7 Steps To Mercury
by Blaine Parker
“How do you create a Mercury-winning spot?” I can’t tell you how many times I heard this question when I was a full-time Creative Director at a radio network. That question is part of what comes with winning two Mercury awards, not to mention some R.A.P. Awards (truly the most notable of the bunch), several Silver Microphones, an ADDY and a bunch of other stuff. Here’s the short answer on how to win...
Q It Up: Are you producing content for your station's website?
With the increasing amount of online streaming, on demand content and greater connection to the audience through website videos, photos and more, there is an increasing need for production pros with website experience -- whether it’s video/graphics editing or content management. This is a natural progression for creative types. As a radio production person, what are you doing to makeyourself more valuable as more station groups expand their internet offerings?
Production 212: Here’s Lookin’ At You, Kid!
by Dave Foxx
I’m sure most of you know that I am often asked to make presentations to broadcast pros, about how to become a better producer. Sometimes it’s for a single company like Southern Cross Austereo in Sydney, Australia last fall and this past March to all attendees at NAB Europe in Berlin, Germany. When he was still putting them on, Dan O’Day used to have me as a semi-regular at his annual World Wide Radio Summit in Los Angeles. To accommodate all these requests, I’ve had to learn how to design and use Power Point presentations to aid in the visualization of certain concepts and actual screen shots of settings I use in my day-to-day production. I’ve gotten pretty fancy with it, adding audio and video to help drive home the various ideas I talk about. When I discovered I could add video of actual sessions in progress, I felt like I was right on the cutting edge.
Radio Hed: Client’s Personal Stories Touch Listeners
by Jeffrey Hedquist
“I had no idea what it was like not knowing where your next meal was coming from until I volunteered to deliver for Meals On Wheels. I loved the experience and it led me to offering our delivery vehicles to pick up food bank donations for free.”
Technology: CryptoLocker and Four Rules for Online Safety
by Steve Cunningham
This month I would like to bring to your attention on online privacy and security matter about which I believe everyone can be concerned. It involves a piece of computer malware which raised its ugly head during the first week of October, 2013. Its sole purpose in life is to hold all of the files on your Windows-based computer hostage, and threatens to kill them all if you, the computer user, don’t pay up. Users running Windows 7, Vista, and XP are all vulnerable.
"...And Make It Real Creative!": The End of the Beginning
by Trent Rentsch
My daughter presented me with an early Christmas present a couple of weeks ago. My Grandson, Murray Jae, has joined the party, and… uhm… I’m a Grandfather. An excited Grandfather, mind you, but still… a Grandfather. The timing is strangely appropriate to me. This column marks 20 years I’ve been writing this column. There’s a certain feeling of accomplishment in that, but still… 20 years. It’s entirely possible that some of you reading these words hadn’t joined the party when I started. That feels… how? Odd is the word that comes the closest.
The Monday Morning Memo: Anything Too Stupid...
by Roy H. Williams
Voltaire is often quoted as having said it, but he never did. It was actually Pierre de Beaumarchais in 1775, just a few months before Thomas and George and Ben and the boys wrote their scathing letter to England’s king. Beaumarchais was working on the second scene in the first act of The Barber of Seville, when it hit him, “Aujourd’hui ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’être dit, on le chante.” “Anything too stupid to be spoken is sung.”
