Back To The Radio Station

Just yesterday I had a fun if unexpected moment at the school. While teaching students the difference between a bulleted list and a numbered list a student from another class walked in and asked for my phone number. She was told to do this by another teacher whose name I was not quite sure about. After I gave her the number it took about ten minutes for me to receive the call and soon I figured out who the teacher was but I was still thrown a bit by the message. "Go see the station manager at Heritage FM."

Why was she giving me the message? What did the station manager want and was I in some sort of trouble? I got done with the class and made my way to find the teacher in question. Alberta (a few months pregnant and in need of a chair outside of her class to rest a bit) explained that she had a radio program with the station on Wednesdays about marital issues, hence she knew the station manager. He had called her up as the station had lost my number and asked Alberta to send me the message. She didn't know what they wanted but said I should just take a taxi and head over to the station. After thanking her and teasing her a bit, I found my bike and rode down the road to the station.

The manager was there and I sat down to hear what he had to say. He was offering me a chance to do a radio promo for them which is not what I would call an urgent message or request, but one that turned out to be pretty fun. They do their promo spots in-house and they had a few scripted messages for me to look at and repeat. It seemed a little silly, but also it was a great break from the regular stuff so I said that I would give it a try.

The station itself is in what I would describe as a small house walled off from its neighboring buildings. As you enter the building from the front, just off to your right is the production studio. To say studio makes you think of something from the movies or television where there are two rooms, the audio engineer sits behind a bank of a thousand dials and knobs and she or he looks through a big glass window to the recording area beyond where the talent delivers the music or voice that will be heard by millions. For this studio, picture a six foot by eight foot room completely covered from wall to ceiling with egg-crate foam and one air conditioning unit humming away to keep the room cool. There was not a lot of space to walk around or move, and I was the fourth person to enter the room so it was crowded. Two desks held the audio mixing board and the computer that would save the tracks that were recorded.

This is not the same studio where we recorded the health program, that is in the room next door. This place is just meant to do recordings and it was where I would be speaking. They gave me the sheet of promos and showed me what they had in mind for me to read. I wish I had memorized the one passage they had me say as it was the silliest thing I have ever said into a microphone (I think, I have said some silly things in my time) but it boiled down to, "I have traveled the world and have never found a radio station that gave me so much pleasure as Heritage FM, 107.3" After I did a few takes of this passage, they had one they liked and they did just ten seconds of post production to it. They played it for me on their rather nice speakers and I was rather impressed my voice could sound the way it did. I didn't get a copy of the file, but when I return I will ask around to see if someone can give it to me.

What would be even better is to hear it on the radio and say to whoever is near me, "That's me!"

Sometimes the small things here can make you smile and have a good day. I should note that while I was enjoying myself at the studio I was not preparing for our ICT Club meeting. I drafted notes earlier in the morning for the one-hour session but didn't refine or practice what I was to cover during my lecture. That had a negative consequence to what I went over. You can't win them all I suppose. It just means I will try a bit harder for our next club meeting whilst I listen to the radio in town for their promo spots.