Why when someone leaves a station....

[the undork]

....does it not create any new opportunities?

When a jock moves on, more often than not they still get to keep the job they are leaving by voicetracking. This denies any opportunity for advancement within that station/cluster.

I get the position that if you can keep a winning talent on the air then why not, and that it can also save on budget and I further understand the dynamic of getting a more talented person on your air than you could normally afford. However, I also see PD's and others on this board lamenting a lack of good talent as well as opportunities for talent to develop.

Honestly though, given today's pay scales you could pay an up and comer less than the per shift rate of a VT'er and get away with it. If the kid has a problem remind him/her of the old concept of paying one's dues. Further, is market 201 really going to get any kind of competitive advantage being VT'ed by market 50?

 

[AKLes]

Sorry to break the news....

It's not, and never was, about opportunity.

It's about MONEY. Voice tracking is cheaper and, even if a tiny bit of advertising revenue might be lost when a personality disappears the money that was being paid to the personality remains in the owner's pocket. Result: A slight decrease in the gross and a nice increase in the net.

The day will come when Bill Gates gets voice simulation coupled with artificial intelligence and the doom is complete for "talent".

 

[Johnny Morgan]

To back up Les---

Clear Channel, for example, offers an additional $3,000 to $5,000 a year to someone who offers to spare an additional 30-45 minutes a day voicetracking a 4-5 hour slot.

Compare that to the full salary of a single on-air guy, even at CC's dirt rates--$20,000.

They save at least $15,000 per.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Voice Tracking

I just want to add a thought about voice tracking...

Yeah, it may only take 45 minutes to phyiscally voice track a 5 hour show, but it's going to take a LOT longer than that to do it right. If you're tracking an out-of-market station, and you want to sound like you're live and local, you have to spend considerable time doing research on current happenings in the market. That includes talking to the local PD, checking out the local paper, tuning in the streams of other local stations, catching video feeds from local TV stations, and tracking down alternate sources of up-to-date information.

$100.00/week - $20.00/day - seems like a real bargain for Cheap Channel, or any other owner.

Of course, if you're just a liner card reader, you don't have to spend the extra time. The ratings will likely reflect your (lack of) effort - unless you have NO competition.

 

[radiofriend1]

Re: Voice Tracking

I just want to add a thought about voice tracking...

Yeah, it may only take 45 minutes to phyiscally voice track a 5 hour show, but it's going to take a LOT longer than that to do it right. If you're tracking an out-of-market station, and you want to sound like you're live and local, you have to spend considerable time doing research on current happenings in the market. That includes talking to the local PD, checking out the local paper, tuning in the streams of other local stations, catching video feeds from local TV stations, and tracking down alternate sources of up-to-date information.

and being local doesn't take that much longer-besides how many truly local jocks actually sound that local anyway?????
how many local jocks do what you describe above (other than morning shows/teams, whose producers do a bunch of that grunt work anyway)? catching video feeds, tracking down alternate sources, tuning into other stations streams- u got to be kidding!!!!!

very few local jocks are great at it but to the voicetracking and big company skeptics the bar gets raised for voicetrackers. excluding prep time(NOT HOURS WORTH!) there are excellent VT talent who can do a great sounding 5 hr show in 30 minutes. great talent is always in **SHOW PREP MODE** anyway, so it's not like they need hours sifting thru prep material & web sites to be prepared.

lets be realistic here. if i'm in grand forks north dakota and i'm paying some mediocre talent $20k to do middays but i can get a big market voicetracker to do it for $6k a year AND i can give my listeners a superior sounding show, i'd do it in a heartbeat.

all voicetracking does, in the end, is trim the fat. it's bad and mediocre talent who, in the big picture, are the most affected. and is that such a terrible thing? the days of boogie checks and venus fly trap with his late-night aura of chimes and incense have been over for about 25 years.

great talent always finds a way to move ahead with the times. lousy talent sticks their head in the sand and whines about **THE GOOD OLE DAYS**

 

[kenhawk1160]

great talent always finds a way to move ahead with the times. lousy talent sticks their head in the sand and whines about **THE GOOD OLE DAYS**

The thing is, it doesn't really take much for lousy talent to become great talent. It's not as much about voice quality as it is about attitude. Self-confidence (without being cocky), focus, and true dedication to their craft are the makings of a good jock. The ones still in this business are the ones who change with the times and that are truly committed to self-improvement. It's not "I'm a good talent". It should always be "How can I get better?" If you always dedicate yourself to that kind of work ethic, you'd be surprised at how much you can improve. Don't depend on a PD to improve you. You have to want it for yourself. This is the best advice I can give to on-air talent. To those of you still getting their feet wet, listen to an old-timer who's been around for almost 20 years.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Kicking ASS

and being local doesn't take that much longer-besides how many truly local jocks actually sound that local anyway??

how many local jocks do what you describe above (other than morning shows/teams, whose producers do a bunch of that grunt work anyway)? catching video feeds, tracking down alternate sources, tuning into other stations streams- u got to be kidding!!!!!

If you can't sound more "live and local" than a big city guy VT'ing from miles away, then you SHOULD get your ass kicked. If you're NOT doing what I "describe above", and you're a local guy trying to beat a big-time talent, you SHOULD get your ass kicked, and you don't deserve the $17,500 you're making.

Anybody who has any business in front of a microphone, who does any show prep beyond surfing to a joke service, should be able to kick the ASS of any "30-minute Voicetracker" IF the rest of the programming is competitive. If you're not doing the work, talking about local stuff that your audience is involved in, and being RELATABLE, you're just a hack collecting a paycheck. And that doesn't mean running off at the mouth for minutes at a time. You can do the job within the format IF you think ahead and condense your thoughts until they're succint and effective.

If you read liner cards, you're another voice - no matter how good or how bad. If you're relatable, you become a PERSONALITY, recognizable in the community. Get out and do remotes - even freebies for charitable organizations - and you'll actually meet your audience and become more than "just a voice on the radio". You learn from them, they get to know you. THAT'S how you build a career.

Once you have a real career, you can become one of those "30-Minute Voicetrackers" for a small market somewhere, where some guy will be trying to figure out how to kick your ass while reading liner cards.

Great talent relates to their audience. That's how they move ahead. Liner cards have been around since Bill Drake in the '60s. A lot of great jocks have used liner cards as the basis for great bits that related to their target audience, and kicked the ass of automation systems since the '70s. Great talent also has developed the "feel" of the audience to present information with the proper gravity. If Charlie Tuna told me something was silly, it sounded silly. If Larry Lujack stopped being sarcastic and told me something was important, he had as much gravity as any newsman on the planet. Most of all, those guys were HONEST. That's why they're legends.

PS - If you don't know who Charlie Tuna or Larry Lujack are, you need to know a bit more about the industry you're involved in. Google 'em, and listen to their airchecks. Those airchecks are a tiny window into their day-to-day performance, and they don't do them justice. Remember this, they sounded that good EVERY DAY, not just when tape was rolling, or they thought the boss was listening. That's what being a PRO is all about. It doesn't matter how you feel, what's going on in your life, who p*ssed in your Wheaties, or whether you got laid last night, you still need to PERFORM, every day.

As they say, "If it was easy, everybody would do it."

PPS - If you want to see if "Live and Local" beats "Big City Voicetrack", check the ratings. In almost every market, the market leaders are the stations with the FEWEST out-of-town voicetrackers. To me, Big City Voicetrackers mean that the local PD has given up, and doesn't have the skills necessary to develop local talent and teach them how to WIN.

 

[radiofriend1]

u r living in the **THE DAY**.

the audience doesn't give a flip if it's live or voice tracked locally or from a thousand miles away

all they care about is: is it entertaining, interesting, relevant

and those things can be accomplished locally or from the other side of the country

the only people who care if a show is **LIVE IN THE STUDIO** vs voicetracking..........are insecure DJs

 

[954]

the only people who care if a show is **LIVE IN THE STUDIO** vs voicetracking..........are insecure DJs

Wrong. I'm not an insecure deejay. I'm a demanding listener.

How relevant can it be from 1000 miles away?

... unless you pay no attention to anything but the music.

73s

 

[954]

If you can't sound more "live and local" than a big city guy VT'ing from miles away, then you SHOULD get your ass kicked. If you're NOT doing what I "describe above", and you're a local guy trying to beat a big-time talent, you SHOULD get your ass kicked, and you don't deserve the $17,500 you're making.

Enjoyed your informative posting, Rox.

Is that all they pay deejays?

73s

 

[kenhawk1160]

How relevant can it be from 1000 miles away?

It can be VERY relevant if you have the right talent. If you're paying an quality out-of-towner to voice-track, he's going to obviously take a little more pride and time in his work and build localism into the breaks, while keeping it interesting. If I had the opportunity to pick up an extra few grand a year by spending 45 minutes, I'd get to know about the market a little bit, and work events and other happenings into simple things like weather reports. The "kids" (meaning entry-level jocks) don't pay that kind of attention to detail to make them sound more than liner-card readers. Voice-tracking is a way for stations to realistically afford both vocally-gifted and highly experienced talent. I don't come cheap (nor am I overpriced, in my opinion) and those that do haven't a whole lot to offer the industry yet. Thus, if given the choice, I'll take the off-site voice-track guy and save a few bucks as opposed to keeping a beginner on full-time with less to offer.

 

[radiofriend1]

the only people who care if a show is **LIVE IN THE STUDIO** vs voicetracking..........are insecure DJs

Wrong. I'm not an insecure deejay. I'm a demanding listener.

How relevant can it be from 1000 miles away?

... unless you pay no attention to anything but the music.

73s

so, using your logic are we to assume u never watch or listen to any radio or tv programming that's not live & local?

 

[SirRoxalot]

Radio 101

If you can't sound more "live and local" than a big city guy VT'ing from miles away, then you SHOULD get your ass kicked. If you're NOT doing what I "describe above", and you're a local guy trying to beat a big-time talent, you SHOULD get your ass kicked, and you don't deserve the $17,500 you're making.

Enjoyed your informative posting, Rox.

Is that all they pay deejays?

73s

I hate to tell you what I got paid for my first gig in market #287, but the phrase "and all the records that we don't play" was implicit, if not explicit in the agreement. I lived in an "apartment house" with a shared bathroom down the hall, and rent was collected bi-weekly. That should give you an idea of the standard of living.

I'm sure that there are small market stations that are paying those kind of wages. After all, that's nearly $8.50/hr.

Now, back to the discussion...

You can't be relevant in 45 minutes a day. The mechanics of VT'ing will take you nearly that long. You'll need to spend some time keeping up-to-date with happenings in the market if you're going to be relevant to your audience. If your VT talent is making $3500/yr., you're talking about $70.00/wk., or $14.00/day. If you spend 2 hrs. per day, that's $7.00/hr. Even at 1.5 hrs./day, you're talking about $9.50/hr. Put on the makeup and the fishnets, because you're walking Radio Street for that kind of money.

Radiofriend1, I'll be happy to take on the best VT talent in the country who only puts 45 minutes a day into a 5 hour airshift for an out-of-town market. I ain't a superstar, but I'll beat him/her/it. A specialty show once a week might win, but a day-after-day presentation like you describe is definitely beatable IF you have local talent who's doing the job and has enough talent to be in the biz in the first place.

One of the problems now is that PDs have multiple stations dumped on them by GMs who think that all there is to programming is building Selector clocks and merging program logs. The art - and it is an art - of developing talent has been neglected for so long that we're growing a generation of programmers with excellent computer skills and insufficient people skills. As I said earlier, it's important to have a PD or somebody who can teach raw talent how to win.

You can debate that POV, but look at the ratings. In most markets, live and local WINS.

 

[radiofriend1]

only mediocre jox take $3500 a yr. big markets pay at least $7500, up to $10k a year for a daytime shift. prep tme & doing the show (4 hrs, music-type show) doesn't take anymore than 45 min per shift

so, let us get this straight. if you're in a studio doing a live 4 hr show, how much of that time is spent w/the mic open? not 45 minutes---in fact i bet that the mic open and u answering calls doesn't collectively add up to 45 minutes. and i'd lay a month's pay down that a sizeable % of music jox in the country(who DO sit in-studio doing a show) put their request lines on hold and get a smoke in between many of their songs.

do u know all the major countdown shows over the yrs have been "voicetracked"? do u really think casey kasem sat in a studio for 4 hours during the recording of at40? no. he laid down his tracks, producers pieced them together w/the music and that show is arguably the most popular music radio show of our time.

time to get real and move into 2006, boyz & girls. not saying all music radio shows should be voicetracked but this notion that "it can't be good in 45 minutes" is a crock and major denial. if u wanna continue living in **THE DAY** go ahead-- those of us who are foward-thinkers will be collecting YOUR paychecks in the future

 

[Johnny Morgan]

Whose paycheck do you collect now?

If you speak as well as you write, I would suspect that you're getting paid too much for your product.

Before you go off on me: I have voice-tracked. I've been live. I make more now than 75% of the music jocks, doing a non-music jock job. My radio position is and always was a hobby.

If we could all do stuff voicetracked, why do they continue to hire folks like you and me?

Answer: because not everything can, or will, be done by voicetracking.

Also, Casey Kasem never explicitly or implicitly passed himself off as being in Cleveland, or New York, or Atlanta, or anywhere else that AT 40 aired. Can't always say the same for a guy from Cleveland voicetracking a show to Mansfield, or from Philadephia to Pittsburgh.

By the way, doing a 3 hour show--live: opening the mike, for 10 secs every other song; answer calls; completing music logs as well as music selection; transmitter readings, as well as pre-show prep and set-up.

By the way--you forgot to mention that as part of the overall meager salary is included a considerable amount of in-house production work, as well as promotions and remotes (even if not on-air) during your "day off".

So, how does $25,000 feel for 6 days a week, 8 hours or more a day (depending on your production schedule) live...

Oh, and that $25k includes your voicetrack salary. (I know for a fact that Clear Channel offered $19k a year for an morning show in Akron, Ohio...including prod work.)

You really a forward thinker now?

If so, you're welcome to that paycheck...I would OWN you in that case. Absolutely OWN you.

It can be good voicetracked in 45 minutes; but it can always be better live--feeling the music in the moment, feeling the microphone reverberation and the mood of the world outside the thick walls and windows. Hard to feel the mood of a city facing a weekend-playoff birth when you recorded two days earlier.

By the way--your figures you quote ($10k for big markets) still means that someone is NOT being paid to do that same position. I'll leave it to your head to know that someone's out of work as a result. Someone maybe in Minot...who can afford it least.

But you enjoy your $10,000. Buy something nice...after taxes.

 

[kenhawk1160]

One of the problems now is that PDs have multiple stations dumped on them by GMs who think that all there is to programming is building Selector clocks and merging program logs. The art - and it is an art - of developing talent has been neglected for so long that we're growing a generation of programmers with excellent computer skills and insufficient people skills. As I said earlier, it's important to have a PD or somebody who can teach raw talent how to win.

Agreed. And I can't remember the last time sitting down with a PD and doing an aircheck session. Nor can I remember PD's I worked with sitting down with their talent. They're not making the time they once were, and to be perfectly honest, most of them were air talent promoted above their heads when the last PD got blown out.

 

[radiofriend1]

If we could all do stuff voicetracked, why do they continue to hire folks like you and me?

Answer: because not everything can, or will, be done by voicetracking.

i think i said that. many in radio today indeed have their **full-time** gig plus additional voicetrack positions. why is that so bad? like i said earlier, if u are the guy in the med/smaller market and can have big league sounding talent via voicetracking, why would you not make your station better AND more efficient? all the romance of "feeling the music" and all that is very nice and noble but if taking xmter readings, putting your signature on a paper log and "set-up"(whatever the heck that is) is your idea of making great radio, wow.

great programming is the right BALANCE between art & science. if U work for cox radio, it's all science and thats why most cox stations sound like wallpaper (and a high percentage of their shows are **LIVE**).

but to automatically dismiss voicetracked jocks and the sound they give their stations is incredibly short-sighted and disrespectful. are ALL voicetracked jocks the bomb? of course not. but i hear **LIVE** jocks all the time and many of them are not all that great, despite the fact they're signing logs, looking at xmtr readings and all the little detail stuff that has nothing to do with making magic come out of the speakers

 

[kenhawk1160]

i think i said that. many in radio today indeed have their **full-time** gig plus additional voicetrack positions. why is that so bad? like i said earlier, if u are the guy in the med/smaller market and can have big league sounding talent via voicetracking, why would you not make your station better AND more efficient?

This is my point, exactly. The industry is, as I've said before, moving towards the well-rounded, multi-capable 'staff announcer', and away from the disk jockey personified by people like Larry Lujack, Don Imus, and others like them during the halcyon days of the business. We're seeing announcers that can do news, write copy, work promotions, and remotes. The four-hour real-time jock is a thing of the past. And to those of you who don't think a four-hour VT shift can be done in 45 minutes, look at the length of your breaks. If you're outside of morning drive and gabbing more than a minute into the mic at any given moment, edit yourself. The bottom line...change with the industry or change careers.

 

[Johnny Morgan]

Dismissing the point as being taking transmitter readings is seeing the trees in the forest.

If you have a crappy live talent, why is the reaction automatically to go to a voicetracked big league guy? Wouldn't the normal course be, "our midday live jock is kinda bad. Is there anyone else out there we can get?"

By the way, all of this ignores the fact that more often than not, the voicetracking is intra-cluster. Cleveland, for example: the midday jock (10a to 3p) on the #1 12+ and #2 25-54 oldies station is voicetracked; he's live on the sister country station (#2 12+ and #1 25-54--in fact, he just got the #1 in his timeslot) in PM drive.

And of the 24 hours of a broadcast day on WMJI, 10 are live. This is the #1 or #2 station in market, a heritage station (not an out-dated oldies operation, but one that's progressed the playlist).

Isn't there a point at which this all gets a bit insane?

By the way, guy the VT replaced was a market vet, having been at either WMJI or WGAR since 1982. He was MD of the oldies station.

And, as good a jock as he is (and he is--you don't succeed for 35 years by being junk), Chuck Collier can't help but sound like he's not there live at WMJI.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not anti-voicetracking. I've done it. But as the maxim always goes, it's preferred to have the slot live. If we give all the local slots to voicetracked big league talent, where will we train the next batch of talent? You're not going to live forever.

Ken's right--the industry is changing, and voicetracking is here to stay. But it doesn't have to be the only source of talent, as some wish it to be.

 

[kenhawk1160]

the industry is changing, and voicetracking is here to stay. But it doesn't have to be the only source of talent, as some wish it to be.

Johnny, I agree with you...VT doesn't have to be the only source of talent. The problem is, there's not enough quality talent out there to replenish the pool. Those who are out there that do have the talent to go places eventually get tired of the politics often found within the business (i.e. small barely livable salary, using lack of revenue as an excuse to pay pitiful salaries) and find something else to do with their lives when they can't get into other stations because their existing talent isn't moving.

There are also situations where VT isn't suitable, such as a CHR format with a lot of listener-phone interaction. That's an on-air shift that will definitely keep a jock busy. Provided he's actually taking calls and not locking out callers.