Recently, I had the pleasure of returning to a part of the radio business that is really the part I enjoy the most, interviewing indie bands (sadly, there’s less of that than I’d like in the professional world of radio, but I do what I can).
A couple days ago for Class Rock CFNR’s “Journey’s”, I interviewed Jean-Guy Roy of Winnipeg’s Federal Lights, a mighty-cool band, with some mighty-cool music.
One of the simple pleasures I’ve taken to, in my radio career, is the voice tracking of a shift I have on Sunday afternoons.
Now, a “voice track”, if you don’t know, is a pre-recorded shift that runs at some odd-hour of the day, or some odd-day.
You basically sit in a booth, and cycle through your log of songs and talk everywhere a break shows up. It kind of takes you out of the element of live radio, but trying to recreate it can be part of the fun.
One thing you can’t really do in a voice track, is mention the time, or the weather, because you have really no way of determining what that will be when your shift airs (unless you’re doing a voice track a few minutes in advance, which happens).
So, within my hectic news anchoring Friday, I have to somehow find the time to slot in a 6-hour radio shift that will air on Sunday. A lot of contests and specialty programming either won’t air for awhile, or just aired by this point … so I’ve got to get a bit creative with the 20-some-odd talking times I get.
This is what happens ….
Jonathon Brown 