Don Elliot: President of Don Elliot Creative Services
by Jerry Vigil
"Your attention please. The next plane to London is now in the final boarding stage." That announcer bit, from the classic hit "Next Plane To London" by The Rose Garden, was voiced by Don Elliott using a Neumann mike hung into a stall in a men's room because the reverb unit at the studio wasn't working. When Don wasn't earning his income in the men's room, he was programming stations such as KBEA/KBEY (now KBEQ) in Kansas City and KBLA (now KROQ) in Burbank. Most notably, Don spearheaded the format change from elevator music to CHR at KIIS-AM in Los Angeles, skyrocketing the ratings in a few short months from zero's to double digits. The marriage to KIIS-FM followed shortly thereafter.
Other accomplishments on Don's resume' include credits as producer of the audio for the world's first interactive video disk for Paramount called The Entertainment Game. Don produced and syndicated Charlie Tuna's American Forces radio show from his 8-track studio in Hollywood, and most recently has released his first production library, "The Legend." Don's credentials go on and on and include and endless list of credits for national voice-over work. We spent several enjoyable hours on the phone with Don. Here are some highlights from that conversation.
R.A.P.: Give us your thoughts on the invasion of digital audio into radio production rooms.
Don: I think the acceptance of digital will come and the demand for it will be there more and more as digital begins to give the advantage of speed in production. I can't see any gain in having a device that's an energy and time-sink that keeps you from getting the job done competitively quicker. You've got to have that compromise of speed and quality together, and when digital is as fast to operate as everything else is, then it will be an advantage.
Right now, what's available and what I think will be more in use in the near future is the DAT. Of course, very soon we'll have the recordable CD, but as far as the advantages of digital in a radio production room, DAT offers some advantages besides the quality.
I love the idea of using a DAT for the basic purpose of laying voice tracks. It renumbers each take as you go, and you don't have to slate or tone each one -- for those of us that pretend to be organized enough as if we did that in the first place. The DAT will renumber each take when it senses the sound again, so if you want to go back and play take 17, when you're in the midst of trying to focus on everything else that you're doing, you don't have to stop your thought process or a conversation with someone else in the room to go back and count bleeps and pops and slate tones and numbers. You push 17 on the keypad and it cues up while you're doing something else. Forget how great the quality is, the device, for that purpose alone, is just incredible. It's also great for archiving and mastering. To be able to get a couple of hours on something that's smaller than a standard size audio cassette is amazing. I've been using one for a little over a year now for just about everything. The access speed is good and so are the storage capabilities. These are just byproducts that people mention, but I find them to be some of the chief advantages.
R.A.P.: What about samplers and sampling keyboards?
Don: The sampling keyboards certainly go beyond the ability to stutter an effect. You can sweeten things up and drop effects in. Once you've sat and played with a sampler and let your mind go wild with it, the ability to be able to slide things around in any key and even play harmony with itself is pretty wild.
R.A.P.: Tell us about the format change at KIIS-AM.
Don: I always thought it had a hell of a potential with the way the signal was at the time. I was very much into trying lots of apparent loudness tricks with a guy named Jack Williams at Pacific Recorders. He had done some early experimenting, as did Mike Dorrough, with the Dorrough 3-band loudness devices in the early days of K-Rock. So, using some of the groundwork that they laid, with some of the playing around that I had done with EQ and some sophisticated compression, I was able to realize the potential of what you could do in the market with a signal that was barely competitive to begin with. This came into play at KIIS-AM when I went over there as Program Director.
The format at the time was elevator music. They had this massive campaign with these giant lips all over billboards, but they had a point one in the ratings! My analysis of the thing was that they had a lot of awareness -- the whole town tuned in to check it out -- but nobody stayed. So, I figured while we've got their attention, let's change the format and do something a little more spectacular. It started out as a real pure CHR. In three months' time, we got 13's during the weekdays and a 26 share on the weekends. That was with KIIS-AM alone, before we acquired the FM. We put in some pretty sophisticated things for the loudness of the signal and the quality of the sound was spectacular.
R.A.P.: Give us a little of your radio philosophy.
Don: It sounds more like a Program Director's philosophy than a production guy's philosophy, but I don't think you can separate them. Radio has to be an escape. It has to be fun. I don't like, except in a newscast, these hairy important issues that divide the sexes and only add fuel to the fire. If I hear another thing in a disk jockey's show about feminism, abortion, gay rights, or civil rights when I want to turn on a radio for escape, I'm going to scream. I can get that out of a newscast on another station! I want to be entertained. I want to have fun. I want it to be plastic, and I want it to be bigger than life. I don't want to alienate at least half of the audience with every opinion, and it's going to happen one way or the other. The talk shows are doing it enough. A lot of the music will stand up for a cause, but not quite as blatantly as editorializing and soap-boxing to the point of leaving somebody hostile. Radio should instead entertain and leave the listener feeling like they were able to go to an old friend, a friend they can rely on to be there, always knowing that when they push that button it's going to be fun. I'm really adamant about that.
Broadcast properties everywhere are beginning to get so expensive that only larger corporations are able to be involved in ownership. With that comes the attendant legal staffs that are very, very conservative, and being creative in a promotion is a lot harder to do under those kinds of guidelines because an attorney that is doing his job is always going to say, conservatively speaking, "No," or "It wouldn't be prudent to do this." Pretty soon you are programming to negatives instead of positives.
When I've changed formats at stations before, I take the opposite approach for that same reason. Initially, I give the jocks zero freedom; but instead of giving them a list of all the things they can't do, we'll start out with a list of things they can do. It's stronger to program to positives than give somebody a list of negatives. Then, invite them to challenge the format within its own boundaries. Nudge it a little bit. One of the reasons that "boss" radio worked in its initial stages is because the jocks were always invited to challenge the format and expand it. Morgan and Steele are prime examples of that. They were able to do the bits in such a concise way. The Real Don Steele, with his one word one liners, could do more with one word than a lot of us could do in a 2 or 3 minute bit. The saying, "brevity is the soul of wit" is really true.
The same thing applies to production. The hardest promo I ever wrote was one that was short. The hardest thing I ever did with a new piece of equipment was not use the device or the effect all the way through the promo. Use it a little bit somewhere in the beginning, make them hungry for it again, and reprise it on the back end. If you use it all the way through, you sure don't want to hear it again for another 3 or 4 months. It's sort of like that great oldie, "September Morn" -- I sure love it, but I don't want to hear it again for at least a couple of months. If I hear it again tomorrow, I'll remember not to listen to that station again.
One of the things that I instilled at KIIS was the competitiveness of production, and this holds true for programming as well: To foresee what you would do across town if you were to get fired at the station you were at. What would you do if you were across town right now, to saw the legs off of the place that you're at. Because you know what the weaknesses of the station are, the philosophy is, "do it where you are now first because you know your own weaknesses." It's programming to your weaknesses. Just that fifteen seconds worth of philosophy carried around in your hip pocket is probably one of the most valuable things you'll ever have in the business.
My strongest philosophy about production is to start with the right delivery from the voice actor. I use that term because the jock really should be a voice actor when it comes to a commercial. You're acting instead of announcing, especially now in the 90's. Look at what's happening with advertising such as what we have with the Infinity: lots of water and whispered voice-over. It stops you in your tracks because it's different. Do something to get their attention without screaming. Gosh, if you've got a knock-em-dead concert spot, go ahead and scream it; but to make everything on the air sound like a concert spot loses the effectiveness. Just the same if every spot on the air was like the Infinity spot; nothing would stand out anymore.
Look at what's happening on television with the re-use of some of the old video clips that are black and white. It stands out. However, once a couple of dozen agencies have begun to do it, it's not going to be as effective.
On radio, a "natural" delivery on a commercial doesn't mean you should go the extreme of turning a mike on in a room and let people rap naturally while a tape is rolling. Natural, in my mind, is still a performance. A radio commercial has to be Kodachrome, not Ektachrome. Ektachrome would be real life; Kodachrome is going to be a little bit brighter, a little bit bigger than life. A television voice-over might be pulled back a little from that because you've got the picture. In fact, it's one of the directions you will go when you start doing TV commercials. They'll say, "Don't be so radio. Come back a little bit. Let the picture work. You're working too hard." The Kodachrome comparison is a good one because it's just a little brighter than life and it's acceptable, not to the point of being unbelievable, unreal, or plastic, but just a little bit bigger. You've got images you've got to conjure up in heads.
R.A.P.: Why, in many major markets, are there not many jocks doing national commercial voice-over work?
Don: On three separate occasions, I was supposed to go to LA to work for a guy named Bill Bell who had a company called Bell Sound. I was supposed to work on producing national commercials for him. He had 75% of all the national commercials in town sewn up at his studio. Every time he'd pitch me to go to work over there, I'd get involved with more money where I was or step up the ladder a little more in radio, and I never made the jump. In conjunction with that, he had a voice-over workshop, too. I always wanted to get into that but never did, and I could never get into commercials. I never figured out that in the LA community at least, and I think Chicago and New York too, if it's known to the ad agency people that you're involved in radio, suddenly a big curtain or wall seems to drop. I always wondered why I didn't hear disc jockeys on national commercials. It's kind of an unwritten law that if you're involved in radio, you don't let the agency people know about it because of the stigma that still exists today of the puker jock. It's hard to overcome. I think I was always a natural sounding jock because to make the jump wasn't too difficult for me.
R.A.P.: What's your basic approach to producing a promo?
Don: I built my early thoughts on doing promos from high school days. A promo has to be memorable. Well, how can you do that? The only thing I knew at the time was to build the promo like a hit record: with a hook in it so it gets your attention. It's informative, entertaining, and you don't mind hearing it another hundred times. In fact, every time you hear it, you're going to hear something else in it.
R.A.P.: What do you think of the advertising approach that embraces the goal of tugging at the listeners' emotions?
Don: They're going a depth further now. Look at the Oriental philosophy with the newer cars. They're programming to lifestyles. In other words, it's a little more than creature comforts; it's the esthetics and the pleasure of it. Years ago, the Japanese would do things that would not only be functional, but would entertain as well. Now that they have enough of the market by just being competitive, they're focusing on something that goes deeper with the American public; that is the gratification angle, the pleasure part, the feelings. I think it was a smart agency that got involved with the Nissan people to reflect this approach with the Infinity campaign, or with the Mazda "It Just Feels Right" campaign. Toyota's "I Love What You Do For Me" doesn't say anything about the car, but selling that slogan and that concept is very strong.
R.A.P.: What makes a promo, with an emotionally charged winner, so effective -- like the girl almost in tears of joy because she just won $20,000?
Don: When we do this kind of promo, we overcome an objection. The feeling of the general public is, "Nobody really wins these radio contests; they're all rigged." By having the listener on the air, you have a testimonial that overcomes that perception. The idea of winning is much more believable.
We're talking about perceptions and fighting perceptions. There's a lot of talk about perceptions right now. You're hearing a lot about perceptions being reality -- inside-out marketing, outside-in marketing, and so on. I see it in promos now. There are a couple of people in town using this technique. They may be smart enough to be planning and doing it on the level of this philosophy, or they may just have enough street sense to do it by instinct. I'm talking about finding out what the perceived weaknesses of the competition are, and then simply reinforcing them. When I first heard this happening in the market, I thought, "Jeez, they're really being negative on the air. I don't like that." But then I realized that they were dealing with perceptions and reinforcing them. I said, "It's going to work," and sure enough, it did. I'm describing some of Shannon's playing.
R.A.P.: What weaknesses should one pick on?
Don: The ones that have been heavily researched and have people coming back again and again saying, "I don't like this about that station because they do too much of this or too little of that. The jocks talk too much, or so and so talks too much about the car he drives," or whatever. If there is a particular trait that a jock is known for, the competition can have fun with it.
R.A.P.: What are some things your extensive voice-over work has taught you?
Don: There's a little thing you can do when reading laundry lists in a piece of copy. We learn things in patterns, usually in threes. If you give things in a laundry list in groups of threes, it's easier to handle the interpretation of it. "We've got red cars, and blue cars, and black cars," (pause) "and orange cars, and pink cars, and green cars." If you read them in groups of fives, the mind can't handle it. For some reason, we've learned things in threes. I don't know what that goes back to, but it's deeply rooted and it works.
Another thing: Many times you'll get a piece of copy that has a tired, old expression or figure of speech. It's very hard to read those phrases well, but you can if you read it as though you're reading it for the first time in your life, like you've never heard it before. Some examples are: "fresh and new!" or "a penny saved is a penny earned;" anything so trite you can hardly stand to look at it. Read it like you've never seen it before.
There's a voice exercise that most people don't know about. Read a piece of copy and cry all the way through it, then read this piece of copy and laugh all the way through it, then read it straight. It's unbelievable what you'll be able to do with a piece of copy after you've done it the other ways first as a warmup. It stretches your delivery. It makes you hit words you never saw before. When you practice this, read the copy straight first and record it. Then go through it laughing, crying, then do a second straight read. Then compare that second straight read with the first one. It opens your eyes. It makes you think about the content of what you're saying rather than what your voice sounds like.
One of the most dramatic things you can do to effect your delivery is to stand up, take your headphones off, and read a piece of copy. Then put them back on, sit down, and read the copy again. It helps you shake that thing of listening to yourself. Granted, you have to wear the cans for a lot of stuff, but a lot of us have gotten so grooved into the idea of having to wear cans that you become addicted to it. The hardest thing I ever did was get rid of the headphones. I couldn't get in front of a mike unless I was sitting down at an 80 degree angle, body folded with one hand behind an ear, headphones cranked to the hilt, and squeezed up to a desk. If you asked me to stand up and say something into a mike without headphones, I'd say, "What? I've gotta go find my cans!" The day I get rid of this addiction was the day I started getting national spots.
R.A.P.: Your promo production library, "THE LEGEND," is your first. How did it come about?
Don: I had been wanting to do this library for ten years before I actually did it. I kept a list of things I always needed in the production room but could never find, thinking, "Someday, I'm going to put something together with one of the Dallas guys." Finally, New Year's of last year, I said, "Shoot! I'm just going to do this!"
I was partners with one of the Dallas guys, and I went to him and said, "Look, I've got an idea for a production library FOR promo people BY promo people. I know what's needed because I've been in the trenches all this time, and you guys have the musicians and know how to put it together. True, I've got 'em out here too, but I'd like to come to Dallas and get it all done." They said, "Well, send us a dozen or so idea tracks. Send us your proposed table of contents, some samples of what you've got, and let us hear the plan." I sent the package to them and they said, "This is great, but you're doing so well with it, what do you need us for? Besides, we don't want to compete with what we're selling."
R.A.P.: Who was this in Dallas?
Don: It was Toby Arnold, and Toby thought that his partner would think that it would dilute what they were doing, which really wasn't true because it's a commercial library. So, I put the thing together myself with the help of a lot of Hollywood people. I had to do a lot of noodling around with MIDI stuff, and I took it to musicians that I worked with. I played them samples of promos to show them how things were going to be used and just stayed very focused on it. Everything was all recorded within that year, so it was all fresh and digitally recorded -- no old stuff. We released the library at the NAB in April. Scott Shannon bought the first one for Pirate. Tom Rounds, at Radio Express, saw some press on it and we talked about him representing me internationally to sell it to the rest of the world. I signed him on to handle that part of it. We're planning a German sales trip this year as well as a trip to Australia. We're also going to do some programming seminars in Australia this year.
R.A.P.: How about a few promotion ideas to pass on to some of the programmers and promotions people reading this?
Don: There is a lot of stuff that has worked so well over the years that I wouldn't be afraid to use again right now. You just take some of these things and expand on them. I was in Chuck Blore's office a year ago and he was down in the dumps. I said, "What's troubling you?" He said, "There aren't any new ideas; I keep running out of ideas." I said, "Wasn't it you that said there aren't any new ideas, you just keep recycling the old ones and put a fresh ribbon on them?" He said, "Yea, yea, but it's really hard to keep comin' up with new stuff." It is, but I think what he was saying, and he's smart enough know this, is what we were talking about a moment ago. You've got to understand human nature and lifestyles and then design things to that. Then you go one level deeper into the emotion or the perception part of it. Everybody's talking about perceptions. They're understanding it, but they don't know how to do it. It's stuff that we've been doing at gut level for years.
Dave McNamee is one of the biggest advocates, if not Scott Shannon, of tempering your research with what you know is right anyway. The critics of that say, "Oh, you're just doing research to justify what you're going to do anyway" because they don't understand. People that react that way, with what is thought to be just gut level programming, have the experience to understand something that I never see in print, and that's human nature. It really works, and radio is so direct with people.
Getting back to ideas we were talking about recycling... One of the great things we used to do was announce the locations of the radar traps in the city. Everybody does traffic reports, but nobody gives radar locations, right? And people don't believe this, but police departments will cooperate with you and give the locations to you because the idea is visible enforcement. Suppose we had the death penalty and nobody knew about it. What kind of deterrent is that? The audience doesn't realize this. They think, "Gosh, the station's really in on something. They're doing a spy trip on the fuzz!" Sometimes you get in areas where police departments don't appreciate it, so instead, you get spotters to call in. Then you can turn that into a promotion itself -- "We'll give you a prize for the radar tip of the day." It's that attitude of the fun, wild and crazy radio station, like they're getting away with something.
Another oldie is the plain old kick of making people think the disc jockey was in trouble for having done something, hence the promotion of, "We're going to throw this guy off the air for what he said." We were doing that in Kansas City in the 60's. Jay Thomas did it most recently with the "We apologize for what Jay Thomas said" promotion. That was our sign-on promotion with Dees: "We apologize for what Rick Dees said this morning." In fact, we got caught on that one about a month later after all the trades had fallen for it. Some sharpie with the LA Times checked with the TV stations and found that we had bought time for the apology a week before the thing had happened on the air. They nailed us on that one, but it's a cute promotion. It's also one of the oldest ones in the book, but it's still a good one if it hasn't been done in a market.
Here's an idea for stations really fighting in the foxholes without any ratings or clients. If you want to get an advertiser with something other than "spec selling," pull up in front of his furniture store with your news cruiser and mention that the first fifty people to come in will get a free record album or whatever. When the guy is deluged with people, you say, "OK, if we don't have any ratings, what's this response? Obviously the ratings are pretty far behind."
Here's another one: There's always a station in town that's got something different on the air than everybody else to set 'em aside. For example, there's probably a station in every market that uses reverb on their signal. Air check some of their spots and send them to the agencies. "This is what your spot sounds like on WXXX." Also send them an aircheck of what it sounds like on your air, or, if they're not advertising with you, secure a dub of the unprocessed spot and put it back to back with the other one on the tape for A/B comparison. Point out that they're not going to lose the quality they intended if they advertise with you. That's really dirty, but it sure works. I've seen many schedules get pulled for things like that.
Just careful monitoring of other stations will net you things like mispronunciations in recorded tags. When you bring these things up to the agency, they might make the other station run makegoods, or it might get you the account -- more dirty stuff.
R.A.P: How about a few words on editing with the old razor blade?
Don: I try to get people that I'm training to use scissors for their editing instead of the splicing blocks and blades. When you're splicing with scissors from sounds that you're coming out of sounds you're going to, you begin to develop a feel for how wide or how narrow or how long the splice needs to be to make it fit just right. When you're using a block, it always has to be the same angle, and when you're going at a faster speed, you don't need so much of an angle. Once you make your edit marks, you just line up the marks and cut them at the same time.
As far as tape speed when editing, I started doing things at 30ips once we got the machines and wow, what a difference. It sure eats tape up in a hurry, but what a godsend 30 is. If you've never experienced it before, you've got to try it. Not only is it great for editing, but you've got so much more headroom. It lets you do things that are a lot punchier. If you like to make transitions that have explosions in them, you've got a lot more headroom to accommodate that explosion.
R.A.P.: Give us a few of your thoughts on equalization and how to use it.
Don: With a little bit of experience you can learn where different instruments and vocal ranges fall within the audio spectrum, so you will know what areas to boost. The Aphex Exciter is a wonderful device because it doesn't add any tape hiss. You can bring up the high end on things without introducing the hiss that comes with high end boost. If you use too much of it though, it's awful, just like any effect.
One of the worst things you can do is buy a ninety-five dollar microphone and spend a thousand dollars on equalizers to try and make the mike sound better, when you could have bought a good stock mike in the first place for the same money. Spend more money on the mike and don't dork around with the EQ. Don't buy a cheap mike and put band aids on it.
On the air, one of the worst things I've heard is a jock mike with EQ set with a boost on the bottom end, in the wrong place. When you're listening to someone speaking dry, with nothing under them, the effect becomes very pronounced and really irritating. When someone is speaking in a normal tone and the voice drops in pitch, the volume also goes down somewhat as the pitch gets lower. That's natural. When it's over EQ'ed in the bottom end, instead of dropping in pitch and level at the same time as it drops into that slot, all of a sudden it boosts as much as 5 or 10 db!
R.A.P.: Any parting thoughts for our readers?
Don: A lot of guys will move from a station because the other station has better equipment. A lot of guys think this way: "Gosh, I'd like to work there because they've got this and this and that and that..." Look to your own talents first because that is going to be the security that you can take with you. If you've got some problems, like an ego problem or something, you're going to take that with you, too.
You can do more wild production with just your own voice in a basic studio. Get the basics of a good delivery down; get a good voice track, first. Otherwise, you're building production on a sandy foundation -- a lot of effects with no lead singer.
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Our thanks to Don for this month's interview. We only wish we had the space to share some of the amazing, unbelievable, and hilarious "war stories" he had to share. Maybe we'll just have to find some space in a future issue to pass these stories along. Regarding Don's work, look for some great stuff on this month's Cassette.