Radio Pulls Out The Stops

August 9, 2011
By Keith Lindsay | No Comments

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The phone rang on Tuesday at 14.50. It was a major agency representing an international client, “We’ve just found out that a major radio station has a gap in its schedules – where our commercial should be. We forgot to commission an ad to go in the slot. It’s supposed to be on air at 15.30. Today. Ooops” (Now you see why all the anonymity).

By 14.55 we’d received the script and by 15.00 we’d booked, and were connecting with, a performer via ISDN and e-mailing him the script simultaneously. The voice read the script from his screen, fluffed a few times, but by 15.10 we were happy with the performance. Within 5 minutes we’d edited, mixed-on the music and sound effects, and at 15.20 it was on its way, digitally, to the (major) radio station. Applause all round. Phew!

Not an everyday occurrence thankfully, but not as unusual as you’d think. Technology, plus the increased use of radio as a tactical tool has shortened lead times enormously. It’s way different from the more leisurely path of the strategic or branding radio commercial, and even more distant from the timescale of a TV commercial, but that’s radio’s strength.  These days radio – and JMS – can pull out the stops to match anything its sibling, the internet, is up to.

- Keith Lindsay