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News Talk Radio Production Values

R

radiowizard101

Or lack of!!! Where are the clever Theater Of The Mind radio commercials on News Talk radio? In most stop sets you hear Voice Only ads hawking some 1-800 Phone number over & over about some product a listener most likely doesn't care about. Where are the CREATIVE ads? Where are the catchy jingles? Why are stations filling stop sets with Voice Only commercials on a TALK STATION? Where are the Sounders and Elements that create EXCITEMENT?

As a programmer, if your station is mostly TALK or the spoken word, why would you ever run a commercial without some sort of music background or attention getting device? Radio is Theater Of The Mind. Talk stations should take advantage of that concept. This is another reason why News Talk fails to attract a younger demographic.

On most of these stations the slogan should be, "Give us an hour and we will bore you to death" or "Blah Blah Blah Blah!!!"

On the other hand, listen to KFI. There's a station that really gets it. An example of wonderful Production Values.

And PLEASE... TALK ABOUT ANYTHING instead of Politics. IT IS TIME TO CHANGE THE RECORD! News Talk radio is horrible and the tumbling numbers are PROOF that something needs to be done to fix it.

Embracing some good old fashioned Production Values could possibly be a step in a positive direction.
 
I had a very successful station owner introduce me to some concepts that often get over looked in radio.

Radio today is so focused on the younger demos that part of this soap-box speech is of no importance.

What about the hearing impaired? Hearing aid devices are much improved today but seek out a few people who wear such devices and ask them how production commercials jazzed up with snippets of music, video-game style transition swooshes and other noised work for them.

The News-Talk stations are the one group of stations you are probably on thin ice with your suggestions for improved commercials. The demos for news-talk do include older listers. (Maybe too much of their audience is mature and they need to do something to atrtracct younger listeners.) If your station has a mature audience and you suddenly hire a hot-shot production person who puts sizzle and pizzaz into your commercials, you just kissed a big part of your audience "Good Bye!"

There is some audience research that needs to be done... maybe it has already been done, but only the people who paid for it know what it said. Let's assume for the moment we are talking about people 28 to 45 years old. Is it reasonable to assume that people of that age who would listen to news and talk might have significantly different expectations than people of that age who would listen to the music of today? Do people who want to listen to news/talk find a musical commercial break a pleasant thing like icing on a cake, like whipped cream on top of a sundae, or do they find it annoying and irritating?
 
How about improving programming first?

Let go of a half-dozen snot-nosed saleskids who can't make their draw and continue to get paid salary money even though they barely sell anything.

Spend the money on the program content. It's more than just filler material between zippy commercials.
 
As a programmer, if your station is mostly TALK or the spoken word, why would you ever run a commercial without some sort of music background or attention getting device?
Click to expand...

If your station is TALK or spoken word, why wouldn't you?

There's plenty of music in talk radio. Ridiculously long music segues going into and out of syndicated shows, telling people "here comes the break, time to flip station."

It's not a music format. If people want music, they'll go to a music station. I can't believe how much effort talk radio programmers waste on selecting music segues. Come to think of it, I can, because most of them program three or four music stations and the talker is an afterthought.

Is there room for effects, sweepers, etc. Absolutely. But that quickly becomes cliched, as do all those promos featuring non sequitur sound bites from production libraries. Here's a suggestion for a budding N/T production director -- get the BBC Sound Effects Library. 40 years of the Radiophonic Workshop's best.
 
Compelling commercial breaks do NOT need wiz-bang production. What I'm suggesting is coming up with a more creative approach. Hearing a 5 minute break with 6 voice only 1-800 spots IS NOT compelling radio. It is filler.

I agree that some of the bumper music being used by some talk show hosts can also go.

My example of one of the best sounding Talk stations is KFI. I'll repeat it... They get it and they have great numbers. Why not emulate a winning sounding radio station? Superb radio production does have a payday.

Unfortunately, if you travel around and hear talk radio in the medium markets, some of it is just really bad.

As for radio for the hearing impaired, isn't that a very limited market?
 
radiowizard101 said:
As for radio for the hearing impaired, isn't that a very limited market?
Click to expand...

Probably hard to quantify, but if you get callous and start writing off every audience segment that is "limited" in size, you soon erode your audience in a major way.

To program a station as "news talk" is to begin your whole business plan aimed at a limited market: news-talk. If your target audience is limited to start with, how many sub-segments can you afford to turn your back on?
 
Didn't mean to be callous. I usually agree with most of your posts Mr. Goat. The hearing impaired comment was satire.

My point is that good production values, (as in a station like KFI) equal good ratings. What's your view on that?
 
radiowizard101 said:
My point is that good production values, (as in a station like KFI) equal good ratings. What's your view on that?
Click to expand...

Well, I just clicked around and found that I can listen to KFI via streaming. If I am going to participate in a conversation with you about the value of "good production values" I guess I need to get up to speed on what "good production values" actually sound like.

During the years I was in the broadcasting industry I remember a lot of conversations about various things good broadcasters do. And the question usually evolved into: Are they successful because they do that or Since they are sucessful (for whatever reason) they do that because they can afford it, and the feature (whatever we might be talking about) is a signal to you that they are truly sucessful (for whatever reason.)

In small market radio I had that conversation with station owners: Why don't we put some energy into doing local news? And their response was: How do I know local news on my station would make it a better station, a more successful station.

In a very tiny way or in a very big way... radio does production because talented radio people use it as a way to let you know that they have the correct "tastes" to be in broadcasting.

I will leave it to people who are truly skilled analyzing data to figure out if "good production values" bring audience improvement or not.

Let me listen to KFI for awhile and we can pick up this conversation again.
 
Not really true production values, but when talk started making the transition to FM the first thing I noticed was how lax every show and station had been on the quality of source material. Processing of liners, mic processing, sound bites. Everything was extremely varied and the combination of hard processing going into a low fidelity transmitter on AM pretty much masked that for them over all these years.
 
Stereo for FM talk is so moronic. Station sounds like crap whenever you get the least bit of interference.

No one cares if the commercials (which the production intern probably accidentally dubbed in mono to begin with) run in stereo.
 
Production VALUE (operative word) serves to create a cosmetic image for the station. News talk operations that employ a seasoned creative imaging director will likely have the edge over the voice only (800 number) spot sets that seem to go on and on. In reality those spots are usually in exchange for the program content, so they have to be run, however I would have thought the syndicator/barter/distributor would want their spots to stand out more..sadly they don't care...all they care about is that they clear, and the affidavit is filled out.

I am currently imaging several successful news talk outlets, and creative writing is king on these stations..lots of local sound, and program teasers that need to be updated nearly every day really make these stations stand out. It does have value to the station if there is VALUE to the element. A six station production director who is 22 years old will likely not spend much time on the news talker. And even if they move to FM..it's best for station range to be in mono anyway...at that point there is a problem with stereo content that is dubbed out of phase..no overworked production "whiz" is going to spend time trying to fix all that..so unless you can find someone with a passion for newstalk you will be stuck being an afterthought, and there goes the value. To produce compelling promos and sweepers that don't get updated for months is useless.
 
^ that

The promos that run on WRDU/Raleigh are pure gold. Some are so hilarious you want to hear them again.... but they rotate enough that you don't!

Talk is the worst format about burning liners and promos to an absolute crisp.
 
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