For the last two weeks, I’ve been rising at 5am to run the 1WAY FM breakfast show from 7-9, in the absence of James Scott. And what fun it has been! James is actually back now so my reign on the breakfast show has come to an end, but during it I learnt alot about radio.
The hardest thing about presenting radio for me is finding something to talk about. The first few shows weren’t too difficult, but once I had exhausted my potential topics of conversation and had run out of enthusiastic interviewees, disaster struck. There were some mornings when I had done no preparation whatsoever – due to the fact that once I started back at work in the second week, I was getting about one hour in the evening before I’d have to go to bed. That gave only enough time to hastily listen to an aircheck whilst eating dinner, reading the news, and trying to think about the next morning. Some nights all four of those essential activities didn’t happen and I just went straight to bed… making the next morning’s show rather difficult.
There are some airchecks that I haven’t listened to yet and honestly don’t want to. Most mornings I had people SMS’ing, e-mailing or Facebook’ing me saying what a good job I had done. On those mornings of tiredness and zilch preparation they either weren’t listening, or they agreed that I certainly hadn’t done my best, and didn’t want to discourage me by letting me know that. That’s quite ok – I was well aware!
So preparation is absolutely paramount. Of course I had already been told that, but me being me I have to actually see something like that to believe it. I know now that I don’t want to be sitting there again during a voice break saying ‘um, what did this German MP say about marriage again? Oh yes, she, um wants it to be limited to seven years. I think that’s, um, a very bad idea and is a sad indication of the lack of importance of the institution of marriage in society these days, yeah, um, I think that’s all, ok let’s go to another song’. Stupid. There was alot more I could have said about that if I had prepared for it.
So I’ve learnt that preparation is very important. Ok. But the hard bit is actually thinking of topics to talk about. Not only that, but knowing enough about these topics to make my commentary on them interesting. And, being confident that the listener would actually find it interesting! Breakfast shows with two or three people are certainly easier to present – the amount of interestingness I have to provide is firstly only 50 or 33% of what I would have had to provide before, and as a bonus I can think about what I want to say next whilst the other person is talking!
But I didn’t always have the luxury of doing my shows with more than just me. I mean, who else wants to get up at 5am? 
A friend told me that I should think of announcing as being a ‘verbal blog’. That makes a lot of sense. I could actually go and read this post out on air. It probably wouldn’t be the best topic to read out on air, but now that I’ve written it, I’d know exactly what I want to say, and since I have written it and proofread it and basically know it back to front, I’d know how to jump around in the post if I decided I wanted to do that whilst reading it. There we go, that’s preparation taken care of!
Now to topics. Well, I often blog about topics I’m interested in. But, if you look back through my recent blog posts, you’ll see there’s quite alot of time in between them. Maybe you don’t think it’s quite alot of time. But it is for a blogger. And if I’m on the radio every morning and if I’m going to start using my blog posts as my inspiration for my on air conversing, then my blog is certainly lacking quantity. Just to give an idea, I have maybe 18 voice breaks in a two hour breakfast show. Some of them are easily filled – here’s the latest news, the latest weather for Canberra, weather around the country, the time, the current temperature, the current unleaded fuel price or an event from the community calendar that may be of interest to some listeners. But that leaves at least 12 voice breaks. Perhaps it’s a good morning and I have two interviewees. Take six, leave six. I still need at least three topics, assuming there’s enough to talk about to cover two voice breaks each.
Gosh it actually sounds very easy when I break it down like that. Maybe that’s the key. I’m thinking as I’m writing here – that’s something I can’t do on air unless I want to be silent for a few seconds after every sentence!
So if that’s the key, I need to blog more. Hey, that could work well. I could blog often about topics that are of interest to me, and then talk about them on the air. I would have two media to communicate with the listener – and they could comment either by commenting on my blog, or by calling me while I’m on air. This could actually work well!
Thank you, dear reader, for helping me come up with this idea.
You’re absolutely right Tim, preparation is the key. I suppose at this stage you’re happy that you were presenting a breakfast show on a predominantly music based station, and not a talk station.
I’ll admit that I heard very little of your breakfast show, but based on your description of it, I’d say you did a pretty good job with the time you had available. If you are trying to compare your experience with what you might hear on the ABC or a commercial station, I’d really suggest that you don’t. People who run breakfast shows on those stations not only don’t have to attend another job during the day, they have a team of producers backing them up.
Whoever said you should think of radio presentation as an audio blog was on the right track. As a radio presenter you probably know the difference between the “conversation voice” and the “reading voice”. Most presenters have worked on their “reading voice” for long enough to make it sound very similar to their “conversation voice”, but if you listen carefully you can tell the difference. Take a look, for example, at a breakfast television program. The majority of the show runs off a teleprompter, but sounds like the hosts are having a conversation.
The reason these voices are important is because the best way to prepare is to write down a lot of what you want to say. Dot points are good for topics without much substance, but a script (or something resembling a blog post) that you can either read verbatim or read parts of, is without a doubt, the best way to cover something important with plenty of detail. Knowing your script well will also prove useful when you need to refer to an arbitrary fact of the story (such as the number of years the German MP wants to limit marriages to). The more scripts you write, the better you will become at writing scripts which make your “reading voice” sound just like your “conversation voice”.
Of course none of this is possible without time. Don’t be too hard on yourself Tim. You did well with the limited amount of time you had available.
When you go for the goal, you’ll reach it. You know I have always said that to you, right from when you were a little Timmy
Mum & I are very proud of you and consider it a joy when we see you pursuing what you’re interested in. I always pray my kids will do radical things – I think this is one of those things. If this is what God has for you , then just keep following Him and He WILL work it out for you. Also, you’ll only improve by doing (as I’m finding out again at 45 years now I’m learning another language).
BTW, I wake up at 5am every day. That’s the best time of day
Love dad