While I was struggling to get that up to speed while maintaining the Z100 momentum, my family got the worst kind of news. My daughter was diagnosed with Cancer. With all the attendant worry that brings, my wife and I decided we simply had to fly out to Idaho and spend some quality time with her. While we were there, Casey had an operation, but as is usually the case, we wouldn’t really know the outcome until after we went back home to New Jersey. So, a few days later, we got the incredible news that she was cancer free.

Finally, I must explain that converting my lecture to video was a very time consuming project. I wanted to get out from behind the lecturn and get behind the camera instead. This meant that I had to create a lot of footage from scratch to carry the narration, because y’all wouldn’t have my ugly mug to stare at while I explained all my points. Consequently, I broke everything up into smaller segments and produced them, one at a time, whenever I had the chance; flying to Idaho, late at night in my studio and many afternoons after I finished the day’s regular day’s work.

It took a while. Sorry. At least I didn’t say my dog ate my homework.

Without further blathering, here it is. I hope you like it.

European radio is far less centralized and thus less subject to the belt-tightening that we’ve gone through over the last several years. They’re not counting beans. They’re having fun and letting the beans pile up on their own. Corporate radio in America and Canada has taken the fun out of the profession and to a large extent throttled future growth. The “suits” are much more concerned with this year’s bottom line and so have eliminated our farm system. When a major station needs a new night jock and listens in Anchorage, Charleston and Sioux Falls for new talent, all they hear is imported talent from New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. We’ve become the proverbial snake, looping around and devouring our own tail. Not just talent, but programming has also been centralized, harking back to a time when the networks controlled what goes on the air. More and more radio stations are getting their playlists, imaging, contests and even their logs delivered from corporate people, instead of doing it themselves. The result is a very sterile, unoriginal kind of bland radio that ultimately will cost the local station all their listeners. The corporate types think this makes better radio at the local radio because it pumps major market talent into smaller and smaller markets. What they don’t realize is that at the end of the day, the audience wants their radio station to be about their town, not Hollywood or Washington, DC. I am firmly convinced that a lot of the “suits” are out of sync with the audience. They’ve forgotten some of the basic principles that made radio such a vibrant, recession-proof medium. From an insider’s point of view, it also severely restricts the number of people who under different circumstances could become the brilliant programmers, producers and personalities of tomorrow.

I know all this might sound a bit gloomy, but as I hinted early on, I think things will turn around sooner, rather than later. My speaking topic in Berlin was a “getting back to basics” kind of piece that focussed on creativity and it was received with great enthusiasm. (I will be turning my presentation into a video later this week and plan to post it on my You Tube channel, provided I don’t infringe anyone’s copyright. I’ll post a link here when it’s up.) I had more than a few people come up afterward and thank me for reminding them to listen like a listener, spending more time doing the things our listeners do, particularly things that only happen locally.

One of the things I said bears repeating here: “We spend all our time teaching the student of radio how to open a microphone, and don’t spend any time at all on what to say once the mic is open.” If you, as a broadcast pro, have experiences in common with your audience, you already know what to say. My presentation gave a few guidelines on the kinds of things you can do personally to create more of those crossroads, making it ultimately simple to be their “broadcast buddy,” who cares about the local bake sales and charity events and doesn’t spend so much time talking about Hollywood sleaze. Producers can make promos and sweepers that help create a sense of community and common purpose. Contests become much simpler, affording the local listener a much better chance of winning. The big flyaway vacations to see artists are fun, but when your audience is competing with 220-million+ other people, I mean…how much fun is that?

If this all sounds like sour grapes, believe me, that’s NOT my intent. I’m hopeful about North American radio because of how successful European radio has become. Even with all of the horrible economic news coming out all over Europe, amazing radio stations keep popping up everywhere, making a lot of money! NRJ/Paris, BBC Radio One/London, RTL/Berlin and 3FM/Amsterdam are all doing well with both ratings and revenue. It’s bound to catch the notice of North American providers. When I visited NRJ/Paris last year, I noticed immediately that they had three different people doing production for one station, not one person doing production for three different stations. When I visited VHU in Hilversum (a suburb of Amsterdam) last week, I was reminded that they have a whole host of producers working on each project.

Instead of stretching the creativity of one person across several formats/stations, they combined the creativity of several people to make radio that’s energized, sparking with enthusiasm and always fun to listen to…oh, and always sold out.

UPDATE: Sorry I haven’t been able to get my Berlin presentation posted yet. I recently experienced what I have to call a “family emergency,” and knowing that, I’ve been jamming so I could take a long weekend to spend with family in Idaho. I’m in Boise as I write this and things already seem much more calm. The family emergency is not as serious as I had feared (though still very concerning) and I should have some time to devote to that video soon.

The week before the storm, my wife Jan found out she needed to travel to Texas to help our daughter while she had some surgery, watching after her and our grand-daughters for several days. She was scheduled to leave on Tuesday, the day the storm was due to be in it’s terrible fury. As we watched Sandy develop and make a bee-line for this area, we switched her flight to the Saturday before. After she left, I came home and battened down the hatches for a big blow.

I lost power Monday night, as the storm blew in and all the initial flooding started along the coast of New Jersey, New York City, Long Island and Connecticut. Because my home is equipped with natural gas, I had hot water and a functional stove so I could shower and cook, at least until the food in the refrigerator went bad on Thursday. By then, the number of people searching for gasoline had blossomed into the millions, as they were struggling to find gas for their cars and generators. Fortunately, I had filled my car up on Saturday, so I could run around to find grocery stores with the staples on the shelves. During the day, I went over to a friend’s house (equipped with a generator) and took care of all the VO business, plus tried to stay current on email and news. There was no way to get into Manhattan, so other than getting pretty cold at night (40ºF), I managed at home quite well through the entire week, although I must admit to getting quite bored. I re-read three Clive Cussler novels and a book by conservative political pundit, Ann Coulter, by the light of a battery powered camping lantern.

Saturday morning under the shower nozzle, as I was contemplating a trip to Starbucks and possibly to a gas station to wait in line for several hours, my power blinked on. After a loud whoop, I finished up my shower, got dressed and started running around the house fixing clocks, running the garbage disposal, resetting the modem and making sure everything was working the way it was supposed to. Then I sat down and started watching television and seeing some of the unbelievable devastation wrought on the tri-state area. Blocks and blocks of homes were flooded out in Queens, right up to the rooftops, entire neighborhoods in Staten Island just wiped off the planet, blocks and blocks of other homes destroyed by fire, hundreds of thousands of people dispossessed of everything, scrambling to find enough food to just stay alive, and roving gangs of teenagers ransacking and looting. The media called them “wolf packs.” I think they insulted wolves with that description. At least wolves only kill to eat.

Z100 managed to stay on the air through everything. They have some massive diesel powered generators that can keep the lights on in the on-air studios, but cannot light up the rest of the plant. So, when Co-Ed killed all power below Times Square Monday night to preserve generating capacity from the salt water flooding, we continued to broadcast, but the offices stayed closed all week.The on-air staff stayed in the hotel across the street, without power OR hot water, so big kudos to all of them. Power was finally restored Saturday evening.

The next Monday, with the offices open, I was duty bound to get in and get busy, but sadly, it was not to be. My primary means of transportation into the city, once I park in Jersey City, is the PATH train system, but they are still out of service as the tubes that run under the Hudson River from Jersey City to the World Trade Center were all completely flooded. It’s my understanding that they’ve been mostly pumped out, but now there are switching and signaling issues which must be ironed out before they can start running again. The ferry service was running a full schedule (except from one dock near the Statue of Liberty which was obliterated). After making sure my parking garage was open, I hopped in the car and headed down to Jersey City. I hit a couple of detours, but actually made pretty good time. After parking I went and joined the line for the ferry. The line to purchase tickets was 3-HOURS long! Then…once you purchased your ticket, the line to board was TWO-hours long. I gave up and went back home.

That afternoon I found an app that allows me to purchase ferry tickets in advance, so armed with that and an early start (the first ferry leaves at 6am), I managed to get on board with no hassles at all, but once in Manhattan, I had to walk a little over 1.5 miles to get to the station because the subways were still out of service. They were back online a day later and now, my commute is almost back to normal. The PATH service to World Trade is still down with switching issues, so I’m still riding the ferry across the river. It’s actually a very pleasant way to commute, but it costs 3 times as much, so I’ll be very happy to see the PATH get online again.

Was Sandy a pain in the butt? Absolutely! But I am SO grateful that’s all it was. There are STILL hundreds of thousands of people without power, and tens of thousands without homes or food. FEMA is a total joke…so it wasn’t all President Bush’s fault in New Orleans. It’s just an amazingly inept Federal agency that doesn’t know its butt from a hole in the ground. If you’re ever in need of assistance, pray it won’t be FEMA. I really don’t want this blog to be in the least bit political, so please don’t think I’m being harsh on the current administration. It’s just the nature of any Federal Agency in my view. Always too many self-important idiots in charge for it to be any other way. While there are exceptions, I’m sure, and there is a certain amount of laudable civic-mindedness about serving in the government, agencies are not ever worried about the bottom line because it’s not their money they’re spending. This kind of culture leads to waste and inefficiencies that would never be tolerated in the private sector.

For me, the trauma (such as it was) is mostly done. My wife is home and together we’ve re-stocked the pantry and life is starting to resemble what it was before. We DO have an appointment with an electrician friend to discuss the possibilities of a serious generator. If you’re one to pray, a few words for the thousands who are still suffering would certainly be in order. A big thank you to all who were genuinely concerned.

A few weeks ago, Sharon (my PD at Z100) and I decided it was time. “The new fall season” kind of thinking pushed us into giving everything a fresh coat of paint, and I’m very excited with the results. I hope you are too. Here we go.

First up are the Positioning sweepers. These are all designed to fortify our image as the HIT station in New York. The first batch are DRY, designed to play between songs, with the intro of the follow-on song sliding in under the sweeper.

Positioning Sweepers/Dry

When the follow-on song has no intro to slide under, we use the WET sweepers:

Positioning Sweepers/Wet

Next up are the Image sweepers. These are designed to promote the fun nature of what we do. We don’t make any consistent claims of music ownership, as we do in the Positioning sweepers, although we will use a lot of the same phrases. They’re simply a fun way to say our name as we play the hits. By their nature, these are all WET, meaning they don’t normally allow for playing the follow-on intro under.

Imaging Sweepers

I love the guys at Reel World, but sometimes their marketing efforts don’t always give us exactly what we’re looking for, so I will often jump in and rework them…a lot. Sharon and I wanted to bring New York into play more often, so I took some sings from Reel World and mixed them into my own  creations and popped a “New York” onto the end. I’m really excited about these. Here’s a sampling:

“New York” Jingles

With the jingles, I almost always do a new Top Of the Hour jingle our jocks use to promote what’s coming up. This is Mo Bounce (our night jock) doing an ID over the new jingle, which he didn’t hear until AFTER I put it together.

New Top of the Hour

The TOH won’t start until after the last contest for the iHeartRadio Music Festival, which uses the TOH. But everything else is on the air now. You can hear it in action on the iHeartRadio app.

I hope you like the new sound!

Every voice is different, which means every voice will react a little differently to this processing. Put on your safety goggles…this is industrial strength stuff. For many, it will only require a bit of tweaking.

I know I’ve been absent from these pages for a while. I’ve been trying to upgrade my means of doing these videos without going whole hog on Final Cut Pro. What I’m doing now is a combination of QuickTime, Camtasia and Screenflow. It’s kind of a kludge, for sure, but for now, it’s working.

If anyone is curious, my next appearance outside of New York is coming in October, when I address the good folks at Austereo in Sydney, Australia. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am at the prospect of spending 18+ hours in an airplane, just to get there. I’m kidding, of course…I really am thrilled to be going down under. I flattered that I’ve even been invited.

There are a couple of other appearances in the works for early 2013, which I will fill you in on once they’re confirmed.

Oh…almost forgot: In this video, I mention some free plug-in software from Blue Cat. I didn’t say much about it in the video, but it’s really amazing stuff. The quality is TOP notch and the bundle comes with 6 plug-ins, all free. Check it out yourself at http://www.bluecataudio.com/Products/Bundle_FreewarePack/ if you’re into free goodies.

Have a great week!

-Dave

I once had an intern who was a Russian immigrant. She had come to this country as a young girl, but had spent almost all of her time here living among people who spoke her native tongue. Consequently, we had a language barrier. I made the mistake of thinking she really was not very smart. In fact, I thought she was downright stupid. Oh, she was very pleasant, even agreeable, but it seemed like every time I gave her an assignment that required just a little creativity, she would return with work that was frankly dreadful. She kept missing the point in her writing, never making a solid emotional connection. A few weeks into the internship, I decided we had both wasted our time and was prepared to let her go her way with little or no training because without creativity, a career in radio production would be very short indeed.

One day after I had made this choice, she asked me a question that really made me struggle. She wanted to know what creativity was. Where did it come from? How could she grow hers?

Understand, that I was firmly of the belief that creativity is something you either have or don’t. I really felt a bad case of “the squirmies” as we talked for the next 2 hours. I didn’t want to just come out and tell her that I thought her case was hopeless, but I didn’t want to blow any smoke up her skirt either. Before she left, she nodded once and said, “I think I understand.” I was doubtful, but I didn’t say anything.

The next day, she walked in and handed me seven scripts; one promo and six sweepers, the original writing assignment I had made a few weeks before. The only sound after that was my jaw hitting the floor as they…were…all…brilliant.

I spent the next few days mulling over what we had talked about that afternoon and finally came to the realization that creativity is a skill, not a talent. Oh sure, natural talent has a big impact on the level of one’s creative skill, but it is a skill. One that can be taught. One that can be grown and nurtured.

That is what this week’s video is all about. So click on the link and follow along.

Oh, and the intern? She took a bit of a left turn and went into sales, but I’ve spoken to a couple of her clients and they absolutely love working with her…because she’s so creative.

Creativity

I’d like to express my heartfelt thanks to all who visit and have taken the time to email me with suggestions and comments. In a way, I wish more would post directly on the site, but some people are shy, I guess. Shout outs to Marcus, Hector, Henrique and especially Eddie…you guys are the reason I even bother with this.

I DO have more videos in the pipeline, some are mere ideas, others are close to completion. I’m especially excited about one on Creativity that I hope I can post on Monday 6/25/12. Where does creativity come from, is it something you either have or don’t – or can it be taught, how one can cultivate, feed and grow it, and the really important part, how to call on it when the pressure is on. Honestly, it’s a HUGE topic that I’m sure every one of you have wrestled with from time to time. Hopefully, I can give you an insight that will really help you grow your skills. Also on the way, some really basic tutorials on the fundamentals of production, designed for the new producer and for those with more experience, but need that periodic re-set to stay on top of their games.

I know that many of you do not use Pro Tools™ and constantly wonder about the parallels to Adobe and Vegas/MOTU, and I have to say I wish I could answer some of those questions. It is for folks like you that I’ve been dealing with Branding and Creativity of late, because those topics are important to all producers, regardless of platform/software. Please don’t feel like second-class citizens because so much of what I demonstrate is centered on the digidesign™ construct. Trust me when I say that I hear a TON of production every week from all over the world and the best sound is never measured by software. It’s not the platform, my friends…it’s how you use it. The only advantage PT has over any of the rest is it’s a little easier to make your dream pour out of the speakers. I’m sure many of you would love to debate that very topic.

Just for fun, I’m posting my latest commercial effort, the video I just voiced and post-produced for the game WWE13. I hope you like it.

WWE13

A couple of notes before you watch it: 1. I didn’t address the many places listeners have to choose from outside of radio, but it’s the same truth. Whether you’re comparing radio stations to radio stations or contrasting radio with satellite and the internet, the same principles apply. You must brand your product thoroughly to maintain growth in your ratings. 2. I need to emphasize that Arbitron no longer measures Exclusive P1 Listening. With the advent of PPM, it became a statistic that is impossible to measure. Too bad…I thought it was a very useful statistic.

Please feel free to comment on this or any other tutorial, good, bad or indifferent. Your comments really help me shape future tutorials.

So now, here is MY take on Branding.

Several people have written to say that while they find these interesting, they don’t use Pro Tools, so they’re not as helpful as they thought they would be. It’s true, so far this has been a very tech-oriented VLOG, and being a Pro Tools guy, they’re naturally about how to do things with that DAW. So I have decided, the next one will be a bit more on the “Art” side of our craft as I delve into Branding.

An awful lot has been written about branding; what it is and how to achieve it, but I’ve found that most of what has gone on before is not really relevant to what we do as radio producers. Hopefully, the next tutorial will help us all get onto the same page. Successful branding can turn your radio station from just a spot on the dial to an absolute “best friend” of the avid listener, and a “really cool place” to the casual one. Understanding branding will put your mind in exactly the right place to give all your production that something special that will set it apart.

In the meantime, here is this week’s tutorial. I hope you enjoy it.

Automating Your Plug-Ins

I hope you like Reverb Automation.