Reclaiming Radio’s Forward Momentum

I taught myself a lot of radio-programming basics, and the vocabulary that went with them, reading the trade publications before I began working for one myself. It wasn’t until I came to Radio & Records, however, that Joel Denver taught me the term “crush and roll.” I think I must have already picked up on how most jocks let the first note of each new song intro establish before coming in a millisecond later, but I was proud of having a name for it.

“Crush and roll” was a radio programming basic, although sometimes the terminology was slightly different. (Other jocks variously learned it as “crunch,” “crash,” or “punch and roll”). If you did something else formatically, it might have been a deliberate choice (consulting legend Mike Joseph’s jocks usually backsold, did their break, and jingled into the next song or spot break), but it might have been a disregard for basic housekeeping.

The adamance with which radio programmers refused to compromise their “forward momentum” was infuriating to the music industry, especially when it meant not stopping to backsell new songs. The animosity manifested in the “if you play it, say it” campaign 35 years ago reflected bad radio/record vibes that are likely still refracted through the labels’ overall indifference to radio today.

In the voice-tracking era, you don’t consistently encounter “crush and roll,” even among different jocks at the same station. One voice-tracked break might be perfectly inserted after that first note. Or it might come slightly ahead of that first note. Or the jock might stop the music altogether to tell you about what those doctors in Norway have discovered, even if that break would fit just over the unused intro that follows.

I’m aware that nothing says “old guy who won’t let go” more than writing about a lack of formatic precision in today’s radio, especially during moments fraught in so many other ways. “The old rules are just that — old. I voice-track and do both as the situation suggests,” says veteran PD and station owner Rick Peters. There are also those people who can’t understand why we would want to talk over intros when listeners say they never liked it.

But I made a stray comment about “crush and roll” in Facebook last week. It turned out that there were a hundred responses from radio people willing to debate whether the current laxity is a function of “the talent tracking incorrectly, or just being lazy,” as Tom Lawler contends, or inflexible radio automation and playout systems. “It really depends on the system and setup,” says Scott Evans, who voice-tracks using three different software programs. Only one, Evans says, allows him to place the break exactly as he wants.

The discussion prompted a number of related issues, including a lack of call letters, another onetime sign of sloppy work. Danny Kingsbury noted how many voice-tracks resulted in jocks being “buried under the music.” (I hear distorted ones as well.) Erich Bachman points out the difficulty of trying to do much over :05 intros or songs that fade in without a distinctive first note, such as Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends.” 

Often, Lawler says, voice-tracking issues are because of choices that stations made, albeit unwittingly. Eventually, in the thread, engineers and vendors for playout systems began chiming in with troubleshooting suggestions. “Start the outro of the last song in the player, start recording but say nothing, segue to the next song and then start talking,” says Michael Erickson. “Stations with good processing won’t hear the dip in levels.”

In today’s already disheartening business, losing control over the product owing to logistics is “just another example of death by a thousand cuts,” as Westwood One’s John Summer puts it. The examples may seem picky, but random radio is checked-out radio. Responding to the music, in large or small ways, is one way to be in the moment with the listener. Random content, randomly inserted, often belies that the voice-tracker isn’t listening to the music (or even aware of what is being played, as reader Don Beno notes).

Lackluster pacing saps our on-air energy, especially if we’re promising to make listeners feel good. We also haven’t replaced “crush and roll” with something better. Voice-trackers freed from the tyranny of formatics aren’t bonding with their audiences like never before in a way that has led to increased listening. With less structure, the net result is sometimes saying less at greater length.

Because if we won’t pay attention, why should listeners? As with all issues of formatic precision — call letters, what’s placed at :00, “hitting the post” — what might seem like broadcaster self-indulgence is still “a vital part of our art because of its contribution to the finished product,” says Ed Rodriguez. “[It’s true] that the listener had no idea why they loved the sound of their favorite station, just that they did.”