Digital Celebrities 292
partridge writes "Carson Daly's simulacrum is the new Max Headroom. I guess this makes Clear Channel Communications the current embodiment of Network 23? Now we just have to wait for the blipverts to start making consumer's heads explode."
Translation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Informative)
For the NY Times disabled (Score:5, Informative)
Mr. Daly's syndicated radio show, "Carson Daly Most Requested," is produced by Premiere Radio Networks, a unit of the broadcasting giant Clear Channel Communications. The program runs each weekday on 140 stations -- most of them owned by Clear Channel -- although only 11 receive the digitally customized version that seeks to simulate a local program.
"Most Requested" has been on the air for nearly two years, but only recently have people not directly involved in the program become aware of the extent to which technology is allowing Mr. Daly to cozy up to local listeners. Radio experts say the program involves perhaps the most extensive use yet of digital audio processing to offer localized shows from a central location. And members of a major broadcasting union are investigating to determine whether the techniques violate local labor agreements.
Clear Channel executives and Mr. Daly declined to discuss the program and the technology. But according to former Clear Channel employees, Mr. Daly spends several hours a week in a studio in his Manhattan apartment, reading scripts with short song introductions and longer segments of D. J. patter. His audio feed is transmitted to Los Angeles, where the show's engineers turn the segments into digital files and drop them into a database.
With a lot of cutting and pasting, the engineers create 11 customized hourlong countdown shows for cities like New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and two national pop and rhythm-and-blues countdowns for other markets. The customization means Mr. Daly can seem to be telling listeners in a particular city their most-requested songs for that day -- without ever seeing the city's top-10 list.
Clear Channel has been widely criticized for its use of so-called voice-tracking technology, which enables prerecorded D. J.'s to sound to listeners in a distant city as if they were both local and live.
Opponents of media consolidation say the technology allows Clear Channel to ignore its regulatory mandate requiring the company to have local stations serve local audiences.
In a case that will go to trial this week, the National Labor Relations Board is charging that Clear Channel violated the contracts of the staff at WWPR-FM in New York, a hip-hop and rhythm-and-blues station known as Power 105.1. The suit argues that the station began using a voice-tracked Los Angeles D. J. without union authorization.
The company has said that the show, "Power After Hours," was a syndicated program, which the contract allows.
Mr. Daly's show uses technology that is similar to voice tracking, but industry experts said that the digital manipulation of the host's words and phrases is so extensive as to put the show in a league of its own.
"This tells you that Carson Daly, as a brand and a personality, is worth the extra studio effort," said Tom Taylor, the editor of Inside Radio, an industry newsletter. "The technology has been advancing to the point where you can do that and make it sound really good."
Steven Dunston, a sound designer and editor in Los Angeles who worked at Clear Channel's Premiere Radio unit when the Daly show began in early 2001, said he helped build its innovative database, which had tens of thousands of audio samples in it.
He said that because Mr. Daly had only a few hours a week to devote to the program, phrases like "coming in at No. 4" were recorded once and stored in the database for reuse. The call letters and phone numbers of the 11 stations, in Mr. Daly's voice, were inserted throughout.
"It really was fascinating from a technological angle," Mr. Dunston said. "Nothing had been done to that extent before."
People close to the current show said its operations had changed little since it began. A spokeswoman for Premiere declined to answer questions about the production of Mr. Daly's show, saying that was proprietary information. She said Mr. Daly was unavailable for comment.
Not all of Mr. Daly's sentences are digitally constructed. The show's writers give him longer segments, like gossip roundups and customized introductions for New York and Los Angeles. But much of the material is written with recycling in mind, so a joke about Christina Aguilera that is used to introduce the No. 3 song in Boston can be used on another day when the song is, say, No. 6 in Atlanta.
Mr. Daly's unconventional countdown only recently caught the attention of the New York chapter of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, which represents broadcast personnel and opposes voice tracking. Peter Fuster, the chapter's assistant executive director, said the union had previously thought that the show was just a national countdown with local branding.
Mr. Fuster said, "We're looking into whether the customized package that they are preparing for New York violates our collective bargaining agreement" at Z-100 (WHTZ-FM), the station that carries the show in New York. If the station is giving Mr. Daly's show a list of songs to play, that would essentially be voice tracking, which is not allowed under the contract, Mr. Fuster said.
Mr. Daly is likely to be even more pressed for time now that he has his own late-night television talk show on NBC, "Last Call With Carson Daly." But when he needs some time off from his radio work, the database lets the countdown roll on. Before he goes on vacation, the show's producers try to make sure they have enough sound clips so his voice can introduce top-10 lists that have yet to be compiled.
That has not always gone smoothly. Mr. Dunston, the sound designer, said that at one point a new Michael Jackson song, "You Rock My World," unexpectedly showed up on the charts. Mr. Daly was unavailable that day, and because he had never introduced a song by Mr. Jackson, the engineers had to dig through old recordings to find a segment in which he made an offhand reference to the singer. Then they hunted down bits of the song title and assembled all the pieces.
"We had to cobble things together," Mr. Dunston said.
Re:Wha? (Score:4, Informative)
Why, just use Google and see what you can find [google.com].
Re:For the NY Times disabled (Score:2, Informative)
http://archives.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/technology
Some Local Radio Stations Are Only Transmitters (Score:5, Informative)
the likes of Clear Channel and other large
multi-station broadcasters.
This has been going on for at least two years now,
especially with the larger chains.
As I remember, he told me that the announcers
would say a catalog of phrases to be digitized
and cataloged into a data base. They would say
each city's name; common street names, names of
businesses, common school names, common church
names; the list goes on.
With this massive database of phrases (and many
that can be used for different locals; Saint
Mary's Church could be in Buffalo or Atlanta),
now they can put together just about anything
and make it 'local' to you.
What is interesting is that many of these stations
are becomming nothing more than a transmitter.
Studios, productions facilities, and even sales
and marketing have all but dissapeared from the
local scene. All of that is done remotely.
Local companies that want to buy ads now deal
with the national office. They come up with a script. The script can be assembed via computer
using the announcer's voice. Only if something unique needs to be said, does the announcer say anything. After all, Henrys' Fine Drycleaning
has probably been used before the Henry's Fine
Drycleaning in your hometown decides to advertise
on the radio.
School sports scores, news, and so forth, can be
handled remotely.
Re:Unions are just looking to save their jobs (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The long, slow, death of the DJ. (Score:4, Informative)
It sucks too because he was an amazing interviewer who did stuff that you just won't here in a canned, pre-recorded interview. He has a great tape of himself doing his super exagerated Chubby Checker impersonation to Chubby Checker to get his opinion. Ok, it sounds dorky but it was hilarious, trust me. You just don't get creative stuff like that when it has to be general purpose.
Re:The long, slow, death of the DJ. (Score:3, Informative)
I used to scrounge around in used junk stores, and a couple times I ran across records containing pre-recorded interviews. They were great - they included the script for the DJ for the canned questions. I wish I hadn't been so poor back then; I could have bought them and ... never mind, they wouldn't fit into my CD player anyway.
In one of my old jobs, the guy who wrote documentation had a passing resemblance to Tom Cruise. Whenever a new Cruise movie came out, he got a call from his agent to look the part and cruise the town (pun intended). Apparently it's a common scam to send out dopplegangers to get some local media buzz going.
There are two kinds of lies. No, sorry, I lied about that.
Re:If you are not old enough (or American enough). (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Wha? (Score:2, Informative)
Now, enter Edison Carter, the on the spot reporter for Network 23 who carries his own camera and is controlled by his director in Network 23's offices.
Network 23 are using high intensity, high speed "blipverts" to force people to watch the commercials giving them no time to change to other channels.
Unfortunately for Network 23, they also cause people who overdose on the blipverts to have their head explode.. it's doubly unfortunate that Edison Carter is sniffing out the story and Edison is also Network 23's highest ratings puller.. so with the help of their pet geek, they devise the idea of a virtual Edison Carter, getting rid of the original (at the body bank).
Anyway, to cut a long story short, Max Headroom is created by a not so well transfered personality from Edison Carter after he has been knocked out when trying to escape from Network 23's underground car park, the last image he had seen was the barrier with the warning sign "Max Headroom ? feet."
There is far more to the original 1985(?) Channel 4 production which involves the escape of both Edison Carter and Max Headroom from Network 23.
The american market got a rejigged version which was no-where as good. The spin-off from which was The Max Headroom Show.
Ron Headrest (Score:2, Informative)
"Ron Headrest" [ucomics.com]:
"I'll s-s-set up illegal covert operations and lie about them to Congress and the American p-p-people! If detected I promise to falsify documents, shred evidence and preserve plausible de-de-deniability! Then I'll take the Fifth! But with moist eyes! And selflessly
Re:Regulatory mandate (Score:2, Informative)
Shooting the whole story down because it was brought up by a union is fairly short-sighted. Obviously, they are going to try to fight for their members - that's the whole point of a union. Granted, fighting for another hour for a local DJ is less grandiose than fighting for safe working conditions. Union's can do stupid things. There's one grocery worker union here that pickets a Super-K, even though the workers inside don't want to be union. And that shipping shutdown a few months ago. So while whether we should or shouldn't care about the union is one issue, truth in broadcasting is the larger issue.
Re:Unions are just looking to save their jobs (Score:3, Informative)
What? You thought that rockstars personally visited every radio station in from here to Springfield? Bwahahaha!
Re:The long, slow, death of the DJ. (Score:2, Informative)
It's an Australian government funded station. It has good hosts, no ads, and no set playlists. They pimp local music constantly, and hold competitions in cities and towns around Australia to get airplay and studio time. Silverchair is the first example off the top of my head of a band that came from these competitions.
There is no finer radio station anywhere I've ever been. Check it out online and get more info at http://triplej.abc.net.au -- if you're a music lover, you won't regret it.