When Is Your Radio Station Overproduced?

The people who create radio imaging libraries for a living do not want you to overproduce your radio station.

“Communicate the message well, once,” says WIZZFX Creative Director Chris Nicoll. “Use as few words as possible. Use as few SFX as possible; no one likes five million laser zaps.”

“No one likes a wall of sound that makes the station sound as if it is stopping,” says CANFX Imaging’s Sean Gailbraith. “Fancy FX and beds are there as punctuation to make your message stick out more. But please do so subtly.”

A decade ago, it was hard to imagine that “overproduced” would ever be an issue for music radio again. The sweepers that early PPM measurement dogma demanded were 3-4 seconds, often calls only, and often deliberately affectless in their delivery. But they weren’t confined to the top 50 markets.

PPM’s overall tightening of all presentational elements, including jocks, didn’t help radio stand out from its digital rivals. But at the time, heavily produced, uptempo hit songs were adding fun and excitement to current-based formats. When pop music became sludgier, then slower, the same imaging underscored the lack of energy.

Then, a few years ago, I started to hear slightly longer sweepers that had a little too much of everything. There was not just one exchange between the male and female imaging voice, there were at least two, each punctuated with not-so-authentic-sounding listener actualities or other drop-ins. By the time the station name and positioner arrived, we’d been through three volleys with multiple SFX and sometimes more than one music bed. It felt like one PPM-era sweeper repeated three times. 

Recently, because of the demands of today’s radio, I’ve also noticed other pieces of imaging — typically top-of-the-hour IDs or sweep-starters — that sound like several PPM-era pieces strung together, each with its own different bed, listener drop-ins, and SFX. Sometimes a :00 ID must accommodate a legal ID (sometimes for several different frequencies with multiple cities of license, plus a mention of the HD signal), a studio sponsorship tag, a plug for the station app or smart speaker skill, and the station owner. I’ve also heard a legal ID segue not into music, but into the hourly text-to-win promo.

If station imaging is overstuffed, other issues exacerbate it. If jock breaks are scarce, or less local, the imaging has to handle more of the station business. If a station doesn’t use jingles, even a hosted station is likely to use imaging break after break, and the only variety becomes longer pieces vs. shorter ones.  

Others are noticing it, too. I put the “is radio overproduced” question to Facebook friends and got more than 200 comments, including some who don’t typically weigh in. “I heard a sweeper the other day that was long enough to make me change stations,” wrote record-biz veteran Brooks Quigley. 

“Sometimes there are so many bells, whistles, swooshes, and drums that you can’t hear the actual liner,” says VO pro and longtime programmer Sue Wilson. “So much doesn’t translate when listening online. It’s starting to sound like screaming car dealers between songs.”

In the mid-to-late ‘80s, as music softened and imaging intensified, it was possible to hear aggressive imagery of the “lock it in and rip the knob off” variety into “I’ll Be Over You” by Toto or “Back in the High Life Again” by Steve Winwood. Recently, Vallie/Richards consultant Mike Donovan noted that Olivia Rodrigo rarely gets a moment to collect herself at the end of “Driver’s License” before a busy sweeper intervenes. “With pop music taking on a more intimate ‘bedroom pop’ style, overproduced imaging that seemed fitting next to Diplo or Calvin Harris now is a disconnect,” says Integr8 Research president Matt Bailey. 

Several readers noted the combo of an increased reliance on outsourced production and the ongoing consolidation of local brand managers and imaging directors. Imaging providers “all do great-sounding stuff, but it mostly lacks connection to the individual brand,” says Cadence13 Executive VP/Content Development Bill Schultz. Former KSWD (The Sound) Seattle PD Smokey Rivers agrees “100 percent. Brands need brand stewards.”

For many readers, the answer was more imaging over song intros. Vinnie Marino’s WXKC (Classy 100) Erie, Pa., and Adam Rivers’ WKCI (KC101) New Haven, Conn., both rely entirely on “rollovers.” Even then, stations need a few fully produced pieces that can finesse an unlikely transition. Rollovers are their own clutter when a dry sweeper plays in the cold in between “Footloose” and “You Give Love a Bad Name.” And rollovers sound better when a jock can make sure they fire simultaneously (or not, in the case of a song with a distinctive opening like “Hungry Like the Wolf” or “Driver’s License”).

Readers also noted that imaging packages were being asked to do the work of writers. “You want to stand out now? Write something meaningful and let the words be more interesting than the prod EFX,” said RadioAnimal’s Dom Theodore. “If you write well, and communicate well with your voiceover talent and producer, memorable and effective imaging can still be achieved,” says WJBR Wilmington, Del., PD Eric Johnson.

While the :40 second legal IDs are another matter, the issues with shorter sweepers are rarely a question of length outright, but whether they’re too busy, and whether the length is justified. Gailbraith still suggests “one simple idea at a time,” the same thing that you might ask your air talent to do in a break. Nicoll suggests “planning out the delivery of messaging across an hour … rather than trying to say it all in every single piece of imaging.” “Make it memorable. Keep the brand reinforced,” says Lee Family Broadcasting’s Ben Reed. “Leave it out and you have Spotify.”

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