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Voicetracking
- Thread starter BigJimmy
- Start date
This is a question that started to be asked about 45 years ago when automation gear became capable of doing what we now call voice tracking using cartridge and reel tape synchronized with music.
Many people today do not realize to what a great extent many leading stations in certain formats were voice tracked in the 70's.
A high profile example was LA's Easy Rock KNX-FM, which used a PDP minicomputer with various remote terminals to allow talent to (among other things) optionally hear the song intros as they recorded. IGM, which made that system, also included VT / music source linking in their lower cost machines like the Basic A, which is how Delilah got her start in Eugene.
Concept Productions perfected the linking idea and offered limited, sort of foolproof, voicetracking in all their syndicated formats in the late 70's.
But voicetracking dates to at least the 50's! Gates sold a few Auto Station and Nitewatch systems, which were converted Seeberg jukebox players, controlled directly by tones on a voicetrack reel deck.
BUT----- of course I prefer ----- local, live air talent.
Voicetracking when done right sounds live. I prefer live and local but today's business model in radio is killing that. I believe we will see more and more voicetracking in the future and more jukeboxes.
I think you can voicetrack successfully. I had a friend that held down a 6 to midnight shift at a small group of stations. He sat in the studio and did the required breaks for 5 stations within a two county area moments before they aired. There was time, temp, local current weather, PSAs, promos, etc. within his breaks. It was well done in my opinion.
I think a smart voicetracked station utilizes local voices that know the coverage area personally because they live in the area. The 'local' feel is lost when Richmond is voicetracked from Phoenix or Dallas is voicetracked from Milwaukee.
The jukebox is much like many FM stations in their early days where the station was 3 or 4 reel to reel decks and a few carousels of carts. Not really anything new except this was done because there was so little revenue for the FM dial at the time. Today it is more a format option versus required by a lack of money. Many FMs in the early days were financial burdens that were virtually forced on the cash cow AM station and the idea was to keep it alive until FM caught on. Lots of interesting stories about how the small market stations pulled this off.
I think you can voicetrack successfully. I had a friend that held down a 6 to midnight shift at a small group of stations. He sat in the studio and did the required breaks for 5 stations within a two county area moments before they aired. There was time, temp, local current weather, PSAs, promos, etc. within his breaks. It was well done in my opinion.
I think a smart voicetracked station utilizes local voices that know the coverage area personally because they live in the area. The 'local' feel is lost when Richmond is voicetracked from Phoenix or Dallas is voicetracked from Milwaukee.
The jukebox is much like many FM stations in their early days where the station was 3 or 4 reel to reel decks and a few carousels of carts. Not really anything new except this was done because there was so little revenue for the FM dial at the time. Today it is more a format option versus required by a lack of money. Many FMs in the early days were financial burdens that were virtually forced on the cash cow AM station and the idea was to keep it alive until FM caught on. Lots of interesting stories about how the small market stations pulled this off.
We who were part of radio before automation have this warm, fuzzy feeling about 'live and local'. Truth be told, it was at the time, something of a pain in the butt. You showed up for work and figuratively, they handcuffed you to the console and you were stuck there until your shift was over. But a lot of jobs are that way. You either had a comfort level with "the short leash" or you found something else in life to do.
The longer I read all these conversation and forums about radio today, the more I realize that today's audience (and POTENTIAL audience) has no warm and fuzzy feeling about the concept... unless they are a groupie that wishes they could be part of the scene that used to exist.
When I found myself outside of radio, I wandered through several industries, lines of business. I was there when we went from 'live and local' accounting to computerized accounting. I was there when auto garages and auto dealers went from handwritten Workorders (live and local?) to computerized registration of your car's visit to the shop. And I am watching as my doctors go from handwritten files, or yelling into a dictaphone, to keying my health conditions into a computer terminal. (no more 'live and local' medicine.) And now my church tells me I can skip the 'live and local' passing of the offering plate, and go to my computer terminal and automate my financial support.
It looks like if you want to be part of the radio scene, either as a creator of content or as a consumer of content, voice-tracking and other computerized/automated methods are here, just like the rest of our life. So learn to like it, learn to use it, or move on to something else. They tell me that 'shooting the rapids' in a kayak is still pretty Live-and-Local.
The longer I read all these conversation and forums about radio today, the more I realize that today's audience (and POTENTIAL audience) has no warm and fuzzy feeling about the concept... unless they are a groupie that wishes they could be part of the scene that used to exist.
When I found myself outside of radio, I wandered through several industries, lines of business. I was there when we went from 'live and local' accounting to computerized accounting. I was there when auto garages and auto dealers went from handwritten Workorders (live and local?) to computerized registration of your car's visit to the shop. And I am watching as my doctors go from handwritten files, or yelling into a dictaphone, to keying my health conditions into a computer terminal. (no more 'live and local' medicine.) And now my church tells me I can skip the 'live and local' passing of the offering plate, and go to my computer terminal and automate my financial support.
It looks like if you want to be part of the radio scene, either as a creator of content or as a consumer of content, voice-tracking and other computerized/automated methods are here, just like the rest of our life. So learn to like it, learn to use it, or move on to something else. They tell me that 'shooting the rapids' in a kayak is still pretty Live-and-Local.
Times change. There's a whole new job in radio called VT and syndication. People with home studios making shows, uploading to ftps, entertaining the public. There will always be stations that hire live staffs, and they will compete in markets with the others. But as for jobs, if you're a voice talent, and you don't have a home studio, and you don't know technology, and you aren't keeping up with the changes, then you will have a nice long retirement.
You are trying to make some connections that do not have to exist.
The task of the radio station is to exist, to survive, to generate income sufficient for continued operation. "Putting local people to work" may be charitable but nowhere in the FCC rules are they any 'brownie points' for putting local people to work. And audience surveys do not seem to indicate that listeners cast their loyalty with a channel just because they ' put local people to work '. That is a Chamber of Commerce issue, not necessarily a listener satisfaction issue.
As I tune across the dial, I conclude there are some people filling up time on the radio that need to be out of work... or, working at some other line of work. Radio does not function like some of the charities that run Thrift Stores in order to make jobs for people who can't find real work.
Most of us come here and complain and cater-wahl because we can't find something to listen to that we think we would enjoy. Your grocer uses scanners to make check-out less costly. The guy who repairs your car may print your work order and your invoice via computer because it is less costly. Your restaurant where you eat dinner this evening buys pre-packaged food kits from the commissary because it is cheaper (and sometimes better)than a live-and-local chef.
T
theoldguy
Guest
as a listener ,the idea of voicetracking takes the heart out of radio in my opinion.it is bad enough there is so much syndication.
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From a management perspective, it often seemed that the people in most need of discipline and training were the ones we had on for overnights and obscure weekend positions. Most of us have stories of tuning in at some strange hour and hearing the jock doing something wrong... terribly wrong.
Some will say that supervising such people guaranteed new people coming into the business. But all I ever saw was an attitude towards overnight jocks that went something like "as long as they show up every night, don't ask for raises and leave me alone, they are great!"
I'd add to the list of showing up on time things like not getting drunk or high in the studio, not falling to sleep, not playing their own song list, not being arrested while on the air, and not leaving pubic hairs on the console or roaches inside the console (all based on personal experience). Euw.
There is a certain relief in having voicetracking in those shifts... my first experience with that was back around 1978 so that shows that this is not a new situation, too.
I prefer the one who sounds the best on the air, whether he is from right next door, or across the country.
"Live and local" does NOT (repeat does NOT) trump sounding great on the air. I would rather have the syndicated jock who sounds great and is engaging, over the 19-year-old kid who can't even correctly pronounce the name of "that" street in your neighborhood which gives everyone (except for the locals) fits!
There is a station near me that even claims to be "live and local," but they are BUSTED whenever their automation screws up.
In most markets (except for the very largest ones), we can have live OR local, but not both.
I worked at a station in the early '90s, where the FM was STILL they way that you described. By then, we probably had two FM listeners for every AM listener that we had. But yet we were still live on the AM, and voicetracked on the FM. Made no sense at all to me.
But that all began to change shortly after I left. The AM was eventually taken over by talk shows like Rush Limbaugh, which was okay since there were no other affiliates in that area at the time. I am not sure what happened with the FM (since I was no longer there), but from a listener's standpoint, it certainly seemed like they "modernized" their sound.
I can only guess that one of two things happened:
1) Broadcast Supply West out of Seattle (their supplier) discontinued manufacturing and distributing reel-to-reel tapes (it WAS the '90s, after all!), thus FORCING my former station to change and adapt.
OR
2) My former boss (the GM of the station) became the owner of the station when he bought out the previous owners, and spent some money to upgrade the station, and its overall sound.
I was aware (from reading the station's online history) that he had bought the station, but whether he invested the money for upgrades by choice, or because he was forced to, is just conjecture on my part.
Management bears some fault here, too. Every manager that I have ever worked for thought that his station was the absolute BEST in the business (certainly within the listening area) and that a listener would have to be absolutely CRAZY not to just tune in, and rip the knob off! So many of them had an exaggerated sense of how "great" their station was!
I did the midnight to 6 shift on a Sunday morning at a station where I was required to be "live and local." But I got the sense that there was absolutely NOBODY listening. I begged them to let me syndicate the shift with a bonus airing of the countdown, ANYTHING to avoid having to jock such an utterly worthless shift, at least at that station. When they wouldn't budge, I played it anyway. They threatened to fire me, but I quit not long after that anyway, because there were a myriad of other things also wrong at that station.
In my years in radio, I experienced: an overnight board op falling asleep repeatedly during his shifts; an overnight jock who, in the 1980s at an adult standards station, decided to play Whitney Houston's entire whole new album (hits and non hits) instead of the regular playlist; an overnight jock who once "froze" ... she was convinced something had gone wrong with the station. She was sitting at the board, nothing was going out over the air. When the AM drive news person showed up at 5 a.m., after hearing the station was not on the air, he went into the studio to help. He put a song cart in a cart machine, hit play, and everything was OK. And, an overnight jock who normally did Sunday midnight to six a.m. who was asked one weekend to also do Saturday midnight to six a.m. Since there was no newsperson Sunday mornings, she had no idea how to bring the newscaster on air Saturday morning for the 6 a.m. news at the end of her shift. She pointed to the news anchor in the booth, giving a fine "you're on" cue ... but didn't open the channel on the board ... even after realizing the news person was not on the air.
And a part-time overnight board op who decided to take a whiz outside right in front of the front door of the station which was in the downtown section of a medium sized city ... you might just see some traffic occasionally on the street, even at 3 a.m. Why'd he do it? Something vague about he thought something was wrong with the bathroom. He was fired immediately for that one.
This was all at small or medium market stations. I have to wonder if staffing the overnight gets any better in large or major markets.
And a part-time overnight board op who decided to take a whiz outside right in front of the front door of the station which was in the downtown section of a medium sized city ... you might just see some traffic occasionally on the street, even at 3 a.m. Why'd he do it? Something vague about he thought something was wrong with the bathroom. He was fired immediately for that one.
This was all at small or medium market stations. I have to wonder if staffing the overnight gets any better in large or major markets.
I keep seeing 'hiring local people'. That's always good but at what, minimum wage and then what do you get?
Radio has evolved. It is not the same animal it once was. I like it and I don't like it.
I was 'live and local', slinging carts, cueing up records, ripping and reading news off the news teletype. I've been there. I know the 'magic' of live and local and I know the bad old days of 'live and local'.
You could really react with your audience when you're live. It is great fun. I loved it even at formats I didn't care for. It was a thrill you simply cannot replicate in other ways.
I know of being the PD and people quitting without notice, jocks getting stoned or drunk, not following format and plain not showing up. I remember struggling through 12 hour shifts with the flu because everyone had it and you had no replacement because you were the unlucky one that caught it during your shift. I know about covering 6 to midnight Christmas Eve, sleeping on the station couch and doing 6 to noon Christmas morning. I know about being so broke you had to save up to do an oil change on your car.
I know about great jocks that handled the lousy equipment with ease, about egos so huge you wondered how they got their head through the door. I know of lifelong friends and the guy that got arrested for sleeping with the Mayor's 14 year old daughter during his shift (yes, she looked 18). I know the glory of an audience that loves you and of a city that hates your station.
Then I knew sales with just as much detail and later management with the same detail. I could have remained a jock and I'd likely no longer be in radio had I not expanded my radio knowledge beyond sitting behind the microphone. You see, I was an okay jock and some even said good but certainly not cream of the crop.
There is a whole world of radio beyond the microphone. No, it's not the same but it's not that far from the headphones. The live and local is just not economically feasible for most stations. As a radio person you have to gain other skills.
When I got in radio everybody was live and local unless you had an automated station and even then you had a licensed person assigned to it every hour. The advertising pie was split in only a handful of media options.
We were the only station in town. We had one weekly newspaper. Then cable came to town and started selling. Then the newspaper went daily. Two out of the market stations increased power and started selling locally. Then a shopper popped up. In a few years we went from $30,000 a month to barely $16,000 but we still were the obvious #1 station in town. There were just so many advertising options. We're talking the late 1970s and early 1980s here. Since that time, the little one station town has 3 newspapers, a TV station and 5 stations including translators. My old station has changed hands a couple of times and is not computer driven outside a live morning show. No more local news department only 2 sales people, the GM, his wife and a jock. There's lots of unused rooms in that old building and they struggle to turn a profit. Such is the fate of many former live and local stations.
The town might be healthy but likely the population and retail sales might have only doubled over the decades while the advertising choices have increased 10 fold or more. Now all the media beats the bushes and works much harder to stay out of red ink and do so by finding the least expensive way to stay in business and offer the best product their revenue can afford. To say the folks at the top are getting rich at many stations is just not true. They're more like a deer caught in the headlights trying to keep themselves in a job. In other words, they're not in a different situation than we find ourselves in.
Live and local is that dream most stations dare to dream about but find that dream about as possible as finding Santa coming down your chimney. If we didn't long for live and local, we likely would have never tried voice tracking at all.
Radio has evolved. It is not the same animal it once was. I like it and I don't like it.
I was 'live and local', slinging carts, cueing up records, ripping and reading news off the news teletype. I've been there. I know the 'magic' of live and local and I know the bad old days of 'live and local'.
You could really react with your audience when you're live. It is great fun. I loved it even at formats I didn't care for. It was a thrill you simply cannot replicate in other ways.
I know of being the PD and people quitting without notice, jocks getting stoned or drunk, not following format and plain not showing up. I remember struggling through 12 hour shifts with the flu because everyone had it and you had no replacement because you were the unlucky one that caught it during your shift. I know about covering 6 to midnight Christmas Eve, sleeping on the station couch and doing 6 to noon Christmas morning. I know about being so broke you had to save up to do an oil change on your car.
I know about great jocks that handled the lousy equipment with ease, about egos so huge you wondered how they got their head through the door. I know of lifelong friends and the guy that got arrested for sleeping with the Mayor's 14 year old daughter during his shift (yes, she looked 18). I know the glory of an audience that loves you and of a city that hates your station.
Then I knew sales with just as much detail and later management with the same detail. I could have remained a jock and I'd likely no longer be in radio had I not expanded my radio knowledge beyond sitting behind the microphone. You see, I was an okay jock and some even said good but certainly not cream of the crop.
There is a whole world of radio beyond the microphone. No, it's not the same but it's not that far from the headphones. The live and local is just not economically feasible for most stations. As a radio person you have to gain other skills.
When I got in radio everybody was live and local unless you had an automated station and even then you had a licensed person assigned to it every hour. The advertising pie was split in only a handful of media options.
We were the only station in town. We had one weekly newspaper. Then cable came to town and started selling. Then the newspaper went daily. Two out of the market stations increased power and started selling locally. Then a shopper popped up. In a few years we went from $30,000 a month to barely $16,000 but we still were the obvious #1 station in town. There were just so many advertising options. We're talking the late 1970s and early 1980s here. Since that time, the little one station town has 3 newspapers, a TV station and 5 stations including translators. My old station has changed hands a couple of times and is not computer driven outside a live morning show. No more local news department only 2 sales people, the GM, his wife and a jock. There's lots of unused rooms in that old building and they struggle to turn a profit. Such is the fate of many former live and local stations.
The town might be healthy but likely the population and retail sales might have only doubled over the decades while the advertising choices have increased 10 fold or more. Now all the media beats the bushes and works much harder to stay out of red ink and do so by finding the least expensive way to stay in business and offer the best product their revenue can afford. To say the folks at the top are getting rich at many stations is just not true. They're more like a deer caught in the headlights trying to keep themselves in a job. In other words, they're not in a different situation than we find ourselves in.
Live and local is that dream most stations dare to dream about but find that dream about as possible as finding Santa coming down your chimney. If we didn't long for live and local, we likely would have never tried voice tracking at all.
Bturner just gave us "the dark underside" of how the marketplace has changed for radio.
I know. Some of you are pretty sure you are smarter than I was, and probably smarter than Bturner... so if they will just give you a shot at driving the boat... you will show us all.
Let me remind you that if we went to that town Bturner was talking about as tracked down the Lead-dog at the newspaper, he could give us a similar tale of woe that being in the newspaper business is no longer the fun it once was.
I would go down to the studio building of our local cable company and ask them to tell us how well they are doing..... but the building is shuttered now. No local programming and ad selling to speak of.
Ditto for the folks who came to town 20 years ago and cranked up a new Shopper publication. That guy is out trying to sell space on a new web-site aimed at the local market. He's one of three. I hope he didn't take out a second mortgage on his home to start up that web site.
I was at the doctor's office today and I went to write down the next appointment and realized all I have is a 2013 calendar. Nowhere to write a time on a Thursday for the March appointment. Note to self: pick up a 2014 calendar tomorrow.
SECOND NOTE TO SELF. It is no longer 1960... or 1970... or 1980. Maybe it's time to take that box of t-shirts to Goodwill. They are not going to sell. You know... the ones that say: "Live and Local. Do it on the Radio"
I know. Some of you are pretty sure you are smarter than I was, and probably smarter than Bturner... so if they will just give you a shot at driving the boat... you will show us all.
Let me remind you that if we went to that town Bturner was talking about as tracked down the Lead-dog at the newspaper, he could give us a similar tale of woe that being in the newspaper business is no longer the fun it once was.
I would go down to the studio building of our local cable company and ask them to tell us how well they are doing..... but the building is shuttered now. No local programming and ad selling to speak of.
Ditto for the folks who came to town 20 years ago and cranked up a new Shopper publication. That guy is out trying to sell space on a new web-site aimed at the local market. He's one of three. I hope he didn't take out a second mortgage on his home to start up that web site.
I was at the doctor's office today and I went to write down the next appointment and realized all I have is a 2013 calendar. Nowhere to write a time on a Thursday for the March appointment. Note to self: pick up a 2014 calendar tomorrow.
SECOND NOTE TO SELF. It is no longer 1960... or 1970... or 1980. Maybe it's time to take that box of t-shirts to Goodwill. They are not going to sell. You know... the ones that say: "Live and Local. Do it on the Radio"
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