Howard Hoffman, Production Director, KABC-AM, Los Angeles, CA
We last checked in with Howard Hoffman in December of 1997, about 3 years after Howard had appeared on the scene at KABC. Twelve years later, he’s still cranking out some of the most creative imaging on talk radio today, as was noted in the recent RAP Awards, in which two of Howard’s promos tied for the first place trophy in the Large Market Promo category. This month’s RAP Interview catches up with Howard as we get the inside story on his winning promos, pick his brain for some creative production tips, and check in on his growing voice-over biz. Be sure to check out audio from Howard on this month’s RAP CD!
JV: When we last spoke, you had been with KABC for about three years. That’s now become 15 years. How did your responsibilities change over those years, and what are they now?
Howard: Right now it’s strictly KABC. When I first got here, it was for KMPC “710 Talk,” and then I gradually moved into the KABC slot as well. Then 710 went through all these different permutations. There was The Zone -- “talk radio’s not just a guy thing anymore.” That was the all woman appeal, woman-oriented talk show format. That became Radio Disney then Radio Disney got moved to 1110 when we took over ESPN — or I might have that backwards, which shows you just how insane all the changes have been over the years. So it went from one radio station, to two radio stations, to four radio stations, back to three radio stations, then two, and now just one. It’s just an absolute roller coaster as far as trying to keep up with it. It was like a nursery -- one stops crying, the other two start crying, and it was crazy to keep up with all of it.
JV: And you were doing the imaging for all of them?
Howard: Yeah. After a while, not so much Radio Disney because the network took that over, but it was mostly ESPN and KABC.
JV: When you say it’s back down to just one station now, do you mean you’re just handling one station, or there’s just one station in the cluster?
Howard: Right now there are just two stations in the cluster, KABC and KLOS, and there’s some cross-pollination between the two stations, of course, because we’re in the age of synergy now. But I handle KABC, and Stew Herrera handles KLOS.
JV: Yes, we know Stew. You both did very well in this year’s RAP Awards.
Howard: Yes, we did very well. I was very happily surprised. Thank you for letting us barge into your playground and letting us be part of it. It was a very, very nice surprise, and I’m really grateful to the people who did the voting on that.
JV: We’ll talk about those promos in a minute, but I was curious, after listening to some of your demos online and listening to the promos that you entered for the awards… given your background as a morning show personality, it sounds like you’ve basically carried that personality into the production room? Would you agree?
Howard: Absolutely. I had been on the air from 1971 until ‘94, and having been on the air for all that time, there’s just no way that I can deny that it gave me a good sense of timing, gave me a good sense of humor, and gave me a good sense of what sounds good on the air, from the listener’s standpoint, because that’s what I always did when I was doing shows. I would always put myself in the vantage point of the listener, saying, “Okay, now, what would sound good coming out of the car radio if I were driving around listening to this nonsense that I’m doing on the air now?” So that gave me a good perspective, and I think more than anything else in recent years, working in the voiceover community here in Los Angeles has helped. I’ve been doing a lot of radio spots for advertising agencies, etc., and some animation — not as much as I’d like, but everybody complains about that -- and I think what that does is it gives you a chance to work with other people, to work on your timing and what works best with dialogs or with tri-logs with three people, or four people, or five people. Yes, I think all these things, all these other experiences, besides doing production, definitely helped me out over the years.
JV: Have you managed to stay off the air all these years?
Howard: Yes, I’ve succeeded, and I’ve been asked. However, on two occasions I have gone back to New York City to do special weekends. It was funny because the first time I did that was for WNEW, and they were Fresh 102.7, kind of a retro dance music station. They heard I was coming to town and they said, “Oh, would you like to do a shift? Will you do a couple of shifts for us on Memorial Day weekend?” I said, “Oh, great! That’ll be a lot of fun!” Then I found out later on that they were calling it “The Legends of Dance Radio,” and I said, “Legends? Oh, no!” You might as well give me the lifetime achievement award, for crying out loud. That’s like the end of the road, last exit before freeway ends! It’s like, I’m a legend? No, no! But I did it, and we all had a great time with it, and I got together with some people I worked with in the past. Then the second time I went back on the air was last year when I did a shift on CBS-FM, to do their Saturday night or Sunday night; I forget which one, but they do people who have worked in New York radio in the past. So yeah, that was fun.
JV: Getting back to your RAP Awards this year, I think you’re only the second person who has tied himself for the trophy in any one of the categories. You won with two promos that you did for KABC, one of which was titled “KABC vs. TV.” How did this concept come about? Why a radio vs. TV spot?
Howard: I really wanted to do something with that Mac vs. PC campaign. I was looking for the music for that commercial, and I have no idea where I found it. I think a friend of mine sent it to me and it sounds like a friend of his made the music; and when it landed in my lap I said, “Okay, now I’ve got to come up with some kind of angle here.” Even though radio is an older technology than television, I resisted the urge to go against the internet, because that was one of the possibilities that I was thinking of — you know, KABC vs. the web. But the web seems to be the future, and it’s growing just enormously, and I didn’t really want to put down a medium that we are on. I mean all radio is now leaning towards the internet, and I wanted to leave that alone. So I just wanted to put down a medium that I knew we were never going to be in, and that was television. Then I said, “Okay, what’s the main difference between radio and TV?” The immediacy, the fact that you can talk back to the radio immediately, and so that’s where that came from. It was just a matter of coming up with the concept first and then coming up with the content afterwards.
JV: The other promo, “McCain/Obama Season” -- do you remember what idea popped into your head to give you the foundation for that one?
Howard: It was just one of those things of inspired madness, I guess. Every once in a while you putter around your studio looking for ideas. You look through the sound effects, you look through the music libraries, and you look through just whatever you can to try to come up with something new for the election, because everybody is covering this thing. So I was going through my stuff, and I found the CDs of Carl Stalling’s music, the Carl Stalling Project is what they called it. There was a series of CDs that Warner Brothers put out, and they all had the music from the Warner Brothers cartoons. I said, “Wow, okay, let me do something with this.” So I decided to try out my chops on doing the Looney Tunes thing, which I have been trying to do all my life since I was a kid, and I was pretty happy with the way it came out. In fact, I should say I was very happy with the way it came out when I did the character voices and the Daffy and the Bugs — without saying that it’s Daffy and Bugs, of course. What I did, before I put it on the air, is that I went to a recording studio for a session, and there was a fellow who worked there who worked with Mel Blanc. The name of the recording studio is Buzzy’s. So I played it for him, and instead of him being absolutely elated with how I did it, he stops it and he goes, “How fast did you speed the voices up?” I said, “About 3½ percent.” He said, “All right, try 5 percent, because that’s what Mel did. Take it up to 5 percent. I would definitely roll up the base on Bugs’ voice a little bit more,” and he just started going over these intricacies on all the voices and what they did with Mel Blanc when they made those cartoons. I got some really, really good advice. So between the really good coaching and of course the underscore of the music, I couldn’t have asked for it to come out any better. I was very happy with it.
JV: That’s a great tip, speeding up the voice track.
Howard: Yeah. Daffy Duck is only a sped up Sylvester. Same exact voice. If you take Sylvester the Cat, speed it up 5 percent, you’re going to get Daffy Duck. That’s what they did with Mel Blanc. Every once in a while — if you watch the cartoons -- Daffy would spout out a “suffering succotash,” and they just left it in because it fit. But yeah, that’s how they did Daffy’s voice.
JV: Do you use that speed-up technique for other voices or in other ways?
Howard: No, I really don’t. It’s just because dealing with the pitch control electronically is a pain. I know it sounds weird, but I’m so used to doing it on reel-to-reel over the years that when I do it digitally it’s like, okay, 5 percent? No, let me try 4 percent, but first you’ve got to undo it. Then you try 3½ percent and you’ve got to undo it. Whereas with reel-to-reel, you could just play with it until you hit the right pitch, rewind it, and play it.
But I’ll rely on that stuff every once in a while. There’s a great Pro Tools plug-in called Speakerphone, and I highly recommend that to anybody who wants to get the effect of any kind of speaker in any kind of environment. You get the sound of like a big, bassy radio from across the room or a transistor radio in the car or anything — telephone, walkie-talkie, bullhorn, PA speakers, along with the background. If I could make one recommendation for a plug-in, that would be it. It’s a really nice tool.
JV: Are you producing a lot of this entertainment type of promos and imaging for the station? Is that the general theme that runs throughout the station’s personality?
Howard: Yeah. We have two different approaches on production at the radio station now, and that is self-deprecating, fun and entertaining, and those would be the ones that I’ll lend my own voice to. For the more serious stuff — the news, the actual legal ID -- the de facto voice of the radio station is Ben Patrick Johnson, who’s done thousands of movie trailers. You hear his voice on Fox, you hear his voice on CBS, you hear his voice all over the place, and he’s been the station voice since I’ve been here. He does all his work out of his house. I send him the stuff, he MP3’s it back to me, and bam, we’ve got a promo.
JV: About how many pieces of production like this, promos and IDs, would you say you’re doing in an average week for the station?
Howard: In a given week, I’m probably doing between 15 and 20 brand new, entertainment-oriented ones along with the standard Dodger promos and news promos, etc.
JV: I would say, of the caliber of work that you’re turning out, that that’s probably approaching the maximum that a person could do and…
Howard: …and not have their brain melt down? Yeah. There are times when I’m just sitting here going, “What do I do now? What do I do now? What I do now?” I put self-imposed deadlines on myself -- otherwise I’d never get anything done -- and as that deadline draws closer, all of a sudden something will just hit me. I’ll do it, and it’ll be like, wow! Where did that come from?
JV: Where do you go for creative inspiration when tackling these deadlines?
Howard: Any form of pop culture is good. Anything that’s pervasive on TV. Most of us I’m sure find that pop culture is a good source of that sort of thing, providing you can pull it off as a good reflection of what that pop culture reference is. I’ll also get ideas from auditions because I audition for up to 40 or 50 pieces of things per week. Sometimes I’ll get ideas out of that without really directly stealing the idea, because after all, that’s another copywriter’s work. But I’ll look at that and go, hmm, okay, I’ll lock that away for later use. And if it’s something that they never end up using, I’ll try to essentially co-op it into my own thing without actually directly stealing it. Like I say, it if it’s another copywriter’s work, I don’t want to steal it verbatim, but I might tweak it and shuffle it around and use it for my own evil deeds.
JV: You have a rare combination of the voice talent, producer and writer. How do you stay on top of your game in all three of these areas? Do you find yourself having to work at it, or is it just something you wake up with and go, “I know what I’m going to do today”?
Howard: I would like to say it’s the latter, but I don’t know. I’ve had so many influences over the years that I’ve developed. As this career of mine has snowballed down the hill, I’ve picked up so many things over the years that it is really hard to say exactly where it comes from. But, I guess I try to keep up with technology. I try to keep up with what’s going on all around me. I try to keep up with pop culture, and just really enjoy humor. I love humor. I love to laugh, and I love it when I make people around me laugh. It’s just a really fun thing, and radio production is a great way of getting on the radio and being able to edit out all your screw-ups. It’s the safest form of radio there is. You can be fun and creative and not worry that something filthy might go out over the air by accident.
JV: KABC is the LA Dodgers station. How busy does that keep you?
Howard: Very. We have to do a “next game” promo, and then a “this game” promo, and then keep up with all the highlights and try to incorporate what happened, not necessarily in the last game, but in recent games just to keep the promos sounding fresh and keep everything sounding up-to-date. But it’s something I’ve been doing since I got here, because when I first got here, KMPC had the Angels. Then, KABC had the Dodgers. Then ESPN got the Angels, again. And then KABC got the Dodgers, again. So I’ve never really left it; it’s always been there, and I’ve always been there to handle it. And of course, opening day, which happened yesterday, is always a nightmare because there’s always a last-minute sponsor that wants to get into the billboard, which is a six-minute production. So of course, every time we get a new sponsor in there, I have to redo it, move everything over by five seconds and then load it back into the system. Then on one version, we have, “Here’s Rick Monday!” and on another version we have, “Here’s Charlie Steiner!” or whoever wants to open the pre-game show first. So yeah, it’s always an absolute nightmare whenever a season starts, but once we get past opening day, it’s kind of a free ride from there.
JV: I would imagine, over the 15 years you’ve been there, that you’ve had a few players come in the studio and do some stuff for you.
Howard: Surprisingly, no. Fortunately for us, we have a very good onsite producer by the name of Josh Cumming, and he’s able to get all the player drop-ins we want. He hands the scripts to the players, and fortunately for the Dodgers, we have some players that are just great on the microphone. One is a young guy, a young pitcher, Clayton Kershaw; he’s magnificent. I would love for him to actually do some promos for us down the road. But the one who comes into the studio here and who will do some stuff for us is none other than Vin Scully, and he is just 100 percent cooperative. What you see on the air is what you see in real life. He just can’t do enough for you, and he can’t do enough for the team. He’s magnificent to work with, and I just feel that I’m very blessed to work with somebody like that, to work with Vin Scully himself. It’s just amazing.
JV: Is Josh Cumming part of your department?
Howard: No. Josh Cumming is the onsite producer for the Dodgers. I have an assistant here, kind of a co-Production Director. His name is Mike Sherry, and he helps out with the commercial load. I’ll voice it and he’ll put it together. And he’s fast. He’s like one of the fastest people I’ve ever worked with, and that helps.
JV: I saw a list some of your freelance clients that was rather impressive and long. What are some of the things that we might be hearing you on now?
Howard: Right now I have a pretty long-running thing going on with TV spots for Arby’s, which I think is in your area there in Texas. Most of what all of us do in commercial voiceover is very regional. A few of us will actually land something national.
JV: What about our readers in LA… What might they hear you on?
Howard: That would be Sprint. There’s a NASCAR series with Sprint where I tell somebody… a second person in the spot who’s not me, amazingly enough! I’m so used to talking to myself on my promos that when I actually do a commercial with somebody else, it’s a real treat. Anyway, I’m telling them that they can’t be at the race or they can’t watch it on TV because they’re camping with their in-laws, or they’re going to miss their daughter’s ballerina recital, and so I tell them they can watch the race and hear all the stuff on their Sprint phone. That one’s been running for a while. Another one that ran for quite a while was REI, and that folded a couple of years ago, right when we won the Gold Award from the Radio Advertising Marketing Association. The spots won the Gold Award for the Best Campaign, so of course, they dropped the advertising agency, changed agencies, and that was the end of that campaign. Another true Hollywood story.
JV: Are you working much out of a home studio?
Howard: I would love to! I do have a home studio, but the trouble is we live in a condo overlooking the ocean, and the condo is just one big, wide-open space. There are no rooms. We have like a space for the bedroom and a loft for the office. And we have a dog, two cats, and a bird, and absolutely zero peace and quiet at any given time. So as much as I tried to build these partitions and made a cubicle for myself and all that… No, I can’t do it. I really have to get a house that actually has rooms in it. So, I have a home studio, and if anybody wants to make me an offer on it, I’ll be more than happy to talk to them.
JV: You must spend a lot of time at the station then.
Howard: Yeah, I do.
JV: What’s the best way to develop character voices? Are there any shortcuts to it?
Howard: I actually got some really good training once I started really doing the voiceover thing in LA. I trained with Susan Blu -- who is a voice talent herself but she’s also a casting director -- Ginny McSwain, and a very good one, Patrick Fraley. He has actually done some stuff with radio in the past. Once upon a time, he did a syndicated radio contest called, “The Street Mysteries,” and it was Detective Street, that was his last name -- very ingenious idea. What he used to do was customize this entire contest for radio stations. There were little one-minute mysteries, and the contest people could call in and guess why Detective Street came up with this conclusion. What the radio station would do is provide him with local places, local libraries, local police stations, local malls, so on and so forth, and then give them the name of a main street that ended with the word “street.” So in Phoenix’s case, it was Lt. Adam Street, because there was an Adam Street in Phoenix. He would just customize this entire contest for radio stations.
So Patrick Fraley is probably one of the best voice coaches I’ve ever had because he’s the one who essentially beat the radio out of my voice when I have to do more low-key, more conversational stuff. He also taught me a lot of tricks and a lot of tips. So yeah, you can get some really good training if you have access to it.
JV: Is that something you do regularly, maybe once a year, go back and visit your coach?
Howard: Once every couple of years, yeah.
JV: With so many guys in the voice market, with the guy-next-door and the movie trailer voices, do you find yourself somewhere alone out there with the character stuff, or is there quite a few guys out there doing that as well?
Howard: What’s funny is that most of the stuff I do book isn’t character stuff. It’s usually announcer stuff, or it’s usually dad stuff — the dad or the downtrodden father or the frazzled employee. Every once in a while the gruff boss. I don’t think I’ve really been pigeonholed as one form. Movie trailers, there are guys who do that who are always going to be much more magnificent than I can ever bring myself to be — John Leader, Ben Patrick Johnson, of course the late great Don LaFontaine. And there are guys who can just nail a normal guy voice and just book so many spots using that plain voice, one of which we just recently lost; his name was Tom Groener. He and a guy by the name of Ken Campbell did a Sears campaign that lasted about five years. These are people who can just get in front of a microphone and be absolutely natural, and normal, and low-key, and get the message across brilliantly. That is something I admire in people, when they can do that.
The other guy I mentioned, Ken Campbell, you hear him all over the place, too. He’s on Raisin Bran Crunch. He’s got kind of a high voice, and he’s from Chicago. Well, not really a high voice, but a very charactery voice. I think he’s doing Orchard Supply spots now. Anyway, there are some really wonderful people who I just watch and learn from. I’m also very fortunate in that I share an agent with some very, very talented people and some really good, helpful people, too, and that helps a lot.
JV: Who’s your agent there?
Howard: My agent is DPN — Danis, Panaro & Nist. That used to be ICM, and when ICM decided they didn’t want a voiceover department anymore, then they just fired off on their own and opened up their own agency.
JV: Has this economic turndown affected you in any way?
Howard: It has affected everyone. There’s just no denying it. And not just in voiceover but also in the economics of radio. So we’re just trying to make do with what we have. I know I certainly can’t get a brand new workstation right now, but we’ve got stuff that works fine, and as long as I keep working fine I guess I’m going to be okay.
JV: Lots of production people have lost their jobs over the past year. From your perspective on the west coast, have you noticed any trends? What do you hear these people are doing?
Howard: There are people who are opening up essentially their own recording studios. I guess they see it now as an opportunity to finally do what they say they’ve been wanting to do all along and that is, “Someday, I’m gonna open up my own studio.” Well, a lot of people are finally getting their chance to do that, and some are succeeding, some aren’t, and some are still getting their feet wet.
The state of the radio business right now is something which I don’t think anybody has ever seen. One report from the R&R Convention is that all these people that were heavy hitters in the business are now walking around with their hat in their hand, saying, “I’ll be a board up. I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” It’s kind of sad to see so many people on the street, and I just feel very blessed that I’ve been able to dodge the strafing fire and survive.
JV: How much of what you do would you call work, and how much would you call play?
Howard: That’s a good question. I don’t know. It’s definitely one of those situations where I like what I do, and I really enjoy it, and I’m very happy that it gives me an outlet for doing what I like to do. But during those times when I’m under deadline, during those times when I have to get stuff on the air, during those times when they give me all the last-minute stuff, that would be the work, and that would probably be 30, 40 percent of the time. The rest of the time, I’m just turning on the thought machine and trying to come up with some new stuff.
JV: Has the PPM affected you or what you’re doing?
Howard: No, no really. It’s funny because since PPM started, we’ve had a change of Program Directors and a change of management. They’ve had different philosophies on how production can work with PPM and so on and so forth. I think where we are right now, I think they’re putting more of an emphasis on the programming to help with the PPM numbers and the production to just essentially aim people towards one segment of the radio station that we would like to really promote hard. Right now, our focus is on the morning show, which has taken on a new direction, and it seems to be working out very well. So now that we’re there, it’s kind of like the restaurant that finally has its menu in place; we now want to promote it, to really push it and really try to make it happen. So we’re promoting the morning show in the Dodger games; we’re promoting the morning show in the afternoon show; we’re promoting the morning show all day long. Then once we get that moving, then we’re going to start promoting other aspects of the radio station that we’re also going to be working on.
As I like to say -- and I’m sure I said this the last time I spoke to you -- but production people are definitely the in-house advertising agency for their radio stations. So they have to come up with good campaigns. They have to come up with sound campaigns. They have to come up with campaigns that will definitely get attention and draw listeners to whatever it is you’re promoting. There’s so much of being clever and self-deprecating, which I love doing by the way, but somewhere in there you also have provide the message.
JV: Promoting the morning show throughout the day -- a lot of stations will take a clip from the morning show, do a “what you missed” kind of promo, and play it once every couple hours throughout the day. Is that about the extent that you go to promote the morning show, or is there more than that?
Howard: Oh, no, there’s more. Although we do have those, we run them 50/50 with another series of promos. With these promo, we’re in the imaginary KABC super-secret research center. “Behind this door is where we play clips of the McIntyre in the Morning show…,” and of course, while I’m talking, somebody comes out of the door, and I talk to them and say, “Well, what did you think?” And then one of them will say, “Well, it’s very erudite, and it’s very high-brow, and it’s very upper crust.” And then I’ll reply, “Nah, nah, you got it all wrong. Throw him back in.” And he goes back in, of course under protest and duress and fighting and screaming and kicking the entire way. Another one is where somebody comes out, and I go, “Oh, and so what did you think of the McIntyre in the Morning show?” The guy just goes, “[babbles incoherently].” “Another satisfied listener!” So there’s a series of those, there’s a takeoff on a breakfast cereal commercial, there’s a testimonial spot, just a whole series that’ll run 50/50 with all the highlight spots that you’re talking about.
JV: Sounds like you’ve had a good 12 years since our last chat. What do you see for yourself over the next dozen years?
Howard: When I think about what age I’m going to be in a dozen years, I just completely freak out. I have no idea. I hope I keep doing what I’m doing, because I totally enjoy it. Whether or not they’re going to want a Production Director my age at that time, I don’t know. It’s totally up to them. If I can keep on turning out this kind of product without my voice going bad, I am going to just keep doing what I’m doing. Very few people can say that. I know at this stage in his life, my dad wasn’t able to say that; but at this stage in my life, I can, and I’m very grateful, again, that I do what I like doing. I’ll just continue to do it until somebody tells me to shut up and go home.