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Issue #56 – Mentor News
by L. Swift and Jeff McQ
“I’ve always been a kick in the pants,” says Radio Connection mentor Ed Knutson of his bigger-than-life personality. Working out of KKVV 1060-AM, a Christian talk radio station in Las Vegas, NV, Ed is a natural stickler with his students when it comes to the spoken-word side of radio, emphasizing the importance developing the voice for on-air radio work as well as building a solid working knowledge of audio editing. In a recent conversation with RRFC, Ed pulled no punches in his advice for radio apprentices looking to develop a career. Here are just a few nuggets of wisdom we mined from the conversation. (You’re welcome, radio students.)
ON PRACTICING WITH YOUR VOICE: “I want [my students] to drive around in their car reading billboards aloud…Going back to my youth, before I even got into radio, I would entertain people by reading the billboard signs… It keeps the lips moving and [helps] the pronunciation.”
ON BUILDING VOCABULARY: “The main thing is the voice and the pronunciation and speaking and saying things correctly…those kinds of basics…be driven to look up words when you need to.”
ON KNOWING THE TECHNICAL SIDE: “Know your audio editing. I don’t care if you are on the air or not, everywhere I’ve ever been in radio, you better know some basic audio editing.”
ON THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING ALL ASPECTS OF RADIO, NOT JUST YOUR AREA OF INTEREST: “I can understand if you have a certain genre you want to do, but let’s learn the whole ball of wax… You’ve got to learn the other stuff anyway because somebody isn’t going to go, ‘Oh, we need a talk show host…BAM!’ What they are going to ask is, ‘What have you done already?’… You’ve got to scrub the deck of the ship before you get be captain.”
ON THE FUTURE OF RADIO: “I don’t think it’s going to go away quick…I get those rags and I read that sad story, [but] I really don’t think it is. I know a lot of people that listen online and on their phones, but a lot of people still have radios in their homes [who like to] flip the switch and listen and not have to tune it in on your phone. I think it’s going to be around for years.”
ON KEEPING YOUR EDGE: “Work the creative monster within you and don’t be afraid to use [it]…You’ve got to have a creative streak or you are just going to be left behind. Work the basics all the time, do your editing and stuff like that…take some voice-over classes, subscribe to the radio rags. Find out what’s going on.”
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