DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

At this year’s International Radio Creative & Production Summit, Dave Foxx gave a presentation entitled “10 Things Every Audio Producer Must Know About Music.”

To illustrate a point, Dave shared this video…which is awfully darn good.

It’s also a perfect companion piece to my earlier posting on “How To Write A Hit Love Ballad.”

Warning: Severe profanity at the beginning and ending of this video. If you are offended by profanity, please do not watch this video.

I spent a week doing a Morning Show Tune-Up with a radio morning show in France.

We began with a full-day seminar…on a Sunday. Not at the radio station but instead at a hotel.

That was at my suggestion. When possible, I like to get the on-air people away from the station and into a less familiar, less predictable environment.

We ended in the late afternoon — which is the equivalent of mid-evening for a morning show.

When I arrived at the station the following day for our first post-program meeting, I learned that instead of going home after our Sunday seminar, the 3-person morning team had gone to the radio station and spent the next three hours working on new ideas for their show.

That experience reminded me:

Within any radio station, there are two types of employees:

A)  People who happen to work at a radio station.
B)  “Radio guys.”

I mean absolutely no disrespect for Type A.

But it’s “radio guys” who motivate me to stay in this business.

The two men and one woman who comprised this particular morning show all were Radio Guys.

Dick Orkin, Dan O'Day

This is the fourth installment in a series that began with Dick Orkin repeatedly hearing this refrain from radio station salespeople:

“I don’t like writing commercials!”

Dick surveyed a large number of radio account executives to determine their most common reasons for viewing “commercial copywriting” negatively.

Ultimately he concluded, “The commercials they write are boring as all hell to themselves and others.”

Why? In my experience, most often it’s because he people writing them have nothing to say.

And that’s because:

A)  They haven’t done enough research. (You don’t need to know anything about the guy who’s just ordered a Big Mac. Just wrap it up and give it to him.)

B)  They haven’t been provided with enough information.

C)  They don’t know that their job is important.

D)  Bad commercials are the industry standard, so no one complains when they exchange perfectly good money for worthless word tripe .

E)  They’re not trying to communicate a valuable message.

F)  They don’t know they’re supposed to be writing human messages that will, one hopes, be heard by humans.

G)  They don’t combine their formal research with their lifetime of experiential research — both of their own experiences of those of others.

What is the advice given to every would-be writer?

“Write about what you know.”

Raise your hand if you’ve heard that one.

Keep your hand up if that makes sense to you.

You’re probably not interested in reading a bookkeeper’s imaginary account of how he singlehandedly scaled Mt. Everest when you know he’s never set foot outside of Ottumwa, Iowa, do you?

So if your hand is still up, then:

Why in the world do you presume to write a commercial for the local dress boutique when you know nothing about dresses, nothing about boutiques, nothing about that shop, and nothing about their customers?

First find out, THEN write.

I’m sitting in the dental chair, trying to banish all thoughts of MARATHON MAN from my mind, when my dentist says, “So you teach radio people how to do their jobs better, right?”

“Well,” I reply, “my job is to show them ways of communicating more effectively with their listeners.”

He arches an eyebrow and holds a gleaming, scary metallic tool in front of my nose.

“Right,” I say. “I teach radio people how to do their jobs better. Exactly.”

He nods. “It must be hard to talk to people you can’t see and who can’t answer back.”

I think a moment, then: “Do you ever talk to people on the phone?”

“Yes.”

“But you can’t see them when you’re talking to them, right?”

“Right.”

“Have you ever spoken to someone on the phone for an entire minute, just you talking but without the other person having a chance to speak for that minute while he listened to you?”

“Sure.”

“So if you have something that you think they’ll be interested in hearing and you genuinely try to communicate it to them, it doesn’t really matter that they can’t see you and that, at least for a minute or so, they don’t even speak. Right?”

Long pause.

“Rinse and spit, please.”

(Note To Self: Inasmuch as my health insurance doesn’t include Dental, check with accountant to see if now I can deduct this visit as a business expense.)