Dennis Daniel, Production Director, WBAB-FM, Babylon, NY -- "Creative Freedom: A Must!"
by Jerry Vigil
Creative brilliance in itself is not rare in our industry, but unfortunately, most of it never gets on the air. It is the lack of freedom to manifest this creativity that keeps most great ideas in someone's head. Sometimes the person with the great idea doesn't have the time to produce it. Other times, the idea will be presented, only to be squelched by a conservative client, sales-person, Program Director, or some other individual that is unwilling to take a chance on a wild idea.
Dennis Daniel, Production Director at WBAB-FM in Babylon, knows the value of creative freedom; but, most importantly, the management, the sales staff, and the clients of WBAB-FM also know the value of this freedom.
Too often, a station will overlook the creative talent on its staff. This month's interview is a good example of what can happen when the floodgates are opened, and the creative river is allowed to flow freely.
Dennis: Quite often, in radio production on a local level, you end up doing a lot of club spots. There are so many of them, it's hard to come up with original ideas for each and every one. You don't want every commercial to sound like someone just reading over a bed. If it's a heavy rock club, they'll say, "Put some Guns And Roses under it and some Rat and some Poison..." That may create some kind of an image, but I like to experiment. I like to create some kind of imagery that makes people interested in the place because they took a chance on something they heard on the air.
A club is not something you can hold in your hand; it's not a car stereo or some product you can visualize. A club is a big room with a stage, lights, a dance floor, and a DJ. No matter what kind of conglomeration you have, or how many lights, or how many couches, you can't really convey that over the radio, except to say just that; and everybody says that: "A beautiful dance floor, a wonderful light show, the best DJ on Long Island." So what I do, to certain people that are willing to take the risk, is say, "Listen. Let me create something that is going to attract people's attention over the radio."
R.A.P. Give us an example of one of your creative club spots.
Dennis: Well let me play one down the phone line for you. (Note: This spot and others are featured on this month's Cassette.) This one is for a club called the "Salty Dog". This club has been on Long Island for a long time, already has a reputation, and doesn't really need to do anything as far as describing it on the radio; but, they still want to say what bands and stuff are going to be there. So what I did was create a montage of bizarre circumstances, bizarre visuals, a conglomeration of weird little vignettes that mean absolutely nothing. I have a basic structure that I follow where I always begin the spot by saying "the Salty Dog Of Huntingdon" in a weird way, like "the Doggy Hunt of Saltington," or "the Hunting Salt of Doggington." Then I always have this section of people singing, "Do Waa Bop Bop", which is from a Neil Young album. In the middle of the spot, I always put a clip from Iggy Pop where he goes, "I'm a real wild one, wild one." Then I end the spot with the "Do Waa Bop Bop" singing again, so the spot has a very tiny structure. Also, at the end, I always say something weird, a very bizarre phrase like, "The Salty Dog Of Huntingdon, Let Me Take Your Hat," or "The Salty Dog of Huntingdon, The Future is Plywood," weird things that mean nothing. Meanwhile, the club does fantastic business, and people are anxious to hear the latest Salty Dog commercial. I get so many clubs coming to me saying, "I want something like the Salty Dog," and I say, "I can't. The Salty Dog is the Salty Dog!" It all came from experimentation. It all came from sitting in the studio one day and saying, "I am just going to break all of the boundaries and do whatever the hell I want," and that's how it started.
R.A.P. This type of creativity obviously takes time. What are your responsibilities as Production Director, and what help do you have, if any?
Dennis: I write most of the commercials that come in house. I do have a full-time assis¬tant, Chris Frohne, but my assistant's job is basically dubs, tags, donuts, and things of that nature. He handles the busy work so I have time to do the wild and crazy stuff. I also write comedy for the morning show and for a special show we have on Fridays called "Jerry's Gin Joint."
R.A.P. Who does the promos?
Dennis: The afternoon jock, Roger Luce, has a beautiful set of pipes. He does a lot of the promos because his voice is so powerful. I'll do promos when my parti¬cular talents are needed for them, but I'm not called on often to do them.
R.A.P. So you have 3 full-time people handling all the production?
Dennis: Basically speaking, yes.
R.A.P. Clubs are notorious for placing ad orders at 4pm to start the next day. How are you able to turn out the quality of spot you do in situations like this?
Dennis: What works best for me is to create some kind of generic spot for the club and to tag it. So if on Thursday at 4 o'clock they change the drink special for Friday, it's just a matter of me typing up the new information and doing a live tag.
R.A.P. You won a Clio in 1984. Tell us about that.
Dennis: The spots than won the Clio were 3 commercials I did for Dr. Charles Ross (a local dentist). The Clio was for best local campaign. The spots were based on voice impressions that I do. The first one was with the actor Jeffrey Holder, who's known for the Seven-Up commercials. The second one used Edith and Archie Bunker. The third one was a Star Trek parody where Spock has a toothache.
After I won the Clio, I remember standing in the elevator with Dick and Bert; they were holding their Clio, I was holding mine, and for one brief shining moment we were equals, which was pretty intense for my 24 year old mind.
R.A.P. You were up against not other radio stations, but major adver¬tising agencies, right?
Dennis: Right. And I'll tell you something else, and I don't know if this will be to my detriment or not, but after I won the Clio in '84, I won the International Radio Festival in '85, again with a Dr. Ross spot based on "The Honeymooners." That was a thrill because this award was an international award. I also gave a lecture at that particular show to advertisers around
the world. After I gave the lecture, which was called, "Radio Production as Theatre of the Mind," I got all these business cards from all over the world; but I found over the years that I don't like putting my stuff into competition any more. I don't like having my stuff judged on a first listening basis by a bunch of people, sitting in a room with pens and paper, listening to 50 commercials. It's not an ideal judging situation. I haven't sub-mitted anything to any awards ceremony since 1986 because I'm a much happier person knowing that I feel good about what I'm doing, rather than worrying about what other people think.
R.A.P. You must have received several phone calls and job offers from ad agencies during this time.
Dennis: I have been interviewed by many ad agencies in New York. I don't like the atmosphere. To me it's not conducive to good creativity to feel that your job is on the line with every job that you do. You have people wearing suits and ties standing over you who have probably no idea about creativity. They just rely on their creative people, and they're passing judgment on you.
One of the most disturbing things to me was finding out that the copywriters in ad agencies are the low men on the totem pole. They're the scum. They're the most expendable; You screw up, you don't do a good job, you're out on your ass. What happened to the guy that did the Herb campaign for Burger King? He's probably working at a Burger King now. I can't work under those conditions. I can't work under that kind of pressure.
R.A.P. What about career advancement?
Dennis: I'm not hell bent on becoming a very rich man. I want to feel that my work is appreciated by the people I'm doing it for, that I myself love what I'm doing, and that I'm making a good enough living to have the things that I want and be happy. That's probably why I stay at WBAB and probably why I'll never leave here. I'll probably never open my own production company because then you get into that competition with all the other production companies. You see, at BAB, the clients come to me. BAB is like a billboard for my work. I get agencies and production companies calling me up and saying, "Are you the guy that did this? Are you the guy that created that? We want to do something with you." It's a cozy situation because I can charge anywhere from 200 to 300 dollars for my work, and I have no overhead. I don't pay for telephones, or a studio, or studio time. It works as long as it doesn't affect my job at the radio station, and it never has.
(WBAB) is also conducive to good creativity. You cannot create in a hostile environment. You can't create in an environment where you feel you are as good as the last thing you've done. Here, I can say that I'm appreciated. I'm almost loved by the people that I work with. They'll pat me on the back. They'll say they appreciate me and that I'm doing great. A creative person needs that kind of support.
R.A.P. How long have you been with WBAB?
Dennis: I've been here 10 years. I started with BAB when I was 19.
R.A.P. How did you land the gig at WBAB?
Dennis: I've been involved in acting, stand up comedy, and things like that since I was about 15 years old. I found out that I could do impressions and just started doing them all the time. I was managing at a Taco Bell, and one night a traveling manager came in. When he came up and introduced himself, I imitated Columbo and said, "I'm sorry sir, I never met you before. This is really embarrassing, I don't really know who you are...Pardon me if I sound blunt, but you've got sour cream on your shirt!" The guy thought it was hysterical and said, "My wife owns an ad agency. You ought to give her a call." So I went down to the ad agency and put on a show for them, doing all these imitations and stuff. They hired me to do a series of commercials for them, and the place where the commercials were recorded was WBAB. So I walked in to BAB with the owner of the ad agency, and she said to the Vice President of the station, who still is Tony Michaels, "One day this kid's gonna be working for you." I'll never forget that she said that, and it turned out to be true.
I worked for the ad agency for awhile, then went to work part-time at WBAB. After awhile I went to do part of a morning team show at WPBH in Poughkeepsie. It got to a point where I wasn't happy there any more, so I left. I caught wind that Brian Battles, the Production Director at BAB at the time, was leaving; so they hired me, and I've been here ever since.
R.A.P. Give us a bit of the Dennis Daniel philosophy for Production Directors.
Dennis: My situation here is very different than that of most Production Directors I know. The disc-jockeys here hardly cut any commercials. Most Production Directors, that I know of, are the kind that write commercials, give them to the disc-jockeys, and the jocks cut them. Here, I do the bulk of the work because of the fact that I do some 200 impressions and voices. I believe that when you have a disc-jockey do something, they will sit down, read it, and not put their heart and soul into it. They'll just read the copy. It's just a job. They're not going to be able to sell the client's product if they can't sound convincing. I also believe that when you have a disc-jockey do something, you're almost degrading the client in a way because the disc-jockey is known to the audience to be somebody that sells the music and sells the station. When you have them selling shoes, is just doesn't work. I think the listeners can key in and say, "Well that's just the disc-jockey reading something, that's not him." To the listener, a disc-jockey is a real person. He's not a spokesman for something, unless of course the disc-jockey is paid to be a spokesman, paid to say, "Hi, this is Dennis Daniel and I use this product and I believe in it."
So I do most of the stuff, and I believe it's helpful to the radio station because you hear my voice and my assistant Chris's voice, and we do the selling of the stuff on the station. You don't associate our voices with anything but that.
Another thing I believe in is an intern program. I believe they are essential at any radio station, and the intern should not be treated as a gopher who just does filing. They should be given hands on experience. In colleges today, they are so far behind the reality of what's going on in radio that I don't believe kids are learning what's really going on. So when a kid comes to me from college, and he's excited, fresh, and ready to rock and roll, I take that talent and I use it! I teach them my style of writing and producing and where my head comes from.
My basic logic is this: Everything in life that you take in and absorb, can be reused. You can look at any situation in life and make a commercial out of it. You can walk in the park, see two old men feeding the pigeons, and make a commercial out of it. (Dennis shifts to old man voice) "Hey, Harry, how long have we been here feeding these pigeons?" (Other man:) "Well, I don't know, but I'd rather be at the sale at Car Tunes.... " The possibilities are endless. There is no chance in the world of drying up, and you jot down every single thought you have. You write down, "Two men feeding pigeons," and you can apply it to any client.
So I try to teach the interns how to write and how to think as theatre of the mind, and what happens is sometimes they write brilliant stuff. Then I have the pleasure of bringing to life what they've written, and they get the opportunity to hear their stuff on the radio. I really believe in using young talent because if somebody hadn't done if for me, I wouldn't be where I am. That is a very important part of what I do here; I work with the interns.
R.A.P. What would you say to other stations about creative freedom?
Dennis: I can't stress enough, how important it is to have creative freedom. If you are stifled creatively, you will never blossom. Believe me, I do my share of bullshit work. Half the work I do here is just straight reads, voiceovers, donuts, and tags from other agencies that I just do as a straight announcer. That's par for the course; that's part of the job, too. But for every ten straight reads that I do, I've got one "Salty Dog," and the one "Salty Dog" makes the ten reads worthwhile. They let me say the orifice theatre" or sing about a "nurse with a nice behind." They let me get away with things because our demographic is young and hip, and they can handle it. It gives me tremendous satisfaction because I can be daring. I'm challenged. I'm not always doing the same damned thing! Everyday brings a new opportunity to do something new, different, and exciting in this market, in this situation that I'm in.
R.A.P. With your obvious talents in commercial writing and production, are you using your spare time to do much free-lancing?
Dennis: I'll be honest with you. When I leave here at six o'clock, I'm in another world entirely. I do my writing. I've been commissioned to do two books about horror films. I'm often a guest lecturer about horror films. I appear at a lot of horror conventions. Horror films are another entire world that I love. I'm a very big movie buff, and I'm constantly watching video tapes and stuff like that as well. I do movie reviews for the station, too. So, as much as I love production and creating this stuff, it's a job. I love it, but it's not everything to me. The reason it's not is because, basically speaking, it's all bullshit in the end. That's what commercials are. They're just interesting ways of attracting attention to get somebody to buy something. I don't want to think that that's what my life is. I get more of a kick out of just creating an original idea and getting it on the air. I don't care what client it's for. What matters more to me is that it's creative, it's fun, that the audience enjoys it, and that it works for the client. I do care that it works for the client. I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it would work for him; but for me, it's the creativity, the fun, and the entertainment value that counts.
R.A.P. An abundance of such creative stuff on the air must have an effect on the station's image. What tangible results have there been.
Dennis: When they do research for the radio station, often the commentary is, "love your commercials." Who says that!? Who says, "we love your commercials!?" That makes good programming sense if you can get the audience to love your commercials. Do you realize that radio is the only medium in entertainment, that knocks the very thing that brings the revenue into it? Commercial free! Commercial free! No commercials! We're commercial free! We're saying to you, "Commercials suck!" Do you ever see television go, "Commercial Free"? So if you can make your commercials entertaining, if you can make the listener say, "I know, in the 4 spot cluster that's coming up, there's gonna be one spot in there that's gonna blow my mind or make me laugh," you've got 'em.
R.A.P. That's good information for programmers. What else would you say to programmers looking to get a more creative sound in their stopsets?
Dennis: The first thing I would say is get a good internship program going because that is where all the young talent is. Secondly, when you find somebody that's creative, give him every opportunity to let it all hang out. Give him a chance to blossom and grow. Give him a chance to do something other than commercials. Let him do some comedy. Let him just go in the studio and produce something, then sit down with him, listen to it, and give him
some advice. Try to get talent that's around, to do some free work for you. There's always comedy shops, comedians, and repertory theatres around in every community, and these are people that act and perform. They can help you, and they would relish the opportunity to be on the radio.
R.A.P. What would you like to be doing a few years down the road?
Dennis: WBAB is part of Noble Broadcasting. I would like to become Noble Broadcasting's Production Advisor. I'd like to teach these theories and these things that I do to other Production Directors at the other radio stations in Noble. That would be an interesting thing for me, but as I said before, production isn't everything with. me. I'm involved in many other projects. As I said, I'm writing two books. I do a lot of writing for magazines, and also, I do some standup comedy now and again. I'm working on a television program right now with Steve Morrison called, "And She Wept". It's just a bunch of comedy vignettes, and right now we're in the process of trying to sell that to Lifetime Cable. All things considered, I'm one happy human being.
We'd like to thank Dennis once again for taking time out of his obviously busy day to do the interview with us. We hope to touch base with Dennis again in the future and get some specific tips on the creative process he commands so well.
As for the "R.A.P. Interview" itself, we're excited to say that we're giving the east coast a break, after several interviews there, to board that renegade boat floating somewhere off the west coast. Join us next month as we RAP with Brian Wilson, the new Production Director at Pirate Radio in Los Angeles, and get the scoop on Scott Shannon's "Production Department of the 90's!