Re: Talk Radio … ever check out Stone’s ‘Talk Radio’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5E9RV9TyEo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Cant wait to hear YOU again on the radio.

So I’ll read the Glass book and also the DFW (I didn’t know he did a piece on radio). Wallace’s little clock-and-talk-to-an-empty-room experiment is a good one. That’s pretty much what it feels like in pro-land, as I recall.

Also useful terminology, especially for music DJ’s (as in radio announcers):

Backtime–meaning you count back from the time you have to hit, typically the top of the hour news or a particular program segment coming over the network, and choose music, spots (commercials), and talk (weather, sports, gab, etc.) that’ll take you right up to that moment. When the backtime works right, it sounds like everything is choreographed perfectly, right to the second. It’s kind of a rush, actually. I once did a great backtime and had no less than Dean Olsher himself (a colleague at that time at WUNC-FM) congratulate me and offer me a slice of pizza as a reward. BTW, Google Dean Olsher. He’s a very, very talented radio guy a la Glass, Ari Daniel Shapiro, etc.

Post, hit a post: timing the talk going into a song so that some event in the song (entrance of a new instrument, entrance of main theme or melody, etc.) happens just as one finishes talking. For example, in “I’m a Believer,” you’d hit a post if you talked during the first four beats and stopped just as the little boingy-boingy guitar riff comes in. See also:

Stepping on the vocal: you do NOT want to be talking when the vocalist begins to sing. You want to HIT the vocal, not step on it. The drama and excitement should never let up.

Puking: an exaggerated “DJ” voice where everything sounds like it’s coming from the back of the throat, half swallowed and half belched and half emetic splendor.

Front announce: say the name of the song/artist at the beginning.

Back announced: say the name of the song/artist at the end. Most DJ’s consider this a weaker form of announcing. As my hero Bart Prater once told me, “things move forward in time.”

Reading the meters: taking readings from the transmitter meters, as per FCC requirements (at least, it was required back in the day).

Riding the gain: manually adjusting sound levels to keep the peaks up around 80-95% but not above 100%.

Overmodulating: peaks above 100%.

The “board”: the mixing board you operate to play music, announce, etc. and blend it all into a seamless whole. At the major markets, they paid a guy to “run the board” for the announcer, who’d simply cue him when the record should play, etc. The rest of us peons all ran our own boards. I prefer it that way. :)

Rip and read: tear the latest news from the roll of paper on the AP teletype (aka “wire), head into the studio, and read it.

Stop set/spot set: the series of commercials (spots) that you’d play in between music. Typically four or five of these an hour.

The log: the typed sheet that said which commercials ran at which times. The DJ would note that the commercials ran when they were supposed to.

Traffic coordinator: the person who prepared the daily logs. (All computerized now of course.)

Cueing up a record: putting a vinyl record (or sometimes an endless-loop tape cartridge) on standby, ready to play. For vinyl, typically for 45 rpm singles, the jock would (on the cue or aux channel, see below) turn on the turntable, place the stylus in the lead-in groove, play the record right up to the first sound, stop the tt, and manually rotate the record back until the stylus was just far enough back from the first sound to allow the TT to come up to speed when it was time to play the record.

Backcueing: same as above.

Cue burn: when a record had been cued up several times, esp if the vinyl was cheap, you’d be able to hear a loud fffffffffffffff during the part that had been, essentially, dug out by the cueing.

Slip cue: letting the TT turn beneath the cued-up record as the record “slipped” on top of the platter. The idea was that the record would come up to speed almost instantly, since the TT was already turning.

Segue: the transition from one program element to another. Typically this refers to the transition from one song to another. A great segue is like a great metaphor or a great rhyme: it keeps the flow going but makes a surprising connection.

Cue or Aux channel (sometimes “preview channel”): a channel on the board that let the DJ hear what was coming next without broadcasting it over the air. Cueing up records, listening to countdowns at the network, etc. required this channel. On the Gates boards I used most often, you listened to the Aux channel by turning the pot (the volume control) on an input all the way down, then clicking down one more step. The click down made the source play through the aux channel.

That’s enough for now–the memories are really cascading….