I find it as refreshing as I did in 1988 when I fell in love with this business we call radio, as a programming ( I really really want to be someday soon) student, I have hopes that someday American radio will take notice of great stations like the aforementioned and take note. It’s all about the passion, the drive and the ambition of our young personalities that will make radio as fun as it was in the past, only now we’ll add social networking, some diggs, tweets, faceplants and a host of other marketing tools to develop our specific brands into fun radio again. Don’t you agree?

Just because the character isn’t making you any money, or you having trouble using the character in you everyday vigil of trying to get the character voice gig, doesn’t mean the character truly dies off, it’s just resting for a bit

The reoccurring character voice (for example: Nestle Bunny) has got to maintain that sound throughout the campaign, if you get a cold and you need to voice this character you should probably try to reschedule the session for at least a day maybe two, if you’re character has a cold and the client is good by it, work it into the copy, rewrite the script so that the obvious change in the sound of your characters voice fits the script. Easier said than done, because in most cases the client has already seen 5 revisions in the script,approved the one you are given and is a little leery about changing it again. But with a little coaxing and some tweaking by the creative director you CAN pull this off.

Keeping the reoccurring character fresh is just as challenging, many times we forget the voice if it hasn’t been used in a few months, I keep audio files of all my character voices and when I need to refresh it, I just listen back to a previous campaign and get warmed up by listening and parroting the voice until I get a match. You have to exercise your voices often, and I suggest that you do so in the shower, in the car, talking to your 2 year old, wherever you can and keep the creative juice moving forward.

Next time: Wow, you can do that?

Too many times I’ve heard commercials (especially in micro markets) that the same VO is ALL the characters in the spot. First and foremost find as many people as you can to audition for the parts in the building, from the receptionist to the GM if need be. Second, just because the production calls for a “type” of voice, doesn’t hold true for ALL production.

You know the characters you do best are the ones you voice in your car on the way home as you listen to talk radio for instance and you try to emulate the imbecile caller from *city* that has no clue as to what he or she is talking about, or the lady in the grocery store with 3 toddlers in tow trying to get them to behave. Listen to those voices, develop your own ‘character’ to wrap around those types of characters and write the commercial to fit the voice over.

If you’re selling cars, make fun of those over hyped but very well produced mega car dealer ads by having all the production values, but perhaps the VO is a smarmy 88 lb weakling, or even better, if you know a child that can read, and I mean really read and is a drama queen/king, then have them do the VO, run all these specs by the account exec, give them to the client, and sell your ideas on WHY you did what you did. Your job is to sell that clients product and this is but one way of doing it. Next time, we’ll chat about developing the characters in a more pristine environment for say, funeral homes. yes I said it, and I’ll stand by it.

Please give me a break, when will corporate programming get behind the mic again and show us how it’s supposed to be done? Never,, they’re too busy trying to figure out why PPM isn’t working like it’s supposed to for certain types of formats and you know why, because talent is told to shut up and just play the music, or the listener “doesn’t care about why you think  an Idol contestant was booted off”.

I really hope that radio will be allowed to be fun again. It’s why I got into the business in the first place, it was fun, it was engaging and it was entertaining. Isn’t that why we ALL got into this business anyway?

Perceptual indications told us that P1′s and P2′s were not going to be ready for Christmas music until AFTER Thanksgiving, but we didn’t “listen” to our primary demo, we followed the lemmings over the cliff and flipped when they did. In my opinion, I would have not followed the suits in corporates knee jerk response, I would have told them, “No, we’re gonna wait..”, let the chips fall where they may, so what the comp flipped to Christmas,, all my P1′s and P2′s that are just not ready have my regular programming to get them through their busy workdays, we’ll go when THEY want us to go, perceptually, after Thanksgiving.

Now, that being said, perhaps the way to program this is to trickle it in, like they did in the “old” days of radio, you know, the day after Halloween, you sneak in a classic holiday tune ONCE a daypart and then the next week a couple more and so on.  Christmas music early in a market with more than one Soft AC can be a blessing or a curse, in our case (the station I work for) a curse. I would hope that next year, things will definitely be different, perhaps that instead of a knee jerk jump to Christmas on Nov 1, we’ll wait and let the LISTENER let us know when they are ready for Christmas  Music, they’ll stay longer and that means an  increase in the TSL, and the Cume will always be up in those 52 glorious days from Nov 1 to Dec 25th , plus the audio they’ll give you will be fabulous!. That’s my opinion, and I hope that it helps you make a great decision next year

On the other end of my stick is the production end, finding new creative audio design in a venue that has heard it all before, is there something new I missed, is there a new effect, a new mix, a new or better way to produce?.  I am going to start to expand my skill sets by learning Pro-Tools and other audio platforms so that my skill sets match everyone else’.

I would love to see programmers (myself included) develop their radio brands and retro fit them to really, really look at personality driven radio again. Music intensive radio is fine, but I fondly look back at why I got into radio in the first place and I miss that personality driven, whacked out fun zoo formatting.  Radio can be fun again.. I know it can, we just need to take the neckties off and stop looking at the bottom line so much and look at why our listeners  LISTEN in the first place.  Just my thoughts, what are yours?

I’m saddened by this as I had hoped that especially this year, when most middle class kids won’t be getting the latest toy from Wally World or ToysRThem that at least they would get  a nice letter from The Jolly Old Elf wishing them a Merry Christmas with a Postmarked Letter from the North Pole

So here is the alternative, go to your local rubber stamp manufacturer, and have them make a stamp for you that looks like a postmark( but obviously isn’t), Write the letter yourself, and discreetly gather it with the other mail you will get from the mailbox, viola’!.. Your child will get that letter they painstakingly practiced for hours writing in their best cursive letters, editing, erasing and finally putting it on paper, the final “list” in beautiful black permanent ink to the one person they know will give them hope.

Santa Claus

I believe, shouldn’t you!

That being said, if you find yourself in a quandary with what and how to image your station, you can always fall back to the basics, who, what, where, why, and how. The principles of Journalism 101. If you ask open ended questions using that formula, you will get the responses you need and you’ll get a bunch of tape that will go on the cutting room floor as it were.

I have come across some great tape, just asking simple questions like; “What is your favorite holiday meal and how do you make it?” ( for my AC stations I ask 9 year olds) or, How many parties do you go to during the holidays and how do you choose which ones to go to?, Or an old favorite, “What do you do to get ready for Christmas”.

In this recessionary period, questions will change to reflect the individuals, “How are you going to make Christmas memorable this year?”.. “What will make this Christmas special for your family?”, “Where will you spend the Holidays?” Great holiday imaging is what will put your station ahead of the others. PPM not in your market?. Don’t worry, it still makes a difference and those small things make your station sound as big as it can be.