Has radio voice tracking ruined local radio
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Has radio voice tracking ruined local radio
- Thread starter Dj mr fresh
- Start date
It depends on who does it. Like anything, it's a tool. Has digital recording ruined music? You can argue either way.
Has the microwave ruined cooking? Has the automobile ruined transportation? So much better when we rode horses,
At one time, radio stations didn't play recorded music. They had live musicians. Was that better?
I think the better question is: Has the internet ruined local radio. I'd say the answer is yes.
The fact is it's here. It's been done in one way or another since the 1930s. The current digital technology goes back to 1993. So it's nothing new.
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taps foot, rolls eyes.. this question has been asked how many times in how many different ways in how many different forums?
Some would say it has ruined radio without a doubt and you won't convince them otherwise
You wont get that from me. It allows me to have 7 to 7 1/2 hour work days. Have the week between Xmas and New Years off, it allows me to cover non life thratening breaking news on 4 stations at once.
It allows me to cover events when im not near a studio (I have a mic, associated gear, cables, connectors and a laptop im goign to put together a to go back with so i can do things from the park or wherever i happen to be if news breaks.
Some would say it has ruined radio without a doubt and you won't convince them otherwise
You wont get that from me. It allows me to have 7 to 7 1/2 hour work days. Have the week between Xmas and New Years off, it allows me to cover non life thratening breaking news on 4 stations at once.
It allows me to cover events when im not near a studio (I have a mic, associated gear, cables, connectors and a laptop im goign to put together a to go back with so i can do things from the park or wherever i happen to be if news breaks.
Paul, are you saying that your work day would be much longer than 7 to 7.5 hours if you did not have VT technology?
I work 7am to 230pm ish most days.. id start later and be working till 7pm if i had to be live.. and id likely be doing 9 hour days .. but a few of the functions of my current job require me to be in studio at 7 and 8am so it'd be a partially split working day too which is never fun
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Not necessarily Voice tracking didn’t ruin music radio but companies like Iheart and Audacy argue we have to protect their apps and promote their podcasts because their core audience went there. Also we had some similar discussions on the radio side about this. TV similar answers in their case it’s to go after people who watch via TV apps for on demand content.
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Is live & local radio dead?
Stepping out of the "radio" realm for a moment, I'm a car guy. I always poured over car magazines, watched shows like Motor Week on PBS, and when things started moving to online content, I went that way, too. Sure, I watched Top Gear and it's offshoot The Grand Tour - the big budget shows -...
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Same DJ On Multiple Markets
How common is it these days for the same DJ or on-air personality to work a daily shift at more than one station in different markets? For example, doing 6–10 a.m. on weekdays at one station in Boston and then 10 a.m.–2 p.m. on weekdays at another station in a different city.
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Are there any major stations that DON'T do voice-tracking and are 100% live?
Just curious about this, as I don't have much inside knowledge of the industry in recent years. I've expressed my feelings about this elsewhere but wonder if anyone in charge actually feels the same way and persists with live DJs. I will say that one thing that this killed off was putting...
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This is like 5 or 6 breaks from my show today that I just did. Th people who are proponents of live radio24/7 say this would be better delivered and mroe effective when done lve
If I were working today, I would love voice tracking. Grab some magazine articles about current artists and events, record a four hour show in 20 minutes, and find something else to do, making a mental note that I have no need for the car radio because it is boring and bland.
When Dan Ingram did his CBS "count up" syndicated program, he recorded it in real time, with the music playing to make it more spontaneous and real. So even though voice tracking was rare during his time, he probably would vote against it today.
If something unplanned and exciting happens in your community, will it still be as exciting to the few listeners left in three days when you can finally mention it on the air? I guess no.
When Dan Ingram did his CBS "count up" syndicated program, he recorded it in real time, with the music playing to make it more spontaneous and real. So even though voice tracking was rare during his time, he probably would vote against it today.
If something unplanned and exciting happens in your community, will it still be as exciting to the few listeners left in three days when you can finally mention it on the air? I guess no.
You don't wait 3 days, that simple. I don't if something happens.. so what if i have t recut a voicetrack? i do it all the time
I might too if the salary were such as it was worth my time to stop what I am doing, go to where I have access to the computer and recut it. Sadly the voice tracking money is such that once my 20 minute session is over, I am casing the check and living my life. I give 110 percent to things I do, but never 112 percent. The money ain't worth it
This question reminds me of this one thinks its like how Tom Joyner was before his team got a national show.
No. It has enhanced local radio.
When I was coming up in radio, nearly all of the stations I worked for were attached to Satellite Music Network or similar 24/7 formats in a can. Back then, there was only local content on the air during AM drive with my newscasts, and a few PSA spots during the commercial breaks. Now there can be local content at any time.
Today, most of those stations have been sold and provide local programming with local voice trackers.
Yeah, it isn't live, but it sure beats another satellite jock having nothing more interesting to say than backselling records. And of course, the satellite jocks haven't been live in many years, so they are even more limited now than they were then.
The same tech that allows voice tracking also allows updates from the field. Back then, if I got a call from the sheriff that there was a large fire and US 460 was closed, I'd have to get up and go into the studio, and the fastest I could do that would be ~30 minutes. Today, I can upload that item to the automation much faster, because I can do it from my home.
I cannot thank you enough for that simple and beautiful example of what technology can do to actually improve local radio in an era when radio, revenues and station evaluations are decreasing dramatically.
As another example, I can recall in the late 60s when I owned nine stations in the city of Quito in Ecuador. There were no cell phones and no portable two-way radios one could carry when going out to eat, seeing a movie or gathering with friends. So I had the smallest and best consumer transistor AM and FM radio which I carried everywhere. For example, if I was in a movie about every 10 minutes, I would tune to each of the stations at a very, very low volume to make sure it was on the air and modulating.
If any of these stations was not on the air, I would go to as private a place as I could where I could turn up the volume and verify that one or more of the stations was off the air. At that time, many locations did not have public telephones, so I would have to grab the family and leave the movie and drive to the stations and start to figure out what was wrong. Even then, the different transmitter sites did not have landline telephones as they were not in the telephone company service areas. That often meant a drive to the transmitter, some of which were on steep hillsides or in swampy pasture land.
Today, in the same location, I could get automatic alerts for carrier and audio failures, and communicate with the staff at each manned location. In many, if not most cases, I could resolve the problem in a short moment while standing on the sidewalk outside a restaurant or a theater or wherever. I could have options that would allow me to alert other staff members or outside engineering, backup people. I could switch transmitters and even activate a different studio. For breaking news or Emergency weather, I could quickly text and notify people and have them working the story in moments even at times of the day when they would not be at the studio location.
So I agree with the previous post as to how the flexibility of technology more than makes up for the more limited budgets and inability to have full-time live individuals at a station 24/7.
Voicetracking is not as much fun as live radio, and it doesn't usually have the immediacy of live radio. Radio also doesn't have the "farm system" it once did. The industry might've had problems regardless, but it failed to find consensus replacements for Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh, and a smaller available talent pool didn't help. That's maybe a little overemphasized because Stern and Limbaugh started in an era that had fewer stations, but it did seem radio has a shallower pool when they left. Voicetracking is a tool, but it can be used as a crutch instead. I'm sure some operators also use it purely as a cost-cutting measure without regard to how it affects the sounds of their properties.
The real question, however, is which would you rather have? Would you rather turn on the radio and hear someone telling you the first Friday art walk in your city is still happening, even though the first Friday is Fourth of July, or would you rather hear some generic babble about algae in the reflecting pool in Washington, DC?
That's really what the choices are. You can either have radio that's local, even if the staff might not be, or you can have obviously generic radio piped in from somewhere else that has the exact same content across multiple stations. Radio has been doing more with less and using part-time employees where it can for decades. Voicetracking means I can work a full-time job with benefits while having a part-time radio job on the side. I don't have to choose one or the other or otherwise try to find an evening job that would decimate my social life because I have to be at the radio station from noon to 3:00 PM. I've done the latter, and it gets miserable quickly.
I've mentioned it occasionally on these boards over the years (most recently a month or two ago in the thread about live and local radio referenced by Y2K), but my experience has always been that most owners really do want what the rest of us want. Maybe that has changed with private equity getting more involved in the industry, but most owners would love to have live radio 24/7. The problem is that you can't put the burden of subsidizing the unprofitable small market stations on your large market stations responsible for most of your revenue. You have to make those small market stations profitable, and having full staffs was a drain on their bottom line. The situation is worse for operators who only run small market properties. They have to make money off of what they have and don't have multimillion dollar cash cows to help them through the lean times. Most owners didn't get into radio for it to be their personal piggy banks, but, at some point, it does become about money. No matter what else happens, the owner is always the last one to get paid, and (s)he has bills, too.
Sure it does. It is larger and more effective than it ever was. The old farm system existed because doing radio once required transmitters and towers. That need doesn't exist anymore. Anyone can start a radio show on any number of platforms. Radio now has the ultimate farm system, where it can pick its talent based on actual results. Would a radio station hire Joe Rogan? You bet!
People need to broaden their view of what radio is. In fact, the users of radio already have. They don't see radio as something restricted to towers and transmitters. To them, Spotify is radio. Name all the live & local talent on Spotify. Sirius is radio. Most of the hosts at Sirius voicetrack. 34 million people pay to hear it. How many people would pay to hear AM/FM radio? I always say radio would be very different if listeners paid instead of advertisers.
The basic problem with voicetracking (and I agree with many of the positives outlined above) is also the basic problem with AI or any system automation: it removes workers from the workforce and doesn't replace them with an equivalent number of workers.
For businesses, this is fine; in fact, it's what business owners want: more profit for themselves and fewer people to have to pay to do the work. As one wealthy entrepreneur (I forget his name now) told NPR a long time ago (and I'm doing this from memory): "I hire others only because I can't do all of the work myself. If I could do all of the work myself, then I don't need to hire others and I can keep all the money I've earned for myself."
Look. Radio is having problems with advertising and listening going down, and all must keep in mind that radio is first and foremost a profit-oriented business. So don't expect voicetracking to go away any time soon, if at all.
For businesses, this is fine; in fact, it's what business owners want: more profit for themselves and fewer people to have to pay to do the work. As one wealthy entrepreneur (I forget his name now) told NPR a long time ago (and I'm doing this from memory): "I hire others only because I can't do all of the work myself. If I could do all of the work myself, then I don't need to hire others and I can keep all the money I've earned for myself."
Look. Radio is having problems with advertising and listening going down, and all must keep in mind that radio is first and foremost a profit-oriented business. So don't expect voicetracking to go away any time soon, if at all.
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That's the difference between the free market and socialism.
Speaking out of turn without understanding the situation, are we?
Voicetracking is part of my overall salary... that combined with owning all the stations in the county with studios here, one newspaper and no tv station, it behooves me to update my show when needed.. and i have... several times in the last month or two due to bad weather
That has been a problem for a long time. Moving from horses and buggies to automobiles put people out of work and didn't replace them with equivalent numbers of workers. So did machination and industrialization. Most businesses aren't employment agencies, and you can't ask people to buy into businesses and lose money. Business dies and evolves constantly. You can't stop progress. I was put out of radio, too. I'll grant you I was more privileged than most and had an IT degree by that time. So, I was able to find a different, and better, job, but, if you're put out of your radio job, you find another one or a different job altogether. When I graduated high school almost 35 years ago, we were told all job growth would be in the service industry by the time we finished college. That was something hammered into our heads beginning my freshman year in the late-80's. My initial approach was to go to college to study a professional service job. If I was going to be forced into service, I was going to have an essential job that paid me. The problem was I hated it. Some of it was environmental; going to college in the South when you're not really a Southerner can be a lonely experience. It was also, however, that I just didn't like service work. Luckily for me, no one saw the internet coming when I was in high school, and I was able to get out of the South and pivot to something that was more suited to my talents. I understand many, if not most, longtime radio talents don't necessarily have the privilege I had, but radio people aren't dumb and have a lot of different skills they can sell. If they have to pivot to a new industry, most have the talent. If they're stuck flipping burgers, they can enjoy the pay raise while they figure out their next move.
My local Cumulus cluster got rid of the part-time voicetrackers during the Great Recession. They haven't been replaced at all. They just air music, bumpers, and commercials. That's what would happen if voicetracking went away. Either that or satellite programming getting piped in.
Fewer but better jobs in select fields has been happening for longer than anyone reading this post has been alive. Adjusting to those changes has often been painful in the short-term, but we've always been better off long-term.
That is the case some of the time but not all of the time.
Yes, absolutely, with some of the large and medium sized copanies
but like for instance, the company i work for... I do afternoons on our AC station, voicetracked.. as a matter of due course with regards to my salary and regular job duties.
We accquried 3 stations
Our country and CHR stations only have syndicated morning shows.
the rock station is just a juekbox.
I will eventually VT middays on the country station with a syndicated afternoon show.
It was either me or just a jukebox middays.
The midday voicetracker on our AC station will eventually wind up dong middays or afternoons on the CHR station, with a syndicated show filling whatever of those two day parts he doesnt do and a syndicated night show.
The rock station will eventually get a syndicated morning show and thats it.
We devote our resources to local content, however we can get it done along with news/community engagement/involvement. Where it really matters