WHY AUDIO IS MUCH MORE POWERFUL THAN VIDEO

Nick Michaels
Copyright 2014 American Voice Corp. All Rights Reserved

I was watching TV and this annoying commercial came on. You know the kind. Selling too hard. Trying to get me to do something instead of feel something. Filled with calls to action.  I didn't want to change the channel so I hit the mute button. Ahh silence...I was back in my own world. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though the video was just as obnoxious and self serving as the audio, when the audio was off I didn't mind it as much.

Well, if the audio was the part that was hurting me the most, it must be the most powerful part of the message. Then I realized, while it was relatively easy to avert my eyes it was not that easy to avert my ears. It reminded me of something I had read by McLuhan ages ago. Audio comes from all around you. The visual element happens mostly in front of you. The real power to create emotion is in the audio. So to make the most powerful message, start with the audio and then pick the visuals to support the audio.

THE AWESOME POWER OF RADIO

Nick Michaels
Copyright 2014 American Voice Corp. All Rights Reserved.

What you are about to read is a true story. A couple of years ago I got an e-mail from a female listener who had recently been released from prison. The e-mail was so moving, so powerful that I was almost shaking when I finished reading it. 

She wrote about how she and some of her fellow inmates would listen to the Deep End on Sunday evenings. I'm going to try to use her words as best I remember them. She said the following: “Women who never cried, cried when they heard White Bird by It's A Beautiful Day. She went on to say that there was no race or color when Otis Redding sang I've Been Loving You Too Long and how moved they were when I told the stories that took them back in time.  Toward the end of the e-mail she wrote, “even though we were prisoners, for a couple of hours every week, while listening to your show, we were free. Although I am now free, I'm always a little freer when listening to the Deep End.” 

The tears were falling heavily and my hands shook a little as I realized the awesome power of radio and the awesome responsibility that comes with that power. It took me back to my beginning. To a bedroom where a 14 year old boy would listen to the magic coming out of that transistor radio and be transported far away by that magic.

 Every time you pick a song or open that microphone remember this, what your job is all about is human connection. The kind that can make a prisoner feel free.