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January 2002 CBI Newsletter

Hope all of you had a restful holiday and your stations were on the air for all of the hours you wanted them to be. Was there a movie about 2002?

1) Reminder for all stations that quarterly Issue/Programs list for October-December 2001 quarter must be in your Public File by January 10th.

2) Mailing should arrive at your stations by early February with addition categories for the fall CBI Awards. Deadlines and details will be contained from Awards Coordinator Chuck Bailey at Marshall University (if he's recovered from that football game last month).

3) If you haven't already done so, make your arrangements today for the CMA Regional conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City Match 14-16, 2002. CBI will be providing many sessions dealing with broadcast specific issues along with those that cross over with journalism issues. Great place to take in some professional station tours as well and make some job contacts.

4) Budget process is fast approaching for many stations for the 2002-03 academic year, so be sure to budget for the CMC/CBI/ACP fall National Convention in Orlando. Information on both conferences is available on the CBI web site at www.collegbroadcasters.org.

5) If you haven't already done so, please visit the website, put a link on your station site and sign on to support the position paper on streaming fees and the DMCA issue put together by Vice-Chair Will Robodee.

6) Production Tips:

-make sure you are writing for the audience and not for yourself. "Check out our web site" means absolutely nothing to the listener. Giving the specific web site address does.

-don't allow promos that trash other programming on your own station. Saying "are you tired of all that holiday music" in a promo if your station plays it doesn't make the station sound very together.

-remember that to us it's a promo, but to a listener it's an interruption. The average listener thinks promos and commercials/underwriting are the same thing. Make your promos exciting and well produced.

-pick one thing you want the listener to remember from each promo. Try to start and end with that important thing. Everything in the middle should be supportive of the important concept.

-set a policy in your production room that every person must calibrate the record levels on all equipment before recording. It sounds horrible when you have several production elements playing back-to-back with different levels because someone adjusted the record level.

-everything from the listener perspective. Instead of "we have a pair of tickets to give away..." use something like "how would you like to go to..."

-music should be supportive but not drown out the message. Again, what do you want the listener to take away---the song bed or the information in the promo?

-work on not sounding like you're reading. Try to sound more like your having a conversation with the listener rather than reading to them.

-if you're really ahead of the game, have four promos for a specific event. One for 2 weeks before, one that says "this (day of week)", one that says "tomorrow" and one that says "today". You'll really sound on top of things assuming the wrong promo doesn't run on the wrong day.

Warren Kozireski
Chair-CBI