But first, let’s make sure this is the right station for you. Our mission is to be an open voice to inform, connect, amplify, and entertain the diverse communities of Baton Rouge. Programming is created by the community and we generally expect to broadcast a diverse mixture that:
Entertains and educates people’s musical, literary, and cultural interests
Inspires action-oriented listeners who seek civic improvement and fresh visions for Baton Rouge
Nurtures ongoing dialogues across races and cultures
Fosters collaboration for community progress
Environment and conservation
Education innovation, showcasing, and reform
Youth-oriented and youth-conducted programming
Civic engagement, leadership, and neighborhood action
Community work of and by special populations, i.e., women’s issues, crime abatement, and transportation
“Think tank” seekers of innovative civic ideas from other communities to build local knowledge and discourse
Local arts and cultural expansion, including the process of creation in multiple mediums, the writing and reading of poetry, and the up-close look at local artists and musicians engaged in the craft of creation
To submit a proposal, download the proposal form, complete it, and turn it in along with an MP3 program sample of at least 10 minutes (see Audio Editing Tips and Show Preparation Guidelines). Our Programming committee chair should let you know the items were received, and then makes them available to the rest of the committee, which meets to review all proposals periodically throughout the year. After meeting, they may write back and ask you to modify the proposal or fix a problem with the sample, or invite you to an in-person meeting to further discuss the show idea. Through this process, we should arrive at a show proposal that fits the station, and should end up with a high quality show sample that demonstrates your technical ability to handle the production work. Then you’ll need to attend one of our volunteer trainings, where we go over FCC regulations and station policies, and you may be asked to prepare a full-length episode for final review.
You can record and prepare shows at home with a personal computer and software such as Audacity or Garage Band. To record your voice, you might have limited success using a built-in microphone, but for better results, plug in an external USB microphone. Some battery-powered “portable recorders” can also act as USB-based microphones.
Some rules of thumb:
Summary:
How to convey a positive upbeat mood that engages the listener: Before speaking into the microphone, imagine you’re sitting across from a friend you haven’t seen in a long time and you are happy to see them and excited to share some news. Be sure to smile before speaking into the microphone. Even though the radio listener can’t see you, imposing upon yourself a feeling of excitement and having your mouth smile causes subtle changes to your voice that convey an upbeat positive mood that is more engaging to the listener.
How to keep the “P” and “T” sounds from popping, and the “Ch” sound from sounding awful: You just point your mouth a little off-center from the mic.
Shows should be built in half-hour segments — actually, slightly under half an hour, giving our automation system room to run public service announcements and station identifiers between show segments. Prepare each segment as a separate audio file. Thus, for typical show slots, you would prepare segments as follows:
Your overall show length should be within 30 seconds of the total time indicated. For example, for a 2-hour show, your 4 segments played back-to-back should take up 116 minutes, give or take 30 seconds. In general, if you can’t achieve the desired length, it’s better to run short than long. In other words, always err on the side of giving our automation system additional room to do its thing. For hour-long and multi-hour shows, your segments are typically 29:00 each, so that pairs of segments at up to 58:00. But you have some flexibility: it is only each pair of segments that must total 58:00 (to allow room for our automation system to play out a special legal station ID that must occur at the top of the hour), but it’s okay if your first segment runs say 37 minutes and your second segment runs 21 minutes, since this pair of segments still adds up to 58 minutes.
Use a consistent naming scheme without spaces or unusual characters in the name. (We like things to work well in our cross-platform environment with Macintosh, Windows, and Linux.) Start with the show name, then the show number, and then the segment number. For example, the 8th episode of a 1.5-hour show called The Grooving Jukebox would have these names:
No need to include a “_p1of1” suffix for single-segment shows. For specific episodes that absolutely cannot be re-aired at a later date (this might apply to a talk show dedicating an episode to a current event in the news), include a “_1x” suffix. You may also include an additional short suffix of your choosing to help identify the show content (to make it easier to identify episodes when communicating with us). Here are some examples:
For broadcasts over the radio in the United States, there are FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Library of Congress and DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) legal regulations, as well as music industry licensing regulations, that govern broadcast content. Our shows must adhere to these rules at all times.
You may announce the current song or immediately upcoming song, but you may not pre-announce a schedule of upcoming artists and song titles. For example, you cannot announce the next 3 songs and then play them. However, so long as you don’t indicate when artists will appear, you may at show introduction time name up to 2 artists that will be featured in the show as a general way of conveying the genre and content of the show, and you may occasionally name an upcoming artist to pique audience suspense. You may always post-announce show contents, such as announcing the last 3 songs that played.
Our automation system takes care of the legal FCC-regulated identification at the top of the hour, but if you are broadcasting live, you still need to make that legal hourly station ID. Listeners remember radio stations primarily by the frequency (“96.9 FM”), next by the brand name (“Baton Rouge Community Radio”), and last by the call letters (“WHYR-LP”). Consequently, we don’t need to draw too much attention to the call letters, and it’s okay if you don’t want to say them at all. On the other hand, we do want to encourage folks to go to our website (“whyr.org”), so that’s an easy way to indirectly mention the call letters. Here are examples of things to say:
You get the idea. Some show hosts may feel inclined to play word games with the call letters, such as referring to the station as “The Wire” (but this might cause confusion with the television show) or asking questions like, “Why R we polluting our waterways?”, and we wish to extend to hosts as much creative control as possible. The disadvantage of word games is that some listeners won’t get it, and more importantly, our current logo and brand name is “Baton Rouge Community Radio”. If you include word games, don’t do so exclusively. Be sure to also promote the station in ways that are broadly familiar and consistent across our other shows and automation system spots.
Others may help you make your show, such as by lending a hand or letting you borrow a piece of equipment, and you may thank them on the air for their assistance, but keep it to a simple thank you. You may not plug a friend’s business or provide contact information. You may not receive money from someone for making your show or plugging their activity. If a business wants to receive acknowledgment on the station or even during a specific show, they are welcome to purchase underwriting directly from WHYR.
Although we intend to keep program schedule re-arrangements to a minimum, there is always the possibility that your show gets moved to a different time slot. Or your show might get pre-empted by a special event, and thus get pushed up or pushed back a couple hours, or simply postponed a week. Therefore, avoid referencing the current weather, a recent event in the news, or the current time of day. In other words, try to keep your show “evergreen”. This also makes it easier to schedule encore presentations, allowing you more flexibility in going on vacation. On the other hand, we understand that some hosts wish to achieve a “live and local sound”. One option is to work with us to create a custom “clock” for your show. For example, if you like your show to start off with, say, “Hey, it’s another Friday evening at 8 PM here in Baton Rouge, time for some serious rock and roll, with me, your host, so-and-so”, that’s no problem: simply record that intro as a *separate* audio file, which we can then schedule to always immediately *precede* your first 28-minute segment. Or if you have a genre-specific music show and wish to include a live music calendar, we could run that as a separate audio file during one of your breaks, as well as at other times in the day!
Please prepare at least 3 but preferably 7 different versions of a short promo (up to 25 seconds) that encourages listeners to tune in to your show. We will run them on different days of the week.
Most show hosts with pre-recorded shows submit their episodes for broadcast through an internet utility called Audioport. Through our affiliation with the Pacifica Radio Network, we employ Audioport to get content to our station from our local show hosts as well as offer some locally-originating shows to other community radio stations across the country.
Please contact programming@whyr.org.
