February 2005 RAP
February 2005 Highlights
Feature: Radio is Changing Faster Than My First Wife Did
By Troy Duran
Radio is changing faster than my wife did when I told her how freakin
HOT(!) her little sister is. It seems just like yesterday that I was bulk
erasing a ten-minute cart because the damn Scully brakes were worn out, and
I upcut the audio on the 16th :30 ABC Networks spot -- the spots that I, as
the overnighter, had to dub because of something I did to really piss off
someone in a previous life. If you were born after about 1983, the above
paragraph probably reads like: BLAH BLAH damn BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH piss
someone off in a previous life. In a nutshell, carts really, really sucked.
Interview: Drake Donovan, Creative Services Director,
WZPT/WDSY, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
By Jerry Vigil
How do you image a HOT AC station whose target is a 35-year old mother of
two? You get a 26-year old single guy with no kids. Well not just any
26-year old single guy. You get Drake Donovan. WZPT is Pittsburgh's HOT AC
station, one of four stations in the Infinity cluster in the country's #23
ranked market. Drake handles the imaging for WZPT as well as sister station
Y108, and Drake recently launched his own creative services company. A
listen to WZPT or to Drakes demo on this months RAP CD illustrates why Drake
was the winner of the recent 2004 Pittsburgh AIR Award for Best Creative
Services Director. This months RAP Interview picks Donovan's brain for some
of his HOT AC imaging tricks, and we get a glimpse at imaging where keeping
it entertaining, local, and fresh still counts.
Test Drive: PSP Nitro, VintageWarmer, and PSP 42 Delay
By Steve Cunningham
Some of the most interesting audio software comes from out-of-the-way
places. For example, Waves Ltd. produces a complete line of highly popular
plug-in processors from their headquarters in Tel Aviv, Israel. This months
collection of audio processors hails from Jozefoslaw, Poland, home of PSP
Audioware. When an opportunity arose to snap up PSPs VintageWarmer at a
hefty discount, I bit on it. While I was there I decided the check out a
couple of their other plugs as well.
Test Drive Sidebar: Free Advice and Cheap Stuff
By Steve Cunningham
Production folks have been trading hints and tips with each other
electronically since the first modem-based bulletin-board systems sprang up
in the late 1980s. With the spread of high-speed Internet access, some of
these loosely-connected groups have established permanent homes on the
Internet in the form of User Groups. Do a quick search and you'll find a
User Group for nearly every brand of software editor, plug-in, or platform
you can come up with. Some groups use the forums provided on the
manufacturers website, like the Digidesign User Conference on
www.digidesign.com. Other groups have established independent forums, and
several have taken up residence at
www.groups.yahoo.com.
Production 212: Using Confabulation
By Dave Foxx
Every couple of months or so, I sign with a new radio station as their
voice guy. They send their copy, generally asking for the "Z100 read." I
voice and post it for download and invariably get an email questioning my
sanity. Its too harsh. Its too brittle. Its always too something. Yup, yup
and yup. Its all that, and its the "Z100 read." For those who are fairly new
to this column, I push my voice though a 400Hz Hi-Pass filter and then
compress the living heck out of it. The waveform is almost completely
flattened by clipping and is thus, the audiophiles worst nightmare.
Radio Hed: Directing Voice Talent I
By Jeffrey Hedquist
Whether you're a writer, producer, actor, or director, developing
directing skills will make a world of difference in your commercials.
Directing is inspiring, coaching, encouraging, cheerleading, getting inside
the psyche of an actor and planting seeds so that that actor will bring to
life words on a page. Good directing not only improves the final production,
but it improves the skills of the actors being directed.
Q It Up: The RAP Network Speaks - Production Intensive
Promotions
Q It Up: What promotion in the past few years was one of
the more challenging ones for you, with regards to the promos and other
imaging material you had to produce for it? What steps did you take to meet
the challenge? Did the promotion "teach" you anything that made you better
than you were before?
Feature: Sound Thinking
By Tim Miles
You know what being a loyal employee gets you? It gets you from the
rich-soiled flat flatlands of East Central Illinois to the base of Pikes
Peak at twilight. Well, sorta... If you're reading this, you're already in
the reindeers whisker minority who digs deeper. So lets take that for
granted. Now, then, what are you prepared to do? Or, more literally... who
do you work for? Do you work for your employer who, without fail, hands you
a paycheck twice a month and feeds you health insurance, vacation, and
partial-pay on the 401? Or do you work for the client?
...And Make It Real Creative:
By Trent Rentsch
Okay, were a month into the year, how are those resolutions going? In my
little circle, it seemed like nobody made any, or if they did it was with a,
"yeah right" attitude. "Gonna lose 25 pounds this year" eye roll, "Yeah,
right!"
Its easy to get jaded, especially if you're like me and you cant even take
care of the small stuff on a to-do list. Really, just found one that I
wrote, oh, about a year and a half ago. I needed to do some lawn work, clean
the garage, re-grout the tiles in the kids bathroom, and fix the car. Of
those I think I mowed the lawn, and eventually fixed the car well, didn't
really fix it, the head gasket blew and we had to get a different one. I
mean, if you cant find a couple hours in a year and a half to throw out a
bunch of junk and sweep a garage floor, how are you going to sweat through
the big stuff, like resolving to finish writing that book, or doubling your
freelance client base?
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