Re: voice-tracking is the symptom, but it's not the disease

[Jeremy Mixer <mixer@zoso.net>]

On Wed, 27 Dec 2000, SteveOrdinetz wrote:

> Does being live 24/7 even gain you anything?  I don't think so.  Certain
> dayparts beg to be live...AM drive, maybe PM drive, certainly nights on an
> active-audience format (CHR, AOR, Alternative, etc).  Overnights or
> non-prime weekend shifts in any but the largest markets?  No.  Mid-days?
> Not really.  Nights on adult-leaning formats like AC or Classic Rock?
> Again, not really.  It's been argued (again and again) that being live

With all due respect, I beg to differ. Look at the station that is about
as live as you can possibly get that usually gets the top spot in the
Portland Arbs.....WBLM. Ron Brown has been doing overnights there for
something around 10 years and still pulls in the listeners.....His
overnight show from what I understandf is one of the most popular in the
area. And they even have people doing the overnights live on weekends.

While the formula doesn;t seem to work as well, the same thing still seems
to work for WKIT in Bangor. Granted they have one of the richest people in
the state as their station owner, but the station along with WZON as I
understand it is self sufficient and the only 24/7 live station in the
Bangor market.

WBZN in Bangor is live most of the time except on overnights and a few of
the slots on weekends, but as a part timer there, I am very thankful that
I get to go to work and be live for 6-8 hours a weekend, while the
competition WWBX is primarily voicetracked except during the really heavy
listened to dayparts. And the funny thing is, I usually can tell when
something is voicetracked because most people never do it well. It's so
perfect sounding, either the voice is too loud or the music drowns it out
half the time......and the spirit of radio just doesn;t seem to be there.
When people are live you usually can tell....yeah sometimes you hear
errors, but when I hear an announcer make a screwup   live on the air it
makes me smile, not in jest towards the announcer, but A smile of "They're
human and they are live on the air" and it is a great feeling.

Being a radio personality myself I obviously look at radio a lot
differently then the general public. Half the fun of listening to the
radio for me is the personalities that you hear. I remember being a kid
and wondering who the mysterious voices that talked really were, even then
I found what the "DJ's" were saying was very interesting. Talking about
how cold of a day it was, talking about being tied up in traffic due to
construction while I am driving around caught in the same construction.
Hearing someone on the radio talk about La Kermesse's fireworks that I
just got home from watching....THAT is what makes radio interesting for
me. A great instructor of mine at the New England School of Communications
passed on to his students three rules of radio that were passed on to him
and I feel should always be passed on.

1. Be local
2. Be brief
3. Be relatable

While you still can do all these with voicetracking,m the voicetrackiing
by people miles away....it's just rediculous. I don;t want to hear some
guy that is dealing with a sunny day while I am dealing with a blizzard.
You can't be local or relatable iuf you are in Florida doing voicetracks
for some station in Maine. If you're doing voicetracking for a local
station....that's great, of course it is a good expirience, but in my
eyes, it really ruins the true feel of radio.

-Mixer