Tuesday, June 9, 2009

WHO'S YOUR VOICE?

Who’s your voice? No matter who you are using now, (you know the one that invoices you monthly and has his agent call if you go over your quota by a line or two). The most important station voice should be your Audience. Not only does it make you local, but real and one-to-one. Which is what you want, right? Like the ads for morning/afternoon/night shows looking to hire always say “great phones”. So add some cinematic character to your station canvas, go out and capture listeners around town or at your events and create some interesting audio. My friend and talented creative director/vo Ben Blankenship(KDXY @ Saga group in Jonesboro AR) has been doing it @ every major promotional event for years now. I know it takes more time and you are pushing the limits already with smaller staff and all the responsibilities- my answer for that is “figure it out”. When music radio evolved into 24/7 operations in the 50’s-60’s the original format vo guy was Bill Drake, remember? Ladies and Gentlemen you’re listening to a million $ weekend on, CKLW,KFRC,KHJ,KYNO and so on. It was mostly top hour/bottom hour ID and jingles and jocks were the rest of the voices heard. In the late 60’s and 70’s radio was more stripped down, had that free-form sound, and again station voice work was relegated to the PD / Prod Dir. or the biggest voice on staff (Brother John ABC FM’s,Russ Albums WLUP/WYNF or Jerry Clifton with his too cool for the room read and laid back/intimate promos on his stations). If I leave out an obvious name out of your radio playbook, forgive me as I was raised in SoCal and that’s the radio I was exposed to in the 60’s-70’s. Leap forward to the mid-late 80’s and we start hearing “The voice Guys” more and more like Joe Kelly on all the big city FM rockers on 50K per year retainer, really! The trend continued as bumpers/sweepers became the norm between every frkn song. NO segues, it sucks,…..for the listener(duh)! And the 90’s with all the filtered voices (John Frost KROQ, Keith Eubanks WNNX). And finally last 5-10 years when we saw stations use Actors to create an image, (Barry Corbin/ WLPX, and Sam Elliott somewhere), the choices and possibilities became endless. So what do you do, who’s voice represents your station? See the thing is there are format legends, John Willyard comes to mind and he’s great and everywhere. But that’s the problem with radio. It follows trends, whatever the “thing” is, sometimes because of corporate edict or fear of change everyone begins to sound the same and that’s lame. Not only the same voices are heard but too often the content of what is said is stale and un inspiring. Why is that. Why would you hire a voice, run it all the time and only create new imaging once a month, or less? Ah but that topic (writing good imaging and lots of it) is for another time. For now, I finish with this. Country radio is Rich with history and full of character; the artists, the listeners , and your town and air talent and the world at large. What more do you need? Go gather, some audio soundbytes, find a fresh voice and write some inspiring copy, there are so many things to showcase on your station. Experiment and have some fun, it’s Radio not Walmart. And it really is that simple. If you need some ideas ask Chuck, he creates new scripts for his voice guys weekly. I know.

9 comments:

  1. Austin, you are so right! I think now more than ever we have to really think out of the box and use everything around us. If we don't we will be left behind. Try something new and fresh, get yourself out of the rut and see what happens. Take chances, if you don't someone else will! TIM JONES

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  2. I unforunately don't have the pleasure of choosing what talent will voice what, but on occassion we have the opportunity to seek out new talent when we launch a new product, format or show.

    Chuck I do agree with you and Austin about thinking outside of the box ... This morning I was on a conference call and someone mentioned at their office there are tons of things that never make it out of the production room because it didn't quite work out the way they imagined it to. The point was if they didn't try it and attempt to be different then how would he have known it wouldn't work.

    - Chad Imaging Whiz @ Dial Global

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  3. It's true Austin. Putting the listeners into the imaging is becoming a lost art. People use too many pre-made drops of listeners instead of doing the foot work to get them recorded and mixed into the imaging. I like to use the listener drops with little production and as a segue between songs, without the station voice. I also mix them into the main imaging with the station Vo guy or gal.
    Best,
    Ben
    http://www.benvoice.com
    http://www.benblankenship.blogspot.com

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  4. Ben you are the shit! I am a fan of listeners and real listeners.

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  5. Thanks for this Blog Chuck. I love it and it's very helpful.

    Best,
    Ben B

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  6. I've know Austin for over a decade so he's preaching to the choir here. Austin is a voice that stood out in any format, but is also an imaging personality. I've always allowed our image voice to be one of our personalities. Just using bells and noices to make words and cutsie phrases stick out, only impresses us old fart purists.

    If your imaging content makes a listener feel, "Yeah! I would have said that!", "No shit.. absolutely!" and the like, then your station is no longer noise, it's companionship.

    The new generation of listeners aren't buying the cute phrases anymore. Even Mitch Craig couldn't pull that off. Balsy deep pipes only work now in Sci-Fi movies.

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  7. Some imaging guys get too cookie cutter and don't look at each topical as a blank canvas, they end up painting by numbers. I produced Austin myself in Yuma and his reads would give the idea and the copy on how to make it cinematic. www.kqsr-fm.com

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  8. Austin is real good, one of the best voice artists out there.

    Also what can you say about a guy who brought formatic discipline to KSDT on the UCSD campus. Good to see this forum guys.

    Kevin Barrett
    XTRASPORTS860

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