DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

This is the most popular thing I’ve ever written. Reprinting it is this blog’s New Year’s Eve tradition.

Hope you enjoy it — complete with the original illustrations by Bobby Ocean.

A Reader Asks:

“Following your advice, we’ve looked for and actually hired part-timers from several unusual places. (One was a waiter our GM had while trying to pitch a potential client, another a door-to-door salesman who came into the station lobby.) But when they get on the air, they seem to clam up and become much more boring than they were before we hired them. When training ‘newly discovered’ part-timers, what are the most important things to start with?”

My Reply:

TELL THEM STORIES…

…about how & why you got into radio, who influenced you, your best radio moments, what you still hope to achieve.

War stories about broadcasting despite impossible conditions, accidentally locking yourself out of the studio, on-air flubs.

Stories about personal connections that have been made with listeners: The girl who called to request her late grandmother’s favorite song…The fan who sent you chocolate chip cookies on your birthday…The listener who berated you for mispronouncing the name of his favorite artist.

Stories about transistor radios under the bed covers and at the beach. Endless struggles to control the car radio buttons.

“Would you PLEASE turn that down”

and

“Wait, I want to hear this!”

Novelty records and girl groups and Motown and Stax and Cadence and Elvis from the waist up and hearing “I Want To Hold Your Hand” for the very first time.

Stories about lovesick teenagers dedicating songs back & forth to each other. About children turning on the radio before they’re even awake, feverishly hoping to hear those magic words from their local disc jockey: “No school, snow day….”

About loneliness and a solitary voice reaching out to you. About making a complete stranger laugh or reflect or remember. About baseball games from far away on car radios. About someone driving across town or across country, with only you and your radio brethren for company.

Stories about Larry Lujack and John Records Landecker and Robert W. and Wolfman Jack and Gary Owens and Dr. Don and Kenny Everett (ask someone from the UK about Kenny) and those crazy young jocks who brought American-style radio to Europe in the 1960s by taking to the seas in honest-to-God pirate radio ships (imagine broadcasting under the worst possible conditions; now imagine doing it while seasick).

Stories about bad news and everyone immediately turning on the radio. About sad news and where you were when you heard it. About practical jokes and misunderstandings and mild or wild revenge.

About getting fired, packing up the U-Haul, and being scared all over again.

Getting angry, getting older and “the good old days.”

Static-y voices criss-crossing in the night. Fifteen-hour air shifts, flaky jocks, disappearing engineers.

Stories about legendary radio people you almost met in an elevator at a convention. The major market PD who did you a favor; the request line caller you can’t forget. Practical jokes on the news guy, disappearing stationery, and a bedroom full of promo records that one day will be worth something.

Staying up late talking radio, swapping tapes, “borrowing” ideas, “embellishing” your ratings, deepening your voice, losing your voice, losing your place, losing your keys, losing your cool.

Wire service copy paper, 15-inch reels, pin-controlled automation. Caffeine addictions and junk food and whatever the station could trade for. Old friends, borrowed headphones, uncontrollable sleep-deprived laughter.

Razor blades, splicing tape, grease pencils. Draping the tape edit over your shoulders until it was safe to throw away.

Cue tones, cue sheets, in cue, out of breath.

Slip-cueing, back-announcing, and hitting the post.

Egos, rivals, and friendships.

Imagination, excitement, Orson Welles and Jack Benny and Ma Perkins and Franklin D. Roosevelt and Arthur Godfrey and Don McNeil’s Breakfast Club.

Losing jobs, gaining weight, changing names.

“How do they do that?”

and

“Listen to this!”

Storz, McClendon, Drake…and Chuck Blore’s Color Radio. Play-by-play and blow-by-blow; sports scores and election returns and Number One on the charts this week.

7-7-7, First Ticket, Hooper, Pulse.

“You don’t look anything like you sound!”

“What am I doing with my life?”

and

7-day workweeks

and

“I can’t believe I get paid for this!”

Slow starting turntables, nickel on the tone-arm, the cart machine sticks.

Stories about hotlines, hot shots, skimmers, phantom cume, time checks, time warping, ratings, feelings, winning, showing off. T-shirts and coffee mugs and iridescent frisbees.

Billboard and Claude Hall and Cashbox and Record World and R&R and Bill Gavin’s green pages.

Floods and tornado watches and power outages and school lunch menus. Lost dogs, lost accounts, lost tempers.

Jiving, shouting, rhyming, whispering. Hiccup remedies, lemon ’n’ honey, and good old-fashioned adrenalin to save the day.

Embarrassed, elated, delighted. Hi-Low, Name It And Claim It, and Dollar-A-Holler. Playlists and station surveys and Good Guys. Q, Zoo, and Boss. Bob & Ray and Mike & Elaine and The Monitor Beacon.

Jingles, stickers, Chickenman and The Oidar Wavelength.

Silly stunts, intense rivalries…Passion.

B-Sides and label colors and songwriter credits. Favorite songs, favorite artists, favorite moments.

Newspaper wars, live remotes, and meter readings. Shouts, stingers, sweepers, stagers, stabs.

Make-goods, live tags, rip ’n’ read and backtiming to the news. Allan Freed and Dan Ingram and Cousin Brucie.

Beat the Bomb and Lucky Bucks and Battle of the Bands. Pinning the needle, pegging the meter, riding gain.

Feedback and wrapping the capstan and “Hold on a sec, I gotta go on the air…”

Sign on, sign off, warming up the filament and Compression, Compression, Compression!

Gates board with rotary pots; Automax and Volumemax. Intros, outros, ramps, talk-ups. False endings and records popping & skipping and carts jamming.

Philosophical Differences and late night resume photocopy sessions. Tight board, good pipes, will relocate.

The big break, bad luck, skip waves, skipping town with the air staff’s paychecks.

Cueing past the splice, heavy phones, cue burn. Solid Gold, Hot Nine at Nine, Hot 100. WABC and KHJ and KLIF and WOWO and WLS and making it to the big markets.

Friday night countdowns, Saturday Swap Shops, Sunday drag racing commercials, twin spins, doubleplays, triple shots and instant replays.

Romantic entanglements, broken hearts, big dreams, small wins, and “Garbage Mouth Leaves Cleveland.”

“NO ONE is to touch these carts! And that means YOU!”

“Were you listening when…?”

and

“What’d ya think?”

and

“You should have been there.”

Then explain to that new jock:

Now you are there.

What are you gonna do with it?

Tim Fen brought this radio commercial to my attention, commenting that the “powerful message demonstrates the emotional impact of good radio advertising.”

While it’s not a bad spot, it could be much stronger.

The problem: This radio ad told the wrong story.

“You killed me” doesn’t make sense.

It puts the blame on the recipient of the text, rather than on the sender.

Sure, they’re speaking metaphorically. We know the “dead person” isn’t actually accusing the recipient of causing her death.

But even metaphors need to make sense.

Let’s Analyze this Radio Commercial for Quebec Auto Insurance.

The engine that drives the story is:

“Someone looked down for just a moment to send a text… and as a result, died.”

What’s more dramatic than a woman causing her own death by texting while driving?

A woman causing someone else’s death by texting while driving.

Someone who now will go through life carrying the guilt of causing another person’s death (a friend’s; a child’s; a young mother & infant) is much more tragic than someone who caused her own death due to her own wanton disregard not only for her own safety but for the safety of everyone else on the road.

Imagine that this spot did tell the story of a woman who caused another person’s death. Here’s how it would begin:

Did you notice how much stronger it was to begin the commercial with, “I never thought it would end like this”?

Voice Over Performance Notes for this Radio Commercial

I have no way of knowing if the performance was hampered by the casting, the voice actor’s choices, or the direction the voiceover artist was given.

But the delivery is heavy, ponderous, resentful.

That voice over delivery reinforces the impression that she really is blaming the friend for her own death.

The Casting for this Radio Commercial

Quick — demographically speaking, what type of person immediately pops into your mind when I say “person who carelessly texts while driving”?

A teenaged girl.

Or a young woman between the ages of 16 and 23.

That should be the target audience for this spot.

To reach that target audience, the protagonist should sound as though she’s one of them.

Did that voice sound like it belonged to 16-to-23-year-old?

That radio advertisement had good intentions…but a weak execution.

Last week I wrote about the importance of radio personalities’ honoring the verbal reality.

A close relative of “honoring the verbal reality” is “committing to your character or premise.”

Too many jocks “wink” at the audience, breaking character to comment on the performance or the comedy bit.

Some try to justify it by saying they’re “breaking the fourth wall,” which is a misuse of a term from the theatre.

For most, it’s an acknowledgement of their lack of faith either in the strength of the comedy feature or the quality of their performance.

They try to hide that insecurity by saying to the audience, “Hey, we know this is dumb, too. We’re just screwing around here.”

If the radio comedy is worth doing, commit to it. If the premise involves a ludicrous situation, play that situation as real as you can.

Commit to your characters, as well. Even if you’re ad-libbing, speak and react only as your character would, not as you would.

Here are two parts of a brilliant example of actors staying with their characters even when the situation is ridiculous*.

If you’re not a Downton Abbey fan, I doubt you’ll find this 2-part “special” funny, because you’re not familiar with the characters.

If you’re a fan, however, I suspect you might enjoy this…

When I coach radio talent, one of the first things I teach them is the importance of “honoring the verbal reality” — a concept that originated in improvisational theater.

Simply stated, honoring the verbal reality means that on your radio show, whatever is stated is real.

The opposite of honoring the verbal reality is “denying the verbal reality.”

Usually that occurs when one on-air person refuses to play along with another in deliberately painting a particular picture in the radio listeners’ minds.

Here are two real radio examples.

A Los Angeles Morning Radio Show Denying the Verbal Reality

The morning host of an L.A. radio station spent at least a minute mocking the loud Hawaiian shirt his news guy was wearing.

The news guy tried to defend himself and his loud Hawaiian shirt.

Then the DJ said, “No, I’m just kidding. He’s actually wearing a regular shirt, just as he always does.”

What???

The two of them spent a minute or more painting in my mind’s eye a vivid picture of the news guy’s wild shirt.

Then they wiped that image clean, removed it from my brain, and replaced it with the unpleasant realization that I had been lied to.

If the host says to the newsperson, “That’s a wild Hawaiian shirt you’re wearing,” the newsperson can give any response except “I’m not wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt.”

If Jock #1 says to Jock #2, “Hey, you parked in my parking space again today,” Jock #2 cannot respond, “I didn’t even drive to work today, so obviously I didn’t park in your space.”

We’ll ignore the fact that very few disc jockeys have their own personal parking spaces

The only one I can think of, offhand, is Gary Burbank when he worked at WLW/Cincinnati.

And that was only because he couldn’t think of what else to demand in his new contract, so he said, “…and I want my own parking space.’ ”

In fact, if we were on the radio right now and I said something about DJs having their own parking spaces and you were my partner, you would not correct me.

You wouldn’t say, “That’s just stupid, Dan. I don’t know of any radio DJs who have their own parking spaces!”

Why not?

Because you’d be denying the verbal reality I had just created.

That “Hawaiian shirt” encounter is a typical example of deliberately denying the verbal reality.

It can be equally deadly, however, to lessen the audience’s experience in a more subtle manner.

Denying the Verbal Reality on Public Radio

I hear versions of “denying the verbal reality” in all formats and markets, but I hear this “subtle” denial most often on local public radio stations.

Before I go further…

I’ve been a public radio listener for years.

I’ve consulted numerous public radio stations.

Public radio has lots of real “radio people” working for them.

It also has has a number of people who are on the air but never had the benefit of learning radio from the ground up. Often they came to radio sideways — making a lateral move from some other industry.

I bring this up because earlier this week I heard someone denying the verbal reality on a Los Angeles public radio without ever having a clue about the pictures that are created in listeners’ minds.

Whether or not on-air hosts try to create a visual image , listeners will generate mental pictures based upon what they hear.

So….

I’m in my car, listening as the radio host welcomes the station’s traffic reporter, who has just arrived with the latest traffic update.

They’re chatting.

Granted, their chatter is inane. Here’s how they begin their conversation:

“Good Monday to you.”

“And good Monday to you!”

If you live far from North America and are thinking, “I guess that’s a typical greeting in America” — no, it’s not.

Real people don’t say “Good Monday to you!”

But that’s not the denial of verbal reality that sparked this article.

They chat inanely for 30 seconds or so.

I don’t know what either of them looks like.

I don’t know what their broadcast studio looks like.

But I can see them sitting side-by-side in that radio studio, casually chatting away.

Until one of them says to the other, “Of course, you can’t see me now, but if you could you’d be impressed that I’m more dressed up than usual today…”

Wait! What?

She can’t see you?

But you two are side-by-side in the radio studio.

Or on opposite sides of the console.

We can see it, because we can hear it.

Your voices are perfectly matched.

Thanks to good microphones, good equipment and good engineering support, the processing is the same.

Because of the way your voices sound, your listeners see you in the same room.

That is their verbal reality.

It wasn’t created by your words; it was created by the tone and sound of your conversation.

You weren’t thinking about it because you’ve never thought about it.

You didn’t deliberately deny your radio audience’s verbal reality. You did so unknowingly.

But when your listeners suddenly realized their pictures were “wrong,” they were disappointed.

Whether or not you want them to, the sounds you broadcast always result in mental pictures for your listeners.

Take responsibility for the pictures you paint, for the verbal realities you create in the minds of your listeners.

Public Radio and Personality