Killer Bits

Australian regional and metropolitan radio networks have committed $20 million worth of air-time for a 12 month campaign to promote radio advertising over TV.

Although the campaign won't actually measure an increase in radio advertising spend, Commercial Radio Australia says the aim, clearly, is to increase radio's current 9% share of main media advertising revenue.

The campaign, organised by Commercial Radio Australia, began on air on June 30^th and was devised by Ralph van Dijk at Eardrum, a specialist UK radio agency that set up in Australia in March this year.

Its key theme is "During the day, radio is twice as effective at reaching your audience than TV."

At the industry launch in Sydney van Dijk said each of the 12 45 second spots had one clear message - for instance one spot challenges the truism that advertisers choose TV because they like to be in their own ads. Another illustrates the common industry belief that agencies promote TV because they can make more money from the creative.

The spots are spoof interviews about advertising conducted by Mark Mitchell, who was given some latitude to ad-lib during the recording. (The three we've heard are good - one in particular has great 'visuals' as Mitchell bumbles through pouring coffee.)

Commercial Radio Australia CEO Joan Warner says the radio spots are targeted at advertisers in specific market segments.

"We see good opportunities to grow revenue in the fast-moving consumer goods, youth, finance and banking, real estate and telecommunications categories," Ms Warner said.

"In many cases advertisers opt for television campaigns when a radio-based campaign would enable them to deliver their messages to more customers more economically and with more frequency and impact."

The campaign's theme is drawn from Nielsen Media Research showing that between the hours of 7 am and 5 pm radio reaches on average, twice as many people as free-to-air television.

Robert Cea at Melbourne's SMR Studios had a crash course in multi-cultural diplomacy recently, recording spots for Consumer Affairs Victoria which presented some challenging concepts for several of the 10 different languages represented.

The Consumer Affairs spots to promote 'The Little Red Book' were recorded in Arabic, Cantonese, Greek, Italian, Mandarin, Serbian, Turkish, Vietnamese and Russian as well as English.

Because the spots involved some humour the idea was to record the English version first, to get an idea of the nuances involved. But that wasn't possible because the talent wasn't available.

"The first two or three sessions were blind," Robert says. "Because of the humour element, we asked the talent to sit in on the editing sessions. But even that was a bit risky because some people's sense of humour is different from others."

The two Arabic voice artists for example, had completely different interpretations of the humour in the script.

Plus, the title of the handbook being promoted is 'The Little Red Book' and wasn't negotiable.

Then there was the dog. In the script, the central character has a pet dog. "Some countries found it strange to have a dog as a pet. For example, the Cantonese voice talent was struggling with the script."

And because of the language differences, all the recording was done in one take to make it easier to do the final editing.

"I made sure when they did a take they did the whole section," Robert says. "Even if they stuffed up a line, I had to get them to do it all again."

Many of the voice-over talents were journalists rather than actors, so there was a fair bit of direction required, but Robert says it was give and take, since he and the producer needed direction with the cultural nuances.

"You really started to understand how humour changes across cultures, and changes the way the audiences perceives things, and the way the talent says them."

Sydney studio Television + Advertising Services (TAS) has secured a deal to become the exclusive provider of production and post-production facilities for Trans-World International, (TWI) the world's largest independent producer and distributor of spots programming.

TWI's programming include Wimbledon, Rugby World Cup 2003, Australian Open Tennis, ASP World Championship Tour of Surfing, Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and Sydney's City to Surf.

General Manager TWI Australia, Peter Brennan says the facilities deal with TAS will allow his company to expand its offerings throughout Asia Pacific.

"Having a facilities agreement in place was critical for us to achieve our production goals. The production processes used by TAS allow us to seamlessly integrate our field and post-production requirements to produce great content with very short turn around times," explains Peter.

TAS Managing Director Brent Meyer is very happy with the new arrangement, given TAS' recent investment in new premises in Pyrmont.

"We are very pleased to announce this facilities agreement with TWI Australia. Their understanding and commitment to production excellence is well known. We look forward to many years of service as we continue to expand our operations in Australia and the Asia Pacific region," Brent says.

Some people get all the best gigs. Kearon de Clouet at Tiger has been ‘going old-fashioned foley’ as he puts it, creating new sounds for an extreme animation series to promote Hutchison Telecom’s new video mobile phone service.

According to Kearon it’s one of the best audio jobs he’s had in ages. “They let me go all the way and do off the wall silly stuff and then they come in and just approve it.”

The voiceovers and SFX are for RFTV, a series of six 60 second animations in which extreme show host Hank Shidderferbranz explores the dangers in non-extreme activities such as supermarket shopping.

"I needed the sound of a supermarket trolley with a wobbly wheel and it's kind of distinctive so I actually had to go to Woollies and steal and trolley and wheel it across Military Road into the studio," Kearon says.

"It's very slapsticky, gorey, ouch-type humour," Kearon says. (Think Ren and Stimpy.) "In one scene for example a guy gets hit on the head with an anvil - I made it sound like one of those old fashioned ring phones falling."

Kearon says everyone involved is having such a great time they’re all putting in extra effort and there’s talk that if the series is successful it could go longform.

While Commercial Radio Australia battles bureaucrats to get its digital radio trials on the air, students from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS) launched their own digital broadcast at the SMPTE conference in Sydney last week.

Each year radio students at AFTRS take to the airwaves of AFTRS station ICE 100.7, which completes their final practical exercise of the course.

The ICE 100.7 digital broadcast at the SMPTE Conference was the first DRB Outside Broadcast mounted in Australia and has been made possible through the co-operation and generosity of many corporate and industry sponsors.

The OB studio used a Logitek console and RCS Master Control playout system. The signal then went through a DBMax digital compressor to an ISDN link that took it to the 4th channel on the digital radio multiplexer for broadcast.

SMPTE Chairman John Maizels hailed the broadcast as a "triumph for radio industry co-operation" with broadcast equipment being loaned by three different companies, the ISDN Codecs borrowed from ABC Radio, and the 4th Multiplex channel being vacated by ARN for a week to allow the broadcast to go ahead.

There were few surprises in the latest metropolitan radio ratings #4 for 2003 and it seems only a matter of time now before John Laws is finally toppled from the number one morning slot.

Sydney's radio rankings are clearly defined in three tiers. Firstly, 2DAY, 2GB and Nova clearly holding the top three spots, then 2UE, Mix, 2MMM, 2CH and 2WS then another fair gap before the ABC stations, 2KY and 2SM.

Laws is still number one in mornings, but his audience is slowly dropping off. Hot contender for the number one slot in mornings is Nova 929.

Although number three overall in Sydney, Nova is the standout winner of the 18-39 year old listeners.

In Melbourne, Nova is also the clear number one in the 18-30 year old demographic, although 3AW is the overall ratings leader with 15.9% of the audience. Fox is number two with 12 and Nova is number three with 10.8.

The two Austereo stations hold down number one and two positions in Brisbane: B105 is still number one with 17.8, and sister station 4MMM rose more than 1% to move into second slot with 14.1%. Mix 97.3 dropped back to third position on 13.9

In Adelaide 5MMM moved up into the number two slot by virtue of 5AA losing more than 2.5% of its audience and crashing down to number three. SA-FM continues its audience dominance with 23.9% overall.

Perth's dominant leader 94.5FM held steady on 22.2% with its sister station 92.9 several thousand listeners behind in second position with 11.1 (up from number three.) 96FM is in third spot on 10%. Nova didn't fare so well in Perth, they're fourth overall and conceded their number one spot in the 18-39 demographics to overall leader 94.5FM this survey.

8GAS Melbourne has a new face in the dub room – David Strangio has been learning the ropes from Ben Worsey. Ben celebrated his own personal independence day on July 4^th by heading off overseas.

8One's Company have been flat out during June -with a lot of work coming from across Bass Strait. Radio campaigns for Workplace safety, road safety and Island State Credit Union have been keeping David and Caillin Flint flat out. There have also been radio campaigns for Mitsubishi and the Australian Institute of Management.

8Greg Clark's putting the finishing touches to his studio upgrade, installing the new OS10 operating system for the new MACs acquired earlier in the year. Greg says he's very impressed with the new system and his upgraded Qbase SX software.

Re-Sending Audio:
Any audio already sent via AudioNET® can be re-sent to new stations from any computer with Internet access. So, if you get a call from the agency after hours or on the weekend because someone wants to send a spot to another station, you CAN DISPATCH FROM HOME (or an Internet café, or wherever.)

Distribution Lists:
If you have regular jobs, make a distribution list so you don't have to enter the stations every time you send. You can make as many distribution lists as you like. If you have several jobs that are similar, you can EDIT distribution lists and re-save them with a new name, so you don't have to start from scratch every time. When you create distribution lists, they'll appear at the top of the station lists page under Personal Receivers when you select 'Send Track.' Also consider making a DL when you have a big dispatch order, as it gives you an extra chance to check that you've ticked the correct number of stations.

Holding Pen for late station notifications:
If you have spots to send, and are hanging around waiting for delivery instructions from the usual suspects use the Holding Pen to make your life easier. Upload the spots to the Holding Pen, then when the delivery instructions come through, again, you can despatch the spots from home, or wherever. Or whoever is still at the office can send them on. (If they haven’t used AudioNET® before, we’ll talk them through it on the phone – no sweat!) The Holding Pen is in the Housekeeping section – you upload tracks to the Holding Pen anytime you want, and then send them from the Holding Pen once you know where they have to go.

If you have any suggestions or ideas about improvements to AudioNET, we would like to hear from you at feedback@dbmsystems.com.au or call Dave or Verity on 03 9687 9055 or 1800 003 155.

"To err is human--and to blame it on a computer is even more so." - Robert Orden US comedian, sceenwriter