DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

Straight talk about radio programming, radio advertising, radio production...Well, you get the idea.

Friday, May 1, 2009

O'DAY'S TRAVEL WOES #31: My Mac & Me At 30,000 Feet


November, 1994: The entire NAB contingent was on the return flight from Amsterdam to Washington. I had planned to get some work done on my Macintosh Powerbook as we crossed the Atlantic.

Spotting the NAB’s John Abel a couple of rows behind me, I decided first to show him the nifty condenser microphone built into the Powerbook. John uses a PC, but he expressed interest in seeing what my Macintosh could do.

Mac PowerBook 180

Like most Macintosh owners, I’m always eager to evangelize on behalf of a computer that you can use intuitively. So I happily went to launch a particular application...and it crashed.

No problem, I told John, sheepishly. I’ll just restart, and everything will be fine.

It wouldn’t restart.

I tried again. Nothing.

And again. Nothing.

Only a Macintosh user can appreciate how frustrating this was.

So I took the computer back to my seat, promising to return. Finally I managed to get the thing started, and I returned to the empty seat next to John.

I demonstrated various nifty features of the computer, and after a couple of minutes another passenger leaned over us to look. And then another. Now I had an audience of three, as I demonstrated a silly program that creates anagrams out of people’s names (or out of any words). Naturally, we had to feed each person’s name into the program.

Finally everyone got tired of my bragging about my Mac, and I returned to my seat. I settled down to get some work done — pleased that my travel time would be used productively — and discovered that all of my showing off had used up the computer battery. (And I wonder why I never seem to get any work done while “on the road.”)

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Friday, January 23, 2009

O'DAY'S TRAVEL WOES #19: Taxi Driver Puts His Life At Risk


July - August, 1994: July was typically quiet for me. My only trip was to Cleveland, where I spoke at the McVay Media’s Programmers School. My topics were Building A Winning Morning Show and the premiere of my Total Quality Service Radio Station seminar.

This trip prompted me to offer the following piece of Information For Airline Passengers: It is possible to get up from or sit down in your seat without pulling down the seat in front of you. (Pass it on.)

It was during the Cleveland trip that I found myself wanting to kill a taxi driver. On the way from the airport to my hotel, the driver was telling some sort of story, and he said, “So I picked up these two men at a downtown hotel, a couple of middle-aged guys — you know, like us.”

I have never before been called “middle-aged,” and I was terribly offended. Needless to say, he did not receive a big tip. (We middle-aged guys are notoriously cheap.)

In August I finally made my first visit to Montana, courtesy of Bob Hoene and the Montana Broadcasters Association. Bob brought me in to conduct two days of seminars: How To Create Maximum Impact Radio Advertising and Air Personality Plus+.

A couple of weeks later found me first in Montréal and then in Québéc City, conducting two days of seminars for Télémédia, thanks to Sylvain Langlois.

Day One was a commercial copywriting seminar for their salespeople; Day Two was an air talent seminar, complete with simultaneous translation. (The year of French class when I was nine years old has been of surprisingly little value in my “middle-aged” years.)

Hotel Vogue Bathroom

In Montréal, I was housed at the Hotel Vogue, a very nice establishment. (How nice? Well...The bathroom had a shower AND a separate sunken bathtub...as well as a telephone and a TV.) The first day’s seminar was held in the “Amphitheatre Bell” (name after Alexander Graham Bell) – the only seminar site I’ve been to that has its own skating rink.

As soon as I returned to Los Angeles, I spoke to an international group of radio people — from Egypt, Botswana, and a couple of countries I hadn’t even heard of. Although each country has its own cultural distinctions, I'm always struck by how much in common radio people from around the world have in common with each other.

Next Week: I get attacked by bees in Germany.

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Friday, December 12, 2008

O'DAY'S TRAVEL WOES #13: Kentucky "Customer Service"


April, 1994: My first visit to Owensboro, Kentucky, had me conducting three seminars in two days. On Day One, I conducted both The Psychology of Management and Air Personality Plus+ for the joint Kentucky Broadcasters Association/Indiana Broadcasters Association convention.

One of my passions is Customer Service (whether it’s a radio station serving its listeners or advertisers...or a non-broadcast business serving its customers). The convention hotel provided my Customer Service seminar with lots of good material.

The hotel has a huge parking lot — the size of a football field. Having driven two hours from Evansville Airport (it would have been one hour, but I followed the directions provided by the hotel) and arriving late in the evening, I could not find a parking place anywhere near the front entrance.

Well, actually, there were three empty spaces right in front, just steps away from the entrance. No, they weren’t Handicapped spaces. They simply were marked, “NO PARKING — TOWAWAY.”

So I parked the equivalent of two city blocks away and struggled to the front door with my suitcase, computer, and box of seminar materials.

Upon checking in, I asked the desk clerk, “For whom are those three prime parking spaces reserved?” She didn’t know.

So I asked a bellman, and he explained, “One is for the owner. Another is for the owner’s mother. And the third is for the hotel manager.”

That told me all I needed to know about this hotel: It is operated for the convenience of the owner and manager, not for the customers. And that is why nothing that happened those two days surprised me....such as:

The KBA/IBA had requested an overhead projector for one of my seminars. But when I arrived at the seminar room, there was no projector. The KBA member in charge of dealing with the hotel asked the hotel’s contact person where it was. The hotel employee said, “You didn’t order one.”

“Yes, we did,” replied the broadcaster. “Here’s a copy of the paperwork that lists our equipment needs.”

“Well, yes, we did receive that,” conceded the hotel employee. “But the problem is the bulb in the overhead projector burned out.”

This, of course, explained why they did not have an overhead projector ready for us; the bulb had burned out. Keep a spare bulb on hand? Why should they do that? Send a hotel employee to a nearby store to buy new bulb? They certainly have better things to do with their time than that!

Believe me, I have half a dozen other stories about this hotel — all of which you can hear in my newly revised Customer Service seminar. Perhaps my favorite moment came when I checked out. I wanted to take with me an extra copy of the hotel’s Guest Comment Card. So I asked the desk clerk if she had one. She didn’t know what I was talking about.

“You know,” I said, “those little cards in the guest rooms that ask us to evaluate the quality of service we received during our stay?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she replied. “I’ve only been here three months.”

Fortunately, the IBA and KBA were such gracious hosts that my non-hotel related memories of this trip are fond ones. This also afforded me my first opportunity to meet (the since deceased) J. T. Whitlock and to enjoy his hospitality.

On the following day, I conducted a special version of How To Create Maximum Impact Radio Advertising for convention attendees as well as employees & advertisers of WBKR/Owensboro. WBKR’s Gary Exline had been wanting to bring this seminar to town for several years, and he is a very persistent person. He arranged to have me stay over, took care of my fee, and invited not only his own people & clients to attend but also opened it up to any IBA and KBA convention attendees who wanted to stay for the extra morning.

My only regret on this trip was not visiting the Moonlight Cafe. WBKR’s Chuck Urban waited until he gave me a ride back to the airport in Evansville, Indiana, to tell me about the Moonlight, which apparently is famous for its barbecue. I, of course, am famous for loving barbecue. The Moonlight has a buffet that is supposed to be wonderful. (Now I’ve got to finagle another invitation to Owensboro to find out what I missed.)

A couple of weeks later I found myself in Nashville, where I conducted a full-day programming seminar for the National Christian Radio Conference. WAY-FM’s Dusty Rhodes had arranged for me to speak there, and I think the NCRS board of directors thought I was a bit expensive.

I told Dusty that although I don’t discount my fees, they would be paying for a day of seminar time...and that they could define what “a day" means. “You can have me work from 6AM until Midnight, if you wish,” I told Dusty.

Little did I know they would take me literally. The seminar began at 9:15AM and ended up 5:30PM. From 6:00PM until 1:00AM, I conducted individual aircheck critiques for NCRS attendees. Suffice it to say, the NCRS knows how to get its money’s worth. (They also were very nice to me, and I was glad to see them get what the British call “value for money.”)

The conference was held at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, which has a revolving restaurant atop the building. It’s lovely...but you can feel the room moving in small, sudden starts. I kept thinking I was back home in Los Angeles, experiencing more earthquake aftershocks.

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