Never Say Never

Sean Connery stated in 1971 that he would never again play the role of James Bond. But in 1983 he played Bond again at the age of 52 in the movie “Never Say Never Again.” I guess, that should have been a warning to me to never say that I would never do something. There is a parallel saying that no longer applies to me; “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Oh yes, while we are doing old sayings, I’ll add one more; “Half a loaf is better than none.”

From the very beginning I’ve believed that live radio was the only way to fly, and my on air career has been mostly that. I guess the thing I loved the most about live radio was being “out there on the ragged edge of disaster” as one of my old flight instructors was fond of saying. Live radio is still my strongest favorite broadcasting medium. There was no “do-over” in live radio. When you say something, it is out there, and nothing can bring it back. If you were late for work, everybody knew it. If you flubbed a word, everybody heard it.

My first radio programs, back in 1963 on WUSC-AM were pre recorded as that was how the new DJs got trained. But they were “live to tape” and never edited. Well, I must admit that I retaped my first show over several times but I soon learned to let minor flubs pass as it was too painful to record a two hour show over again because of a mistake in the last announcement. Besides, there was not enough studio time available. We usually had a three hour time slot to do a two hour show. So live to tape it was.

When I completed my training and sat down at the console for my first live show the butterflies in my stomach were as big as “Mothra” in the old Japanese monster movies. But the rush of the experience was so strong that I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I was hooked!

Some of my favorite stories, often told in conversations with other old DJs revolve around things that happened in live radio. Like the time that the AP news copy said “snot” instead of “snow” or the time the Hells Angels came past my radio booth down at Doug Broome’s Drive In to request “Born To Be Wild” by Steppenwolf. As usual, the conversations turned to the changes in the radio business, the rise in automation and the evil of all evils; voice tracking.

When I became involved in online radio some 13 years ago all I did was live shows. But I recorded each and every show I did as I did them. As a result my “air check” library takes up nearly a terabyte of disk space on my backup and network drives. A couple of years after I started I got a request from another online station for copies of my Monday evening shows and that began my syndicated show. It was all good. Live, live to tape and syndication in one big package.

A short while later, one of the stations asked if I could produce a show exclusively for them and I took on recording shows again for the first time in 40 years. I agreed to it with the stipulation of doing it “live to tape” and I would not edit out the mistakes. To my surprise, it felt almost like I was doing it live, something that would have been impossible due to other commitments and the differences in time zones. The one thing that I could no longer do was take live requests and play their songs immediately. We old school DJs love doing that. I still take requests on these shows but tell the listener that I’ll play their song the next week.

But there was this big bugaboo – a “no no” that I still would not do; Voice Tracking. Voice tracking is the process of recording DJ patter that would be placed between songs by an automation system. Voice tracking replaced live DJs decades ago on many stations because it was cheaper and the bean counters were always looking to improve the bottom line.

I could always tell early voice tracked stations because the announcements were always “dry” and fit neatly between the end of a song and the beginning of the next with no overlap. Eventually they figured out a way to overlap the announcer and the music. But, when recording the voice track the announcer could not hear the music so there was no timing with or interacting with the song ending. It was all too neat and too artificial to me.

Finally, voice tracking systems allowed the DJ to hear the music that would be playing under the announcement as he or she recorded the track. So now it is not as apparent as it used to be.

I still felt that voice tracking was not for me and I continued to say never.

A few months ago, a friend of mine purchased a rural AM radio station that was about to go dark and leave a community without any radio service at all. I was all in; I asked him if there was anything I could do to help keep this 70 year old radio station on the air. His response was to ask me if I could do a weekend shift for him. I was anticipating that there was a process where I could log into the station and download the commercials and other production elements and do the show live. To my surprise there was no infrastructure at the station that could accomplish that but he offered me their voice tracking solution.

So there it was. It was voice tracking or nothing. I was faced with my arch enemy. Reluctantly I agreed to it because I really believe that community should have its own radio voice.

I am so glad that my first show over there was not recorded because I was pretty awful. I was stiff and unsteady and unable to make the VT software do what I wanted it to do. Slowly but surely I became more familiar with the software’s limitations and developed ways to work with it better. I began to take on more shows over there filling in for the DJs that could not do their shows on a given day or week. I was back to being a part timer, my first gig in radio.

A couple of weeks ago, the boss asked if I could take on his afternoon drive slot and let him take over the weekends. By that time I had become pretty comfortable with the system and found that it was possible to voice track a three hour show in less than an hour. So I agreed. I’m not completely at ease with the restrictions of voice tracking but I’m learning more how to work around them every day.

So this old dog has learned a new trick. Now if I can just get the override levels to my liking, I’ll be a happy guy. Oh MY! (Woof Woof!)