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VT

butlerguy03

butlerguy03

I know, I know...voicetracking is the devil. However, I teach students how to voicetrack because it is essential to know in our business. I teach "daypart, daypart, daypart - sound live!" with our students. Now, with that said, is it common for stations to have a set of "generic" voicetracks for when a jock/vt talent is out or on vacation?

Just wondering if this should be in my lesson planning too?
 
Typically, stations budget part time hours to cover for vacations. Even if they have those part timers voicetrack (or use out-of-market talent), they should be people that can track as close to live as possible to contain the most relevant content. I would never let a jock voice track far ahead to cover for a long vacation. If it's only one day, perhaps, but I'd yank those tracks and put someone else on the air (including myself) if anything major happened that needed to be on the air.
 
It seems relatively common to hear a jock say something something like:
Big Country 98.7 WXYZ. Hey did you hear about that survey of top activities to turn your woman on? Well, that's next on Big Country WXYZ.
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However, I don't think I've ever heard a local shift exclusively containing generic voice tracks. (On the other hand, syndicated programs like Delilah are nothing but generic voice tracks)

Voice tracking a Sunday Evening show on Friday afternoon? Sure, but not a "generic" set of voice tracks that could be used at any time.
 
butlerguy03 said:
Now, with that said, is it common for stations to have a set of "generic" voicetracks for when a jock/vt talent is out or on vacation?
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Funny...that's how we handled it in public radio. We felt host consistency was important. That's how lots of the major talk talent do it too. Best of Rush, Best of Hannity, etc. But for commercial music programming, dayparting and being CURRENT are two big things.

By the way, "hats off" to you for teaching something practical in college. We'd all love to teach radio drama, but it's just not practical.
 
Its funny, they do it like that at Big Mic Productions (www.bigmicproductions.com), some breaks are generic, but stations can get the whole day-part and local breaks with their shows that aren't free. I think with the generics its just important to be current and time sensitive, if its not done every day its too out dated.
 
By the way, "hats off" to you for teaching something practical in college. We'd all love to teach radio drama, but it's just not practical.
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I'll do you one better...it's a high school station. We sound really good (I'm a little bias). I bring my commercial experience in and run the place like a business. They can do the fun, creative things like Drama, but I really pay attention to the basics. On-Air, VT, News News News, Play-by-Play for those interested, sales, and programming.

I love these kids, its fun and most people cannot tell we are a high school radio station.
 
bigpunk81 said:
Its funny, they do it like that at Big Mic Productions (www.bigmicproductions.com), some breaks are generic, but stations can get the whole day-part and local breaks with their shows that aren't free. I think with the generics its just important to be current and time sensitive, if its not done every day its too out dated.
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I like what I hear on this site. Too bad its commercial only (we need to fill in slots during the summer)!
 
I don't see whats so bad about voicetracking. It was around in a different form even in the 1970s when automated FM stations ran various formats from drake-chenault, TM and Century 21. Its all in how much effort is put into it to make it sound live and local. Back then, the automation were basically electro-mechanical and were subject to all sorts of errorrs. The voicetracking methods were very rudimentary and limited. But with a simple run of the mill computer and decent software nowadays, the skies the limit.
 
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