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Author Topic: Does anyone here podcast? On any topic at all? John Lasher Master Film Handler Posts: 493 From: Newark, DE Registered: Aug 2001 posted 03-28-2008 01:02 AM                        I have a videoblog which I post... semi-regularly on YouTube. You can see it here. For some reason, the one I posted with the rushes from "The Lucky Quarter" has substantially more views than the others (not counting my explanation of the David Copperfield mind-reading clock trick). As a boy scout, I got to visit the Claymont, DE studios of WJBR. At the time they were running an oldies/sports station on AM (1290) and an Adult Contemporary/Pop station on FM (99.5). The FM station still broadcasts, although they are now owned by ClearChannel. I got to see the FM DJ take a few few requests, tape record one (on reel-to-reel). The AM side was relaying a Phillies game (I think, might have been Blue Rocks). They had someone show us the production studio, which was mostly analog tape (RTR and Cart, they had 2 top loading CD players, which had to be opened with a screwdriver because the eject buttons were broken, and a voice synthesizer the guy giving the tour used to make his voice sound like a monster-truck rally commercial.) Later on I got to visit the local college station, they still had turntables they used for the evening jazz show, this would have been around 1998-2000. I think they still have them for that and a show called the cutting edge, which features unsigned/local/indie bands (many of which still release vinyl).  |  IP: Logged Sean McKinnon Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1712 From: Peabody Massachusetts Registered: Sep 2000 posted 03-28-2008 09:56 AM                        Yeah, I agree that there is a LOT of really crappy radio out there. I am lucky as a listener to live in one of the tops market on the country and to have one of the oldest and most well respected rock stations in the country. I almost exclusively listen to WBCN 104.1 FM (CBS Radio) they have really good DJ's who really love what they do and know a lot about the music people literally line up to work for this station because of its reputation so we are lucky to get the best of the best. They also have a really really good afternoon show it is very entertaining but not hacky. It's The Toucher And Rich Show and they are consistently funny and have created a huge following in just about two years. As someone who wants to break into the business it is not such a good thing to live in a top market. I really do not want to move. Maybe I can get a gig at one of the New Hampshire radio stations. Tim, Do you reccomend applying at any station or just stations that you like the format and are familiar with what they play? Is that very important, or should I try to get any station no matter the format? Also, the reason I wanted to go to school is I am not happy with my voice and think I can use the voice training. CSB (connecticuit school of broadcasting) has a campus near me and they run an 8 week course that covers on air operations, speech and voice training, production and commercials with pro-tools etc..., and they say that they provide job placement upon "graduation" They also claim to have state of the art studios that are open to students six days a week to work on projects and demo tapes etc... It seems like 8 weeks really isnt a long time to get a little training under my belt and get pointed in the right direction? Thanks for all your advice!  |  IP: Logged Jack Ondracek Film God Posts: 2348 From: Port Orchard, WA, USA Registered: Oct 2002 posted 03-28-2008 01:58 PM                        There's no easy answer to this, as the business has changed dramatically. When I started (Tim too, I think), you could work your way up through stations in smaller towns, establish your identity and make plenty of aircheck (tapes!). Satellite programming has eliminated a lot of those 'training ground' opportunities, as small broadcasters have found it much easier (and cheaper) to toss a common PC into the control room and automate the whole station. A lot of larger markets have gone the 'intern' route. They offer some opportunities to get in at near ground-floor levels, but the pay is low, or nonexistent. In a lot of cases though, that's a way to get in. I think the best way to find a job in broadcasting is not to limit yourself to the music you personally like to listen to. We have a couple of college-based schools here. However, they play only... well, I don't know what they call it these days, and there are only two stations in the state that they could easily move that talent to. On the other hand, there are two clusters of stations in Seattle, where announcers appear on more than one station. One guy does talk on a 50kW AM station, then does AC at a co-owned FM station, just down the hall. Another does a morning show on a Seattle FM, and co-hosts an afternoon show on a co-owned TV station. The point being that if you don't go into the talent pool with a narrowly focused set of abilities, your chances of landing something interesting might be a lot better. In one market I was in, I did rock at one station, country and engineering at another, and commercial production at one of the local TV stations. None of them were full-time gigs, but added together, it was a pretty good time and I had all the work I could handle. Good luck!  |  IP: Logged James Westbrook Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1133 From: Lubbock, Texas, Usa Registered: Mar 2006 posted 03-28-2008 02:51 PM                     Clear Channel has been given credit for "ruining" radio, though one could argue that they didn't do that alone. The Lubbock market does have announcing staff at most of the stations here, especially on the FM band. Clear Channel was acutally producing and distributing programming from Lubbock to it's owned stations in Amarillo and Abilene but last year sold the Lubbock stations (2 AM and 4 FM) to Gap Broadcasting. I used to find it interesting that some of the announcing staff and program directors would leave, say, the top 40 station and work at a country-formatted station and still thrive and vice/versa. I recall a program director at KLLL (country) named Chuck Luck. I found his name to be kind of odd so I asked the newspaper's entertainment editor what Mr. Luck's real name was. Chuck Luck IS his actual name. He later got a job offer to the local top 40 station as program director (KZII, or Z-102) and brought that station to the top of the Arbitron books. Formats are just a formality in the business, it seems.  |  IP: Logged Scott Norwood Film God Posts: 8146 From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas) Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-28-2008 02:59 PM                        How many commercial radio stations still generate 100% of their programming in house with live announcers or DJs? I can think of only two in this market: WBZ (AM news/talk) and WFNX (FM alt-rock). It seems that pretty much every other station uses taped or syndicated shows or automation for at least some daily programming. There may be others that don't do this, but there can't be very many. Really, the best radio programming seems to be at the low end of the FM dial, with NPR and various college stations. WERS (Emerson College radio) is particularly good: their signal is stronger than most college stations, the production work is quite good, and they play a wide variety of music, including many live performances in their studio.  |  IP: Logged James Westbrook Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1133 From: Lubbock, Texas, Usa Registered: Mar 2006 posted 03-28-2008 03:28 PM                     In Lubbock, a lot of syndicated programming airs, including on the FM stations. (Mike Harvey Monday through Saturday nights on the oldies station, for example.) I estimate the talk station I have on the most runs 6 hours of local talk a day, with the remainder being syndicated. I also suspect the station goes "automated" when the syndicated programs air (except maybe Bill O'Reilly, which is delayed so they can air Dr Laura live.) Ramar Communications owns this station, and when the top-of-the hour ID comes on, the computer consistently cuts it off before the ID finishes. ("AM 950 is KJTV, Lubbock. A service of Ramar C-")  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-28-2008 07:17 PM                       quote: Sean McKinnon Do you reccomend applying at any station or just stations that you like the format and are familiar with what they play? [warning, Frank Angel-sized post follows ] Sean, as Jack mentioned, you shouldn't "limit yourself to formats," or else you narrow your chances for jobs. It only takes a week to get used to a station's format. Whenever I started a new station (regardless of format), I listened to them for a good week before my first shift. This gets you familiar with their call letters, positioning statements, slogans, air talent, and playlist. You can bet there's a percentage of jocks on your favorite station there who absolutely cannot stand the music they play, but you will never know it to listen to them. I've played the hits on country stations, Big Band, AC, CHR, and Contemporary Christian formats. Regardless of what station you're on, when you crack that mic, you gotta make it sound like there's no other place in the world you'd rather be. At my first station (I was 18), I made the mistake of commenting about a Willie Nelson song on the backsell: "Well, there's one good thing about that tune, it's only a minute and a half long!" Almost immediately, the hot line lit up. I knew I was in trouble; program director. He told me something to the effect of, "While you may not personally like a song, there are plenty of listeners who do and you need to validate that with them." Before we hung up, he added, laughing, "By the way... that was pretty good." Don't believe for a minute, the promos for a certain format that's currently popular around the country: NO ONE is on the air playing whatever they want, whenever they want! The consistency of a format is critical to pulling good (Arbitron) numbers. Jack's info is probably more up to the minute than mine. I think he's still involved in that business and I'm several years removed. Try all the stations near you, it can't hurt. Send out a T&R (tape and resume) and see if you get any bites. You never know. A weekend spot might open up, running the board on ball games or something. But you'll certainly have a better chance at a small outfit to start. Re: voice training. In a city as big as Boston, you can probably find good local voice coaches. Short of enunciating words clearly, the thing most people have trouble with is their breathing. Speak while expelling air from your diaphram, and not while taking it in. Don't try to sound like someone else, either. Everyone wants to sound like Don LaFontaine, but precious few have the pipes for it. Just be YOU. If the Broadcast School whets your appetite, go for it. I can tell you the "job placement assistance" is probably helping you put a tape and resume together, and then sitting down with a copy of R&R. Good luck!  |  IP: Logged Sean McKinnon Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1712 From: Peabody Massachusetts Registered: Sep 2000 posted 03-29-2008 10:23 AM                        Thank you for all the replies and help. As I said this is something I have wanted to do since I was a little kid but never beleived I had the talent. The biggest thing that is holding me back is that I don't like the way my voice sounds, I have always been mindful of my pronunciation (Double-You not Dubbya etc...) but feel that I could use work on timing and voice quality. It is an awful lot of money for an 8 week course but they say that you have access to use their studios for life, invitations to different seminars for life, and job placement assistance for life. The other thing I was thinking about is their is a college station near me that lets people from the community produce their own shows not just students.  |  IP: Logged Greg Anderson Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 766 From: Ogden Valley, Utah Registered: Nov 1999 posted 03-29-2008 11:30 AM                        I'm still stumped about how YouTube can be sustained in its present form. Consider that there's very little advertising there and then the rest of the business model doesn't make sense. They host millions of video clips "for free." There's no limit to how many videos I can upload. And there's a ton of bandwidth used by viewers. So how can this activity pay for itself? Anyway... The bulk of my radio broadcasting experience was throughout the 1990s, so I may be a little out-of-date. We were using satellite-based music services. We had automation to insert our local ads, along with station IDs and "liners" from the DJs that were doing their live shows over the satellite system. In other words, the same show was simultaneously being broadcast on dozens of stations nationwide and each station was making it seem as if the show was locally-produced. The fact that our programming wasn't locally-produced was a closely-guarded secret, as far as management was concerned. Today, of course, nobody seems to care where the programs originate as long as they're interesting. At our small station, I did a little bit of everything, including some live, on-air work. I recorded the local ads, kept the automation computers running, scheduled the station breaks, ran the board for live, local sports broadcasts, performed maintenance and repairs, swept snow off the satellite dishes... and just about everything else when I felt like something needed to happen and I didn't want to wait for others to do it. That kind of situation can wear you down. I have a habit of being a bit too "generous" with my abilities. I'll give myself tons of additional assignments without asking for additional compensation. Before long, those assignments became my responsibilities and I eventually resented the situation. I was doing double the work that I was hired to do but getting nothing for my additional trouble. This can happen easily at a small station. It's easy to start doing a lot of things and get a lot of experience. But if it starts to wear you down, don't be afraid to speak up (before you get really frustrated) or to take that experience elsewhere. I ultimately realized that I didn't have radio "in my blood" and I decided that a life-long career there wasn't right for me. But, during my time in radio, I met a lot of guys who did have radio "in their blood." There was nothing to keep them away from radio. They loved every second of it and they could be enthusiastic on the air whether the format was country, rock, oldies, "soft hits," whatever! They had tons of music history in their heads, too. As for broadcast school... I studied a lot of related stuff in college but never had specific training for radio. But I did tons of recording at home during high school. I sent tapes to friends just for our own entertainment. If a guy spends years playing the piano by himself before becoming a professional musician, that's cool. Why do we think a guy's a weirdo if he spends years practicing being a DJ before actually going on the air?  |  IP: Logged Mike Blakesley Film God Posts: 12767 From: Forsyth, Montana Registered: Jun 99 posted 03-29-2008 01:14 PM                        quote: Tim Reed I made the mistake of commenting about a Willie Nelson song on the backsell: "Well, there's one good thing about that tune, it's only a minute and a half long!" Almost immediately, the hot line lit up. I knew I was in trouble Jeez, I can't believe people have no more to do than call and gripe at a radio station about a joke by a DJ. No wonder other countries hate us.  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-30-2008 12:14 AM                       Mike, listeners don't have the hotline number, that was my program director who called to reprimand me. It was his job to monitor the air talent. I'm actually glad he did that, and continued to steer me in the right direction, because I was very green. The lessons I learned at that station about connecting with listeners carried with me, and I always pulled good numbers as a result.  |  IP: Logged Joe Redifer You need a beating today Posts: 12859 From: Denver, Colorado Registered: May 99 posted 03-30-2008 01:13 AM                        Every time I see this thread on the Film Yak board, I think it says: Does anyone here post on topic at all? quote: Sean McKinnon The board is digital and outputs a high-def signal. LOLOL  |  IP: Logged Tim Reed Better Projection Pays Posts: 5246 From: Northampton, PA Registered: Sep 1999 posted 03-30-2008 09:49 AM                        |  IP: Logged Sean McKinnon Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1712 From: Peabody Massachusetts Registered: Sep 2000 posted 03-30-2008 10:15 AM                        well it does, you know that new digital HD radio?  |  IP: Logged Rachel Craven Madam Moderator Posts: 2190 From: Pensacola, FL Registered: Dec 2000 posted 03-30-2008 10:19 AM                     Damn Sean, I wish someone told me, I would have listened! You uploading the cd on youtube or anything? Ok, on topic... I've never even SEEN a podcast... I'm so out of the loop! I guess I'll check out a couple of the links at the beginning of this thread.  |  IP: Logged

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