When You’re Tongue-Tied and Just Don’t know What To Do!

Jan 24, 2015 | Welcome Column

One of my disc jockey friends was having an unusually and incredibly tough day this past week. This is the sort of thing that happens to all of us from time to time and sometimes it is just so overwhelming, it can seriously impact the way we function.

Some of us can find ways to get by, to mask the situation, to shrug it off and plow through. But for radio announcers, it can get so bad as to even effect the way we speak. Our tongues get tied in knots similar to a sheepshank. Every word we utter over the microphone can sound like your old cassette tape that was left on the dashboard of your car mixed with the CD you disc’d and plowed under last year and then found come spring planting … “skip-whir-skip-whir-skip-whir.” Pretty hard to hold an audience, wouldn’t you think?

So for my friend and anyone else who finds themselves in trouble – especially the inability to speak clearly due to “one of those days,” I offer this:

Maybe a refresher course at the Brian McNeal School of Broadcasting would help … we have a full semester on “Coordinated Articulation with Digital Gesturing On the Air”.

We’ll put you through all the paces of a real broadcast studio with real audience members listening. You’ll learn to announce the time and temperature and to correctly pronounce the names of at least 50 obscure cities that may or may not pop up in a newscast. Your full final semester is your final exam. After working as hard as you can, but at your own pace, we’ll give you the test. You must pass the test with 100% in order to graduate. The final exam consists of stuffing your mouth full of marbles and doing your show on the air. Each day your listeners are invited to call in and give us just ONE word you said that they understood. If they get it right, we’ll allow you to spit out one marble each day they answer correctly. Of course it gets easier with practice but finally at the very end of your semester, we’ll grant you Full Broadcast Certification to be an honest-to-goodness Radio DJ … when you’ve lost all of your marbles.

If you wanna take the Brian McNeal Night Club DJ course, it’s just a bit more advanced and difficult. With our Night Club DJ course, you must continually prove on a daily basis that you have lost all your marbles.

Don’t forget that we also have the Brian McNeal School of Public Address Announcing course … it’s a lot easier. Many of our students have gone on to successful careers working on the P.A. at Wal-Mart and other such fine institutions. This course is where you keep all the marbles in your mouth while eating a peanut butter sandwich and talking on the mic simultaneously. No one can understand what you say and that makes it easier for the company who hires you to ring up higher-than-sale prices when the customers get to the checkout counter.

So, if you’re ever having a day that is just too tough to handle by yourself, remember, we’re here to help. Contact us by phone for an audition but remember, if we can understand what you say, you probably don’t really need us so have a great BLUEGRASS day!

Thank You!
Brian McNeal
Prescription Bluegrass Media

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