George Robinson, Creative Director, WZGC-FM/Z93, Atlanta, Georgia
More and more stations are finding the value of separating their "programming" production personnel from their "commercial" production personnel. Many stations call this "programming" producer the Creative Director, or Creative Services Director. Whatever the title, the position is usually filled by an individual whose creative talents - as a writer, producer, and voice talent -- are so strong that it becomes obvious to management that the person should be spending the majority of their time on the station's biggest client...the station itself. Join us for a visit with George Robinson, Creative Director for Atlanta's classic rock king, Z93/WZGC-FM. George has more than one RAP Award to his name, and chances are he'll be tough competition this year, too!
R.A.P.: When did it all start for you, and how did you wind up at WZGC?
George: Well, I started when I was pretty young. My dad was a private investigator, and he had some surveillance gear -- tape recorders and what have you -- and he would let me play with them. So, I would gather a few of my friends, and we would turn on record players in the background to set the ambiance. Then we would take some glasses or whatever we could think of to create sound effects, and we would do these little presentations to amuse ourselves.
Years later, when I was in the service, I was stationed in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and played in a band during the evening. After I finished a solo set, this guy walked up to me and said, "Hey, you've got a pretty nice voice when you're talking between your songs." I didn't really know quite how to take that, but I guess he meant it as a compliment. He asked if I wanted to do a radio show at the American Forces radio station. I said, "Yeah, that would be fun! I'd love to do it!" So I did.
When I got out of the service, I got my first job at a commercial station in Stark, Florida where about half my audience consisted of dairy cows and the other half consisted of Stark inmates at the Stark penitentiary. That was quite an interesting start, I suppose. After that I went to Green Coast Springs to a little three thousand watt rock station called 92K. From there I went to one of the last city-owned stations in the country, WJAX in Jacksonville. I worked in Jacksonville for about ten years spending my last five at Rock 105, WFYV where I did some air work and was Production Director. I left Rock 105 about five years ago when I had the opportunity to come up here as a Production Director. After two and a half years I was moved into the Creative Director position, so my main thrust, although I do write and produce commercials, is on-air creative.
I'm not only the Creative Director for WZGC, but I'm also a booth announcer for TBS. I also have a couple of other TV and radio stations that I do stuff for out of my studio at home.
R.A.P.: How did the TBS deal come about?
George: Someone heard a promo that I produced on Z93 and they said they thought I had a similar delivery to this guy they were using, Bill St. James. I didn't really see that, but that's what they thought, so they wanted me to give them a demo for TNT. I didn't hear anything from anybody, then TBS called and asked me to come and do some reads. I did, and I didn't hear from them for a while. Then I went back and did some more, and they offered me a position to be their booth announcer. It's myself, along with another guy, John Young, who have been their voices since creation.
R.A.P.: What shift do you do for TBS?
George: I go in around three o'clock. From three to four I read the liners -- they're called VOCs, voice-over credits. Then I do a lot of promos for shows and movies they have coming up. They just finished recycling the James Bond movies and I played a couple of character parts for those promos. I also do a lot of stuff with World Championship Wrestling. I have a character voice that I use for them that's a real grizzled, raspy, growly kind of...well, wrestling voice.
R.A.P.: You mentioned a home studio. Tell us about it.
George: The station lets me produce a lot of their stuff from home because the home studio is pretty well equipped with some digital gear, as well as some analog gear. Originally, I started putting this studio together as an insurance policy because, you know, radio is somewhat an iffy game. You don't know; someday you may get a new Program Director, and he may want a different sound. I didn't want to miss a beat. I wanted to continue on if that day ever came. So, I've amassed quite a production studio.
I have a Tascam mixing console, the M3500, and the Tascam CD-601 CD player, along with a couple of Panasonic SV37 DAT machines. I've got the H3000S Eventide Harmonizer, an Alesis QuadraVerb, and a drum machine by Alesis. A recent purchase is a DA-88 digital 8-track from Tascam. I found your article on it pretty favorable [RAP Test Drive, December 1993]. I also have an Ensoniq keyboard and some guitars and what have you.
R.A.P.: Do you ever get a chance to use the musical instruments in the station's production?
George: Yes. We had a series of promos that we produced a while back to help push the deep cuts we'd play. The promo opened up in a studio situation where you could hear the engineer in the talk-back microphone saying, "Okay, this is Aqualung mix 93, guitars up a third, we're rolling." Then I would play an Aqualung kind of rip-off. I wanted it to sound enough like Aqualung where it was identifiable, but not too much like it so people would think, "Oh, you just lifted it from the record." Then, of course, the engineer cuts in and says, "No, no, we're not going to put that one on the album, we're going to put a different one." Then the promo goes into selling the deep cuts and let's you know the lesser known songs we feature on our "ZD Side." We used that approach with Eric Clapton, Aqualung, the Beatles.... It was a nice little campaign that we did for a while. This is the kind of production I do at home for Z93 because it would be kind of tough to lug in all the equipment to the radio station to do it. We do have some good equipment at the station; don't get me wrong. But, for some of the more intricate stuff, I kind of like working at home.
R.A.P.: How many production rooms are there at the station and what's in them?
George: There are two rooms. We have an analog 8-track room, and then we have the digital room where we have the ProTools system. There are a couple of analog 2-track machines in the digital room as well as some cart machines and two DAT machines. In the analog room we have a nice 8-track, a one-inch Otari 8-track. We also have a Harrison board and your standard radio station sound effects processing gear, the Yamaha SPX-90. There's also one DAT machine as well as two 2-track machines.
I have such a production load on me during the day, I have had a hard time trying to get in to learn to use the ProTools machine to the point where I feel comfortable using it day in and day out. So, I kind of stay in the analog domain during the day at the radio station, although I do know how to use the machine on simpler things like voice-over music with effects. I'll also use it occasionally for editing. I'm so used to the old school of analog, that I just feel more comfortable working with that. However, I've really come to enjoy the clean sound of digital recording with my DA-88, so there will probably be some changes in my attitude about working with digital. In fact, I'll probably pick up the Roland box, the DM-80 at the end of '94.
R.A.P.: For the station, or for yourself?
George: Probably for myself. I have a tendency of getting a lot of gear and sound effects for myself because sometimes it's really tough to get that kind of stuff budgeted in at the station. We've just been taken over by a new company, and I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem with the company we're owned by now. But in the past, I just wanted the production to excel, and I didn't want to wait until it was budgeted in. So, I went ahead and bought the stuff myself because I could keep it and use it wherever I went.
R.A.P.: Back to the ProTools system for a minute. How long has the system been at the station?
George: It has been at the station for only about six months.
R.A.P.: Is there anybody else at the station using the system?
George: Yeah. We have another production guy who works in the evening. His name is Roger King, and he uses it from time to time. But he's kind of like me. When we first got the machine, we thought, "All right! This is it!" And we were both grabbing at each other to get through the door to get at the unit first. Then once we both got in there.... Well, we had someone from DigiDesign come in to give us the one-two through it, and we videotaped the session which was a good thing to do because we were able to go back and review it. But, because of the complexity of the stuff that we do, it really takes more time to do it with a 4-track set-up. Roger probably uses it maybe twenty-five percent of the time, and I probably use it twenty-five percent of the time. I'll tell you who really takes to it a lot are the interns we have who are real computer hackers. Those guys get in there and they play around with it a little bit. Our Continuity Director is also quite a computer hacker, and he gets in there. It just seems to me that ProTools, although it is an excellent machine, is designed more for someone who is a computer buff more than a recording engineer. That's the way it seems to me.
You have the Roland machine, the Korg SoundLink, and of course the DSE-7000 -- those are all kind of designed for people who are making the transition from analog to digital, and these units make that easier, I think. I go and do sessions at a studio that uses the Korg SoundLink, and I mean, it looks a lot easier than the ProTools. I've had a demo on the Roland unit, and I really like that system, too.
R.A.P.: Are you basically leaning toward the Roland based on the demo you had?
George: Yeah. But I want to look at it some more before I take any further steps. The only thing I don't like about the Roland unit is the memory that it's packaged with. It has two scuzzies -- one for each 4-track section -- and it seems like you're going to immediately have to expand on the memory. One of the things I liked about the DA-88 was that you can, for nine or ten dollars, buy a high quality, 8-millimeter tape and quickly have a hundred and ten more minutes of recording time which would represent about four reels of analog tape.
R.A.P.: True, but with the DA-88 you lose the workstation editing capabilities.
George: Well, yeah, you do lose that ability to move things around. So, the best of both worlds -- and this is almost a direct quote from the [DA-88] article -- would be to have both, to get the time code card for the DA-88 and sync it up with a workstation.
R.A.P.: You were promoted from Production Director to Creative Director a couple of years ago. How did your responsibilities change at that point?
George: I don't do as much commercial production now. I still write and produce a lot of the commercial material that airs, but what I primarily do now is work on the sound of the station. I produce bumps and promos and elements that are -- I guess you could say -- the ear candy in between the songs that are oh so familiar in the classic format. It's kind of like constantly putting a new package on an old present. It's a lot like what Nick At Night does. You've seen Dick Van Dyke, how many episodes, how many times? But, with the different and varying packaging, you give it the appeal to make you want to tune it in again.
R.A.P.: You said Roger King, your other production guy, works in the evening. What does he do?
George: We run the Grease Man's syndicated show in the morning. He airs his show out of Los Angeles in afternoon drive. So, what we do is get the feed straight from the satellite in the evening, and we edit out evening references and insert day references. That's where Roger King comes in. He takes that show and turns an afternoon talk show into a morning show.
R.A.P.: That sounds like it would take a little time to do.
George: Yeah, it does. We basically "high-five" each day. He comes in and I go out like that old Warner Brothers cartoon with the two sheep dogs. "Good night, Sam." "Good night." He works from about four to midnight or whenever he gets done, then I come in at six in the morning. I usually work until two, two-thirty. I work straight through. I don't take lunch. I may have someone go down and get me a sandwich or something, but there's no time to take an hour lunch. Our Program Director, Mike O'Connor, is a very production-intensive programmer that believes a lot of elements are needed on a radio station, especially in a classic format, and I agree. It has really been a lot of fun working with him, and I hope it continues to be a pretty good relationship. He's a driver, but he brings out certain abilities that enable you to keep on keeping on.
R.A.P.: Does Roger handle some of the commercial production?
George: No. He's got his hands full with the Grease Man. From time to time, when things get kind of hectic, we all pitch in to get the job done, but his primary concern is making the Grease Man a good presentation every single morning. He's probably on the verge of being overworked because he does that, and then he does some promos positioning the Grease Man as well. Sometimes, before he comes in, he may stop at the Falcons' training camp to get some of the players to say some basic endorsement things around the Grease Man. He stays busy.
R.A.P.: You mentioned some interns going into the production rooms to play. Are they actually producing anything?
George: Not really. We have interns come in from time to time, and we've been very fortunate with the ones we've had. Bill Allen, our Continuity Director, has just been wonderful at picking really good interns. And, he's a heck of a guy. He will bring interns into the station and give them an overview of radio. They hit every department, and they work pretty hard in every department. I imagine if you asked any intern after their internship, "Hey, do you want to be in radio?" the answer would be, "Hell, no." They probably have their fill of it because we really work them hard. They help us out in a lot of ways, and I try to bring them in to the production studio when I'm producing promos and stuff. I try to get them involved in small character parts. They've been a great help. and they seem to take an interest in being able to look over your shoulder and kind of get a bird's eye view of some of the other things that go on in radio stations.
R.A.P.: Do any of the jocks do production?
George: Just about all of the jocks have a production schedule where they produce or dub. They're not overwhelmed. The overnight guy is the one who gets inundated with dubs, but pretty much all day parts handle somewhat of a production load. I know that our mid-day guy handles his fair share, and our afternoon guy handles his. Everybody really pulls their own weight and then some. There's an amazing synergy around the station. It's like an ant mound inside there. Everybody is scurrying about really working their abdomens off.
R.A.P.: Who assigns production to the jocks?
George: Bill King, the Continuity Director, is in charge of assigning production to the jocks and following up on that. He also writes ads and gives them to the announcers to produce. I kind of consider him Production Director, even though he says, "No, I'm not." I don't know if he's trying to be kind, but I consider him more of a Production Director than myself because basically what I do is meet with the Program Director every morning and hash out the daily assignments and what kind of strategy and little tricks we may want to put into the promos to make them memorable. I think management would consider the Production Director title severed in half with half of it in Bill's lap, and half of it in mine.
R.A.P.: Are there any particular creative techniques you like to use when producing a promo?
George: That's a hard one to answer because it really depends on what we're doing. I may really dig deep into some bizarre writing technique, or I may depend on sound effects to carry the load. I've always believed the old saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words." I've always believed a sound effect is worth a thousand words, as well, because of the emotion it can evoke. The same goes for music. There are so many different avenues of creativity. It just really depends on what it is you want to accomplish and how you want the listener to remember what it is you're trying to get across to them.
As far as reaching down into your creative soul and finding what vehicle you want to use to get your idea across, basically you just really have to pull from life. I mean, you could have a terrible incident happen to you on your way to work. Later, you're sitting there at your desk pulling your eyebrows out trying to decide what the hell you're going to do with this promo, not realizing that the idea is right there in your own back yard. You can take from what happened to you on your way to work. You can play off things from everyday life. Everybody meets strange and interesting people every day that they can pull characters from and make them interesting enough to be used in a promo.
R.A.P.: Are you a formally trained musician?
George: No, not really. I play by ear, although I find myself developing more and more of an interest in the formalities behind it. Before, I would just fly by the seat of my pants. Well, that sounds fine, but now I'm saying, "Why does that work? Why does that go with that?" My son says, "I want to take guitar lessons." And I say, "Okay. If you want to take guitar lessons, that's great. But you're going to learn the theory first. Then, if you have a feel for it, you'll develop the rest naturally."
R.A.P.: You sound like a well rounded Creative Director, one with a lot of strength in a lot of different areas.
George: Well, when I first started getting into radio, I bounced around. First I worked on the air, and it seems like every station where I worked on the air had a General Manager who said, "Son, you've got an honest face. You need to be out there on the streets telling the story. You need to be selling this product." So here I was working morning drive. Then I'd get off the air to go selling all day. Then I'd come back and produce the spots I sold in the afternoon. Then I'd go to a damn nightclub and spin records just so I could pay for that Toyota Corolla!
Then, lo and behold, one night when I'm coming home from that gig, I fell asleep at the wheel and careened off a telephone pole. Fortunately, the only thing that was damaged was the quarter panel and the telephone pole. But I said to myself, "You need to focus on what you want to do here; you can't run the entire radio station or be everything." But, then you have to make yourself as valuable as you can. You have to develop your interest. If you have an interest as a writer, develop that. If you have an interest as a voice talent, listen to every voice talent that you hear nationally on radio and television and pick up the characteristics that you like about them and use that to develop your own skill. I think one of the most important things is not to try to be somebody else though. You have to develop your own style.
It's good to wear a variety of hats if you can. Although, it takes me from six a.m. to nine p.m. to wear my hats, and then I go upstairs and say, "Honey, what are those kids' names? Who are those kids?"
R.A.P.: You've been in radio for about 12 years. How would you say your style of production has changed over the years, or has it changed?
George: Oh, yeah. It's changed, and it will continue to change. It's an ongoing change, and the day that you think there's no room for change is the day that you're dead. You have to constantly, constantly look for new ways, look for new ideas. And it's not so much that you're constantly struggling and digging in the dirt, looking for new ways of delivery or new ways of expressing an idea or new ways of creating new sounds, but you have to evolve because the world is evolving around you. And if you don't, you're still going to be putting your fader up to get the slapback echo off the record head, thinking that's a cool effect. You know what I'm saying?
Fortunately, my wife Suzanne is a writer/producer as well. She's quite a talented lady. The beauty of being married to such a wonderful woman is that we can bounce ideas off of each other. She moved here and worked at Channel 2 here in Atlanta for a couple of years when she decided she was not going to let me get away, bless her heart. She moved up here from Jacksonville where she was working with a film company. About a year and a half ago, she decided to stay at home and be a free-lance writer. She writes narrations and industrials, primarily. In fact, she just won a Houston Award, I think it was second place, for an industrial film. The first place Houston Award went to a film that starred Cathy Lee Turner. So she felt if she was going to be beat by somebody....
She's quite a character. She's a reservoir of creativity. She worked with an agency in Jacksonville that handled the Big Ape. So, it was tough. There I was working for Rock 105, and she was working for this good-sized agency that was handling the Ape, which was a big competitor. So Mark Schwartz would give her T-shirts with the Big Ape on them and say, "Here, Suzanne, when you're going to sleep over at George's house, wear this to bed." But it didn't bother me. We have such a good understanding. We could even share each other's ideas, and I wouldn't go into work the next day and spill my guts and say, "Hey, do you know what they're doing?" Nor would she.
She kind of helped me out, too. I started as a voice talent, and that's how I met her. She introduced me to this guy named Paul Siner who worked at the agency with her, and I thought, "This guy's just some old agency guy. No big deal." So I go in and I audition for an on-camera part, and I get it. Then, on the day before the shoot she tells me who this guy really is. Paul Siner came from Chicago. He developed Tony the Tiger, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Fly the Friendly Skies. I find this stuff out before I'm supposed to do this part. I was a little intimidated, you might say, but it turned out well. He's quite an eccentric fellow. The last time we heard from him was about a year and a half ago. Suzanne told me when she was in college that this guy was in her textbooks. He's an older gentleman, kind of quiet, and very eccentric. He'd go to Hong Kong to have his shirts made. We hadn't heard from him in years, then one night out of the blue the phone rang. I picked it up and this guy was asking for Suzanne. I couldn't quite understand him, and I said, "Hey, I don't know who the hell this is, but it sounds like he's Spanish or something." It was Paul, and he was calling from Egypt. Again, he's quite an eccentric fellow.
R.A.P.: You're doing voice-over work for TBS, and you mentioned you do voice work for a couple of other stations. Are you a "voice for hire" for promos, IDs and such?
George: Yeah, absolutely. I'm kind of proud of my quick turnaround time. When I come home in the afternoon, if there's a fax waiting for me that needs to be voiced, I can voice it and send it so they'll have it the next day. Also, I have quite an extensive production library of sound effects that I've digitally recorded myself. Let's say there was a particular sound effect that someone was having a hard time finding. I can usually put together custom sound effects.
I also write and produce promos on a free-lance basis. I also do character voices. As a matter of fact, I worked for an animation company that was based out of Jacksonville. They were a robotics company, and I did a lot of character voices for Chucky Cheese type places and the New York State Fair. I can adapt to many styles and formats, and I'm very open to direction. You have to be. You can't think that your ideas are chiseled in granite. Every programmer and every production guy has their own ideas about a particular sound they're looking for. So, I try to market myself as someone who is A) very reasonable in price, and B) very approachable.
R.A.P.: How long have you had the home studio?
George: We just bought this house, so I just had the studio designed and built. Where we lived before, I had a studio essentially in the bonus room over the garage. We decided we'd better get out of that house and look for something else, especially when interest rates were what they were. It took about a year, but we found a place that had plenty of room on the upper two levels and down in the basement. We have about sixteen hundred square feet of basement. So I had a contractor come in, and we had about a quarter of it turned into the room within a room. We have a sound room and the studio, and they just finished it about three weeks ago. There's still wires all over the floor, but I'm going on vacation Thursday. So, I'll have about a week and a half over the holidays to hide wires and get everything up to par to start '94 off, hopefully, with a bang.
R.A.P.: Now that you've built a nice studio in your home, what tips can you offer someone about to do the same?
George: You need to draw it on paper. You need to sit back and picture it in your mind. You need to kind of picture yourself actually working in the environment because you may think you see certain equipment in certain positions, but until you actually get in there and start doing it, you don't know. You're going to realize, "Oh my God, this isn't going to work here!" So, you really need to sit down and visualize what you want to do and see yourself doing it so you can then start placing things where you think they need to be. Then you also have to visualize what the future can bring. You have to be constantly looking to evolve.
Another very important thing to do is to pay for all this stuff up front, if you can. That's what I've done. I learned that lesson from seeing other friends of mine who would go out and buy, on credit, everything they thought they needed, and it's just a crying shame to see them lose it all about six to eight months later. Buy it as you need it. Don't buy it as you want it. I'm a real believer in paying cash for it. Save your money. Invest it. And then, if you want a certain piece of gear and you feel you can use it to help you increase your productivity, increase your value, and increase your potential for earnings, then at that time make the move. I know this guy who'll go and buy a Lexicon Opus because he thinks he needs it. Well, for crying out loud, that's a $150,000/$200,000 piece of gear! I don't know how he pays for it, but it's real important that you be practical. But, you also have to see yourself. I don't ever see myself as having anything like that. I don't think it's necessary. I can do a heck of a lot with what I have right here. But, I'm never satisfied, so there's always room for growth. Take it a step at a time and spend time with your family.