MediaVoice BLOG #1

It was last night that I actually wrote my first MediaVoice blog for this site…only to find that my page had timed out in the interim and my first complete blog went POOF, disappearing into cyberspace. (My webmaster laughed at me from his Blackberry) Don’t you love multimedia ? You see, even with all the technology, you’re going to goof up. With me, I don’t mind… as long as I only make that mistake once.

When I mentioned to a few that I was going to attempt to start a blog, I was asked, “So…what are you going to write about…the evils of Voice-Tracking ?” Lol…well….first of all, I’ll bring you some MediaVoice news and events. And no I don’t mean from a Sales perspective either. Vince won’t be making any appearance here, at least for now. I’ll keep you up to date on some of the cool things we are working on and what we’re learning along the way. I’ll also try to feature hilites on some cool new software programs and of course some neat website’s too. Trying to navigate all the new bells and whistles that debut each week is practically a full time job. I hope you’ll find some of the tips and new product stories will have both some educational and ‘wow’ factor. I think it’s what I enjoy the most about Multimedia.

Finally, yes, a MediaVoice Blog wouldn’t be complete without some observations about the changing world of Radio.

When I was very young, Dad and I used to fight over the station he would play in his big Oldsmobile every day and I would always lose. He was a diehard old CFDR fan and as a teen, I couldn’t listen to it for 5 minutes without wanting to open the car door on Thistle Hill traffic to ‘duck and roll’. Anyway, there was one thing I always remembered. Each afternoon when I would occasionally hear Arnie Patterson read his signature 5PM CFDR newscast, he’d always end the news by saying… “and I’ll be back in a few moments with a few comments”. Those comments rarely had any news value but they were one of the first things I think I noticed that fueled my love for Radio. Arnie’s comments would detail earth shattering stories like… where he had lunch that day, who he ran into on the street and my favorite…who shot the great golf game that day at Brightwood. A lot of name-dropping. No world news, rarely editorial rantings on the Ottawa politics of the day.. just some friendly neighbourhood stories from the City of Lakes. (Don't get me started on Amalgamation) And so I hope it will go with this Blog. There are many people in the industry that deserve more recognition than they receive and along with industry trends and product developments, we’ll try to hilite some cool Radio stories.. with …as Arnie used to say, a few comments. Oh by the way, that Dartmouth Station, CFDR, the one I hated as a teen… turned out to be the station that later hired me for my very first Graveyard shift on the AM band. Can you believe it? I think I was 21 years old, I owned every Deep Purple and Uriah Heep Album and my first Radio show was called ...uh... Starlight Serenade.

So excuse me for just a moment as I pause… ….as CFDR (KIXX) succumbed to dead air last week and ended what used to be the grand era of AM Radio in Halifax and Dartmouth. And thanks to a couple of real pros Frank Lowe and Country Bob for shutting off the lights in style.

I welcome your thoughts and comments and thanks for reading MediaVoice Blog #1

Dave ‘0db’ Bannerman