.)
Flying back home via Amsterdam, I spent some time in the KLM lounge while awaiting my flight to L.A. It was there that I noticed a woman who apparently was sanitizing some magazines before bringing them to her home country.
When I walked by, she was using a black marking pen to cover up the legs of a woman in an advertisement.
Then she kept flipping the pages, stopping frequently to apply more black ink to any images that might corrupt her countrymen/women back home. (Either she herself is impervious to corruption, or she’s already corrupted.)
I’m not fond of cliches, and I don’t believe that “less” always “is more.” But in my files I found a couple of really nice promos Chris Ward created a while ago for Severn Sound. As good as they are, I think they would have been even better with a single line omitted from the finished product.
Here’s one of them:
What line do I think is unnecessary? “Sing it, guys.”
With Chris’s permission — he’s now the station producer at Real Radio Wales — here’s my edited version:
What do you think? Was it stronger without “sing it guys”? Even more tellingly, was it weaker without that line? If removing any element of a spot doesn’t weaken the spot, that element shouldn’t be there.
Chris says, “Having listened back to the promos, I do agree with your analysis. The line ‘sing it guys’ wasn’t necessary, it dilutes promo and, to be brutally honest it makes it slightly ‘cheesy.’ I remember at the time being a big fan of using the ‘stop down effect’ in promos, but it wasn’t necessary in this instance and seems to have been used for the sake of being used rather than to enhance the promo.
“The promos were produced in a very short space of time and put straight to air. Whenever I produce something I like to script and produce it, leave it for a few days and then come back to it. In this instance, however, that wasn’t possible. I think had I done this I would have not included the ‘sing it, guys’ line.”
Here’s another “A/B” example for you:
The edited version:
Despite my opinion that it’s better without “sing it, guys,” the promo is strong enough to be effective with or without it.
If you don’t have time to prepare for your radio show, why bother to show up?
“Oh, I can just wing it. Only beginners waste their time with show prep.”
To quote a high school classmate of mine (obviously inspired by The Marx Brothers) who loudly (and memorably) protested a particularly inane statement by our Civics teacher:
“Horsefeathers!”
Professionals prepare.
Amateurs pray for inspiration.
