Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Every Voice On Your Radio Show Must Agree On

  • Who’s the leader?  You can't be Letterman, Colbert or Katie Couric.  Be who you are, but if you are the lead character, set the tone for the entire program, control the content, production values and momentum.  You can’t win if two players of your soccer team acts like they both are the goalie.
  • Who’s the sidekick?  This is an extremely important role that might even get as much or more mic time as the lead character, but Fred Armisen doesn't try to be Seth Meyers.  Roots takes their part very seriously but never forgets that it's Jimmy Fallon's show.  This may be a more difficult role that playing the lead, requiring quick wits and restraint.
  • Who plays the foils?  This person may not even be a full time employee.  News? weather? traffic? sports?  The more people involved in your performance, the more important that the leader understand the role of ringmaster isn’t to take too much time, but to seamlessly glue the pieces together.
  • Individual vocal character for everyone.  Who listens to be sure it's always clear who's talking and people aren't talking over one another?
  • Humor, especially jokes:  don’t do them unless it feels comfortable and natural.  One person needs to make that call, directing relevance to the target, locale, pacing, production value, theater of mind, in’s and out’s -- to be sure a fistfight doesn’t break out with the mic open.  A bar fight may be fun once in awhile, but not as a way to bring the average person back to "your place" day after day, hour after hour.

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