WBUR pre-recording underwriting

[Aaron Read <aread@speakeasy.net>]

Just curious, what have folks thought of WBUR's decision to pre-record 
their underwriting spots (to their AudioVault, presumably) and drop them in 
and around a live announcer?

I am aware that several months ago a new policy came down that ALL breaks 
were required to be live...prior to that several of the non-news breaks 
(esp. the breaks during The Connection) were pre-recorded to save time and 
hassle in the air studio whilst getting ready for Here & Now at noon.

Anyways, I think overall it's a decent idea.  The pacing on the 
underwriting spots is much better - frequently a host rushing to finish 
before time ran out would read way too fast (Bob Oakes is notorious for 
this) and the spot was largely useless as you could barely understand what 
was said.   The diversity of voices is kinda nice, too.

By the same token, the abrupt shift from live announcer voice to 
pre-recorded voice (Mary Ann Nichols and Ted O'Brien seem to be the 
preferred "underwriting voices") is somewhat jarring...no matter how good 
the live announcer is, it's nigh-impossible to make your live voice match 
the pace and cadence of the pre-recorded one.

Also, I've heard some of the pre-recorded stuff run over time as well, and 
that always sounds hideous.  The audio processing is a little off, 
too...you can hear the background music's apparent volume shooting up and 
down as the processor tries to deal with a voice source from a computer vs. 
a voice source from a Neumann U87A microphone.


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Aaron "Bishop" Read             aread@speakeasy.net
FriedBagels Consulting          AOL-IM: readaaron
http://www.friedbagels.com      Boston, MA