The Peter Pan Principle

"If growing up means it would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up! Not me!" - Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie

Dignity is a wonderful quality. Like wisdom, it grows with age. And, like everything else it should be used judiciously, in moderation.

Our culture is filled with contradictions about age. We worship youth and yet dismiss its immaturity. We admire long years of experience but still make fun of old people and turn them out to pasture. And, the biggest offenders of age discimination are those at both ends of the spectrum.

As a radio personality you can't survive for long at either extreme. Don't let them suck you in.  How you perceive and present yourself has nothing to do with target demographics.

Long ago I vowed I would never become a grumpy old man. I enjoy my memories but refuse to live in them. I embrace the present and greet the future with eager anticipation. In short, I strive to be ageless because it's a joyous way to live.

It's also the only way to succeed and survive on the air.

If you are dedicating your life to a career of informing and entertaining you must have respect, compassion and empathy for people of all ages. You can't fake it. You have to get to know and enjoy the company of your elders and the wisdom of their experience. You need to truly understand that even children have a right to the opinions that their limited perspectives allow. Hell, even teenagers deserve respect and compassion.

When you understand this an amazing thing happens: you never get old. You never become grumpy or stuffy because you never stop caring. You delight yourself and everybody who meets you.

If you are young, make friends with your grandparents and hear what they have to say. If you're old, stay in touch with trends, fads and all the things that fascinate youth.

Listen at least as much as you talk. Ask more questions. Don't pontificate too much, though an occasional splash of pomposity can enhance your personality like a dash of lemon in a cheesecake.

Ingratiate yourself without being obsequious.

Don't use big words too often.

You're never too old to laugh at fart jokes. Reality TV is not beneath you.

History is fascinating and important. Words matter.

Age does not.

Your "voice"

This has nothing to do with  "pipes", as voices are often referred  to in the radio business. Your "voice" has nothing to do with...well, your voice.

Abraham Lincoln is said to have had a high-pitched, somewhat nasal and flat delivery. Some historians suggest that Abe would have had trouble being taken seriously in the modern world of media sound bites. Maybe, but I think that's an indictment of the sound-bite mentality we're forced to live with today. Lincoln delivered his speeches to real people standing in front of him, exhibiting his dignity and his native intelligence with forceful and compassionate conviction.

That's "voice".

There are rich, deep, resonant voices and quirky, sparkly, unique voices. Most of us have average voices that sound pretty much like everybody else. Some of the greatest radio personalities who ever lived had average or even puny voices but they all had enormous belief in who they were and what they had to say.

There is no greater power than belief in one's self.

Your "voice", your comfort and confidence with who you are as a person, is something that only comes with life and radio experience. It's that day you realize you've grown up, when suddenly, after years of playing around, you just know who you are when you pop that mic one day and, for the first time, all the scattered pieces of you fall into place.

Writers are always talking about "voice". There was only one Mark Twain; just one Ernest Hemmingway. Nobody writes like Ayn Rand or Shakespeare or Dickens.

The greatest actors have "voices" that consume the words of playwrights which have been memorized and delivered by thousands of other voices but never with such unique faith and conviction.

You can and must learn from the mentors who will tweak and poke and prod at your vocal delivery. They will steal from you words, the only tools of your trade. They will force you into tiny boxes made of their own limited imaginations.

But whether you're hosting a talk show or reading news or just back-selling songs and reading liner cards, your "voice" will not be denied if you listen to that quiet "voice" in your head that tells you who you are.

Focus. Fascinate me.

The most misunderstood and cliched basic rule of good radio is that you should focus on a single listener, talk to one person and imagine that person as you speak. It's okay advice to try to settle the nerves of the raw beginner who will grasp at any straw of wisdom but it's really misleading because the truth is, as a radio personality you're not talking to one person you're talking to many thousands of total strangers who have neither faces nor voices from your perspective.

Even as raw beginners we don't buy it. We're just gripping.

The honest-to-God inescapable truth is, you're talking to a wall beyond a microphone and trying to be warm, fuzzy, and lovable in the process.

Tell me Oscar-winning actors have a greater challenge.

This is very subtle stuff, one of those advanced lessons one learns after years and often decades of being on the air. How do you focus your message to each of thousands of people and make them feel as if you're talking with them one-on-one? Easy...

You can't. It's not possible. Get real.

You talk, listeners listen. That's hardly a conversation, is it? There is no way you can make a listener feel as invested in the discussion as you are unless you give them what they want from you:

Information.

Tell me something I don't know. Fascinate me. And let me learn to like you for who you are in my own good time.

Embracing a radio personality is exactly like dating. If you try to force yourself on your date, he or she will recoil and run.

Just fascinate me. That's all there is to it.

Notice I didn't mention being funny or wise. If you're funny or wise in real life it will come across on the air. If not, it doesn't matter as long as the things you're talking about are new to me and you convince me that you know what you're talking about. Your personality lives in who you are. Trying to be somebody you are not is a major #FAIL.

Talk to me, not just your sidekick. For God's sake don't be constantly talking to your board op and producer. It's a crutch. When you do that it tells me two things: you don't know what you're doing and you are scared.

Fear on the radio is exactly like fear on a date. It's uncomfortable for the person you're trying to impress.

Stop trying.

If you occasionally talk with your call screener or producer to sweep back the curtain that hides the Wizard of Oz, it can be a good thing if you know how to begin and end it. But that's post-graduate stuff. You have to be able to do something like that as an aside, still maintain the flow of information and remember who you're talking to at every moment.

Nobody can do that with effort. It has to be instinctive.

One of the greatest programmers I worked for in my early career, Vic Ives at KSFO, San Francisco, said it best and I remember these words with the same clarity and love as I remember my wedding vows. Vic said to me:

"The more passion and energy you pour into that microphone, the more you will receive in return."

That's all you really need to know about focus.

Chemistry

How do you define personal chemistry in radio?

It's something that simply works because you enjoy each other's company, whether or not you have anything in common.

That's it. That's the whole answer. Don't expect to ever understand or make sense of it. It never will.

In 42 years of radio I have worked with people I have liked immensely but couldn't engage on the air without each of us constantly bumbling and annoying each other. Some indescribable something made us oil and water, scotch and cola; Cheerios and chocolate milk.

I have also managed to co-create an effortless, magical on-air connection with a couple of people with whom I had nothing at all in common. In fact, in one case we bickered nearly constantly off the air but made magic when the mics were open.

Beats me.

I'm pretty sure you have some similar experiences and were hoping for an explanation. I'm very sorry, believe me. I've been trying to figure this out for a very long time.

My wife of 23 years and I are like that. Carolann and I have nearly nothing in common except for this: we adore ourselves together. We just love each other's company and are far greater together than the sum of our individual parts.

Here's my working conclusion: go with your gut. Don't interview prospective on-air partners, employers, or spouses.

Just talk a bit and do what feels good.

Vagueries

What makes truly great radio?

A lot of mostly vague yet discernible concepts like native intelligence, experience, opportunity, timing, chemistry and wise, trustworthy guidance.

And, talent.

How's that for a vague, yet discernible quality?

"Talent."

You can look it up but that won't help much. It's definable but elusive. You know it when you hear it. We all have it in varying degrees. It's always dependent upon supporting circumstances like time and place. Some might call it fate. Maybe even kismet.

Or, dumb luck.

The point of this essay is frustratingly vague, yet discernible: never stop refining your talent but just as importantly, don't try to define or measure it.

Just let it be and make it grow.

And through all this nonstop introspection, above all else, remember:

Great radio is not just about you.

The neverending story

I just learned that another good radio friend is also out of work.

Damn. I feel sorry for him. He has a family and a mortgage and all that money stuff to worry about. Oh, he'll be fine for awhile, before self doubt creeps in.

He'll start out with his hard-earned, well-deserved professional pride, his head held high and with the quiet self-assurance that will lead him to new, exciting opportunities.

He'll decide this interruption in his career is nothing more than a hiccup. He'll find elation in an unexpected break from his work. He will lavish in precious gift hours in new time slots with his wife and kids.

I pray for him that it works out as he imagines it must. He's too smart, too talented and too experienced to not have the radio world beating a path to his doorstep.

Everybody will assure him of that.

Those of us who have been waiting for months and even years for that knock on the door are his biggest cheerleaders, even though we are also his competitors in a job market that seems to be shrinking by the hour.

Remember that great kids movie from the 1980s, The Neverending Story? That's the one where the kid named Bastian flies around on a huge flying dog named Atreyu trying to save the world called Fantasia from a rapidly creeping nothingness called "the Nothing".

The story takes place in a parallel universe and a world being gobbled up by this "Nothing", which represents people's lack of imagination in the real world.

I'm just sayin'...

© Dave Williams 2011, all rights reserved

The ingredients

I was eight or nine when I decided I want to spend my life inside the radio.

The local disc jockeys swept up my heart and what little firmament had taken form in my childish, primitive brain. Yet now, fifty years later, the emotional buzz I get from hearing great radio personalities is as strong as ever though I still don't completely understand why.

The songs played by the deejays of the sixties were wonderful. They remain the soundtrack of my life but like movie soundtracks I never focused on the music. Every song was exactly the same each time it was played. No, I lived for the song's presentation, its showcasing. I wanted to hear that clever deejay patter.

The deejays strung words together in fashion and order you never heard anywhere else in life. They colored fanciful pictures in my head. They made me feel special. They made me happy. They elevated even lousy songs to an equal footing with the classics.

They were magic. They were royalty.

And yet, they were touchable. I could call these gods on the phone. I could meet them at the grand opening of a record store. I spent the evening with them as they spun the records for our high school dances. I could see them standing right in front of me!

I heard the familiar voice, the famous tone and rhythm. The magic was even stronger in person because it emanated from a very ordinary-looking man.

These moments took my breath in awe and wonder. And early on something incredibly brash and naive inside me decided I needed to be one of these magicians.

The deejays of my youth were bigger than life. But then, life was much smaller in those days.

This is where I leave the metaphors and generalities of my first two posts behind. This is where I get specific about what I have learned from fifty years of loving and living radio.

The necessary ingredients for creating great radio stations and great radio personalities are as unique as we are. No two of us are alike and that, in itself, is a remarkable quality. We'll come back to that. But even as every word, every nuance of inflection and tone; every intent and reception of every utterance from great radio personalities is unique, there is one constant.

They always evoke an emotional response.

Always.

That's it! That's all you need to know.

Prove me wrong. Name one great radio station or personality of any format, of any era, who didn't excite you, delight you or piss you off every time you listen.

Is that ability a God-given gift or the result of passion, commitment and hard work?

Yes, it is.