2023.07.19 – 0930 – Earn Your ‘On Air’ Miles
Earn your ‘on-air’ miles
Of course, overcoming a fear of failure comes from experience: your miles at the mic.
When I was still at university, I’d spend hours on hospital radio and then my local station, sometimes just sitting in a studio, seeing the layout, playing songs and jingles, seeing what happened and why. I became comfortable at the controls. Later I had tricks to help me sight-read such as reading the credits to a tv show out loud, talking over the start of songs to hit the ‘vocal post’, listening to the news and repeating the scripts parrot fashion a second after they were uttered by the professional. All these, as well as other exercises in this book are what I have practiced myself.
I also made ‘radio programmes’ for family and friends, scripted and recorded a radio soap opera in which I played all the parts, and when I got my first professional job I presented Saturday afternoons 14:00-18:00 on the speech station, Sunday morning 01:00 – 06:00 on the chart music station, Sunday afternoons 14:00-18:00 on the oldies station, as well as being the networked news reader on two of those stations on weekday afternoons.
I learnt my trade and built up both my experience and confidence in a variety of ways, on air and off, to help me achieve my role.
All skills improve with practice. There is no mystery to mastery!
‘Experience’ is the body realising that if a situation produces nothing dangerous, then adrenaline has been wasted. So, the next time a similar situation happens, it’ll produce slightly less of it, because it has learnt that it is working for nothing. It’s a process of ‘involuntary learnt response’, similar to the way that you probably don’t feel nervous about driving any more.
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