Patterns.
Hosted my usual show tonight and noticed, for the first time, a distinct pattern in the quality of my announcing.
When I take over board, I sound like a goddamned windbag. "THIS IS KUNM! ALBUQUERQUE! STAY TUNED! FOR THIS! AMERICAN! LIFE! FROM WBEZ CHICAGO! THEN AT FIVE! IT'S ALL THINGS CONSIDERED! FROM NATIONAL! PUBLIC! RADIO!" Hearing the aircheck I want to tell myself to shut the fuck up and get over myself already. It's a "radio voice" in the worst possible sense of the word: overblown and stagey.
But then as one break follows another I gradually fall into a natural, relaxed rhythm. I sound decidedly better by the time I'm giving the 5:38:30 weather forecast. I can talk about slow-moving cold fronts *very* conversationally, almost like I'm sharing a secret with "the listener" that I just happen to be privy to. Kinda "yeah, it's comin' through right now and may leave rain in certain places, but by midweek we should be getting warmer." Now if only I could sound that way when taking over board, I'd be set.
It's not a particularly hard shift -- Sunday evenings. But the transitions from one shift to another are super-tricky. I'm taking over from "Singing Wire", which is the Native-American music/call-in show. They've got *tons* of listeners out on the various reservations, and it's a great show in how it serves its audience. They do "shout outs", which some people at the station say sound "too commercial", but which in context of an American Indian music show serve a definite and valuable purpose to the community -- for many people "shouting out" it's their best way to communicate with people who care about them, far, far away.
Then I waltz in outta nowhere with my super-faggy, super-white-guy little "This American Life" thing, and it's no wonder they don't want to cede the airwaves until the last possible moment. In the pressure of that moment, I don't care. I'm not there to re-enact the buffalo hunts from the trains, and there's really no weird racial ideology at work here. I just *need* to get my own damn show started at precisely four o'clock, following a legal station ID which might take two seconds. It's not that we're reenacting the "Indian Wars" in the control room every Sunday, it's just that we're suddenly, abruptly changing format completely from one thing to another. I *love* the Singing Wire crew. David Paytiamo got me into the newsroom last week after I'd locked myself out of it. But the format transition is so abrupt, so sudden, and so complete a break: one minute we're playing centuries-old pow-wow dances for hours on end, then suddenly we're all urbanite wine-sipping sophisticates talking about "relationships". All this matters precisely because that's when our listening audience *changes*.
Most of the "Singing Wire" listeners tune out at the exact same time most of the "This American Life" listeners tune in. So it's a super-delicate balancing game in the ten or fifteen seconds that I've got -- who is my audience? Sophisticated, self-important latte-sipping urbanites? Or traditional, family-oriented people driving from one reservation to another? As an announcer, I have to address myself to "the listener" -- the single person tuned in at that precise moment. The simple answer is: it's both! For those few seconds I have got to address and reach *both* audiences, as wildly disparate as they are. Those seconds ae *crucial* and I have yet to master them. Flood warnings are the best thing I can think of to happen right then -- they give me an easy way to provide a public service to the rural drivers *and* transition casually into David Sedaris' frivolous stories about alcoholic squirrels on fire.
I love radio.
Then transitioning out is tricky, as well. Either John Burgund takes over the helm for Radio Theatre or someone I've never heard of or met before takes over for Youth Radio, which follows Radio Theatre. John Burgund is, well, a control freak. I say this with the greatest possible respect, because I am one, too. We've done the transition a couple of times now and I think it's fair to say we've got it down to a science -- which is good! He took over from me today and between the two of us obsessing over details we figured "Radio Theatre" had 30 more seconds to play with, per hour, than it had previously.
When Youth Radio takes over, the transition's more uncertain. Sometimes it's *very* tightly run. Sometimes it's not. Today was lovely because I actually got to "train" one of the Youth Radio board engineers in how to run a show before he got pulled off to prepare for his program. Gave him a *lot* of information, very fast. Sometimes, you never know for sure who is relieving you until ten minutes before you're set to go off the air.
Long story short: it's never the same scenario from one day to the next. It's *always* interesting. It's *always* challenging.
I love radio.
And then there was the call I got after the "floating cutaway" in "This American Life". I kinda cringe sometimes, I admit, when I hear the phone ring in Control Room. This guy asked if I was listening to the show, and I said "kinda", 'cause it was true. I'd audited the whole CD before I aired it to make sure that it was free of glitches and whatnot, but was more attuned to when what breaks happened and when I could air what carts and make announcements.
Winds up he *loved* the story on "This American Life" about the Iraq War veteran who joined the Muslim Students' Association on returning to the states despite having no interest in becoming Muslim. It reminded him of an Iranian friend he'd had in college and he wanted desperately to get in touch with. I offered him some email addresses but it winds up he's living "off the grid". So I wind up looking up this and that for him online from the control room and giving him mailing addresses and phone numbers.
Then he asks who I am, and I tell him, and he says "weren't you on the air the other night?" I respond "yes, I was", because I was, and he says he enjoyed the program. Very goddamned fuckin' nifty. He goes into how he's kind of an insomniac and listens late at night and blah blah blah -- long story short, he *liked* the program I put on. He starts talking about his parents' record collection and how much he liked hearing showtunes along with all the other stuff I played, and how it brought back happy memories and stuff. Very neat. Very, very neat.
Have I already said that I love radio?
If not -- I do.
When I take over board, I sound like a goddamned windbag. "THIS IS KUNM! ALBUQUERQUE! STAY TUNED! FOR THIS! AMERICAN! LIFE! FROM WBEZ CHICAGO! THEN AT FIVE! IT'S ALL THINGS CONSIDERED! FROM NATIONAL! PUBLIC! RADIO!" Hearing the aircheck I want to tell myself to shut the fuck up and get over myself already. It's a "radio voice" in the worst possible sense of the word: overblown and stagey.
But then as one break follows another I gradually fall into a natural, relaxed rhythm. I sound decidedly better by the time I'm giving the 5:38:30 weather forecast. I can talk about slow-moving cold fronts *very* conversationally, almost like I'm sharing a secret with "the listener" that I just happen to be privy to. Kinda "yeah, it's comin' through right now and may leave rain in certain places, but by midweek we should be getting warmer." Now if only I could sound that way when taking over board, I'd be set.
It's not a particularly hard shift -- Sunday evenings. But the transitions from one shift to another are super-tricky. I'm taking over from "Singing Wire", which is the Native-American music/call-in show. They've got *tons* of listeners out on the various reservations, and it's a great show in how it serves its audience. They do "shout outs", which some people at the station say sound "too commercial", but which in context of an American Indian music show serve a definite and valuable purpose to the community -- for many people "shouting out" it's their best way to communicate with people who care about them, far, far away.
Then I waltz in outta nowhere with my super-faggy, super-white-guy little "This American Life" thing, and it's no wonder they don't want to cede the airwaves until the last possible moment. In the pressure of that moment, I don't care. I'm not there to re-enact the buffalo hunts from the trains, and there's really no weird racial ideology at work here. I just *need* to get my own damn show started at precisely four o'clock, following a legal station ID which might take two seconds. It's not that we're reenacting the "Indian Wars" in the control room every Sunday, it's just that we're suddenly, abruptly changing format completely from one thing to another. I *love* the Singing Wire crew. David Paytiamo got me into the newsroom last week after I'd locked myself out of it. But the format transition is so abrupt, so sudden, and so complete a break: one minute we're playing centuries-old pow-wow dances for hours on end, then suddenly we're all urbanite wine-sipping sophisticates talking about "relationships". All this matters precisely because that's when our listening audience *changes*.
Most of the "Singing Wire" listeners tune out at the exact same time most of the "This American Life" listeners tune in. So it's a super-delicate balancing game in the ten or fifteen seconds that I've got -- who is my audience? Sophisticated, self-important latte-sipping urbanites? Or traditional, family-oriented people driving from one reservation to another? As an announcer, I have to address myself to "the listener" -- the single person tuned in at that precise moment. The simple answer is: it's both! For those few seconds I have got to address and reach *both* audiences, as wildly disparate as they are. Those seconds ae *crucial* and I have yet to master them. Flood warnings are the best thing I can think of to happen right then -- they give me an easy way to provide a public service to the rural drivers *and* transition casually into David Sedaris' frivolous stories about alcoholic squirrels on fire.
I love radio.
Then transitioning out is tricky, as well. Either John Burgund takes over the helm for Radio Theatre or someone I've never heard of or met before takes over for Youth Radio, which follows Radio Theatre. John Burgund is, well, a control freak. I say this with the greatest possible respect, because I am one, too. We've done the transition a couple of times now and I think it's fair to say we've got it down to a science -- which is good! He took over from me today and between the two of us obsessing over details we figured "Radio Theatre" had 30 more seconds to play with, per hour, than it had previously.
When Youth Radio takes over, the transition's more uncertain. Sometimes it's *very* tightly run. Sometimes it's not. Today was lovely because I actually got to "train" one of the Youth Radio board engineers in how to run a show before he got pulled off to prepare for his program. Gave him a *lot* of information, very fast. Sometimes, you never know for sure who is relieving you until ten minutes before you're set to go off the air.
Long story short: it's never the same scenario from one day to the next. It's *always* interesting. It's *always* challenging.
I love radio.
And then there was the call I got after the "floating cutaway" in "This American Life". I kinda cringe sometimes, I admit, when I hear the phone ring in Control Room. This guy asked if I was listening to the show, and I said "kinda", 'cause it was true. I'd audited the whole CD before I aired it to make sure that it was free of glitches and whatnot, but was more attuned to when what breaks happened and when I could air what carts and make announcements.
Winds up he *loved* the story on "This American Life" about the Iraq War veteran who joined the Muslim Students' Association on returning to the states despite having no interest in becoming Muslim. It reminded him of an Iranian friend he'd had in college and he wanted desperately to get in touch with. I offered him some email addresses but it winds up he's living "off the grid". So I wind up looking up this and that for him online from the control room and giving him mailing addresses and phone numbers.
Then he asks who I am, and I tell him, and he says "weren't you on the air the other night?" I respond "yes, I was", because I was, and he says he enjoyed the program. Very goddamned fuckin' nifty. He goes into how he's kind of an insomniac and listens late at night and blah blah blah -- long story short, he *liked* the program I put on. He starts talking about his parents' record collection and how much he liked hearing showtunes along with all the other stuff I played, and how it brought back happy memories and stuff. Very neat. Very, very neat.
Have I already said that I love radio?
If not -- I do.
posted by xeltifon at 9:05 PM
1 Comments:
I thought you were doing two-minute news spots, but you have a *regular show*. How cool is that!? Maybe I can find the means to listen (via my dial-up connection).
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