Air check day.

Today was air check day in the newsroom.

That's when we pull a recent broadcast off the skimmer and sit down and review our "breaks" with the News Director (note the singular -- this is a good thing!) and the program director. We're trying to do these more regularly now -- they're an invaluable tool in just hearing how you sound on the air, without actually *being* on air, and getting the feedback from different sets of ears *without* the pressure of "I'm trying to line up my next break, here".

It *can* be a bit of a "sweatbox" -- you know, the unventilated, crowded closet underneath the stairs at the old Hyperion Avenue Disney studio in Hollywood, where animators would go over their pencil tests with Roy and Walt and their directors literally looming over their shoulders as they ran the rushes on a Movieola. But it doesn't have to be, and today, it wasn't.

I go in and carve out my "breaks" from the skimmer's sound of yesterday's brodcast. My first news break I literally take notes -- I tripped over the "K"s and the "P"s and still sound "halting" in my delivery. I'm *very* self-critical by nature, but at a certain point, just being so gets in my way.

Whoa -- back up. Look at the *big* picture. That's basically the advice I get. I need it. I'm obsessing over individual phonemes, and sticking my mind in the rut of thinking "sibilants and plosives trip me up", which winds up reinforcing itself in the way of a self-fulfilling prophesy, so that any time I see an "S" or a "P" or a "T" or an "F" in the script, let along a whole string of 'em, my mind gets pre-programmed to get jumbled. The air check is all about deprogramming my brain.

I just need to slow down and simplify. It's not about "reading the news" so much as it's about "telling a story" to one person, somewhere, out there. And of all the people listening, *whatever* I am telling them, some people will go "WHOA!", while others will go "WHAT?". So at the same time I am talking to *one* person, I am also talking to a *bunch* of people -- but it's *not* like standing at a podium and delivering a speech to the huddled masses.

And the whole "apologizing on air" thing. (Not that I did in my "air check", but I have been known to do it, in the past.) It isn't that it's "sloppy", which is how I *was* thinking about it, which invariably leads me down the garden path of apologizing for having apologized, ad infinitum. Wrong mental place to be, ON AIR. You wind up just gasping for air and waiting, with increasing desperation, for the post you have to hit to roll around.

It's *really* that apologizing simply *isn't* necessary *or* helpful. The instant you apologize on air -- even if you feel it's needed because you skipped or misread a crucial word -- you're introducing *personality* into the story. In some small but absolutely obvious way, when you apologise on air, the story ceases to be about the story and becomes *about* you, the host, and your sense of remorse and unworthiness at doing what really *is* a hard job most people would never even *dream* of doing. There are ways to smooth over mistakes which inevitably happen -- "rather" is a good one, maybe the best -- but if you start betraying your emotions on air, reading headlines, it quickly becomes less about the story and more about *you*. And the best way to prevent having to say "rather" is just to SLOW DOWN and TELL THE STORY.

My thinking is still, in some ways, that "air time is priceless", which, of course, it is! But that doesn't mean I have to read off current temperatures from *all* around the state like a Gatling gun. Amy does that in her end-credits -- and while I suppose it's sort of a verbal pirouette, when done day after day it's just too much getting thrown at you too fast, and you won't really *hear* anything. (Wait -- who produced? who engineered? I sure as hell do not remember.)

Got lots of other -- forgive me for saying it this way -- "pointers" on the details. I call them "pointers" because they're things I *can't* just turn around and suddenly incorporate into my broadcast, they're little, subtle shifts in the way I handle carts and stuff that will take time. One in particular -- about how to handle the current version of the translator ID -- will involve people in other departments before I'm really comfortable doing it the way I *know* it *should* be done.

I have been doing this long enough to establish some habits, and incorporating new suggestions and ideas takes changing some habits. That's a good thing! On both ends. On the one hand, running a broadcast is "routine" enough for me at this point I can *absolutely* do it every day. On the other hand, there are better ways to handle certain breaks -- indeed, better ways to *view* them, which involves "stepping back" from the crazitude of the Control Room from time to time for long enough to think about -- you guessed it! -- the LISTENER.

The breaks at 19 and 48:30 after, for instance, aren't technically "weather breaks". True, that's when I read the weather forecasts. But -- it doesn't mean I have to stick myself into a boring rut of fading down SAT-1, playing a 30-second cart, then fading SAT-1 back up to background while I come out of nowhere, breathing on mic, *desperately* trying *not* to sound *like* whatever cart I just played, to tell people the weather, and nothing *but* the weather. I can, instead, for instance, fade down SAT-1 and "take control" of the break with whatever happy thought happens to cross my mind at that precise moment. Oh, something like "This is KUNM, stick around for the Blues Show, coming up" *before* playing the cart. It takes a couple of seconds, and I didn't even *think* to do it until my last break at 6:48:30 tonight. But you know what? It sounded better! *Way* more fluid. And by the time the cart played, it was *my* break, already, because I had *established* that, *before* trying to "match" (or "de-match") my pacing and intonation to the craps shoot of whatever cart I'd just played. Instead, I matched my little "ad lib" to the network, and the whole broadcast improved.

I sounded better today than I sounded yesterday. The only reason is because today was air check day, and two different sets of ears besides my own were listening and telling me what crossed *their* minds. I hope we have another air check soon. There is *no* doubt in my mind that it helps us all improve.