The 7 Wonders of Production

I’ve been thinking about getting a tattoo. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to figure out what I should get. Not having lived through one I can only go by what people who love their ink have to say, and how they say it’s worth any pain they had to endure.

That’s my relationship to radio. I’ve loved it, but if I’m being honest, it’s also had its fair share of pain.  It’s been 33 years that I’ve had continuous employment in the Christian Radio Industry. 46 years if I go back to my first time ever on the radio. Conventional wisdom says I’ve experienced enough to be a General Manager, or a Station Owner by this time.

But no.

I’m a Production Director. That is what I’ve chosen. It’s the way I’m wired. It’s tattooed on my heart.

I’ve worn a lot of hats — Air Talent, Music Director, Program Director, Salesperson, agency creative, and even business owner. Yet, at the end of the day, I’ve chosen to stay full-time at the last stop before air: where revisions, rewrites, and client demands collide. It’s messy, but it’s my passion.

Earlier this year, I spoke to a group of radio creatives. To fire myself up (and maybe them too), I wrote a love letter to my craft: The Seven Wonders of Production.

It’s what  I love about creating though audio, words, story and memories.

Here they are:

 

1. Getting to Enter Someone’s Heart is an Honor

Production isn’t just about sound; it’s about connection. My job is to move people — from desire to action, from curiosity to belief. I craft stories that touch hearts and inspire change.

I believe that audio production is a station’s operating system, built on storytelling. All of the sound you hear: Music, promos, sweepers, and spots—everything—it’s all audio production and it should connect, inform, motivate, and sometimes persuade. All to move people. That’s the ideal I chase.

 

2. Creative Writing

Words come first. I get to paint pictures with them, tapping into senses and emotions. My professor, Don Boggs, taught me: “In radio, the pictures are prettier.”

It’s like describing Nostalgia not just by “looking at pictures,” but by “seeing albums of faded instamatics.” It’s describing your Mom, not just baking, but “creating the crescent roll aroma of home” It’s explaining the feeling of home, not just being the place “where you grew up” but by “arriving, and opening the door to your carefree childhood room and setting down the just-under-50-pound Samsonite full of adult baggage.”

 

3. Getting Paid to Be Silly

I’ve been introduced to homeschoolers as “the guy who gets paid to make noise.” I’ve played Julia Child in a promo, and directed talent that were duct-taped to giant spinning wheels inside the theatre of the mind. To this day you’ll find me waving my arms like a lunatic to get the right energy for a vocal performance.

My first rule of voice acting: never worry about how you look while performing.

 

4. Creating Auditory “Saccades”

A saccade is the fastest movement your body makes— it involves the eyes, like when they  flick toward something unexpected. Ears do this too. Like when you hear a bit of whispered gossip across a crowded room.

Through volume shifts, tempo changes, sound effects, and other auditory tricks, I grab attention and turn heads toward their radios. If someone notices a quirky detail in a spot, I know I’ve succeeded: “Gotcha.”

 

5. Playing with Cool Stuff

When I toured my first radio station as a kid, I saw the DJ hit a button and start a reel-to-reel machine across the room. I was hooked.

In 7th grade, I sat out of gym class an entire semester and pretended the scoreboard controls were my personal spaceship. I imagined they controlled the movements of the kids playing basketball. Fast forward to today: I’m pushing buttons, moving faders, editing waveforms, playing with cool software, and kind of living that somewhat twisted dream.

 

6. Balancing Creativity and Organization

Yeah, I’m creative, but as the paragraph above shows, I also like to be in control. My coworkers will tell you that I am sometimes a little annoying when it comes making sure everything is captured in “the system.”  Just a few things I track: Date created. Date Due. On-air start date, stations airing on, who’s writing, voicing, producing. I even have my favorite client-related checkbox that says “Late-waiting on approval.”  I love this almost as much as creating.

 

7. The Future of Audio Production

For the past year, I’ve explored AI—not just getting ideas from ChatGPT, but pasting other voices over my own, making custom music, separating voices from music, and making phone callers sound like they’re in a studio. We used AI to make our English-speaking CEO speak a Spanish donor spot in his own voice!

But AI should be additive, not subtractive. Voice Talents should be paid MORE for the right to use their voices. Right now, one of my projects is figuring how to compensate voice talents fairly when their voices are used without direct recordings.

The future of production is equal parts thrilling and terrifying, and if you’ve felt that, then you’re in the right place.

 

The Tattoo Question

So what will my tattoo be? I want it to be about audio, but also about Love. Pain. Story. Family and Faith. These themes intersect in my life, just as they did in my parents’ marriage.

When my dad was passing, my mom said, “Thank you for 49 years. I love you.” It was pure love and pain, intertwined.

If your radio journey feels the same — if it’s messy, beautiful, and worth the pain — know you’re not alone.

I’m chugging along with you in a wild, wonder-filled, and sporadically painful 21^st-Century Radio life.