May 2008 Highlights

by Dave Foxx

Back in the Dark Ages, I actually attended school… complete with dorm living, frat hazing and some really stupid stunts that probably should have landed me in jail. Like most of my peers, I was there because my parents told me I needed to be there, but I had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up, or even if I wanted to grow up. I think I might have set a record at my University for highest number of declared majors for one student. (Can you imagine me as a Marine Biologist? Nah… me either.) To help defray the cost of school, I got a job at the campus radio station, one of those stations that has a paid (not very much) staff, comprised mostly of students and a few radio ‘veterans’ who probably would have starved in the real broadcast industry.One of my co-workers was a student named Brian Capener, from Ithaca, New York. Brian was a pretty cool dude in my book. He was clearly smart, well traveled (his father had served in the USAID program in India), and an all-around nice guy. We got to be pretty good friends as he was an excellent producer and I had a fair voice, so we often teamed to work together. Brian produced a multi-media project for one of his literary classes on Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and he asked me to narrate it for him. It was a Masterpiece bit of work, mainly due to his efforts, that really opened my eyes to what the story was really about.

Radio Hed: Defuse the Objection Bombs

by Jeffrey Hedquist

You and I are advertisers, communicators, crafters of compelling messages, yet we’re consumers first. As members of the audience, we know how difficult it is to be convinced that a product, service or brand offers a genuine benefit. We’re all skeptics. We know that special effects, technology and money can create a façade of believability; so most advertising doesn’t “reach” us.

Interview: Casey Van Allen, Viper Communications, Osage Beach, Missouri

by Jerry Vigil

We’ve read many stories in the pages of RAP about Production Directors who make the break from radio to open their own production company or make it full-time in the voice-over business. But we’ve yet to talk to a production guy who made the break and became a station owner! Turn back the pages all the way to 1992, the December issue of RAP, the RAP Interview. Casey Van Allen (real name, Dennis Klautzer) was the Production Director at KMOX in St. Louis at the time. Even then, he had already stepped into station ownership as an investment, but a decade later Casey would leave the comforts of a steady paycheck in corporate radio to actually work at his station – the best decision he ever made, as he recalls. Join us for a remarkable visit with Casey as he treats us to his story and gives us a glimpse of the life of a Production Director turned station owner.

Test Drive: Small Toys — MicPort Pro and Countryman E6i Condenser Mic

by Steve Cunningham

I don’t know about you, but I carry around way too much stuff. And with airline travel having become the ordeal it is today, the situation has become worse, not better. The last couple of trips I made, one to San Francisco and the other Las Vegas, nearly involved a complete strip search at LAX airport. Needless to say, the TSA drones in the airport had lots of questions regarding my laptop, audio interface, and microphone. Methinks someone is trying to tell me that I need to cut back on my carry-ons. This month’s review features a couple of items that take care of exactly that problem. They’re small, they sound good, and I’m betting that they’ll create a lot less intrigue at the airport.

Q It Up: The RAP Network Speaks!

Online Production Libraries and Imaging Services

Q It Up: Online production libraries and imaging services - how are they working out for you? If you haven’t noticed, CD libraries are becoming a thing of the past as companies now provide hard drives with their collections or simply direct their clients to their websites where music and imaging tools can be searched and downloaded. Some companies give you a choice of hard drive, online access, or both. If you’ve made the move to hard drive storage and/or online libraries, what pros and cons have you discovered along the way? What changes would you like to see in the way things are done? If you haven’t moved away from CD libraries, what’s keeping you there? Please feel free to add any other comments you might have.

Notes Off the Napkin: A Different Air Force

by Andrew Frame

We interrupt this magazine for an essay on aviation. We will return to your normal radio and production text in a moment. I used to have a fear of heights. Nowadays, I understand it isn’t the altitude I’m afraid of, it’s the death part... you know when one hundred fifty kilo’s of me traveling at one hundred twenty knots has immediate decelerative contact with the ground. The fact my flight instructor, Rhonda, trusts my pre-flight of the aircraft worries me. I want maintenance records, X-rays, sonograms, sworn affidavits, and a complete metallurgical analysis of the fuselage. Then, and only then... I might step out to the flight line and actually begin something resembling pre-flight.

 

 ...And Make It Real Creative - "Dude, it's just a spot!"

by Trent Rentsch

Like anyone who cares about their work, I take a certain pride in my scripts and finished production. After throwing enough of both against the wall over the years, some basic rules and rhythm have stuck and my own “voice” comes through in what I do, intentionally or not. Still, I understand that my Creative flow can use adjustment depending on the client and/or situation. Revisions are all part of the game; this is no place for the bullheaded and thin-skinned of the world. But not long ago, revisions got so stupid for one client that I actually blurted the phrase I never thought would fall out of my mouth, “Dude, it’s JUST a spot!”

Feature: They Call This "Work"?

by Steve Wein

I was digging thru my boxes of reel-to-reel airchecks and “best of” production reels last month, looking for a commercial to use as an example in an upcoming sales meeting when I discovered what I consider the first “good spot” in my career, way back in 1973. And one of the remarkable things about it was the crude way we did production back in the pre-digital, pre-multi-track age when AM radio ruled. The copy was a typical laundry list of prices and items, but the trick was to make it sound like it was anything BUT a laundry list of prices and items. The movie “Ben Hur” was recently on TV (Yes, we did have TV way back then!), so I wrote a take-off on it, called The Adventures Of “Ben-Him.”