Give your listeners a voice
Putting callers to air for a talk radio segment can add a lot of interest to your station’s output, but how to do it?
While there are numerous ways to do this, bear with, as there are some legal implications you need to be aware of.
An unruly caller can shout out obscenities that may offend listeners, or make claims about people and products that are not true – which puts station owners and presenters at risk of legal action. And believe me, once letters from lawyers start arriving it’s not only stressful, it can be but costly.
Ideally, presenters handling calls from members of the public are journalists or understand media law so they can keep callers in check and ensure balance and good standards are maintained.
Ideally you will record all phone-ins and hang on to those recordings for three years minimum – just in case someone complains down the track.
Pro stations will have a delay on their output, perhaps 10 seconds. That means that what listeners hear happened 10 seconds ago. This delay gives presenters a chance to ‘dump’ a caller before their offensive comment goes to air.
Ideally callers can be vetted before they are put to air.
Ok, that said; how does one put a caller to air? Here are a few budget options…
- Connect a mobile phone to the mixer. This involves using the headphone output of the phone to an input on your mixer. The caller hears the presenter via the phone’s microphone, but their response goes through the mixer.
- A quick and dirty way is to simply put your caller on speaker phone and hold the phone up against your microphone. Gets the job done…
- Google Voice. Get a dedicated phone number for use on a smartphone or desktop computer.
- Skype. Again, you can get a unique phone number or have people contact you via your Skype user account.
- You can use a standard phone line, but typically the audio quality won’t match the digital options above. You’ll need a gadget to sit between the phone and the line to connect to your mixer.
- An old school solution is AudioTX which converts a standard landline into a higher quality ISDN line.
- FeenPhone A fully duplex (and free) option meaning when one person speaks they do not drown out the other.
OK – a bundle of deas to help you put callers to air. Any other ideas are welcome, so do let us know.
Know any others? Let me know…