Dave Labrecque
04-11-2005, 07:50 PM
Thanks for all who helped me with some of the preparations for this "network" radio broadcast that originated from my studio on Saturday morning. For those interested...
First off, let's be clear. The reason I have the word 'network' in quotes is that we have but two affiliates so far: Las Vegas (hey!) and South Bend. And we're pretty sure South Bend didn't get us on the air Saturday for some reason.
I've spent the last several weeks preparing show elements in SAW. I brought in a local guy who does a great Gary Owens, and he cut a couple pages of lines for the show -- very tongue-in-cheek and campy with lots of animal puns for this veterinary call-in show. I mixed a bunch of those over library music for some of the show features and over pop hits that reference (or were recorded by The...) animals. We're hoping to have a real fun-sounding program.
The show went fairly well considering it was our first AND I slept through my alarm, getting here a half hour before air (show started at 7 am PDT/MST) to greet everyone else loitering in the parking lot -- AND at :20:00 till air the network told us that they had not received approval on the sponsor's scripts and so had not produced any of our "network" spots, which were to run four times in the hour.
We got ahold of a single script, I layed down the VO (lots of starts and stops -- I was not awake, yet!), then edited it in SAW (lots of wrong keystrokes -- I was not awake, yet!). A quick check of the total length, and... Egad! It's 1:07! DelayDots PitchWorks to the rescue! I slapped it across the track, typed in the before and after times and boom -- a quick build mix, then I fed it to the network about 2 minutes till air. Very intense. I don't miss those panic moments from my prior broadcasting life. I had no time to run over the show log I'd made up to help Dr. Randy navigate through the broadcast, so there were a couple rough spots, but everyone was pretty happy overall. We got calls from Las Vegas, nearby Kingman, AZ, and even Tucson -- where we have no affiliate (our show creative director walked outside with his cell -- probably wasn't even necessary :^). Our best guess is that, for whatever reason, South Bend didn't get us on the air. (no calls from SB -- and it was two hours later for them :confused:) Maybe next week.
Hopefully, things will smooth out from here...
Oh -- just today I checked the spot I'd sent to the network. It was still 3 seconds long!! :eek: I apparently misread the length and didn't time compress it enough. I guess I have a guardian angel at the network, because it sure was under :60 during the broadcast. They musta TC'd it even further at the last minute. The engineer on their end didn't even say anything about it afterward. :)
If anyone's intersted, you can check it out this Saturday at 7 am PDT/10 am EDT via the "secondary channel" stream link here (http://www.universaltalknetwork.com/listen.htm):
http://www.universaltalknetwork.com/listen.htm
Though it wasn't working on Saturday. They musta been too busy saving my :oss with the time compression to get the stream up. Hopefully, it'll be up this next time.
We'd love to hear your calls to the Radio Pet Vet!
First off, let's be clear. The reason I have the word 'network' in quotes is that we have but two affiliates so far: Las Vegas (hey!) and South Bend. And we're pretty sure South Bend didn't get us on the air Saturday for some reason.
I've spent the last several weeks preparing show elements in SAW. I brought in a local guy who does a great Gary Owens, and he cut a couple pages of lines for the show -- very tongue-in-cheek and campy with lots of animal puns for this veterinary call-in show. I mixed a bunch of those over library music for some of the show features and over pop hits that reference (or were recorded by The...) animals. We're hoping to have a real fun-sounding program.
The show went fairly well considering it was our first AND I slept through my alarm, getting here a half hour before air (show started at 7 am PDT/MST) to greet everyone else loitering in the parking lot -- AND at :20:00 till air the network told us that they had not received approval on the sponsor's scripts and so had not produced any of our "network" spots, which were to run four times in the hour.
We got ahold of a single script, I layed down the VO (lots of starts and stops -- I was not awake, yet!), then edited it in SAW (lots of wrong keystrokes -- I was not awake, yet!). A quick check of the total length, and... Egad! It's 1:07! DelayDots PitchWorks to the rescue! I slapped it across the track, typed in the before and after times and boom -- a quick build mix, then I fed it to the network about 2 minutes till air. Very intense. I don't miss those panic moments from my prior broadcasting life. I had no time to run over the show log I'd made up to help Dr. Randy navigate through the broadcast, so there were a couple rough spots, but everyone was pretty happy overall. We got calls from Las Vegas, nearby Kingman, AZ, and even Tucson -- where we have no affiliate (our show creative director walked outside with his cell -- probably wasn't even necessary :^). Our best guess is that, for whatever reason, South Bend didn't get us on the air. (no calls from SB -- and it was two hours later for them :confused:) Maybe next week.
Hopefully, things will smooth out from here...
Oh -- just today I checked the spot I'd sent to the network. It was still 3 seconds long!! :eek: I apparently misread the length and didn't time compress it enough. I guess I have a guardian angel at the network, because it sure was under :60 during the broadcast. They musta TC'd it even further at the last minute. The engineer on their end didn't even say anything about it afterward. :)
If anyone's intersted, you can check it out this Saturday at 7 am PDT/10 am EDT via the "secondary channel" stream link here (http://www.universaltalknetwork.com/listen.htm):
http://www.universaltalknetwork.com/listen.htm
Though it wasn't working on Saturday. They musta been too busy saving my :oss with the time compression to get the stream up. Hopefully, it'll be up this next time.
We'd love to hear your calls to the Radio Pet Vet!