0345 – Imagining Your Hidden Audience – Where They Are

2021.12.11 – 0345 – Imagining Your Hidden Audience – Where They Are

Summon up an image of where that person will be when they are watching you on tv or listening to you on the radio, will also alter how you talk live, or record a piece of copy. Will it be played on breakfast TV? Is it for an instore commercial? Is it for a podcast? If you are presenting on the radio, you are likely to have a different style of presentation for a breakfast show to a late-night show. Not only will the content be different but also the choice of words, the projection, the pace and the tone: perhaps brighter and faster for breakfast and slower and softer for late in the evening. Each situation may suggest a different style to cut through or complement the activity that your listener is likely doing as they consume your content.

If you are a fast-paced Saturday night DJ the scenario you’re painting with the music you are playing is one of a club, so you ‘point of vocus’ would be as though you are talking to lots of people, at a distance, in a club. A ‘late night love’ music presenter would be more intimate in their style, fitting with the music and the atmosphere they are creating, so their point of vocus is nearer to the mic – a close, one-to-one voice. A local radio presenter of events and guests would be somewhere between the two, as might be a newsreader.

Project your voice to an invisible listener across the studio: a visualisation technique to help you successfully talk conversationally, one to one despite seeing no-one.

Audio recording script and show notes (c) 2021 Peter Stewart

Through these around-5-minute episodes, you can build your confidence and competence with advice on breathing and reading, inflection and projection, the roles played by better scripting and better sitting, mic techniques and voice care tips... with exercises and anecdotes from a career spent in TV and radio studios. If you're wondering about how to start a podcast, or have had one for a while - download every episode!

And as themes develop over the weeks (that is, they are not random topics day-by-day), this is a free, course to help you GET A BETTER BROADCAST, PODCAST AND VIDEO VOICE.

Look out for more details of the book during 2022.

Contacts: https://linktr.ee/Peter_Stewart

Peter has been around voice and audio all his working life and has trained hundreds of broadcasters in all styles of radio from pop music stations such as Capital FM and BBC Radio 1, the classical music station BBC Radio 3 and regional BBC stations. He’s trained news presenters on regional TV, the BBC News Channel and on flagship programmes such as the BBC’s Panorama. 

He has written a number of books on audio and video presentation and production (see contacts clink above) and presented hundreds of radio shows (you may have heard him on BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 4, Virgin Radio or Kiss, as well as BBC regional radio) with various formats. He has read tens of thousands of news bulletins and hosted 3,000+ podcast episodes.

The podcast title refers to those who may wish to change their speaking voice in some way. It is not a suggestion that anyone should, or be pressured into needing to. We love accents and dialects, and are well aware that how we speak changes over time. The key is: is your voice successfully communicating your message, so it is being understood (and potentially being acted upon) by your target audience?

This podcast is London-based and examples are spoken in the RP (Received Pronunciation) / standard-English / BBC English pronunciation, although invariably applicable to other languages, accents and dialects.

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