If you work at a radio station that still has a local program director instead of one at the corporate programming lair (I know, sooooo old school), then you might be interested in this. I compiled a list of things that radio station program directors like:
- Good ratings. A good rating book means that they are great program directors and they really know their stuff. Bad ratings mean that engineering dropped the ball (again) when the station went off the air for 30 seconds during afternoon drive.
- Taking credit for anything good. Sort of goes with the good ratings above, but this extends out to all other aspects of a radio station, promotions, sales, news, and even engineering.
- New Processing. Any new gizmo or gadget that changes the sound of the microphone or entire station, for better or worse, is good. The more flashing lights the better. The more knobs to adjust the better. Things that can be plugged into computers and remotely controlled are the ultimate.
- More. More of anything is better, more compression, more expansion, more highs, more mid-range, more lows, more gain, more de-essing, more loudness, more power, more punch, more reverb, more crack, more more more. If they could just have a little more, the station would be number one.
- Any other new piece of equipment. Watching a program director look at a new studio is like watching a two year old open presents on Christmas morning. I know, I have a two year old. Unfortunately, the studios don’t stay new looking for long.
- Taping notes up in the studio. I have one studio where every stationary piece of equipment has a note taped to it. Mind you, the notes have nothing to do with the equipment they are covering up, they are more like general directions, phone numbers, and other miscellaneous pieces of information.
- Free stuff. Used to be called payola or plugola, now it is a free laptop, or a trip to Disney paid for by the record rep. I’ve even seen some mysterious mike processors show up (see number 3).
- Rigging up lights to alert operators. This is a great one, the studio operator does not know if the Marti (or Matrix or ISDN) is active, so they want a light to indicate there is someone there. Or a light on the phone hotline, or a light for the EAS machine, the back door, the coffee machine, the silence sensor (never mind they are in the studio, they still need a silence sensor light)
- Blaming other people when things go wrong. The program director is infallible. If something goes wrong, it is somebody else’s fault. Always. And forever. Amen.
Someone suggested that I put up the video “More, more, more” by Andrea True Connection to go along #4. Well, okay, I guess. It is not a terrible song but the video kinda suxor. From what I can tell, Andrea True is a former p0r n star that turned signer for just this one hit. Looks like it was filmed on a p0r n set too.
Feel free to add anything else that I may have forgotten. Of course, this is all in good fun. I’ll do a “stuff radio engineers like” post as soon as I figure out what that is.