 Hey, guess what? It's Monday night time for voiceover body shop. Yay. All right. You showed up again We don't know why but you keep doing it But might be the guests it could be because we have a great guest tonight Dano day who is a radio legend indeed Mostly dealing in commercials and how radio stations do their stuff as opposed to really being on the air I mean was it John, but we'll talk about that and that's but he also has some courses for voice actors And we're gonna talk about that. Yeah, and in tech we have some stuff. We've got questions microphones We've got some microphones. We have an audio interface courtesy of Jack Daniels brought as Apollo arrow Yeah, see that all right a lot more fun stuff and your questions So stay tuned voiceover body shop coming right up two men Twin sons from different mothers with a passion for voiceover recording technology and the desire to make Recording easy for voice actors everywhere together in one place George Whittem the home studio engineer to the stars a Virginia Tech grad with an unmatched knowledge of all the latest gear and technology in voiceover today Dan Leonard the home studio master a voice actor with over 30 years experience in broadcasting and recording and a no holds barred myth busting attitude for teaching you how Easy it is together to bring you all the latest technology today's voiceover superstars and Leaving the discussion on how to make the most of your voiceover business This is voiceover body shop Voiceover body shop is brought to you by voiceover essentials comm home of Harlan Hogan signature products Source elements makers of source connect source connect pro and source connect now The O to go go dot com everything you need to become a successful voice artist voiceover extra your daily resource for VO Success the VO dojo take your voiceover career all the way J. Michael Collins demos when quality matters and by voice actor websites dot com Where your voice actor website shouldn't be a pin in the butt And now live from their super secret multimedia studio in Sherman Oaks, California Here are George Widdem and Dan Leonard Good evening. I'm Dan Leonard, and I'm George Widdem and this is voiceover body shop or V.O. BS Oh, yes, indeed. We return once again Still got one more shit by the way Did you realize this is our seventh anniversary of doing this show like this is the date? This is the one in March 22nd, but it's 19 cooling right now Yeah, something like that. I think there's some you know some re-orchard out in the fridge or something Yeah, seven years. We've been doing this show. She's man by hooker by crook You really as I was saying earlier the internet seems to try to kill us and yeah, we are still here Come back every every week. Yeah, but tonight flawless. Yes from here on out from it will be from this point forward It will be all that Matt walks in. Yeah, so it's all that's when I now it's all gonna just fall off the cliff here But anyway, we've got Dan O'Day with us tonight, and we've got some questions from our wonderful audience out there who Continues to challenge us. We have some gear. We're gonna look at but right now. It's time for So far they shop presents the beyond BS voice over extra news All the information you need for a successful voice over career For March 19th voice over extra news a happy jaw tonight. We bring you a real jaw dropper Literally, we all have trouble with articulation on in that now and then like then when reading a script But for some it's a constant battle and here's why you might have trouble Speech is this specialist. See the same thing speech specialist. Dr. And her back says your jaw might not be happy and an article now on voice over extra and notes the difference between what she Calls British English and American English. Yes with British English, you know, you talk with your jaw clenched There's less openness of the job But for American English, it's important to have an open jaw especially for the sound in words like at and came Here's where we might have problems though Stress and anger can cause us to clench our teeth and this clenching results in alter articulation clenching or grinding your teeth can also lead to Temporal mendipular disorder and one result of that is pain or difficulty in opening your mouth widely See a doctor if you suspect this to be happening And says simple exercises can help bring you back to a happy jaw for one Watch yourself in the mirror as you open your mouth aim for an opening That allows you to insert your middle and index fingers on top of each other with the edges touching So that's enough. Okay, another exercise is to do gentle circular motions With your lower jaw Well see now you've got a happy jaw This helpful article and many hundreds more await you at voiceover extra comm your daily resource for voice over success indeed yes indeed and Next week we have Dr. Rina Gupta with us. Oh, great There's a rhino otolaryngologist and your nose and throat doctor and she will talk about her are The mechanics of our voice whenever we've had people that the the ENT is on Yeah, we always have a lot of people watching because there's a lot of questions That's one to be here for live. Absolutely. That'll be a fun one to have So you got some gadgets. We have some gadgets. We're gonna talk about also whose studio are we? We're in Jorge and Fonte studio in Portugal. That is fancy. Isn't that something? We're gonna find out this is actually his studio Picture he sent us so her. Hey, you better verify that one So what's up in tech this week? We've got a couple pieces of gear in the studio tonight to show off in the flesh as it were And Dan you got a few mics sent to you by SE electronics. Yes, I did. What did they send you? Well, they and it's an SE electronics X1 a the X1 a and the a is the new version of the X1 Yes, now you can probably unmute this mic so we can hear what it actually sounds like All right, it's it's the guest mic All right, so Ready one two three four So right now It's a great microphone when it works Really, okay, you want to just patch it into this one we could do that. Let's try that All right, how's that that better? Okay? All right. That's better. All right. This is the SE electronics X1 a Now needs a little bit more game. It does mean I'll it that is one thing about it It does need a fair amount of game just put that in there. No, that's not good. Okay. We'll just put it there like that All right Okay, and the what's great about this mic is one the price point on it is under $200 It's affordable. It's a very affordable mic, but it also has it has a An 80 Hertz rumble filter on it. Uh-huh. Yeah, and it's got a 20 DB pad. Yeah, and it's got a nice cardioid pattern to it The output on it. What oh for crying out loud Okay, now it's back. All right. No, see it was 30 seconds ago when we unplugged the microphone Little bit of a delay out there, but anyway The the SE X1 a it doesn't have the output that some of the the other mics do yeah But for that price point as you can hear it's a really good sounding Mike You know, I mean that could be a deal my deal mic for travel use Yeah, you don't want a mic that's overly sensitive to everything right it could be good for that and especially at that price Right, and so yeah, and we know that SE makes really great stuff. It's got a great It's got a great capsule in it and it's everything you need and it's not $10,000 Yeah, it's an affordable price point could be a good starter mic to plug into your scarlet solo or whatever. Yes So what else you got? Well, this is the other one here. Let me just this is the great thing about this. We're gonna mute that we're gonna mute that One two three four, okay Everything should be set right on this thing. Oh, there we go Is it? No, it should be setter. You know what it is? This mic has something called a soft Fan and power ramp up or something like that Now what's working fine when you patch it in it ramps the power up slowly to keep you from getting this loud pop when you plug it in Right, it's a great micro that's a feature right not a bug. Yeah Now this this is very similar and is to be competitive with the akg 414 Or it's kind of emulates that design in shape of a 414 a little bit a little bit of flat body But it's yeah, but it's got a lot of different patterns on it It's got a lot of bells and whistles it does not necessarily that you would need all of those for voiceover Now recording a concerto maybe Or interview from side to side or something along those lines figure eight It has omni it has two different flavors of cardioid cardioid and hyper cardioid, right? It's a great mic Yeah, and uh, but it's also more expensive. I think it's about about uh 449 499 something like that So it's in the caddy 100 s price. It is but has more features in the Yeah, it's a little more flexible. It's a little capsule mic which gives you all those patterns Right this patterns could be useful in a in a small studio where you've got glass behind the mic and you Or glass on the side by switching it to figure eight sometimes the mic will pick up less reflections off the glass and that can work in your favor Right. Okay. Let's go back to the harlin hogan view To be working just fine now. It's ramping itself up there. There we go. Okay So as the electronics does make some great stuff. I've been reviewing that they also make the reflexion filter which Can help you out in some tight situation Yeah, the reflection is good and and when you're trying to take a room That's a little bit too lively and making a little less lively It's not a just fix all you can't just put one up in your bedroom and have an instant studio Right, you know be clear about that, but it is a pretty good piece of kit Yeah, so um, we also have courtesy of Our good friend over here Our game drop down All right, all right There we go. Um courtesy of jack daniel. This is his own personal piece of gear he brought in for us to see It's we get a close-up with it on this camera. Yeah, let's go to the brio. Yeah Our new logitech brio camera. It's our close-up camera Don't worry about it. It'll be each ball Well, that would make sense actually We may or may not be on the air right now Dan O'Day you've came from you came in for a good one tonight Dan Still beach ball Okay, so do you think this camera is working or no? All right And there it is This is the uh Universal audio apollo arrow This is we've talked about this unit, but it's the first time we've actually had one in our hot little hands and uh, it is Basically a I wouldn't call it entry-level device because it's 500 bucks and it's got a lot of stuff going in on in under the hood Right, but it's a little less expensive than their prior one the apollo twin solo It's also an easier name to say apollo arrow and um, it's a thunderbolt 3 device So you got to have a pretty recent mac to use it. I understand there are some windows pc's Coming out with thunderbolt 3 as well and so my understanding is it is Cross compatible for mac and for windows if you have the right interface Does it work the same way say the twin does with the plugins and stuff? It does it supports all the same plugin architecture that the twin does So if you want to insert like You know the front end processing that we always say you're not supposed to do But if you know better and you know how to use these tools it can be an advantage Um, you can insert plugins plugins like a mic preamp a certain particular preamp like an api Vision channel strip, which is an emulation of a vintage mixing board, right? You can also insert like the manly vox box, which is a Four or five thousand dollar preamp something like that normally But if you buy the plugin, it's about a three hundred dollar plugin And as we found out from the people at universal audio It's hard to tell the difference. It is really hard to tell the difference. We were at Nam back in january. We got to demo the Electronic or the virtual plugins versus the real pieces of gear that they're emulating It was uh, it's very hard to tell. Yeah extremely hard to tell. Um This one's also different from the Apollo and that it's bus powered So what that means it only requires power From the usb or the thunderbolt 3 jack I say usb because it looks like a usb c jack. Don't get them confused. It looks like it But it's thunderbolt 3 um Anyway, I think 499 roughly something something around there two microphone inputs and two line outputs The apollo twin has additional outputs that you would use to send audio to I don't know a zephyr or a phone patch some other Hardware gear that some of you may use but for the majority of you who don't use Outside of the box gear you're doing everything in the computer This really might be all that you need this a great mic a mac or windows with thunderbolt 3 And you're off to the races. So anyway, nice little piece of gear. Nice size I'm hoping to make a mono one one day. That's half the size Holding on to see if that comes out, but thanks for bringing it in jack. Yeah, all right Well, I was gonna do a dov you tonight, but we're we since we've spent a little time on that We'll just go a lot of time We'll just go to the question that we had tonight From uh, uh, what's see here the question comes from so we skip a break and go right to no No, no, no, we'll go to the break actually, okay So we're gonna take a break right now and we'll go to that question. That was a tease ladies. I know Be right back Once again for another episode of voiceover body shop V obs is still on Seriously, this is john bailey the epic voice and you're watching v obs dot tv Monday nights at 6 p.m. Pacific 9 30 newfoundland Man, there's one show that I can't miss it's called v obs and a lot of people like v obs What is that that is bs about v o and I love v o how much bs is going to be in this show? There's only one way to find out Hey guys, this is tom also known as the voice of spongebob square pants And you want to fill your ear holes and your eye holes with dan and george and the audio body shop Meow snails like it too Before time began there was v obs dot tv watch Or else You're still watching v obs Learn the latest in voiceover technology business and good old fashion acting I really like your bracelet. It's awesome Hey paul, where did you get that watch? Um, that's really cool and a hamburger with no cheese, please Every monday nine eastern six pacific only on voiceover body shop dot com Hey is 2018 going to be the year you take your voiceover practice to the next level Well, if not, you can go back to checking your email or anything else. It's going on while this message is airing And I think there's also some leftover pizza in the back of the fridge But if you're serious about dramatically upping your level of success I want you to go to a very very special url v o the number two go go dot com forward slash v obs That's v o to go go dot com forward slash v obs Join the hundreds of v o practitioners around the world who've decided to do something positive invest in themselves For this new year learn voiceover from the ground up or from where you are right now to where you want to be Go to v o to go go dot com forward slash v obs and let's make 2018 Your year As a voice talent you have to have a website But what a hassle getting someone to do it for you and when they finally do they break or don't look right on mobile devices They're not built for marketing and seo. They're expensive You have limited or no control and it takes forever to get one built and go live So what's the best way to get you online in no time go to voice actor websites dot com Like our name implies voice actor websites dot com just does websites for voice actors We believe in creating fast mobile friendly responsive highly functional designs that are easy to read and easy to use You have full control no need to hire someone every time you want to make a change And our upfront pricing means you know exactly what your costs are ahead of time You can get your voice over website going for as little as 700 dollars So if you want your voice actor website without the hassle of complexity in dealing with too many options Go to voice actor websites dot com where your v o website shouldn't be a pain in the you know what answers and uh dano day waiting patiently by we'll get to him in just a couple of minutes Uh, but I want to do something and show and explain something for everybody Uh that is always asked of us because people don't necessarily understand What is what a waveform is? so i'm going to use our screen here And we're going to show it to you all right Okay, well Okay, so we need there it is right here. Look at this People are always asking what is A waveform Well, there's a number of components to it So let's look at it here. There's the waveform now if you look in the center there There's what's called the nominal line level. That's where there is no volume Remember you're not looking at this thing up and down so that the top is loud and the bottom is soft The top is heart loud and the bottom is loud So make sure that you understand that you're actually looking down at it and it's going from side to side And that's really what's going on when you're looking at your digital audio uh software You're looking at a waveform and it's loud on top loud on the bottom and in the middle where it says nominal line There's nothing Okay, then we have some other stuff. We have to be certain like for instance, there's dynamic range Now dynamic range is how We modulate our voice and that's how loud it is And the louder you are the bigger the waveform is going to be So you want to maintain this dynamic range We like to say peak between minus six and minus four some people say oh, maybe more like minus ten We say between minus six and minus four and we're right Anyway, uh, that's that's that's what the modulation is So we measured this in with a something called the db scale But anyway, if you get too loud If you get too loud, what happens is you go into the distortion region Which is near I think, uh, uh Lompoc Uh Northy here and but the distortion region is where the audio starts to break up And we want to make sure that you don't get that loud But there's a way to make sure that you are loud enough And that the engineer at the other end that's getting your audio isn't going to get ticked off at you And that's something we call well first There's the peak level with the clipping point when things start to really break up. Yeah But there's this thing called headroom Now headroom is this area between where it's modulating okay and below the distortion region And as long as you're keeping the audio in that that zone It should be fine, but your waveform should be nice and healthy and thick Yeah, having a little bit of headroom is helpful, right? It is because it gives you that little cushion you need Digital is not forgiving that's when you hit distortion region It's done right okay, and let's look at this. This is this is give us an uh, if you're say using twisted wave Uh go to that shot there if you look really carefully you can see the nominal line Running through the middle of that It's you know, it's that line there it is right there And when you look at the audio and the audio is not on that line I mean I could zoom in even tighter on this and you could see that uh, it's um What it is is It's it's a crossover point is what we like to call it come on It's there there it is It's a crossover point when you can find a spot where the audio Is crossing that line. There's no volume and that's where that's a good place to edit that Or edit to and get silence out of it. So In case you were wondering that's what a waveform is all right all right So what's next on the agenda? I think we have a question And you can you can end that shot Susan. That's uh, just the two of us now. There we go. Uh, the question comes from Uh, nope down down down down down down down down down the other way other way other way there it is There we go Paula phay line Weber. Paula flying Weber. Yeah, all right Uh, still looking at different mic options on the recommendations of my engineer Thanks, George and another mic was suggested by a local dealer So, I thought I would ask for your thoughts on it. That's the Shure SM7D dynamic mic with 7B, sorry, that's a very different mic. I don't even think there is a 7B. Mike with the Cloudlifter CL1 mic activator. What are your opinions? I'm waiting to possibly get a couple to compare, but so far only have a Sennheiser MKE600 coming. Thanks for any thoughts you can supply. What's she using to start with? I guess context is helpful. Paul assumes that I'm remembering which mic she's already using and what context she's already using them in. If you hear a dynamic mic being thrown around in my world, it's because you're working in a really tall environment and you're trying to get away with working in a noisy environment. That's when you use a low sensitivity mic like a SM7 or something. But what does she lose by that? You lose some clarity? Bluebird. Oh, that's right. Thank you. Thank you for checking the chatroom, Jack. Yes, that's right. She's using a Bluebird. The Bluebird is a fantastically sensitive, great amazing studio mic, but if I remember now, her studio environment is less than perfect. There is a relatively elevated noise floor from her environment. I plugged the fridge. I think she is in a shared living environment, which is really challenging. She is one of five tenants in one house. That is one of the hardest things. That is one of the hardest environments to deal with, because unless they're all going to play along and play nice. Good luck with that one. No problem. Go ahead and record now, unless they're going to be willing to play along and actually be quiet. It's not going to probably work out. I do believe now I had mentioned a couple options to her. I mentioned the dynamic mic. I also mentioned a headset microphone. She does audiobooks, and so my thought of using a headset mic is a headset mic is because it's so close to the mouth. You can put one about one to two inches away from your mouth. You can run the gain a lot, lot lower. With a lot lower gain means the mic is less sensitive. It means that here's less background noise. That was my theory about using a headset mic. We've bantered around, at least I've bantered around the idea of using headset mics from time to time. I've tested some out, and they're definitely usable. If you're comparing the noise floor between, let's say, the blue bird she has, or any good large diaphragm mic and a headset mic, the headset mic is always going to have a higher amount of hiss. Those micro capsules are not capable of creating a super quiet recording. They will have some hiss. That's the trade-off, even at the $700 price range. But again, audiobook, mic is very close. You're going to do a lot of post-processing on it to get to master it. You can deal with a little bit of that hiss and post. So try out the SM7, see what you think. But it's going to be one of those things you've got to test it and see in your environment if it's going to work. Yeah. But an SM7B fabulous mic if you're on the radio. But we're not on the radio, we're voice actors. You put it right up to your lips and you talk. That's what that mic is designed for. Whereas a studio mic like the BlueBurg, the VO1A, those are designed to be used at some distance. And they sound better at a distance. The further away the mic is, the more gain you need. The more gain you have, the more background noise. Get the mic closer. Maybe you can get away with your environment. Yeah, but an SM7B, with a cloud lift. Cloud lifter is a great little thing for a ribbon mic and it can help in certain situations. But using that to gain up an SM7B and somebody suggested that was a Hawaiian vacation written on her forehead. So. Yeah, I mean the CL-1 is a very popular device. A lot of people use it with an SM7. I find that sometimes it really helps and sometimes it doesn't. Don't take anything by rote. You have to demo whatever it is you're gonna get. You have to use it in your environment and try it and see if it works for your needs. And send you or I the audio so we can determine if it's working. I'm feeling I'll be hearing this audio. Yes. You don't hire you. Listen to the guys that actually know it. So if they wanna get ahold of you and listen to you and have you listen to their audio and fix the dome and all the stuff you do, where do they go? GeorgeTheTech.com. You can go to my services menu. You can get a sound check. Have some audio processing done. I can help you with your audio book mastering, design a studio. It's all right there at GeorgeTheTech.com, right there below me. And Dan, you're right over there. Right here at homevoiceoverstudio.com. Boy, talk about technology. Yeah, I've got the specimen collection cup there. Just click on that. It is a Dropbox. And let me listen to your audio. Don't process it. I wanna hear your clean studio. It's like, I'm gonna put all this compression in it. No, stop it. Alrighty. Anyway, Dan O'Day is waiting patiently by. Yes, he is. And he will be joining us in just a couple of minutes here and we'll talk about some stuff from radio and some other things too. So stay tuned. We'll be right back here on VoiceOver Body Shop. Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder. The information out there is mostly mythology. This is the best microphone to use. You'll have to have a preamp. You need a soundproof booth. This software is the best. Your audio must be broadcast quality. Consult with someone who knows the truth. Someone who's been there in the trenches doing voiceover for over 30 years. Someone with unparalleled experience with voiceover studios, who's worked with hundreds of voice actors and designed hundreds of personal studios. He knows how to teach and cares about your success. In one of the harshest environments known to voiceover, you're home. Dan Leonard, the home studio master. Separate myth from fact and get a handle on your personal voiceover studio. Contact the home studio master at homevoiceoverstudio.com. Drop off a specimen of your dry audio for a free analysis. Are you confused about how to set up and maintain a professional quality voiceover studio? No wonder. The information out there is mostly. Okay. All right, we're back here on Voiceover Body Shop. I think you have to talk about Source Elements, don't you? Oh, I do. I have to do their commercial because they would, they would leave us if I don't do or do their commercial. I'm gonna talk about Source Elements. Source Elements is a fantastic software. Well, they make a lot of different softwares, but they make Source Connect. Don't need it, I'd improvise. They make Source Connect and so many other softwares for voice actors. The ones that you're probably most interested in as a voice actor are gonna be Source Connect Standard or Source Connect Now. What is the difference? A quick demystification. Source Connect Now is a completely free system for sending your audio between studios real time or between you and a client who wants to monitor you in a method that's cleaner and better sounding than Skype or a phone patch. It sounds amazing again and it's totally free. Source Connect Standard, on the other hand, is not free. You can buy it on a monthly installment plan or you can buy it outright for people that just wanna buy it once and not have to buy it again. And that software is a total replacement for technologies like ISDN. It allows very high quality, very reliable connections to the other studio. If you wanna give either one of them, either wanna try, you can go to source-elements.com. You can get a 15 day free trial right over there and give it a shot. Let us know what you think and let them know we sent you. We'd really appreciate it. All right, Dan's coming up here in just a minute with Dan right after this. Old fashioned actor. Hey, Paul, where did you get it? It looks good on you. This is VOBS. In a world of audio, two men knew what they were doing or at least they have you convinced. They put the BS and VOBS.tv. Having dinner tonight? How about having some VO too? Voiceover Body Shop. Have some voiceover with your dinner tonight on Voiceover Body Shop, nine Eastern, six Pacific. Every Monday, nine Eastern, six Pacific. Voiceover Body Shop. I love when they talk BS about VO. Voiceover Body Shop. Learn the latest in voiceover technology. Learn how to get rid of that. And you know, oh, we're on? Okay, cool. Our guest tonight is Dan O'Day. He is a highly opinionated radio advertising guru and radio talent coach, waging war against bad commercials and bad radio. Dan O'Day conducts seminars for radio station, station groups, associations and advertising agencies around the world. He also teaches voice talent on how to succeed in VO and audio books. And he's joining us right now from the other side of the hill. No, actually, he's in Northridge. Welcome to Dan O'Day. You can't hear me? The Sony's turned off. Turned the Sony on their hat. Turned the what? No, it's not you, Dan. It's our studio wanting to kill us and bury us six feet underground with every possible piece of might that it has. So Dan is trying to blame me and George is saying it's not my fault. Okay, exactly. We got you, Dan. Go for it. Can we hear him now? How about now? There we go. Hey guys. All right, welcome to the show. Thank you. It's an honor. By the way, George, I was tempted to jump in and you had one or two technical difficulties earlier. And I wanted to jump in all that based on what I learned from radio station engineers in my career. Please. And I'll share with you for next time, okay? Next time. Oh, yeah. Here we go. Anyway. So what's the problem? Well, we've solved all the problems here. But at least we've tried. This is the engineer. This is the engineer. Okay. Show me. Well, it should work. I think they go back to their trailers. Well, it should work. It should work. That's the answer. We gained a little slogan for over the last seven years doing the show and that is every week is Apollo 13. And in the world of live webcasting where it's the Wild West gear, software updates, things are constantly changing. We troubleshoot stuff pretty much every single show. So it's fun. That's why I haven't changed from my Mac Plus. You know, that's all I use. And I know what to expect. Well, you know, Dan, I think it's fair to say you're a lot better known for radio, the radio world, radio people know who you are than the voiceover people. But how did you get into radio? And why did you get out? Although I can probably guess. There was no plan. I never had intended to get into radio. I was 18 years old. I ran away from college. It's like two Los Angeles. And one reason I didn't know it at the time. But I think that I could sense some of the sinister presence at the college that I was going to because at the time both John Landecker and John Leder were there. And I didn't know it at the time. But that was a good reason. So I hitched to LA and had some things I wanted. I wanted to write for a particular TV show and that got canceled the day before my interview. And I guess I got into it. The reason I do a lot of things, which is I think there are two things. One is I must have been hearing jocks on the air and thinking, I'd do better than that. And then I heard a commercial. It's something along the lines of, say, can you imagine how exciting it would be to get paid to do what I'm doing right now? Which is talking to you about how exciting it would be to get paid for doing what I'm doing right now. I signed up for the Bill Wade School of Radio and Television. And I did that for no reason that I can think of. And in four months, they taught me how to cue a record. I'm a fast learner. I could have picked it up in two. I'm the other end of the year. Then they're doing my first radio job. I took out of that in a broadcasting magazine. DJ Goodpipes tight board will relocate. And I was convinced no one would offer me a job. So I took the first one that was offered across the country. And my very first day at that radio station, my very first job, the program director gave me some real-to-real stuff and said, here, put these on cart for anyone who doesn't know what a cart is, a tape cartridge, which is from a different century. And the Bill Wade School of Radio and Television taught me how to play carts. But not how to record them. They didn't teach me how to record them. And I can only imagine how thrilled the program director was to discover that their new hire didn't know how to put something on cart. So that's how I got into it. I had set a few goals for myself, I think, in radio and got lucky and met the goals. And one day, I've had some good station managers and some terrible station managers in my disjock of years. And the last manager at the major market where I was working was just nuts. He was, he literally was nuts. I have a degree in psychology, so I can diagnose. I would find my, you know, I'd be ridiculing him, you know, the jocks and everyone would be getting together and talking about what I'm more on. He is how stupid and crazy and, you know, we call it a dial-up format. Every day we come into the station and there'd be a different format. And then one day I realized this guy who I was mocking had a tremendous amount of power over my life. And I thought, okay, what's wrong with that picture? And so that's when I stopped being in radio. Basically, I finally decided if I have to work for an idiot, I must work for myself. So ever since then, I've been my own idiot. That's my radio story. Yeah. Well, you know, I remember going back, oh, some 38 years ago or so when I was a tyke in the radio business, I remember one of the jocks, the morning jock at the show that I was at, at the station I was at had the O-liners. So I was familiar with you all the way back then from, I guess what you did is you wrote the daily, the weekly jokes for morning jocks and stuff? Yeah. One of the reasons, I became pretty successful on the radio and I won some awards and stuff. And I decided, like any disc jockey who has ever said anything that he thought was remotely funny, I said to myself, I wonder if other people have paid me for this. And so I started actually two different comedy services. The one that really took off more was O-liners. And it was a monthly service I wrote and published it and about once a month at its peak, I think it was 950 subscribers around the world would get this eight page newsletter style mailing and they'd go on the air and hopefully they would change the material around to fit their own personalities. And that was 15 years. So, yeah. I think I used it once or twice at one station I was at. Somebody had a copy. What were some of your favorite jokes from it? Oh God, it was so long ago. Probably had something to do with Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter or something, but we're Three Mile Island or one of those things. Three Mile Island was just ripe for a lot of time. Did you ever think about pursuing a career in just straight voiceover? For a split second, when I left the radio, I moved back to Los Angeles and I took a class, a single class, a weekend class with someone I'm sure you know, Sue Blue, Susan Blue. And it was a lot of fun. And there was good news and bad news for me. One is I clearly was the best cold reader in the class. I mean, piece of copy, pretty good job. But I noticed that I didn't get better. You know, she would coach me, try to tweak my performance and I wasn't getting better. And that's not because she does not a coach. So that bothered me. And then when I found out the back in those days to just, you know, as you know, everyone who's not in voiceovers, it sounds so cool and easy. Yeah, right. And when I learned at that time that what doing voiceovers full time meant was spending all day long in your car driving from audition to audition where you're not gonna get most of them. That just didn't sound like fun at all. So I have no idea if I would have been good, but I never had the chance to find out. Well, but you became a director though and you started directing commercials and you got to work with Gary Owens? Oh, God, yeah. That's what's strange is moving to LA and getting a little bit older. And there were a few instances in which like my heroes, you know, I'm a child who became friends and Gary was one of them. And I wrote and produced two comedy albums for radio people called Silly Show Sponsors. So it would be, they all began pretty much with this portion of the show is being brought to you by, I can, this is not an example of a funny one, but the first one that comes to mind. This portion of the show is being brought to you by Anonymous Yogurt, ask for it by name. So I hired Gary twice to do the first volume and then the second volume, I wrote them all and I produced it. We recorded the first one in the secret recording studio at Radio and Records where John Leder was secretly making his voiceover demos. And I think that's the first time that's been made public. And the second time I booked a studio in Hollywood and it was very strange being behind the glass and wanting to give notes to Gary Owens because he was just so brilliant. And I would say he did 75 to 80% of the lines on one take, on the occasion when I want to say something, you know, Josh, I felt weird, it's like, Gary is great. I wonder, you know, would it be okay? Would you, you know, and he was really cool about it. But what I learned from that was that if you really want to excel at comedy voiceover, you know, these were short bits, you've got to have good peripheral vision because Gary didn't look at the script. He didn't have a copy of the script until the mic was on. And while Gary was reading the beginning of the joke, he also was skipping forward to the end of the joke. And that combined with a great comedy sense really paid off. That's where I first realized, okay, if you've got a vision problem that really restricts your vision, you're going to be a little bit handicapped compared to somebody who has really wide peripheral vision. That's right, that's what I learned from Gary. Gary is a name that is in our world, kind of a household name, but what's like one thing that when you say Gary Owens, everybody will not recognize that name. What's something that he's- Well, if they're old enough, and you know, I'm not, but if they are, laugh in. Laugh in, yes. I mean, beautiful downtown Burbank. He was on camera on Laugh In, right? Yes, he was. Although he was hired as a writer and one day in the bathroom at the studios, George Slaughter was in there and Gary was just kind of doing this, just to screw around with the echo and the reverb and George said, oh, that's great. Well, let's make you the announcer. So after that, I guess, what's the character? I mean, that's- Roger Ramjet was my favorite. Exactly, Roger Ramjet. And I think he was on Deputy Dog, which, believe it or not, I never saw. Well, it depends on how old you are, what he represented to you. But to me, he represented somebody who always was really funny on television. And when I met him, I realized, this guy is brilliant. I mean, you hear his voice, which was amazing. And it's easy to think, who's the guy on the Carol Burnett show? Lyle Wagner, you know, their announcer? Yeah, I don't know the guy. I'm sure he's a great guy. So please, no, not putting it down, Lyle. But Lyle Wagner was this really handsome guy who clearly his job was to stand there and look handsome and say, now we're back or something like that. And with Gary Owens, his voice was so rich that it was easy to assume that that's what made him appealing. But he was absolutely brilliant. Just, he knew everybody, he knew, you could name the topic, he would know something about it a bit of trivia and he was really, really fast. As a matter of fact, it's funny, I had a lot of things in my head that I think are funny and that, just like a radio, you never know until you share it. One day I visited Gary at his office at KNPC Los Angeles and I was doing the comedy service. And so he and I were just talking about the demands of creating material on a daily basis. And Gary said, well, you know, Dan, that's an uncanny impression, isn't it? Like being there. Well, you know, Dan, I get a lot of inspiration for comedy by reading the letters to the editor's page, letters to the editor page of the LA Times. And I said, and what I thought was a fairly witty proposed, I said, well, you know, I used to read the letters to the editor of the LA Times and I had to stop because I just didn't have time to go kill every one of those people. To which, without a moment's hesitation, Gary said, well, Dan, you'll just have to make time. And he was just, he was brilliant. It was really cool to work with him. Yeah. That's the other thing, that's the other thing too. You get a phone call. Hello? Hello, Dan, Gary Owens. Yeah, I can tell. You really don't have to identify yourself. I used to work with, I used to work with Don LaFontaine. I was his tech and I would get that call, but Dan, he never, he never announced himself. He, I guess he knew enough about himself to know that when he called, all he had to do was speak. You just say, Schwarzenegger. You never say, Dan, George, this is Don. He would just start talking. So. Exactly. Well, you're not a voiceover coach. No, I'm not. But when you have someone else voice projects for you, how do you get the performance out of them that you want? Anyway, necessary. First of all, I only have people voice projects when I can't do it. Like, it's very, very frustrating as a writer, hearing it in my head, but I can't get it out of my mouth. And I, at those times, I really get frustrated so I hire somebody. My first go-to is before they even do a take, I will fill them in on the emotional impact that I want this to have. So it goes beyond, okay, we're talking to this type of person in this type of life situation. And what you're about to say is something that she is terribly, terribly worried about and she doesn't know who she can talk to about it. And she's just terrified. And what you say is going to calm her down and reassure her or whatever it is. And that almost always worked. If that didn't work, then I would go to metaphor. There was a number of years ago, Harlan Hogan and I, and you mentioned his microphone, by the way. There it is. It's amazing you guys still use that because I heard that it's no longer current, but now that's just for Harlan. He does listen. Old tomorrow. For the record, Harlan's microphone's great. We created a class a number of years ago, I think 2009 called Starting Your Voice Opera Business. And I wrote the script and sent to Harlan to record. And on his first take, it really wasn't what I had wanted. And so we got on the phone and I directed him. And the only thing I could think of to explain what I wanted was to say, okay, you're at the airport on a pay phone. This was back when there was an occasional pay phone. You're at the airport on a pay phone at the gate. They're about to close the gate and you're playing, you've got 10 seconds to get this message to me. And Harlan didn't say, got it, but he got it. He just, okay, that's, you know, whatever, if you're directing someone, it's your job to do whatever it takes. When I can, it's probably my favorite thing. I teach an improv class for voice actors called Improbability. And first let me say that for me, improv for voice over is not when you're at the audition coming up with some brilliant, clever twist. It's the work you do beforehand that expands your range as a performer. And so for that will be a public event. We'll have a whole bunch of people, people come up on stage. And so I'll give them commercial copy. You know, you're a basic mister or missus stupid, you know, commercial, it's say, honey, why is the cat on the refrigerator? Well, dear, you know, and they'll get up and get behind them, I can do the best. And it'll sound as stupid as it was written, not their fault, but I'll go to one of them, and I'll give them a backstory. I just give them a slip of paper. And one of the things I find sneakily helpful is either to the man or the woman doesn't matter. So to one of the two, I'll give them a slip of paper that says, you're terribly afraid your spouse is going to leave you. And you love her or him more than anything in the world. Okay, go. It changes. It changes the performance, not always for the better. If you say, you just heard on the radio that a tornado is coming and your entire neighborhood can be blown away in the next 45 minutes, that might inform your delivery. So I'll give people a backstory. And when I get the kind of performance I want, I'll say, great, exactly. And I'll pretend that I knew I was going to get that result from that backstory. If you're just joining us, boy, you missed a lot already. Our guest is Dan O'Day, who is a guy, it's kind of hard to describe what you do, but you've been, you've talked radio stations, how to improve their image and all that kind of stuff. But you also teach voiceover related classes. And if anybody has a question for Dan, throw it in the chat room right now, because Jack Daniel is sitting there typing away in the chat room and he'll relay that question to us and we'll ask it to Dan in a while. I can suggest one for you guys. Okay, go for it. What the hell are you doing teaching anything about voiceovers? That would be a good question. So what are you doing teaching anything about voiceover? Oh, by the way, in the lovely promotional write-up that you did for tonight's show, and you mentioned me, and I did not write, correct? Oh, I wrote it. Some of it. Thank you, it was very generous, overly generous. I have a hard time buying the legendary Dan O'Day, it's like. So Dan's in radio, Dan, you are a legend. Everybody knows who you are. No, I'm really serious. It's like over the years, if someone's been around long enough, like to be called a veteran, now they're not called a veteran, they're called legendary. You know, the legendary Jamie Farr, you know? It's legendary is not the same as been around a while, but thank you for the nice words. You started to ask a question, I think, and I wasn't listening. Yeah, well, it had to do with voiceover, but yeah. Ask for it. Yeah, exactly. But how did you begin teaching voiceover classes? If really you were really an expert on radio commercials more than anything else? Twofold. One was in 1996, a gentleman by the name of Dick Orkin, and I created something called the International Radio Creative and Voiceover Summit that was an annual event for those people. And the idea was Dick would do the voiceover stuff and I would do the radio stuff, although Dick, of course, had a great radio background. And that's pretty much what we stuck to, except there would be times when I would notice something about the performance and I would discover actually had something to say. Dick and I would do our, we call it our critique of Spotify in which we critique commercials submitted by attendees. And I was surprised to discover that not only was I able to make comments about the story of the spot, the script, and which I figured I should, yeah, I'm a writer, but there were times when I would be able to pinpoint stuff about the performance. And it was never technical stuff. I never did, still don't have the ability to say, well, you know, if you work the mic just an eighth of an inch closer, and if you drop your gain by three tenths of whatever, I can't do that, you know, and I know people and George is one of them, a couple of people, they can just hear a recording and they can say, okay, here's the problem. You know, this is what you're doing and you got to figure, I can't do that. That's what we do. Yeah, no, exactly. And that's really, I can't do that. So it's never technical, but it would be performance-based. So that's how I got into it. I think teaching maybe more than coaching. And in 2009, Harlan Hogan and I launched a class called Starting Your Voice Over Business. And that's really where, if I started to become a little bit known to VO people, and we did that, again, same reason I do almost everything. I do almost everything I do either because I want to see if I can do it or because I'm really annoyed at something. And Harlan and I would get very upset about the, let me, how can I say this politely? The bottom feeders of the voiceover industry who run ads saying, how would you like to make money at home in your underwear? It's easy. And you know, you sign up and go to the weekend thing, they'd sell you the $3,000 advanced thing and it's all a bunch of crap. And that really, there was one person in particular whom I won't name, but who was doing a lot of advertising for that. And this was someone who could not get work, could not get an agent, nothing. And finally, we said, let's do a class, but it's not how to get into voiceover. It's for people who already are in voiceover either part-time, full-time, successfully, unsuccessfully. If you're already in voiceover, we're gonna help you get as far as you can faster. So we don't know what your ceiling is of performance, but we can get you there faster and that's how we jumped into that. Right. Well, you teach marketing essentially to voice actors because that's really what we have to do. What is your definition of marketing when it comes to voiceover? Marketing is, I think, not just voiceover. To me, marketing is simply having the solution to someone's problem and making sure that your solution is right in front of them at the very moment they're looking for a solution. That's what it is to me. It's not being a huckster, it's not spamming the world. There seems to be a great misunderstanding as to what marketing is among a lot of people in our industry. Well, they never studied it. They just hear the word. What passes for marketing for, it's not just voiceover, but what we see a lot of and Harlan is on a lot more mailing lists than I am even though neither of us joined the list so we're getting spammed. And almost every day, Harlan will forward stuff to me and it's people who think they're doing marketing and it'll be their newsletter. And what these people don't understand is nobody cares about them. I mean, that's bottom line, nobody cares. And if you're going to send out what you call a newsletter that's all about you and there's the one guy who said in his email newsletter said, let's call him Bob Smith. Okay, those up. In other work, Bob Smith has done recently, who the hell do you think cares? It's like somebody else who mails out tips about enjoying the holiday because I know with you guys when you go to your computer, check your email, you're hoping to find something to read, right? Because you're bored and so you're looking for extraneous stuff. And that's not marketing, that's just being dumb. But a lot of people fall into the trap of doing what is efficient rather than what is effective. So in terms of efficient, like how much work goes into it? I'll send an email, that's nothing. Does it work? No. Do you guys get, without naming names, do you get spam from any voice actors? Spam? Well, we get blogs. Well, what I mean is emails from people who you did not opt into their list. Oh yes, talking about their business. And I know my girlfriend, Maxine, is a voice actor. That's one of her pet peeves. I mean, we talk about that. Getting opted in on lists just because you happen to be also a fellow voice actor. So I guess you should be on the list. And that's not being opted in, that's being co-opted. Yes. So, but think about this. Who do the voice actors send that unsolicited email to? Trying to get work. Other voice actors? Does that make sense? No. I mean, for me, really good marketing. Somebody's doing a voice actor doing a really good marketing. I should never see it. You should never see it. Only the people who are likely to hire them should see it. And they should have requested it. It shouldn't be spam. So there are people doing really excellent marketing, but we don't see it because they know what they're doing. They're doing it right. Good point. Again, we're talking with Dan O'Day. We're talking about marketing your voice over business and some fun stuff from radio. And if you've got a question for him, again, throw it in the chat room. Jack Daniel will be really relaying that to us. Now, one of the questions. Can I answer one of them right now? One of them? One of the questions. OK, if you want to. I'm getting the vibe. Wait, I'm not getting the vibe. Got it. OK, we got one from. Wait, no, I got to hear it mentally. OK. Here's the answer. Sure, we'll get that on for you as soon as we can. Thank you. Thank you. As a production director, I totally respect that one. Here's a match book. Give me something in 30 minutes. You know, it's got to sound great for the client. Did you in your production room, were you the person that the station went to when they needed aspirin? No. OK. I would usually throw it at him if I had it, though. Of all the years that I spent in radio, there's only one person who is in the sales department who I would still consider somebody I would want to talk to. Yeah. Of course, he ended up as a station manager, so I always wanted to talk to him. I got to work under the programming director who ended up being hired by Howard Stern. It's serious. And I think he believed. I believe he's still there, actually. I'm not sure, but he had hired by Howard to do. Become the programming director for his serious station. Oh, for his channel. Yeah, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Howard knows what he's doing. He seems to have staying power. Yeah. I mean, he's been on the air for a long time, that guy. Howard is unique. Yeah. Now, one of the things that you've been starting to teach is stuff with audiobooks. And at the beginning of this year, you started an ACX master class, but you took some flak for some people from it? What was that all about? Yeah, that actually was in 2013. David H. Lawrence, the 17th, and I had lunch. David, for those of you who know him, he's the sponsor of yours, I saw. David was my first webmaster many, many years ago. He called me from across the country and said, you should have your own website. And I said, what's that? And, you know, took it from there. And David and I had lunch at a hamburger joint, not far from me. And he started to tell me about ACX. And again, this is 2013. And it took me a while to understand this was not another paid-a-play site. Because I kept saying, OK, so what monthly dues? So they take a big hunk of, no. They charge you to what I didn't know. You paid for a higher tier, no. And when I finally understood what it was, I said something like, I must be the most ignorant guy in the business, because what you're describing is so great, every voice actor must know about this. And he said, not really, it's pretty new. And so we talked about it, and we decided to develop a class for it. And for those of you who don't know David or you don't know his audiobook credits, David has voiced about 160, 170 audiobooks. He's been in it a long time, and he's very, very good at it. And so we carefully designed this class that we called the ACX Master Class. And we announced it. I think we had some videos to introduce it. And one morning, I checked my email. And there were three different emails from individuals, fans or customers of mine, that essentially said, Dan, there is a Facebook group devoted to audiobooks, and they're just ripping you apart. They're attacking you right and left, you're charlatan, you're a con man. Understand, there's no way that they could critique the class because nobody had ever experienced it. And all three people said, you've got to go over there. See what they're saying. And I actually did what's called a cost-benefits analysis. I thought, OK, if I go there and see what these bad things are being said about me, what are the odds that's going to improve my day, that I'm going to feel better? And so I didn't. To this day, I haven't seen what they said. I am told, and you've got one or both of you guys probably is in the group, I am told that by somebody in the group that it had the longest thread attacking us, like 400 comments attacking us. And it was interesting. And David was kind of shocked because he had never been attacked before. I've been doing things kind of publicly for a long time, and you learn that whether or not you deserve it, whatever you do, if it reaches a point where it's visible, some people will attack you for it. Unfortunately, pitchforks work on the internet, too. So you get an angry mob flaming and trolling. It just takes on a life of its own. It takes on a life of its own. And if somebody who had taken our class were to post something negative about it, it probably would hurt my feelings. But I would think, well, you got every right. You were there. But these people were attacking stuff that they didn't know about. And they were saying, oh, they were saying wrong stuff. But there's one guy. Of course, I don't hold a grudge, but I can tell you his name. There's one guy who posted a big warning on my blog saying, if you're a SAG after a member, watch out. You can get thrown out of the union, which is not true. But when I saw that, I freaked out. They went, oh my god, I got it wrong. I thought I'd researched it. I called SAG after, I got the guy, one of the two guys, I got the guy who negotiated the contract with Audible and ACX. And I said, can you get thrown out of the union? No. Okay, and I asked him maybe 10 different ways. Okay, is it possible if you record a book that is in a certain category, you can get in trouble with the union? No. I just kept asking him that. And I finally said, Dan, if you're a union member, you can record any title that's offered on ACX, period. And what amazes me about that story is that guy has, to this day, has not apologized, has not said, sorry for scaring away all those people. It's just, it's real easy to attack somebody. And there's no moral there other than I have a long memory. And there was somebody else who said that how awful the editing was that when she started, it took her 10 hours per finished hour. Now, ACX says it should be five or six. Max, you can get it down to three to one, actually, if you- Yeah, exactly. And David Lawrence invented a method of editing for audio books where our students typically get two to three hours, a couple of them are like 90 minutes per finished hour. So not only was she slower than people in our class, she was slower than ACX says beginners should be. And a year later, I noticed she's teaching audio book class. Of course. Yeah. What else would you expect? Wow. Yeah, that's not, that's, I know we hear that all the time. Now, one of the things you, we have one more question for you and then we're gonna take a break and then we're gonna get some questions from our audience, but last year, now you were teaching the ACX class, the master class this year. Last year you premiered a new online class called Aikido Self Promotion for Audio Book Narrators. What is Aikido Self Promotion and what led you to create a class like this, turning resistance into assistance somehow? Yeah, that's pretty much it. First of all, I for a long time wanted to use the Japanese word. Of course. And as you just explained, Aikido is a method of self-defense in which you use all the energy from your opponent. There are no attack moves in Aikido. It's totally, if someone lunges at you, it's being able to move in a way where the person gets carried forward by their own momentum. And it was, I'd added that name, that word to the title just before I released the class because I realized in my mind, at least, it fit. It's very different from the model that most voice actors have and certainly most audiobook narrators, if you're an ACX, which I like. I like ACX. And by the way, the PS or the Coda, to the story about those people who attacked us that first year, we now have at last count more than 2,000 audiobooks that our students have produced that are selling on Audible. But still, that system is where you try to get clients. There's nothing wrong with that. But I have always found it much more enjoyable when people come to you. It's a very, very different dynamic. On the one hand, would you please hire me to somebody coming to you and saying, could you possibly consider recording my audiobook? There's a difference between those. I mean, it really is. And when you've positioned yourself that way, price goes out the window. You know, they... When they have learned you are the one person who can do it. And it might be the one person in their neighborhood, in their town, in their state, in the country, whatever. But the one person that they know of who does this, you're in charge. And so I created this class for that. And it was kind of like a radio show. We just spent a lot of time writing and producing. And then you put it on the air and see if anybody responds. And fortunately, people liked it and it worked. And so we're doing it again. But that's... The whole idea about Key, though, is having them come to you. There is zero saying, could I or, well, you know, I'd be glad to. Or why don't you take my card? None of that. It's a process whereby people come to you and say, would you please? Makes total sense. Once again, our guest is Dan O'Day. And we're going to answer your questions right after these messages. 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Well, we're on the break and they're playing some playback sometimes. I am an experienced lip reader so I can see that George is saying, Dan you're the best guest we've ever had. Don't worry about it. You've already given us so much value but really I'd like to be able to hear you. Are you hearing us right now? I'm gonna put, well first of all if anybody is hearing me can you tell them in the chat box? Yeah, we're hearing Dan and the problem is on his end. Yeah. We can hear you. Are you saying yes? Yes. We hear you. Okay. Can you hear us? So apparently the virus traveled from your computer to mine. I've done the, I didn't touch anything. I was just sitting here enraptured by Dan's delivery of the commercial and halfway through disappeared. So I've tried muting, unmuting. I see that my, the level is reading on my microphone, let me mute it. Dan hears us no matter what they hear on the air because it's a separate system. And now I unmuted it. So Dan- I'm not hearing us. We can hear Dan. He's just not getting us. Yeah. I don't know why. Let's see if I can read it. You know what? I'm just gonna turn on my volume on Facebook. Oh, there I am. Oh yeah, we're going on there. It's just changed. So I just went to Facebook and I can hear it there but I'm not hearing it. Check Dan, one, two, three. Yeah. There we go. Okay. I just reset the audio input in the zoom and now you can hear us. So great. Let me share the screen again so you can see us and off we go. Can you hear us now? Yes, I can. Okay. Sorry for the interruption. That's okay. No, great vamping there by the way. Is it sunspots, Mercury retrograde or is somebody conspiring to take us off the air? It's been one of those days. It's all three for the price of one. Oh my goodness. This is what I get guys. I have computer problems that are impossible and my first computer was the Mac Plus which I have over on my filing cabinet and I've lost track of the number of times I've taken to have some problem and taken to the techie and they'll say, sir, I'm sorry. What you're describing isn't possible. And then after about a half an hour of troubleshooting, they'll say, geez, I've never seen this before. And that doesn't make me feel special but I wanna hear, oh yeah, I've seen it a thousand times, here's what you do. So who knows what just happened. That happens to us all the time. Tonight's been one of those kind of days. Yeah, it really has. I gotta tell you it has. But we do have a bunch of questions stacked up for you and we wanna get those going. Yeah, we have a lot of them. Let's start off right off the top here with one from Robert Laborde. And he says, what style of voiceover read is most popular for radio commercials and what is the future of terrestrial radio? So he gets, he's asking a style question about radio commercials. Do you see it? He's asking two questions, one of which are not qualified to answer. The first one, I'm not qualified to answer. You guys would have a much better informed opinion than I in terms of the preferred style of radio commercials. The future of terrestrial radio, sadly, it simply will become more and more commoditized. Meaning, you know, when something's a commodity people buy the cheapest, that's it. And so when one company owns nine stations in a market and one for each format and they've got virtually a monopoly and they might have a competitor but the corporate owner can say, well, if you buy our country station we'll also throw in our all news, our hot talk, our rap station, our gold station, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And that becomes hard to beat. And so people do compete on price. And it's, I'd say it's sad, but that's the way business works. Radio became a mature industry in America, you know, 15, 20, about 20 years ago. And that's what happens. When an industry becomes mature, then it becomes commoditized. And then you get a lot of people complaining about Facebook about how in the good old days it used to be like, well, it's not that way anymore. Sounds like you spend a lot of time on Facebook. Well, I do. I've got 12 friends. Well, that's gonna keep like, take up all your time. Jack Daniel asks, how would you differentiate the radio read on copy from a TV read? That one I only know because I learned it from someone else. So I don't wanna be taking credit. Basically what I learned from someone else, because I never thought about TV spots, is that with a TV spot, you are commenting on the actual story that's being presented on the screen. Whereas in a radio spot, you are the story. Your words are carrying the story. But beyond that, you know, I know a little about it, but it all comes from one person and I don't wanna be ripping them off. Well, you can put them in the footnotes if you wanted. I could. And the fact that I'm not maybe implies there's some drama. Okay, never mind. Moving along. This one comes in from John C. who's in our chat room. All right, what are some of the things from radio that have held on too long in terms of style or format that you wish would just go away and die off? I'm sure you have plenty. I have long been a big fan, you know, when I work at radio stations of, I'll tell them, let's get your program log out. And I want you to defend every item on that log. And by that I mean, just tell me why it's there. And if they've got a reason, I'm cool with it. But you would be shocked at how many times the answer is, well, it's always been there, you know. And so the first thing is a lot of stuff that's done for no particular reason. If a lot of stuff that is done, so they can say they did it, but that nobody cared. I mean, now there's no longer a news and public affairs commitment for US radio stations. But still there are some stations that will do what they call a news or they'll put a public affairs program on Sunday morning when the biggest audience is available. And when they do the news, it's somebody for one minute reading wire surface copy that they don't understand. And so I'd rather, if you're, get rid of it. Don't do it if you're not gonna do it so that it's worth the listener's time. You know, to me, that's the ultimate test. Is this worth the listener's time and attention? And if it's not, why are you doing it? If you have to do it, then what can you do to be doing it so it's worthwhile? And that applies just about everything. And certainly some of the folks here have heard me rant and rave about radio commercials that are written by the salespeople who basically they take a fact sheet, or brochure from the advertiser and put it into 30 seconds or 60 seconds. And so it's, Blotlemans has been serving the Tri-City area for 57 years with over 1900 years of experience combined and their family owned and operated. And here's a bunch of other stuff and we set everything in the brochure. And here's our website, our phone number and our street address. And we're done. Well, it makes the advertiser happy until the advertiser realizes they're not getting any money for their return. And they stop. And what I have always wished for this and now more than ever is more people on radio who take their responsibility to their clients seriously because you've got a business owner coming to you if you're an account exec, let's say, or you're the producer on the spot. And the business owner comes to you because you're the expert. And you're saying, yeah, not only will we air your spot but we'll write it, we'll produce it and we're not gonna charge you anything for it. So guess how much they value that, by the way, because you're not gonna charge anything. And they're coming to you as the expert and you're saying to them, trust me, give me your money and we're gonna help you achieve your goals. And sadly, I don't think enough people take that responsibility seriously. If you ask me to do something, if you ask me to do anything professionally and I don't feel like I can do a good job, I'll say no, thank you. It's that's what I think people need to do. Beyond that, yeah, I should just say some really funny things that are gonna make much sense. Give people a reason to listen. I mean, that's the biggest thing. In my lifetime, radio programmers have almost, without exception, believe that the way to win in the ratings is to make fewer mistakes than the competition. And you're like, you have an air check session and the PD says, now there's some dead air over there. Oh, thank you. The disc shock, you didn't know how to recognize dead air. But you don't win by removing negatives, you win by giving people a reason to listen. And the radio attitude of winning by removing negatives is like opening a brand new restaurant in town and putting up a big billboard that says, we don't serve any of these foods, not it. Well, wait, why, you know? Because you mentioned Howard Stern. Howard does a lot of things that are not correctly done by the book. There will be some dead air, there are all kinds of things. But Howard's content is so compelling to his audience that they don't care. And that to me is certainly what a radio personality is. And it's also for your music station, a successful music station is one that after you've played a huge hit song, your audience stays with you. Because every song you play is somebody's favorite song, which is good news and bad news. That means if your music is well programmed, right now you're playing somebody's favorite song. Great. The bad news is you're playing somebody's favorite song and as soon as it's over, why should they keep listening to you? The one thing they know is they're not gonna hear that song next. So what does the music station do to give people a reason to keep listening? And here in LA this goes back, I guess to the 90s, if you remember K-Rock, when John Frost was their imaging director, there are a heck of a lot of people in Los Angeles who would say, you know, yeah, I listen to K-Rock, not so much really for the music or anything, but just for the funny little bits between the records. And that was John. And it wasn't, you know, using the call letters 12 times or getting as many sponsor mentions. And it was John giving people a reason to listen. So that's why I like to get people a reason to listen. Okay, we got one more question for you. Okay. From Fred North. He says, Dan, you're the ultimate of the gig economy world. Have you woven, how have you woven together all these things you do into a career? So a gig economy, I'm guessing what that means. It helps to be psychologically incapable of working for other people. Sounds like people in radio, yeah. No, it's very much me. There is something in psychology called polarity response. And all of us have it to a certain degree, but I have it to, what some people would say is an unhealthy degree. And that is a polarity response is if you have excessive polarity response and I say, hey, when we go on the air, make sure you don't mention the weather. First thing you're gonna do is mention the weather. And so the best way to get me not to do something is to tell me, the best way to get me to do it is to ask if I mind, you know, if it's okay with you. So I'm not cut out to work for other people but to answer your question more directly, for to whatever degree I've woven a career out of this, I see my career is doing projects. I do things that interest me that either aren't being done and I think should be done or that I think are being done as well as they could or that just seem like they'd be fun and I wanna see if I could do it. And I'll just go ahead and do it. And that's not much of a plan for anyone. You know, Fred, I don't know how that can help anyone. If there's anything to gloom from that, it's, I think one advantage I have over some people is I'm not afraid to fail. Like, you know, coming here talking to you guys, you know, maybe I'm doing a lousy job. You know, maybe afterwards, you guys are gonna say, oh man, can you believe it? He's just as bad as we were afraid he would be. But nobody dies, you know? And so for anyone who is looking to do something professionally or otherwise, don't let fear stop you. The absolute worst thing that can happen is it doesn't succeed. And pretty much only you and two people know about it. Nobody else cares about you. So, you know, I've had some successes that you've brought up and I probably have had some failures that you don't know about. I think it's a big problem for a lot of people. You did mention Chernobyl. And, you know, aside from that, most people don't know about my big flops, so. I think a lot of us were very eccentric and we think that people pay attention to everything that we do and everything that we do wrong and that they all care about what it is that we are doing and doing wrong and we get obsessed about it. And yet in the day, no, people aren't paying attention to you, they're paying attention to themselves more than you. So, you know. My epiphany came when I was in junior high school, which I missed the meeting where they changed it to middle school, but it was junior high school, I was 12 or 13, and I truly remember this lying in bed at night, obsessing about whatever I had done that day in school that was embarrassing and not wanting to go to school the next day because I knew that's all people were gonna talk about. As soon as they saw me, they were gonna ridicule me and I literally remember this, thinking, wait a second, I don't spend any time thinking about the dumb things other people did. I'll bet they're not thinking about me. And that was the freeing moment for me at least. So, whatever is you, Fred or anybody else out there, if there's something you want to do, then do it, you know, the absolute worst that happens is it won't succeed. Absolutely. Well, Dan, if somebody wants to get ahold of you and maybe take one of your classes, where can they go to find all the information about this plethora of courses you have? Well, let's see. Actually, if you go to danoday.com, d-a-n-o-d-a-y.com slash free hypen stuff, you'll find a bunch of free stuff. We've got the Keto class coming up later this year, if you're interested, if you're an audio book narrator who has recorded at least one audio book already and is on ACX and you'd like to be on our alert list, please send me an email and you could send it to promo, P-R-O-M-O at danoday.com. And, you know, let us know who you are and stuff so we know who we're communicating with. But, otherwise, I'm fairly easy to find, either danoday.com or I'm somewhere, you mentioned Facebook and I'm probably... You'll find them there. Can I tell you the one? I'll end with this. I got on Facebook fairly early due to some, you know, a friend of mine was a big expert in it. And I was so proud the day I got onto Facebook and I told my 13-year-old daughter at the time, say, hey, I'm on Facebook now. And, you know, I was just pecking some plots, you know, like how cool I am. And she immediately said, don't friend me. Yeah, we got that one, too. Danoday, thank you so much for joining us tonight and parting all this wisdom and a lot of golden nuggets in there that I think people will glean from this. And we look forward to talking to you again. It's always a pleasure, guys. Thank you for having me. It's been an honor. And anytime you need technical help, you know, George, I'm right here, okay? I got you on speed dial. Thanks, man. Okay, great. Thanks so much, guys. It's an honor to be on the show. Alrighty. All right, well, George and I'll be right back to wrap things up into a nice tight little ball right after this. I think voiceover career requires extra resources to keep moving ahead. Now there's one place where you can explore everything the voiceover industry has to offer. That place is voiceoverextra.com. Whether you're just exploring a voiceover career or a seasoned veteran ready to reach that next professional level, stay in touch with market trends, coaching, products and services while avoiding scams and other pitfalls. Voiceoverextra has hundreds of articles, free resources and training that will save you time and help you succeed. Learn from the most respected talents, coaches and industry insiders when you join the online sessions bringing you the most current information on topics like audio books, auditioning, casting, home studio setup and equipment, marketing, performance techniques and much more. It's time to hit your one stop daily resource for voiceover success. Sign up for a free subscription to newsletters and reports and get 14 bonus reports on how to ace the voiceover audition. It's all here at voiceoverextra.com. That's voiceoverXTRA.com. And we're back. We are back to say goodbye. Hello, I must be going. I'm glad to say I came to stay. I don't know where that goes. Anyway, first off, our greetings to Pat Sweeney who I hear is actually doing better. Oh that's great to know. He's eating and all that stuff. And so Pat, we love you. Keep on keeping on. Who's on next week? March 26th, Dr. Renee Gupta. That's right. Rena Gupta, I'm sorry. Dr. Rena Gupta from Osborne Head and Neck Sheet. She specializes in us voice guys. That's right. So that'll be really interesting. April 2nd, we taking a break. Yay. Because we need it. We need it. Bad. We've done like 10 weeks in a row or something. April 9th, Tim Friedlander from Sombox LA will be here. April 16th, Scott Brick will be here. Far out. Talking about audiobooks. Scott, he loves us and we love him. And it's always great when he's here. There's stuff. April 23rd, a mystery guest. Ooh. I don't know. April 30th, Kristen Lennox and daughter. Oh cool. Or daughters. I love what you do. We have a long daughter, a parent, child. Yeah. Guest, that's fun. And May 21st, Harry Dunn promos at the CW. Planning ahead. Our great producer, Catherine Curd, and has booked us ahead two months here. Some great stuff coming up. Boy, I'm looking forward to taking a week off. Me too. Who are our donors of the week? Oh, we've got Jorge Infante. Thank you, Jorge. I love that name. Jorge, it's the studio. Andrew Kaufman, Eric Aragoni, still donating pretty much every single episode, or he'd probably say every episode. Every episode. Phillips Apere. More names, more names. We've got our subscribing donor from Sarah Borges. Thank you, Sarah. Going back a little bit longer. Antland Productions. Uncle Roy. And Tracy H. Reynolds. Thank you for helping keep the show afloat. We're gonna put that money to good use pretty soon here. The studio needs a lot of TLC. And we're gonna get on that and try to get things running better, not only for us, but for our technical director, Susan, who has to deal with the studio in this video. We have to clean up her hair at the end of the show here. It's strewn about here. Let's see here. You've got a new podcast for geeky stuff. It's very geeky. We talk about mics and gear and the history of tube microphones and all this kind of fun stuff on the Pro Audio Suite. It's a, we've got a few of us on the show, a couple Aussies, Andrew Peters and Darren Robertson and then Source Elements co-founder, Robert Marshall, who's on the show with me as well. So it's four of us. Roomful of geeks for sure. We have our own podcast, of course. Maybe you're watching live tonight or if you watch the replay. But if say you're driving in your car, we do it as a podcast as well. So everything, all that great stuff that Dan O'Day said tonight, you can hear it all over again. And take your time and fast forward and go backwards and hear it again. Maybe you're listening to the podcast and you'd like to actually be here in person or watch it live at six o'clock every Monday night, unless we're not. But almost every Monday night, we're here at the studio, 6 p.m. Pacific time. If you wanna be here live in the studio, send us an email to the guys at vobs.tv. Say you wanna be in the audience and we'll pull up a sofa cushion for you. Yeah, that's a nice sofa. And maybe a doggal sit on your lap or something. I hope you like doing it. Thanks to Jorge and Fonte for letting us use his studio tonight in Portugal. And if you wanna have your booth, show us your booths. Send it to the guys at vobs.tv. And so it looks like we're in your studio. Let's see here. We need to thank our sponsors like Harlan Hogan's Voiceover Essentials. It's voiceover extra. Source Elements. V.O.Tagogo. VoiceActorWebSites.com. And J. Michael Collins, demos for providing an uninterrupted live stream in Bandwick. All right. Well, we'd like to thank Marcie for being patient with us and letting us be out here in the garage while she's making dinner. Katherine Curden, our producer for finding great guests like Dan O'Day. And Jack Daniel for chat room duty tonight and our floor producer technical director and... Tolerant. Very tolerant floor director, Susan Merlino. Jack Tagolio for the show notes and Lee Pinney, please come visit us simply for being Lee Pinney. Well, that's gonna do it for us tonight. You know, this is not an easy business which is why we bring you experts like Dan O'Day and all the other great people here to show you that anything's possible but you gotta do it yourself. Tell your friend who says, hey, I hear I have a good voice for voiceover. Where should I go to learn about the business? Tell them to come here. You'll find it here. That's gonna do it for us this week. I'm Dan Leonard. And I'm George Wynnum. And this is VoiceOver. Body Shop. Or VOBS. Have a great week, everybody. We'll see you next Monday night.