While there are a handful of veteran on-air talent who actually want to be airchecked, the vast majority of them do not. That’s partly because they’ve been doing this long enough that they think aircheck sessions are no longer necessary, which isn’t true. It’s also partly because many of them have had some very bad experiences being airchecked by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Those bad experiences can range from annoying to downright traumatic.

Sadly, many programmers think aircheck sessions are an excuse to dress down on-air talent, point out everything they’re doing wrong and thicken the skin of the personality so they’re prepared to handle the judgement they’ll get from the audience. This approach typically backfires and either kills the confidence of the performer, actually making them worse on the air, or simply forces them to quit and go work somewhere else. The challenge for programmers is this, airchecking talent is a whole other skillset than being good on-air ourselves. It takes patience, strategy, a willingness to really listen and the ability to strike a healthy balance between being a motivator, a therapist, a teacher and at times a disciplinarian. It also takes a willingness to adjust our approach based on the talent’s experience level, personality type and situation. 

While my approach varies depending on all of those things, here’s the basic structure for how I conduct aircheck sessions now. I listen to a full show’s worth of audio (varying up the day each time) and a few key trouble spots or bright spots from other days during the week. I use Audio Logger to make this process faster by the way. Then I make detailed notes because it’s never a good idea to wing it in aircheck sessions. Talent are paid to talk and so it’s easy for the meeting to get away from us if we don’t have a clear cut agenda. Then we meet for no more than 30 minutes. Within the aircheck meeting I ALWAYS start by highlighting multiple things they’re doing well. Some of those are big, some are small, but none of them are untrue. I never pat them on the back for something untrue just to find something good to say because this reinforces bad habits. I just dig until I find something, which is why I pull and listen to lots of audio. Then, for most shows but not all, I pick one piece of audio for us to listen to that’s either really good or needs work. But, either way, before I say anything, I ask them what they think. That’s because I’ve found these meetings work a lot better if they’re interactive instead of a lecture. So, throughout I encourage the talent to participate, but use my notes to keep us on track. Then, I transition into anywhere from one (new or veteran talent resistant to coaching) to five things they need to work on (talent that need to improve very quickly or talent that actually want to be airchecked). Finally, I always end with a brainstorming session where I throw out a few content ideas for them to consider that I think fit their show/format/market and ask them if there’s any content they’re working on for the next couple days. This is usually the most fun part of the meeting because eventually it starts to feel like a writer’s room where we’re all kicking around creative ideas. But, importantly, it also reinforces working in advance and diving deeper to further develop our content and think about ways to extend some of that content to digital.

Deep dives are different. Once per year, or per quarter depending on where the show’s at in their development, I like to do deep dives. On these everyone involved with the show listens to an entire shows-worth of audio (on their own) and makes their own notes. They all send them to me ahead of time so I can compile them, focusing on things where we have a consensus. Then we get together for a longer meeting (generally 45 minutes to an hour) and go over the results. It’s a great way to see if we’re on the same page and everyone is hearing the same things, or if we’re miles apart. It also encourages talent to learn to aircheck themselves, which is a critical skill. Talent that aircheck themselves improve exponentially faster than talent who don’t. 

For talent that still insist that airchecks aren’t needed, I would say this. No matter where we’re at in our career and what we’ve achieved in the past, we should ALL be airchecked. It’s still the best way to get better on-air and we never outgrow it. This business requires us to continually evolve and improve. The second we stop doing that we begin to slowly get worse each day because our performance is judged against the performance of others who are continuing to evolve and improve.

What do you think? What’s your process for airchecking or what experiences have you had, good or bad, being airchecked by others? Comment below or email me at Andy@RadioStationConsultant.com.

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