On-Air: Talking To A Client On-Air

We’ve been trying to convince more clients to start using a landline instead of a mobile phone (cell phone) when talking on the air with our jocks. They appear to be one of the weakest links when trying to communicate a message with a paying client on-air.

Live crosses with clients are always a double edged sword when you are talking about the quality of the audio and the availability of the client, sometimes compromises have to be made.

As I said we have been trying to get clients to do better, and be better on air. How do we do that?

First of all the basics… a landline will be a far better sound and call quality. Plus they can be relied on for significantly better sound and call quality with no dropped calls and switching between towers – which is always a possibility when using a mobile phone.

While mobile phones can be used everywhere and anywhere… because of their smallness, the audio quality of the microphone is limited and the operating system of the mobile phone will compress audio files and signals. They use different codes and as such each call on a different phone will sound different on-air.

One of the things not thought of by some stations is that mobile phones and towers especially can suffer from congestion during certain times of the day.

Because calls from landlines are transmitted through a telephone cable, rather than radio waves and cell tower signals, any call made on a land line is clearer and the connection more stable.

Solutions:

1. If the client must use a mobile phone then tell them NOT to use speaker phone – the phone will tfy to compensate with so much noise that it will drop some of the voice by mistake.
2. Tell them not to walk around, to stand still in one location that you can get a strong signal from. A weak signal strength will give bad results.
3. Callers who use an older phone transmitter (microphone), it is usually a carbon microphone and the carbon microphone is on its last tracks. Poor frequency response and the sound of crackling are signs of a poor-performing microphone.
4. If they have a battery that is nearly dead, then they need to charge their phone before hand as the phone will switch off services as they use it.
5. Remind them not to drink coffee before hand, less lactose in the throat will drop out that ‘clicking’ sound that you sometimes get.

We have also been trying to encourage clients to practice, practice, practice with the core message and what it is that they want to talk about.

It takes time, it takes practice and… it takes patience – someone will need to spend time coaching clients and making them better at what it is that they want to do.

We will cover that in another post.