Radio Drops #8: How to Talk on the Radio, Part 2

The Three Speaking Zones

• Personal: Your listener is three to ten feet away. You speak with a comfortable volume.

• Public: Your listener is on the other side of the room. Or, there are six or a dozen people in the room. You speak louder.

• Intimate: Your listener is very, very close and what you are saying is private.

Watch the video on YouTube: Radio Drops #8: How to Talk on the Radio Pt. 2

Stay in the Personal Zone

There are three speaking zones, relative to the distance between you and whomever you’re speaking to: personal, intimate and public. You could also call yelling a zone, but let’s pass on that, because we’re not going to yell at anybody.

The personal zone is where most of our talking is done. The people we’re talking to are 3 to 5 feet away, maybe 6. No need to raise our voice. We just talk normally, like I’m doing right now.

The intimate zone is when the person is less than 3 feet away. You go a little softer. In this zone you ask for credit, you tell secrets, you say sweet things in your lover’s ear.

Then there’s the public zone, when people are 10 to 15 feet away, maybe more, or you’re in a crowded room. You may not talk any faster, but your volume goes up, because you want everybody to hear you.

Why Jocks Get Loud

The other reason disc jockeys tend to talk loud is that they know the people listening aren’t in the room. They’re far away somewhere, and if somebody’s far away, you’ve got to talk a little louder, right? In the public zone, if you’re not careful, you get right on the edge of shouting, and nobody likes to be shouted at.

Disc jockeys have a problem, too. When we’re doing our shows we’ve got those cans on our ears, and we tend to turn them up. When things are loud, you get louder.

Now, I have had disc jockeys that were loud and fast-talking, and I loved listening to those guys, especially when I was young. One of them was on WLS in Chicago in the 1960s, and I thought that was the greatest thing I’d ever heard. He was turned on with what he was doing, one of the originals, and naturally I tried to emulate him when I got into the business. But I soon learned it’s hard to pull off, because you can sound like an idiot pretty easily.

Nobody to Coach You

Most young announcers coming into the business now are at a disadvantage, because you don’t have radio like we used to have. You had a program director who would sit down with you at least once a month, sometimes once a week, go over a tape of your show, listen to what you said and how you said it, and give you a little critique.

Like a coach with a player: here are the good things you’re doing, and here’s what could be improved on. You don’t have that anymore.

It’s difficult for a guy to critique his own self. We tend to think we’re worse than we actually are, or better, because we’re too wrapped up in it, too close to it.

The only thing I can say is what I said in my last Radio Drop: talk in the personal zone, be quick, and don’t try to be anybody except yourself. If you’re a burner, a screamer, if you’re having fun, you may be onto something, and somebody’s going to listen. But most people are going to listen to a disc jockey who talks pretty much like I’m talking here. Natural.

Two Examples: One Personal, One Public

Here are a couple of YouTubes with short airchecks of two of the top West Coast DJ’s from long ago, both on the same station here. Both guys are very quick in delivery, but Humble Harve was a ‘personal zone’ DJ. The Real Don Steele delivered his raps in the “public zone” his entire career, and nobody pulled it off better than he.

Link to Humble Harve KRLA 1990

Link to The Real Don Steele KRLA 1990

Note: the Steele tape was, obviously, not recorded on a normal day. To hear Steele in his prime here’s an aircheck from 1967.