This is a thread I’ve always been meaning to post. It centers upon probably the only aspect of my life the general population might be interested in (compared to, say, Ask the Unmotivated Grad Student or Ask the Guy Who Needs to Do Laundry, Like, Right Now, Because He Just Spilled Coffee on His Only Pair of Socially-Acceptable Pants), and with the upcoming switch to subscriptions, I thought I should get it in ASAP.
So anyways, I have a radio program on the local community radio station CFCR 90.5 FM in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I broadcast two hours of music every Wednesday morning, from 8-10 A.M. Fire away with any and all questions.
Howdy, fellow broadcaster! I hope I’m not disqualified to participate in your thread, because I’m an announcer and program producer in Florida (I’m Canadian, too - and have relatives in Saskatoon!). I’ve got a bunch of questions!
I don’t believe we have any “community radio stations” here, but they do have them in lots of outlying areas. How are the staff there? Are they “just folks”? Do they understand the equipment all right, and can they put together and edit a program on the computer? What kind of music do you play on your program? Are you bound by the Cancon rules? What’s the percentage per hour on that now? How is your station outfitted, equipment-wise? Do you have sufficiently modern technology? What are you using for your main recording and playback format? Open reel? DAT? Minidisc? Digital recording on computers? Do you still use turntables?
I was interested in the technology, because I’ve been at this station for three years. They were still using open reel tape and editing with blades and sticky tape when I arrived (did I mention that it was three years ago?). I was the first one on the staff to ever do any digital editing there - nobody else knew how to operate the software! They were conned into buying some outrageously expensive and insanely difficult multitrack program, and nobody could produce anything of worth on it because it was so counter-intuitive. Now everything is digital, and we are slowly teaching the news staff what a VU meter is for, not to plug a line source into the mic input on their MD machines, and not to edit out their breaths in a recorded piece. And this is supposedly a professional outfit! Now that is a fight against ignorance that is taking a long time!
I could go on and on here, but I’ll quit for now and await your responses.
I used to be a radio announcer for the Nebraska Public Radio Network. I had rotating weekend morning shifts - either Saturday 6am to noon, or Sunday 6am to 11am. As it was a public radio station and a weekend, it was just me alone in the studio – well, me and the big board and the AP teletype. The engineers who monitored the transmitter were off in some other distant part of the building (they also monitored the public television station transmitter, with whom we shared a building).
So my question is: what kind of support do you get in terms of other people working with you, or are you essentially a one-man operation?
Those come as part of the format the station buys from whichever radio consulting business. Someone has worked out everything you need to have your station sound a particular way. You buy the guidelines and the sounds that go along with them, and bingo! you sound just like the station in Atlanta or Jacksonville or Nashville or Detroit. Or, if you’re a Clear Channel station, they do all that stuff for you, and beam it to you on a satellite channel, along with your supposed “local” announcers who may be in another country for all you know, and you just rebroadcast it.
Somebody gets paid a LOT of money to come up with those obnoxious sounds! Even a jingle package (where a group of singers sing your call letters) costs a ton of money! There are still lots of companies doing this, and making a killing in profit.
A lot. The best part is that I have access to probably over 10,000 different albums (not that I’m planning to sit down and listen to every one of them) and I’ve been exposed to a lot of great music that I otherwise wouldn’t have been. Stuff like the new Shins album, Destroyer, Neko Case - there are hundreds of artists that I’ve really gotten to like over the past few years through working at the station. And planning a show, trying to fit someone’s request in with the “flow” of your program - I find that aspect of community radio really fascinating.
There’s also a definite “scene” that exists in Saskatoon - the same bands play the same pubs, and by working at CFCR I’ve gotten to know that scene and have met a lot of like-minded individuals. And it’s really cool when someone says, “Hey, aren’t you that guy that does Green Eggs and Ham on Wednesday mornings?”
Feel free. There are probably tons of administrative and technical questions that I can’t answer. (And who are your relatives? Everyone knows everyone here - or at least, it feels that way.)
Well, most of us (like myself) are volunteers - I think we only have three or four salaried individuals. Probably about fifty percent of the hosts (best guess) are university students, and obviously, their proficiency with the technical aspects varies somewhat. The paid staff are all fairly technically competent - and very protective of it, since we renovated our studio and installed new CD players, sound boards, and mini-disc players just last year.
The “Green Eggs & Ham” program - which runs weekday mornings from 6-10 AM - is mostly indie rock. I’m one of a number of hosts who have a program during these hours. However, we play music in a number of different genres - for example, right after my show is a country music/folk/blues program, and later in the day there are programs dedicated to jazz and swing, classical, and soul.
The CRTC stipulates that 35% of all the content we play must be Canadian. However, as we run a number of ethnic programs on the weekend, some shows have to make up the difference, and I’m required to play at least 50% Canadian programming on my show. Which is easier than it sounds, actually - after awhile, you become intensely familiar with the Canadian scene, and there’s a lot of really exciting music coming out of Canada (especially Toronto) at the moment.
The technical aspects aren’t really my specialty, but I’ll give it my best shot. As I said, we did a bunch of technological upgrades last year - we run a fundraising campaign every year called “FM-Phasis” and last year most of the money we raised went towards modernizing the in-studio equipment. New CD players, new sound board, and a minidisc player for playing commercials and pre-recorded shows. (Thank God for the minidisc player - before, we were running our commercials off of 8-tracks, and the sound quality was always out of whack with the rest of the program. Infuriating, it was.) We do still use turntables, but being a child of the '80s, they scare me so I stick to CDs.
If this was a community or campus station (sounds like you’re in commercial radio), this would just be another charming part of the slacker ambience.
Lots. We have people on waiting lists to volunteer for us because of the amazing community support for CFCR.
Really, most of the equipment runs itself - I turn on my microphone, introduce a few songs, and hit play on the CD player. As the station isn’t officially open when I’m on the air Wednesday mornings, I’m usually the only one there for most of my shift.
There was one thing I forgot to ask. Is there still a CKOM in Saskatoon? When I was hitchhiking out west in '76, I stopped in to see my relatives, and ended up getting a job for a short time. While there, I went to CKOM and did a demo tape and left an application. Much later, I found out that while I was still in BC, they called my family home in ON to offer me a job! It was far too late for me to do anything about it, though.
You asked about my relatives - their name is Perkins. I haven’t seen any of them since 1976. My cousins are all married or ex-married, and have kids I know nothing about, and I wouldn’t have any idea what their married names are.
Ahh, good ol’ 65 CKOM. I will be singing their little ditty on my deathbed, burned into my brain as it is. I remember my parents having it on the car radio almost exclusively when I was growing up, before we had any decent FM stations.
I’ll just flip to it and see what’s on…hmm, a dorky Pizza Hut commercial, a dorky commercial for something called “Gardenscape 2004,” and a now a talk radio show about financial security. Good to know some things remain constant.
I work for 88.9 WFSU-FM, Tallahassee/89.1 WFSW-FM Panama City. It’s an NPR affiliate. It’s my voice doing the underwriting announcements and most station IDs, I produce live programming both weekly and during fundraising drives, assemble promos, and have created and edited many of the classical programs that air on our classical music station, WFSQ. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff for which I should be getting paid more, but I digress. Are you in the listening area? We’re streaming at wfsu.org if you’d like to hear us.
Hey, I live in Regina (it’s a small world) and I guess I have a few questions for you.
I understand that CFCR is a community station, but I still hope you can answer my question:
I’ve thought about become a radio DJ on a classical station (such as CBC2, I’m sure you know of). I’m just not sure what kind of qualifications I need to get into said business. Obviously, I love classical music, I’m going to the U of R majoring in music history, so I’ll have a good knowledge of the music… what else do I need to know? I imagine I must have some pretty good technical skills? I don’t know if the DJ really does much other than talk, introduce the music and load the recordings and pressing play. Is there much else to it than that?
