RELENTLESS RADIO

 

Author:	Hollywood Henderson
Published:	February, 2000

 

Are you an announcer, or a personality? On the surface, this may seem like a loaded question. But I think it's a great starting point for the series of articles I'm planning on writing about being an on-air radio performer. It's been my experience that most of us in this business consider being called an announcer an insult. I think this is unfair, because although there is a distinct difference between being an announcer and being a personality, the radio world is big enough for both of these varieties of on-air talent. Both require a demanding, though differing set of skills. That makes it even more important to decide in which camp you belong. It makes no sense to spend your time developing the skill set of one, if you belong in the other.  Part of the problem is the on-going stigma associated with being an "announcer." How many articles have I read over my career from radio consultants, programmers, guest columnists and jocks which have put down the so-called "time and temp, liner card" jock as being a talentless goof. "You've got to have something to SAY!" "You've got to be topical!" "You've got to be relatable!" All this is true, of course if you're trying to be a radio personality! But what if you're not? Or, more to the point, what if the constraints of your format don't allow it?  I recently exchanged a series of e-mails with a close friend and long-time air talent who's worked at many of the greatest CHR stations in the country. He just relocated to Los Angeles, and was bemoaning the fact that in the AFTRA union scale, the so-called "liner card readers" at KOST had a significantly higher starting salary than the jocks at other stations did. With the formative thoughts of this article already bubbling in my head, I challenged him about this. "Why are you criticizing them? Their job requires a high level of skill and competence, just like yours does, although it's a different kind of competence." His response was, "I'm not saying they don't deserve to be paid, but why should they be paid the most?"  This illustrates the anti-announcer bias I'm getting at. Those of us who are in the "personality camp", and I include myself in this group, tend to look down our noses at those in the "announcer camp." We make fun of them, we get laughs from putting on our puking "announcer voices," and so on. We think their jobs are a piece of cake compared to ours. But maybe we ought to have a little more respect.  So, are you an announcer, or a personality? More importantly, what does your boss expect you to be? (This is a pretty important thing to think about, since your paycheck depends on it!) Let's take the air talent quiz:  1. Would your boss say that the absolute most crucial thing about your job is getting the programming elements, liners, sweepers, jingles, songs, correctly executed and in the right places?  2. Are there specific positioning statements or fixed liners attached to most of your talk sets?  3. When you open the mike, would you feel uncomfortable talking about a personal experience, un-related to a song that you just played?  4. Do you routinely find yourself censoring out your personal thoughts because "nobody cares what I think?"  5. Do you make comments off-air that you would never say on-air, because somebody might be offended? (I'm not talking about inappropriate comments here, nobody should be making those, ever.)  I could be wrong, but my feeling is the more "yesses" you have to questions like these, the more likely your boss has hired you to be an announcer rather than a personality. As I've already said, there should be no shame in this. Frankly, I wish programmers would be more honest about this with their air staffs.  I remember a conversation I had with a program director of a major market "lite rock, less talk" station. He was talking about a recent staff meeting where the jocks had griped about there not being enough show prep tools provided for them in the studio. The program director's comment to me was, "How much show prep do they need, to say '(station), I'm so-and-so, and coming up next another long set of your lite rock favorites, with less talk?"  Mister program director, don’t tell your announcers that they're personalities, regardless of how flattering that sounds, if you're not willing to give them the flexibility required to be a personality!  Let's talk about the differing skill sets of these two groups. A good place to start is with voice quality. For an announcer, a smooth, polished voice is a must. For a personality, it's practically irrelevant. Some of the best personalities in the country have very imperfect voices. One of the top sports talk guys here in Dallas, Norm Hitzges, has a voice that would probably not win many awards for being easy to listen to. Dr. Laura Schlessinger is another example of a less-than-wonderful voice. Yet both of these personalities, and scores more like them, have huge audiences every single day.  For an announcer, though, a unique voice can be a problem. An un-polished voice is certainly a problem! My experience has been that most programmers of "music intensive" stations feel uncomfortable with voices that are too far outside the established norm. An "odd" or "unfinished" voice represents a potential "tune-out" factor, and music-intensive radio is more about avoiding tune-out than anything else.  A second major differentiation between an announcer and a personality is content. An announcer communicates information, whereas a personality communicates passion. Stand-up comic Judy Carter has written a great book,, a must-read for every radio personality who uses humor in his or her show, entitled "Stand-Up Comedy, The Book." In it, she makes the point that audiences don't respond to jokes, they respond to the passion behind those jokes.  Think about a break you did on today's show where you talked about a certain topic, not a station-oriented topic like a contest or feature. Were you passionate about it? Did you express that passion in personal terms? Or did you simply communicate information, without putting a personal spin on it?  Let's use the recent American Music Awards as an example. The announcer would simply have communicated information. "That was Ricky Martin, who won an American Music Award last night for best Latin artist." The personality would go a step further and express some passion. "Jennifer Lopez got RIPPED OFF!" "Did you see Britney Spears’ DRESS!? SHOCKING!" Or something similarly subjective.  It's important to note that the line between announcer and personality is not drawn by how much you talk! Yes, you can be a personality in ten or fifteen second intervals! If you've ever listened to some of those old air checks from Bobby Ocean and Machine Gun Kelly on KHJ back in the 70's, you know what I mean. Conversely, just because you blathered on for two minutes about some topic doesn’t make you a personality!  Having said that, I must add here that I get a kick out of consultants and programmers who wave reams of research in the air that "proves" that listeners don't like DJ chatter. Clarification: listeners don't like pointless DJ chatter. If you've got something to say, they'll listen. (If people really hate DJ chatter, then why is talk radio so popular?) However, many jocks just don't have anything to say. There's nothing worse than hearing an announcer trying to be a personality, it's uncomfortable! This happens all the time on the TV evening news, when the news announcers exchange "happy talk." Ever notice how inane the content of that chitchat is? Better to say nothing at all than to foist that kind of "personality" on your listeners.  A final thought: In reality, many of us who consider ourselves to be personalities are some combination of announcer and personality. This is especially true outside of morning drive. Most of us have to sell the station and the music to at least some degree. Even more reason to be aware of the different skill sets required! Still, you should take an honest evaluation of which is your primary role. There have been days when I have been a pretty good personality but a pretty bad announcer. Recognizing the difference between the two has helped me accept such shows and leave the building with at least some sense of satisfaction.  Sooo, what are you, most of all? An announcer? Or a personality? There's room for both in the radio biz. The key is to find your niche and solidify your position in it! If you're an announcer, approach your craft like a singer or orator. Work out the imperfections in your voice, practice your pacing, get rid of any traces of regional accent, do breathing exercises. If you're a personality, work on your passion. Find things that you care about and talk about them! Yes, be topical and relevant, but above all, be passionate! And don't let a couple of flubbed words or jumbled thoughts make you feel like your show has been a failure!