Most air talents assume that if you’re on the air, you must have a good voice.  But in reality, about half the people on the air in every format I hear have taken that for granted, and stunted their growth.

Over the years, I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some pretty impressive voice actors that you hear on national commercials, station Imaging, and movie trailers every day.  And universally, the ones who are the most successful have really studied what makes them unique, and how to fully use the vocal tools at hand.

Here’s what I mean…

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If you’re having trouble getting into Content, well, don’t feel like the Lone Ranger.  Every air talent either struggles with this at some point, or worse, doesn’t know yet that they’re struggling with it. : (

There’s lots of coaching available on this, including my own.  We’ve all heard the “Headline first, then tell the rest of the story” thing, for example.  And there’s tons of stuff about how to construct a story, how to physically lay out a story in just bullet points, etc., and what a great ending should be.

But here’s the problem:  You don’t really know until you know.  Human beings may become aware of things and intellectually understand them through reading and talking with people about them, but in the long run, we really only learn through experience – trial and error.

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Here’s one of my primary tips for show prep – The 3 Questions.  If you’ve read my “The 5 Subjects” tip, you already know the five categories of Content that will ALWAYS work (besides the obvious “station things” that will always be in the mix, like promoting events or features, etc.).

But “The 5 Subjects” should be filtered through these three questions before you put them on the air:

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Dan Ingram died a few days ago.  If you’re not familiar with him, suffice it to say that to a ton of people, he was the Michael Jordan of radio.  Primarily known for his work in New York on WABC and WCBS, maybe this Wikipedia quote says it best:

Ingram was one of the most highly regarded DJs from his era.  He was noted for his quick wit and ability to convey a humorous or satiric idea with quick pacing and an economy of words, a skill which rendered him uniquely suited to, and successful within, modern personality-driven music radio.

Yes, the style was a little different then, but he was FUN, and you never knew what he’d say next.  So with Dan Ingram in mind…

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A lot of air talents are not even aware of talent coaching.  They have aircheck sessions with the PD – maybe – and that’s about it.  I don’t know every talent coach working these days, but most of the ones I do know concentrate on Content – the search for it, the storytelling skill set, how to dig inside yourself and reveal things that (hopefully) the listener can identify with.

And that’s fine.  That’s the “big picture stuff,” and it matters.  If you’re fortunate enough to work with a Valerie Geller or Randy Lane, for instance, there’s no doubt that you will get better, and understand a lot of things you probably never “got” before.

But there’s something else that plays a huge factor in being the Full Package, and that’s simply being a good disc jockey.

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With all the conversations going on in radio circles about the uses of social media, there’s a giant, Grand Canyon-sized difference being overlooked.  Let’s just use Facebook as the best example, simply because it’s the most-utilized social media platform.

As of this writing, there are about 225 million people in the United States using Facebook.

But there are over 323 million people in this country, and well over 90% of them listen to radio for a significant amount of time every single day.  So radio has somewhere between sixty-five to ninety million more people using it every single day than Facebook does.

I’ve talked a lot about how random postings on Facebook don’t make for compelling radio Content; quite the opposite, usually.  And this is why: because they’re used in totally different ways.

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No matter how many songs in a row you play or “commercial-free zones” your station may promote, radio is still at its core about the CONNECTION between you and the Listener.

A great Consultant can help you map out a Strategy, but the essence of Coaching is about how many ways there are to carry out that strategy.  And when it comes to engaging the listener, and making that person want to listen longer or more often, sometimes the little things matter more than the big things.

Here’s an example, from morning team Tom & Ana on Contemporary Christian station Spirit 105.3 in Seattle:

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“The Best Variety at Work…”
“(City)’s Best Music…”
“We Play More Music…”
“The Home of the Fifty-Minute Music Hour…”

We’ve all heard these.

None of them – not one – is true.

So why are you using them?

In a world surrounded by B. S., why are you adding to the junk pile of words thrown together like they fell out of a bowl of Alpha Bits and made what sounds like a sentence?

What do any of these say about the Values of your radio station?  Or your city?  Or anything, really, that’s meaningful to your audience?

Let’s take a close look…

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“He’s got such a great voice.”

We used to hear that a lot, but today, it’s virtually meaningless.  In L.A. and New York, the big voices are doing tractor pull spots and horror movie spots, and you still hear the network TV guys doing that big, mighty “announcement” thing some, but be honest – doesn’t it just sound kind of cheesy?

The voice that gets the most work today is the midrange voice with great inflection.  But even then, it’s not the old-school radio “emphatic” read; it’s more, as the great voice acting coach Marice Tobias says, “noticing” a word.

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One word can change everything. If you’re going to be a truly good Talent, you have to actually think about the words that are coming out of your mouth. I work with people all the time on this.

For example, I heard this the other day:
“I want to hear from you RIGHT NOW. Can you think of a song that’s got something about automobiles in it?”

No. And even if I could, why should I call you? What’s in it for me?

You can’t treat listeners like employees. They’re not here to do your bidding. You’re here to do theirs, actually.

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