Willie B!, Creative Services Director, WEGQ-FM/WBMX-FM, Boston, Massachusetts
Willie B! If you haven't heard of him, give it a little time. A few years ago, Willie got out of a long stint in the construction business to return to radio, something he always enjoyed. It took him little time to wind up in the Boston market, and it's taking him even less time to get a free-lance "stationality production" service off the ground and servicing about twenty stations in the U.S.. In Boston, he handles the image production for two FMs in a 4-station facility equipped with nine, yes nine, Orban DSE-7000 digital audio workstations. He has taken the ambition and drive necessary to make it in the competitive construction business and applied it to radio production. This month's interview visits with this rare individual who has successfully combined business savvy with talent--his own and others--and a true passion for his work, and he's just getting started. Look out, here comes Willie B!
RAP: You have an unusual radio background in that you left radio for several years and went into the construction business. How did you get in and out of radio the first time around.
Willie: Well, pretty much like everyone else, I was willing to go to the local radio station, take the trash out, and go to the convenience store for the Program Director. And when the first Sunday overnight shift became available, yours truly was able to jump in and do a radio show, and the birth of Jesse Sky took place in 1979. It's funny. I think the Program Director was somewhat of a naturalist. All of his air personnel had names that had something to do with the stars, the moon, or the earth. His name was Tony Sands. Our midday person was Allison Hill. I think for a short time we had someone there working under the name of Robert Moon, and I was Jesse Sky. This was in Fort Myers, Florida. Actually, that was the market. The town was Bonita Springs. The radio station was in an old mobile home trailer that had no air conditioning. The administrative and sales offices were in downtown Fort Myers. It was a fun beginning.
I was going to high school at this time, and I ended up getting the night shift. Once I graduated, I did the midday shift and even had a television show for the local ABC affiliate called "The Pepsi Generation Rock Show" which I did a little segment on. It's been quite some time since I've even thought about that TV show, and I think I must have still been in high school at the time because I remember my classmates teasing me after they'd see me on television.
After my dad passed away, my family relocated. My mother's family was in New England, so everyone moved there. But at the age of seventeen or eighteen, I decided just to stay down in Florida, go to school, and finish my career in broadcasting. Then when I thought it was time to expand, I came to Boston hoping to land a job up here, not knowing the difference between market size two hundred and something and market size six or seven, which Boston was at the time. I had a tough time getting started, so I ended up getting involved in the construction business. A friend of the family was in construction. So in 1980 or 1981, I actually left radio behind and went on to do construction, and I rode the crest of the construction boom and wave during the late eighties and early nineties.
RAP: How did you get back into radio?
Willie: Everything seemed to fall apart with the construction business, and remembering that I had done something that I truly loved years and years before, and remembering how much fun it was, I attempted to get back into radio. Actually, throughout that period of ten or twelve years in construction, I did some part-time work in radio at WERZ in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, but the workload ended up being too much. So I got back out of radio again. At this point, I had no production experience at all. As a matter of fact, the only reel-to-reel I had ever used was the one in the control room to record callers for contests.
I had made friends with someone earlier, and they had a little radio station in Saco, Maine. They asked if I was interested in getting back in radio, and I said, "Sure." This station was probably about a three thousand watt radio station that we'd shut off at night, and I went up to do the afternoon shift. I was there for about four months.
Then in September of '92 I made a phone call to Pete Falconi, the Program Director I had worked for at WERZ. He was the Operations Manager for Precision Media who owned WERZ and WMYF, and they had just picked up a couple of stations in Rochester, New Hampshire as well. Pete, not knowing if I was ready to make a serious commitment again, gave me the opportunity to come in and do an overnight shift, just to familiarize myself with the board again. Then they made room for me after a period of four or five months and hired me to do the night shift.
RAP: When did production become part of your bag of tricks?
Willie: In Saco we were using the old Scully reel-to-reels, and I remember that the brakes on the Scullys didn't work. So when you hit the stop button, the tape just kept going. It was a real trick to get the timing down so when you hit the stop button and caught the reel, the tape didn't come flying off the deck. That's where I started to learn the techniques of production. You combined the two cart machines with the CD players and a couple of turntables and the Scully reel-to-reel, and you made sure that your hands were fast enough to stop the tape when you hit the stop button on the Scully. And you tried to do all of this in real time while going to one reel-to-reel to produce a sixty-second commercial or promo.
I think this is a story everyone certainly can relate to. We've all been there. It's about pushing the elements, pushing what I had for tools, to get the most out of it, which still, to this day, is the key to successful production, I believe. We can have the nice toys, but unless we're willing to push our creativity and the equipment that we have to the maximum, you're really not going to be able to take advantage of your own abilities.
RAP: Were you able to apply anything from the construction business to radio once you got back in?
Willie: After WERZ hired me for the night shift, that's when I brought my business experience to the table, I guess you'd say, because in the construction business, I was used to selling things in units. I sold so many units and so much of this type of product, and the more I sold, the more I made. I realized that sort of thing was really not available as an on-air talent. You worked your air shift and felt fortunate if you had good ratings and continued to do that. On the other hand, I saw that production gave me the opportunity to do the same thing I did in construction where the more I was able to do, the more I'd be able to put into my back pocket.
So, my first goal was to learn the equipment and understand what production was all about. When no one was in the studio on Saturdays and Sundays, I locked the door and just stayed in there and learned the equipment. I watched how the sales department interacted with the clients. In fact, my first couple of free-lance clients were actually commercial type clients. They had heard a commercial I did for them on our radio station and wanted to expand their advertising to other radio stations. So I worked directly with the clients and built some specific campaigns.
Then I went to my General Manager, Al Perry, and said I wanted to organize the production department. I went to the local lumber yard and bought some two by fours and some shelving. I went back and constructed shelving and put together a system that we actually built right in the production studios for organizational purposes.
RAP: How did you wind up at WEGQ in Boston?
Willie: When I got to Saco in '92, I set a goal to be working in Boston within two years. In October of '94, I was hired by American Radio Systems, specifically WEGQ which had just been bought from Curt Gowdy. It used to be WCGY. We fired up Eagle 93.7, The Hits of the Seventies. I was brought on board to be the Production Director and afternoon drive. That put me in Boston, and that put me in touch with the first analog 8-track and the first slide pot board I'd ever seen in my life.
Up until this point, I was working with the typical equipment you'd find in any small to medium size market. I remember having an equalizer at WERZ, and we were so close to the AM transmitter three doors down that it would be picked up over the equalizer or any electronics that I had in the room. So, when I was looking to produce a really specialized stationality spot, I'd actually sneak down to the other end of the hall and pump the power down on the AM transmitter for sixty seconds while I did my final mix. It was either me, or I'd have someone else strategically in place. When I was done I'd yell out the production room door, "Okay," and we'd pump the power back up. I remember one time I actually forgot to turn it back up, and the people on the listening fringe started calling the switchboard to say that something had happened to the radio signal. At that point, Pete Falconi and I had a discussion about maybe limiting that type of production until after the AM powered down in the afternoon. It was a daytime AM.
So that was another thing that I had the chance to discover here at WEGQ; there was no RF in any of the equipment. When I was hired by Greg Strassell, I was hired as Production Director and afternoon drive, and at this point I was telling him I didn't really want to be on the air. I just wanted to focus on production. But it was a start-up station, so I did the afternoon shift for the first six or seven months. Then we hired Pete Falconi to come in as PD, and he eventually did afternoon drive. This was the fellow I had worked for in New Hampshire, so once again I was working for Pete which was nice because he's just a great guy.
I was able to cut back to a two-hour shift working two until four while focusing on production. One thing led to another and Greg Strassell was in need of another Production Director for our sister station, Mix 98.5, WBMX. He asked if I could take care of both properties and, of course, I jumped at the chance. At that point, American Radio Systems started its initial growth, and we owned WRKO, WEEI, WEGQ and WBMX, all located in the same facility at 116 Huntington Avenue. Expanding over to WBMX meant that I didn't have to leave my studio. I continued to do exactly what I did. I just had another station to take care of. At that point I came off the air completely and was just focusing on the production for the two radio stations.
RAP: When you got heavy into production, it was commercials first, right?
Willie: Yes, and I actually worked for a couple of advertising agencies out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. When they had some clients that needed special attention, I was fortunate to establish a relationship there. As time went on, I moved into more of the stationality type production for WERZ and was doing a limited amount of commercial production.
RAP: So it has only been in the last couple of years or so that you really started doing station imaging production.
Willie: Yes.
RAP: And you're doing imaging or stationality production for how many stations now?
Willie: I would say probably fifteen or twenty radio stations. It's funny. There's one market, and I'd just as soon not say which market it is, but there's one market where I actually take care of two radio stations. I haven't mentioned it to either one of them. The styles are different, and they're not really head to head competitors. One's a rock and roll station and one's a Mix formatted station. So we clearly have one that's male oriented and one female oriented, and that's what is fun, trying to be diversified so that you can't recognize the production from station to station.
RAP: You must be using voices other than your own.
Willie: Yes. As a matter of fact, the niche that I've found is in doing all of the stationality production using the station's voice. I thought that was a smarter move because, even though I do voice-over for some radio and television stations, we all know that your sound is as good as today, and who knows what's going to happen tomorrow? If for some reason one of my clients decides to use another voice, that means I end up losing that client and have to fight to get another client to replace that one. By focusing on production of a stationality product, I can change with the times and give my clients exactly what they're looking for, whether it's a hot Alternative station, whether it's Classic Rock, whether it's Modern Rock, whether it's Top Forty. I can work with a voice talent they already have. In addition, if they're looking to expand their voice talents, I can lend myself to that, or they can pick from a stable of people I've met over the course of the last two years who also are in the voice-over business.
RAP: You mentioned in a previous conversation that you had discovered some of this talent yourself.
Willie: Well, I don't know that I would say "discovered." I would say I realigned this talent. There's one fellow who is just absolutely amazing, and his name is James Justice. He's in New York, and he works for United Stations and does a great job for them. He is recognized by his voice-over work. Most recently, it was the Budweiser campaign for the Olympics. You may remember the television commercial where the blimp is flying over the different countries. In the back there's a song playing by Elastica, and he comes on and does the voice-over: "Hey, it's gonna be a hell of a party...The Budwill Games...." That's James Justice. He is a friend of John Lander, a legendary morning host who most recently was at Z100 in New York and is now the morning show host here at Mix 98.5. James walked into the studio, and I had been told that he was the guy who had done the Budweiser campaign. Come to find out, he had voiced something like thirty or forty of the Budweiser spots in addition to several nationally known television spots, and he had a background in radio but hadn't done any radio production outside of the program syndications he's been working on now for quite some time. So I asked him to step in front of a microphone and handed him a script, and now James is on probably ten or a dozen radio stations in a period of four or five months. He's a great sound of the nineties.
I've had the fortunate luck, also, to discover probably the premiere female talent in the business. She works right here on the morning show. Her name is Lynn Hoffman, and she is doing voice work now for probably half a dozen radio stations. She's the primary voice for WTIC in Hartford, and they've had some legendary voices there. And right next door is another wonderful talent named Patricia Fox who can be heard on several radio stations.
It's a matter of recognizing the talent, dragging them into the studios, sitting them down and chaining them to the chairs and saying, "do not move until you read these scripts." And with today's technology, with ISDN and this wonderful Zephyr I have next to me, I'm able to tap in to any one of these VO talents all across the country. I also have the fortunate luck to work with one of the great voice-over talents in the industry. He's one of the primaries for CBS television. His name is Chuck Riley, and Chuck is the voice of WEGQ, Eagle 93.7.
RAP: How did you manage to get so many stations so quickly?
Willie: It started off with Greg Strassell, the Program Director and Vice President of Programming for American Radio Systems. He came to me and said that they were going to flip a format in Las Vegas, that he liked what I did here for their Mix format, and could I put together a package for them. This was probably late last spring. They gave me a script and the VO work had already been done by Randy Reeves. I put together probably twenty-five or thirty elements--sweepers, bumpers and promos--and put all of those onto a compact disc and shipped the CD out to them. The next morning, after they got all the elements, they carted them up and flipped formats. Then they came in and requested another package. So I produced another package for them.
Also, I have the fortunate luck of working for American Radio Systems which now owns upwards of a hundred radio stations. We're second to the Westinghouse CBS Infinity deal.
RAP: Are all the stations you're doing work for owned by American Radio Systems?
Willie: No. I'd say sixty to sixty-five percent are American, and the others probably come from American directly or indirectly--a consultant may work for a station out in California which also has another station in Rochester, New York or Fresno, California or whatever the case may be.
RAP: How can someone who produces imaging production for stations afford to cater to smaller market stations and provide the same caliber of work for less money? I mean, the voice talent's job is incredibly easy compared to the producer's task in terms of time spent on the project, so he/she can reduce the rate without much sweat off their back. But the producer still puts in the long hours piecing it all together. Do you offer special rates for smaller markets?
Willie: Everything I do is saved on compact disc. So I have the masters to all of these radio stations on compact disc in the library here. And now, for every piece of production that I do, I'm starting to also save a shell of that production. This is advice I would give to anyone who is looking to expand this sort of thing as well. You know, we sweat and toil over work here. Once it's aired, whether it's for a day or a week, once it has aired and run its course, it's time to basically get rid of it forever. The one thing I'm able to do for my clients, those interested in working with me but who can't afford the higher priced package of all original material, is offer them the opportunity to pick and choose from these pre-produced shells where they can basically insert their own voice-over talent. It's cookie-cutter type production for them, but what they're getting in market two hundred is the same production that they're getting in a top ten market. The shell consists of the sound effects that I produce here, and music, drops, things of that nature, and the choice is from Country to Modern Rock to Mix formats to Top Forty to Classic Rock and just good old fashioned AOR.
RAP: Are you creating these elements yourself?
Willie: Some of them, yes.
RAP: Are you a musician?
Willie: I'm not a musician, but I do have a sampler keyboard, the Roland S10. I'll take just anything from the music library, whether it's an album that was released a week ago or something that was released some time ago, and I'll manipulate the data. I'll put it in there and play with it, pitch change it, flip it. It could be music from an album, but it could also be from some people who are not recording artists. We have a couple of people here who go to Berkeley School for the Arts around the corner. They are creating things in school and then bringing me a DAT. Then I'll take their musical pieces and use them for music beds and things of that nature. One of the luxuries of living in the city is having a school like that just around the corner. Here are college students who are going to school to learn the arts and hopefully some day hear their music on the air. In the meantime, they're hearing the music on the air behind my promo.
RAP: Is this something they get a few bucks for or are they just glad to be on the air?
Willie: On occasion, sure. If we sell the product, they'll pick up something. If I'm using it right here, they're thrilled to death just to be able to have their product on the air and to be able to use the product for resume material.
RAP: With these pre-produced "shells" you offer, how do you handle using pre-produced sounds effects and work-parts from existing production libraries?
Willie: I'm talking to a couple of companies right now as far as getting sound effects and things of that nature. And as I expand, I'll be able to also help these companies out as well. Let's say I'm doing work for another radio station. The first thing I'll ask them is what bumper packages or sound effects packages they are using. More than likely, I'll have the same ones here, so there is no copyright infringement. If I don't have the package, with the ease of Federal Express they will send me their work-part packages.
RAP: Are you still producing commercials on a free-lance basis?
Willie: I've pretty much left the commercial aspect behind. Maybe two percent of my business now is commercial production, which is fortunate because I'm able to focus on the stationality sound. And I only have to please the OM or Program Director of the station and not some entire advertising agency, as well as the advertising agency's clients. And nine times out of ten, when I do something for one of my stations now, I'm not having to redo it because the client didn't like the way this person said this or that, or there was a typo in the script. So the problems you run into with advertising agencies are pretty much nonexistent with radio station type product.
RAP: Would you say you have a particular "style" of production?
Willie: My style of production is whatever my current client needs. It may sound pompous and it may sound silly, but whatever my client needs, he gets. The most important thing is to have a complete understanding of your client's needs. Once you understand the direction the radio station is going, it's quite easy to be able to get in and actually expand on that idea. Most of the Program Directors I work with are in the habit of just writing the product and not even putting specific instructions on how to do it because they're pleased with the way the product is turning out. And that's because I have an understanding of where they are trying to go with the radio station. A lot of these radio stations have listen lines, so it's quite easy for me to dial up to a listen line and listen to the radio station to know what direction they are going and expand on that as well.
I suppose my style runs the gamut. First of all, I find I can produce other people's voice-over work so much easier than I can my own, and I think everyone you talk to is probably going to feel the same way. When you use your own voice, you hear an inflection or something that perhaps you think you should do again. So now you're going back and doing the voice-over work over and over again.
But to get back to your original question, the style can vary. If a drop is necessary for a certain type of format, then drop related it is. I've amassed a library, I dare say, of drops, probably ten to twelve thousand strong and then some. That's a fun way to do production, but it seems as though everyone and his or her brother are doing drop type production right now. If you just turn on your radio in any market, you're going to hear that style of radio, which is a lot of fun, and I do just as much as anyone else does. But I'm looking forward to the next step, the next phase of production.
RAP: What do you think that's going to be?
Willie: Well, it's going to have to come back to creativity. It all comes back to hitting the key demo. Watching NBC Thursday Night Must See TV, they have a voice-over fellow you only hear on Thursday nights, and that style of production is different than it is on their Tuesday or Wednesday drama prime-time lineup.
We've become the impatient generation. If you don't give people something they need within the first three to five seconds, they're going to disappear. If we keep them entertained, then they'll stay. I think today, more than ever, the smart Program Directors are realizing that what goes in between the records is just as important as the records themselves because there are so many stations out there trying to accomplish the same thing. Those who are the best Production and Creative Directors are the ones who are working with limited tools as far as equipment, but no limitation whatsoever on creativity. And the luxury that American Radio has afforded me is that when I'm given an assignment, I get to lock my production studio door behind me. I grab the voice-over talents I need, sit down with the production elements, and put together what I hope is my next good piece of production. I'm sure I'm not alone, but every single time, I try to put a different spin or different flair on something so there isn't that recognizable factor--"Oh, that's got to be so-and-so's production." They are different every time, and that's really where the challenge comes in on a daily basis. That's where the wonder of this position is recognized by me. I've got the best job in the building, bar none.
RAP: Let's talk about your tools. You mentioned the DSE-7000.
Willie: Yes, I have a DSE-7000; and here I sound like a patronizing employee, but American Radio Systems understands that when I need something, there's a reason behind it. When we first got the DSE, we were working with one analog 8-track, a wonderful old MCI 8-track, and I was taking care of two radio stations. At that time, we had two production studios. We needed to take care of the commercial and stationality production for both with two production studios, and when you're dealing with as many AEs and as many air talents and production talents that we had running around the building, it was a little difficult to do that. So we test drove one of the DSE-7000s, and at that point I told them that they wouldn't be able to take it back, that I had to have that machine. We now have nine of them in the building. It's a company that really believes in supplying the tools.
RAP: What other equipment is in your studio?
Willie: I have probably one of the oldest consoles in the building. It's a BMX 22. I've got an Eventide H3000B. I have an old dbx 2020 equalizer, which I brought from home, which allows me to preprogram ten equalization settings. I don't think you can even get this box any more. I've got a couple of dbx 165A compressors which give you that nice, old fashioned tube compression sound. And, of course, there's my Telos Zephyr which allows me to tap into any of the voice-over talent all over the country. So, if I've got the budget, all I need do is make a telephone call and I'm hooked up. We just hired a fellow by the name of Chris Corley to do MixFest out here, which was a two-day outdoor music, arts and crafts and children's festival. We had probably four or five hundred thousand people stroll through the Boston Common, and throughout that entire process I was using Chris Corley exclusively for that event. He was moving from one location to another during this time and was able to pop into a studio down in Florida and get me what I needed every day. It's just a wonderful device.
I also have a Marantz CD recorder. A client will call me up and say, "Hey, we're going to send you a tape with our voice-over talent on it. When can we expect it back?" Usually the turnaround is anywhere from twenty-four hours to a few days and when they get the product back, they'll get it delivered on compact disc. So if they want to stay in the digital realm, they can walk into the studio, throw the compact disc in, and cut number one may be an image promo, cut number two may be a top of the hour ID, and cut number three is a contest promo. It works out well. I don't know of a radio station in existence these days that isn't using compact discs, so it's the one medium that we know is going to work out in every situation.
RAP: You mentioned nine DSE-7000s in the building. How many production rooms are there?
Willie: We now have four state of the art production rooms. Each production studio is equipped just about as equally as the other. Most radio stations you go to, you have THE production room, then you have everyone else's production room. What they've allowed me to do here is to duplicate my original studio three times over. The boards are all set up exactly the same, so no matter what studio you're in, it feels as though you're in THE studio. And that's a nice luxury. I know it seems like a small thing, but it's a wonderful, wonderful luxury.
Even with the four studios that we have, people are still fighting to get time in. I'm looking right now across the room at John Lander and his morning show in one studio, and to my right is the other morning show. And next to me is my right and left hand and two legs, Patty Fox. She takes care of all the commercial production for the two FMs and does a great job with it.
RAP: There are four stations there, two AM and two FM, right?
Willie: Yes. I'm primarily talking about the two FMs which are the two I take care of. On the other side are the two AMs, WRKO, the talk station, and WEEI, the sports station in town.
RAP: Are these four production rooms for all four stations?
Willie: Nope. The four production studios are for the FMs only. The AMs' are on the other side of the building, and they have four as well, maybe five.
RAP: This must be where the nine DSEs come in.
Willie: Yes. I think at one point I heard we had more in one location than any other company in the country. It was either that or that we had more in one location than all of Germany or something like that.
RAP: Do you have a studio at home?
Willie: I don't, but you can pretty much call this my home away from home. The studio is equipped with all of the stuff I just told you about, as well as full cable television. Everything is here that I need. As a matter of fact, I have a separate stand alone digital workstation over to the right. I have a little PC that's loaded with SAW, and my interns can work on a separate piece with headphones. There's a little preamp that's hooked up to a VCR that runs through my computer and a laser disc player, and that separate digital workstation is in line with my main console. So I can actually have somebody sitting over there doing data base work, recording drops and things of that nature, then they can throw it over to the main console to me for final editing.
RAP: To what extent do you use interns?
Willie: I use them in production primarily to gather material for me, whether it's running in to one of the FMs to get music for music image promos, or whether it's outfitting them with a microphone and cassette recorder or MiniDisc recorder to go out on the streets and record listener testimonials. Everyone has lots of use for testimonials.
This is another thing I do quite a lot of, and that is build listener testimonial type things that are non-station specific. I get permission to use these people as we recorded them. We give them a compact disc as payment to do the voice-over for us. I've amassed a large library of listener drops, so whether the station is in Oregon or Pennsylvania, it sounds as though the people are right there on the street talking about that radio station. Quite often, when we do a flip of a format, three or four days later we've incorporated listener testimonials in top of the hour IDs long before anyone would have had a chance to get out on the streets to actually take the time to record it. It works out well.
RAP: Maintaining all these drops and recycling them into production for other markets sounds like quite a task.
Willie: The key to this type of organization is organization. As long as you can take the time, and you're detail oriented, there's no reason why you can't either mass produce it or at least have a nice resource at your own facility.
A day doesn't go by that people don't come in here looking for something specific, whether it's listener testimonials or a specific type of music or something I've created within the studio like some unique sound effect. I take existing sound effects and manipulate that data to make new sounds. I might take a simple dentist's drill on a sound effects disc combined with a lion roar. I flip the two of them, roll the pitch up a little bit, and all of a sudden the dentist's drill and the lion's roar played backwards at twice the speed with a little reverb gives me a sound that just is not out there. It's unavailable. And every single Production Director across the country who has access to sound effects or knows how to make a sound effect has access to a library. I always get a kick when I hear people say, "Oh, if I could only get this library and that library." There are some wonderful libraries out there, and yes, I have access to those libraries, but it still comes from within. If you can push the limits of creativity, there's no reason you can't sit down with a handful of sound effects discs, a handful of music discs, and come up with enough product to last for a couple of weeks.
RAP: You must put in some long days--twelve, fourteen hours.
Willie: I put in half days. I always joke about that. "I've got another half day going...," that being half of twenty-four.
RAP: It sounds like you've got your hands full, but you seem to be handling it very well. How do you do it all?
Willie: It's something I've been doing now full-time for this radio station for two years, and now for stations across the country. My next goal is to get international, and the trick there is to just understand the language so that I know what I'm doing. But it's all about the passion from within. I absolutely love what I do. The people I work with are wonderful people. I couldn't do it without Patty Fox next door handling all the commercial accounts. When I was here for the first year and a half, I was doing exactly what she's doing now plus the stationality work for the two radio stations, which is pretty much the situation that I think most of your readers will be in, handling both the commercial aspect as well as the stationality aspect. If I were going to give any advice, it would be just what I've lived through, which is that it's okay to say "No" on occasion as long as you always have an answer for that one Account Executive banging on the door. "I don't have the time right now, but I'd love to sit down with you. Let's make the time."
The first thing I did when I came here was devise a clerical system. The traffic department works with the production department in such a way that everything's catalogued on paper so that the system runs itself. You're not always pulling your hair out. You're not worried about the deadlines so much because the system runs itself. I was there to baby-sit, and I was there to say no, and let's reschedule an appointment, and here's when we can sit down. "Oh, but my client needs it now! My client needs it now!" That's when I'll pull my AE to one side and say to him, "This one particular time, I'll take care of it. But I want you to know that when you come in with just minutes to spare the next time, I'll be unavailable. You may need to also schedule time with me as you do with your client." Once that's understood, it has always worked for a wonderful, wonderful relationship between AEs and anyone in production.
RAP: You seem to have the production/sales relationship under control. That's something that just happens to be a hot topic in this month's "Letters" section.
Willie: You know, it's an ongoing battle that you'll see at every single radio station where it just seems as though sales and creative sometimes have difficulty communicating. And I've always found that funny. Here we are in the communications business, but it's just a matter of--and excuse me for saying this cliche--good time management. If I were going to pass along what I've found to be the best setup, I'd say sales work is best taken care of toward the latter part of the day because that's when everyone's in. That's when deadlines are coming. That's when the next day's work has to be taken care of. And your stationality type project is handled in the morning. The reason I find that to work out well is that when you get away from the station at the end of the day and go home, and whether you flip on the television or go running or work out or whatever you do to unwind, you find that the creativity flows again. You've had a chance to sleep on those creative thoughts, and you wake up thinking about them again. You come in and take care of those first thing in the morning when the creativity is still flowing and the door hasn't been knocked on yet because someone needs to hear a commercial.
So if you're stuck in the situation where you have to do both the stationality and the commercial production, do the creative in the morning when things are still fresh. Then at noon, switch hats and take care of your Account Executives and watch how well your Account Executives take care of you. They don't joke and call me Fatty B for nothing. I've had one or two gift certificates thrown my way for lunch, and it's just like developing any relationship. As long as there is understanding, as long as there is good time management in place and a system that can be followed, I think you'll have a successful and compatible relationship with both departments, programming and sales.
RAP: "Willie B" definitely sounds like an air name? What does the "B" stand for?
Willie: When I first worked at WERZ, they said I couldn't use my real name. My real name, and this is going to be a kick--it's been very difficult since Back to the Future has been out--but the day I was born back oh so many hundreds of years ago, I was given the name Biff. And my last name is an English name which is spelled Eveleth. And if you put the two of them together...try it now and see what happens. People thought I had a speech impediment. Either my parents tried to play a cruel hoax on me, or they were just comedians. I don't know, but the name came from Death of a Salesman. They were out when my mother was pregnant with me and they saw Death of a Salesman, and the son's name was Biff Loman. They liked that name, so they gave it to me. So when Biff Eveleth went in to WERZ, they said "No, sorry, can't do it." They asked what my full name was, and I told them it was William Howard Eveleth. They said, "Well, I tell you what. We'll take the William. We'll cut it to Willie. You can keep the Biff, but we're going to take out the 'iff'." So, I became Willie B. Willie B was born when I started with WERZ, but since then, it's been Willie B exclamation mark--no period. Willie B!, simply because of my bounce off the walls attitude. If I can get it done, let's do it! Let's go! People--even those I haven't told--send me letters and things of that nature and include the exclamation mark.
RAP: What production libraries are you working with?
Willie: I've got actually a couple. For the commercial library I use Network Music, and when it comes to commercial, I just don't think there's anybody better than that. As far as the stationality stuff, we're using FirstCom's The Edge. But the one that I'm really excited about, that's absolutely wonderful, is out of Chicago. It's called Chateau Brazil and AV Deli. They have a series of libraries that are just spectacular from the "X Rules" to the "Guitar Wars" to a library specifically designed for sports. It's imaging. It's music beds, and it's state of the art type sweepers. As a matter of fact, they're the only company that even comes close in duplicating the kind of thing we were talking about earlier as far as taking sound effects and manipulating them, running them through keyboards, and they're doing a great job. They are all buyout libraries, and they are inexpensive. Then for sound effects, I use Sound Ideas. I've got probably half a dozen of their sound effects libraries.
RAP: If someone wants to send you a demo of their work for consideration to become part of your voice-over bank, what can they do on their demo to impress you?
Willie: If you're going to be putting together a demo tape, I would suggest a maximum length of no more than two minutes because the attention span today is such that if I or a Program Director don't hear what I'm looking for in the first eight seconds, the stop button is so close to the play button that it's just not going to get any further play. And after the first eight to ten seconds, I would suggest that you immediately follow it with something completely different. Diversification is such an important feature with production that if we don't hear diversification within the first twenty seconds, the tape is going to be stopped and, unfortunately, probably put in the recycled cassette bin. Two minutes max, and employ your heart and your soul. If you do impersonations, then let's hear the impersonations within the first twenty seconds. Let's hear the style or styles of production within the first twenty seconds, which means within the first twenty to twenty-five seconds we should be listening to at least three different promos or three different commercials. No one has the time to sit through thirty seconds of a sixty-second promo unless it's just spectacular.
RAP: Are you taking advantage of the Internet to any degree at this point?
Willie: You know, at this point I'm probably on it on a daily basis just to see what's out there. Currently, the Eagle has a mascot, our twenty-foot inflatable mascot. He's a bird of the people. Not only did he inhale, but he's full of hot air. He's running for President along with Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. So I'm on our Web page checking that out every day, and I'm proud to say that the Eagle is beating the other candidates at a ratio of two to one. But by the time this prints, that will be long over, and I don't know if we covered the national scene as well as we hoped to. So, unfortunately, it looks like we'll have to wait until the year 2000 for it to be the year of the Eagle.