Rick Allen, Director of Creative Production, WQHT-FM, New York
by Jerry Vigil
Unfortunately, there are many stations yet to grasp the value of a good Production Department and the talent in it. On the other hand, there are those that have. These are the stations with superior ratings. These are the stations good enough to compete in the majors. These are the stations owned by organizations like Emmis Broadcasting.
This month, Radio And Production takes a look at production in our country's number one market and the man qualified to be there. We selected Emmis Broadcasting's WQHT-FM in New York. The virtuoso behind the console and heading up the department is Rick Allen.
R.A.P. Let's get your background, Rick.
Rick: I got into radio when I was 15. I was on the air from 4am til noon on Sunday mornings at a small station in Danville, just outside of Indianapolis. I rolled tapes for the religious shows and did a couple of hours on the air. I worked my way up to a couple of weekend shifts, and used to love to hang around in the production studio. For some reason that always clicked. While I was doing that, I got an internship at the local top 40 station, which at the time was WIFE in Indianapolis. I basically just hung around and paid attention. I was young enough that the guys in production never really saw me as a threat to their job, which was real lucky for me because they taught me a lot of the tricks that take a long time to learn if nobody shows them to you. I did this through high school.
When I graduated, I went down to Indiana University and worked for a year at the local college station, and then got a job as the weekender at WTTS-AM in Bloomington. I worked weekends for about 6 to 8 months and hung around their production studio, doing promos on my own whenever I could. I would say, "Hey, if you wanna use them, here." All of a sudden they decided to create a full-time Production Director position. So for 4 years, while I was going to school, I did all the production for WTTS and WGTC, which was their FM station. These guys let me go to school full time and work full time. So if I had a 2 o'clock class, I could take off and come back. These people were wonderful.
While I was there, I really started listening to jingle demos. One of the jingle companies we used was TM. A guy named Ken Justis used to put together all of TM's jingle demos. If I've had a mentor, it's been Ken Justis. He was a VP at TM, and in my mind a creative genius. I used to call and talk to him often. I'd send tapes and say, "I'm not good, I'm not ready yet, but what am I doing right, what am I doing wrong?" I stayed in contact with him for over 3 years and when I graduated, it turned out there was an opening at TM. I went down there as a producer right out of college. The scary thing was, this was one of my goals for the end of my career; I wanted to be a producer for TM. Then there I was at TM and only 21. I was with them for a year and a half and wrote and produced all their jingle demos while I was there.
R.A.P. Why did you leave TM?
Rick: A couple of things; An illness in the family called my attention to Indianapolis, and Earmark Productions had been talking with me. Earmark was a small jingle company in Indy that produced jingles for advertisers. They talked to me about a sales job. After being told a million times, "sales is where the money is", and with the family needing me in Indy, I took the job with Earmark Productions in sales. I was with them for 2 years.
During that time something interesting happened, the development of MIDI. These guys were really young and hip and into that. I learned a lot just hanging around. That was my first experience with the computerization of synthesizers.
I was making a lot of money, but I was finding that sales was missing my talents. There was a local radio station, WIBC, that had an opening in production. I put together a tape and sent it over there. They called me, and we went back and forth for about three months before they hired me. A funny story there is that one of the reasons the PD didn't want to hire me was because he didn't believe the stuff on my tape was really mine. He'd say, "Now you promise this is you?" I'd say, "Yeah!" and he'd say, "Well, we're going to find out if it isn't, because we're gonna put you to the test." and I'd say, "Fine." That was a neat experience, somebody liking my stuff enough, to not believe I did it.
While I was there, I got into sampling. I went out and bought a really inexpensive sampler and started doing some sweepers and ID's. I put together a little package, and the guys at TM heard it and asked if I was interested in letting them market it for me. That was the creation of TM's DVI package, or the Digital Voice Identification package. That was a real turning point for me. All of a sudden, KIIS-FM in L.A. bought my work and we cleared some 50 stations with the package.
R.A.P. Was your voice on this package?
Rick: No. We used a lot of different voices. I don't have a real killer radio voice. I can do a lot of situational stuff, but not the real announcer stuff. That was one of the questions with WIBC, whether they should hire me or hire a voice guy. My philosophy was: Do you want to hire a big deep voice and add one more voice to your staff, or do you want to hire me, who can come in and make the 5 or 6 voices you've got, that much better? Do you want to add 5 great voices to your radio station or just one? That was my argument, and they really appreciated it once I got in there, turned some of those guys around, and made them sound very good on the promos and stuff.
R.A.P. So was it off to New York and WQHT from there?
Rick: Right, and the funny story there is that Rick Cummings, the Vice-President of Emmis, was in Indianapolis, listening to my work on WIBC; and Joel Salkowitz, the PD of WQHT at the time, had bought the DVI package from TM for WQHT. So he thought I was in Dallas. When Joel said, "Who should we hire for a production guy?" Rick (Cummings) said, "Well, I know this guy in Indy," and Joel said, "I know this guy in Dallas. Let's get together and talk about them." Obviously, it turned out to be the same person! So they gave me a call and asked me if I wanted to come to New York. That was about 2 years ago.
I came out here and continued to do a lot of free lance stuff through TM. Because of the exposure I was getting, a lot of people started coming to me directly (for sweepers and ID's).
R.A.P. Again, this was just for your production only, not your voice, right?
Rick: Right. I have a pool of about 5 or 6 guys around the country that I use, or I'll use whatever voice they want to send me. I add the effects, the sampling, and things like that.
R.A.P. Describe the main production studio at WQHT.
Rick: We're running with a Trident board, which is a recording studio board. It's a full 24-track board: 28 inputs and 24 outputs, full patch panel, and 8 effects sends. We were 8-track, but we just upgraded to 200 tracks with the NED (Cont. next page)
Synclavier Direct-to-Disk system. It's a mutha! We got it about 3 months ago.
R.A.P. How has the transition from analog to digital gone?
Rick: For the last month and a half, I haven't turned on an analog multi-track tape deck at all.
R.A.P. Are you a musician?
Rick: A little bit, but not much. I call myself a "step musician" because I'm step programming on sequencers. I used to play the trumpet in high school, so I can play one note at a time, read music, and come up with a composition; but I'd starve as a musician.
R.A.P. Are you the only one using the Direct-To-Disk system?
Rick: Yes. We've got two production studios. The studio I'm describing, I have a key to, and that's it.
R.A.P. What else is in the studio?
Rick: We've got a couple of DBX-165 compressors, the old 949 Harmonizer, the Eventide 2016, a rack of the DBX 900 series, which are the noise gates and compressors, a couple of Technics turntables, a couple of Studer 2-tracks, and an SPX-90. I've got a couple of samplers that I own. One of them is a Prophet 2002 I keep here at work, and I also have the Prophet 2000 at home. That way I can do a lot of swapping between them.
R.A.P. What about the other studio?
Rick: The other production studio is a 4-track room, but it's designed to be an auxiliary on-air studio also. It's got the Auditronics board that is the same as the ones in the on-air studio. The toughest thing these days is designing a production studio that can work as a second air studio, without tying up the hands of the production guy by making it so simple that it can't do what you need it to do. Our second studio is a good compromise there. It's got the Studer 4-track, a couple of Studer 2-tracks, 2 cart machines, 2 turntables, etc.
R.A.P. How many people are helping you out with the day to day stuff?
Rick: I've got one full-time assistant and a part-timer. It's basically set up so that I deal with the sweepers, the ID's, the promos, and the presentations. Bill Schultz, my assistant, does a great job on commercials, and then he's got a guy that comes in 4 nights a week, 4 hours a night just to do dubs, clean up work, labeling, and things like that.
R.A.P. Who handles the copywriting?
Rick: There is no official copywriter on staff. A lot of it comes from agencies or the salespeople. We definitely help out and give ideas, but we don't do a lot of copywriting here. On the promos, I do all of that with the help of the PD. We usually sit down, go over ideas, and knock them out together; or I'll do them over a weekend.
R.A.P. Any deadlines on commercials?
Rick: We just released a new handbook! Copy should be in 24 hours in advance of the flight. I don't want to lose business for the radio station, so if it's possible to get it done, we'll get it done. The other day there was a dub, probably $2000 worth of business, that came in literally 5 minutes before the flight. Well, for me to turn down $2000 worth of business because it came in past a deadline and I didn't have a minute to dub a spot, is a little crazy. Those exceptions are always going to happen. I have a Station Manager and a General Sales Manager who are great at doing the balancing act between sales and programming. There isn't a fight here, which is nice.
R.A.P. You've got a studio at home. Tell us about it.
Rick: I've got a lot of old analog synthesizer gear. The earlier work I did was before the digital synths came out, so I still have a lot of that stuff. Over the past 5 years, I've spent $30,000 on gear. Most of the synthesizer gear I'm buying these days are the rack mount synths without a keyboard, because I use the Prophet 2000 as my master keyboard. I run everything else off of MIDI. I'm very, very into MIDI at home. I use one computer program and the Roland MC-500, a real easy, dedicated sequencer to use. For multi-track, I'm using the Fostex 8-track. There are 2 SPX-90's and the Digitech 128.
R.A.P. How did you acquire the studio?
Rick: Many little tiny purchases. Initially, I took out a $5000 home equity loan when I was back in Indy, and put together a little quickie studio. I'm very glad I did that. It has paid off.
R.A.P. You're one of the few free-lancers who is selling his production only, not your voice, and currently do work for some 50 stations. What marketing was involved here?
Rick: TM originally marketed it pretty heavily with cassettes and direct mail. Personally, I'm at the point now where a lot of it is just word of mouth through a lot of consultants, people who recommend me, and people who have used me before. I'm in a situation now where a lot of stations I originally got on my own, are coming back for additional packages. So a lot of my time is spent just servicing the people I've got.
R.A.P. What's your basic plan of attack when producing a sweeper or ID?
Rick: First, I'll look at the line itself, the line of copy, and many times I'll get an idea of what I'm going to do sampling-wise just by looking at it. I try to visualize the copy and see what kind of audio would go with it. Then I look for impact words, words that need to be emphasized. With those, I'll filter them, repeat them, or add some type of digital effect to them to make them stand out.
R.A.P. What do you do with a voice track for an ID that doesn't need to be sampled. Do you process it in any special way before going to multi-track?
Rick: I'll still sample it. Most of the things that I do nowadays will go directly to the 2-track. I won't even do any multi-track work. That's what I use the MIDI for. It's much cleaner that way.
R.A.P. So the voice tracks and the synthesizer zaps and effects are all triggered by MIDI and dumped right to 2-track?
Rick: Right.
R.A.P. The fact that Emmis will build you a $350,000 studio says a lot about them. Tell us a bit more about the owners.
Rick: I'm blown away by Emmis. They're very programming and production oriented. They really want their stations to sound well produced. They know that a sweeper is going to be on the air just as much as a disc-jockey, so sweepers have to be good, fresh, and well produced.
They're willing to put the energy and the money into that. They're also good about keeping the production people involved with what's going on. We have marketing meetings about every Monday where we discuss the promotions and things like that. I don't know of many stations where the production guy is called in to those meetings to discuss promotions and the direction the station is headed in. I go out to dinner with the PD and the GM quite a bit, and we sit down and talk. They're definitely open to having as much input from as many people as they can. I'm real impressed with that, I really am.
R.A.P. Any advice for other prodo guys?
Rick: Don't forget the importance of the spots. A lot of guys will say, "well if I was doing promos only, I could get more excited...". I've heard some guys do some incredibly good production on spots, and a lot of the time, that is where their time is tied up. If they can be creative in that outlet, when they get to a position which is promos only, they're going to be that much better. There's a lot of time spent on a radio station airing spots, and if they can be good, and keep the people listening, that's pretty good programming justification to make sure you've got somebody good in that position. It can be a good way to be appreciated by management, by putting a lot of work into commercials, even though it may not be the type of thing you want to do right now. It'll pay off down the road.
Also, make yourself a part of the team. Make an effort to ask if you can be in on some of the meetings and that sort of thing. Generate some ideas, not just for production, but for all areas of the station.
And listen to everything you can get your hands on. I learned a lot of things from listening to old jingle demos. Even listen to TV commercials for ideas.
In the "don't" department, the one thing that kind of upsets me is the nonchalant attitude in production of, "well, here's a demo tape from a production company, nobody will mind if I take this little section out here and use it and not pay for it." I think that really cheapens the whole bunch of us.
The only other thing is to try and put out an overall positive attitude. I think it works because we all try to stay friends around here, and I don't think I've ever had a problem with the sales department that couldn't be solved by sitting down and talking about it. I've been in situations where people are shouting back and forth and nothing gets done, but I think if you just make sure they know you're not trying to steal money from their pockets, since they get paid on commissions, things can be worked out.
R.A.P. What's in the future for Rick Allen?
Rick: An interesting question, because I've always had the drive to get to the next rung. Free lance has satisfied a lot of my urge of this "what do I do next" thing. There isn't the next market, as far as size goes, and New York is a constant challenge. I haven't even come close to being bored in this market after 2 years.
I would enjoy working with a company like Emmis. I see them as progressive enough that they may take production to a centralized location for the chain, or they may want to start a production company, or I could see myself starting my own production company. I don't know, but right now, I feel really comfortable saying this is where I want to be for a while. The neat thing is, at most stations you have to move on to grow; I'm lucky to be with Emmis and with WQHT, a station and a company that give me every opportunity to try to keep up with them! I don't see getting tired of doing what I'm doing here for a while. Call me back in 5 years and see what I'm doing.
We'll call Rick back alright, and it'll probably be sooner than 5 years from now. We are also talking with him about the possibility of getting him to jot down a few notes on directing talent--a talent of Rick's he is well known for. Look for something in a future issue!
Suggestions for subjects of the R.A.P. Interview are welcome. Drop us a line, tell us who you have in mind, why you'd like us to interview this person, and how to get hold of him or her.