Voice-Tracking Without Sounding Like a Ghost Town: How to Stay Local When Nobody’s in the Room

By Bill Bernardoni

Let’s be honest about voice-tracking. Most small stations can’t afford a live body on every shift, and pretending otherwise doesn’t help anybody. Tracking isn’t the problem. Sounding like nobody’s home is.

I’ve tracked shifts myself and I’ve managed stations that ran on them. Listeners don’t mind that a break was recorded an hour ago. They mind when it’s obvious the person talking has no idea what town they’re in. The fix is mostly discipline, and it doesn’t cost much.

Start with timing. The worst tracked breaks are the ones that could air any day of the year. Record as close to air as you can, and talk about things with a shelf life of a day: the high school game Friday night, the road that’s closed on Route 6, the fundraiser at the VFW on Saturday. A break that only makes sense this week tells the listener somebody’s paying attention this week.

Next, feed the tracker real local material. If your talent tracks from another city, somebody local has to send them the school closings, the event calendar, the names that matter, and the right way to pronounce them. Nothing gives a tracked station away faster than butchering the name of the county seat. One short daily email from a local staffer fixes most of that.

Then plan for the moment the recording can’t handle. Severe weather, a big local story, a power outage. Every tracked station needs a written plan for who breaks in, how fast, and from where, and that person needs to know they’re on call. That’s when listeners decide whether you’re really their station.

Finally, keep at least one live, local moment every day if you can, even if it’s short. A live morning cut-in, a call-in segment, a remote at a local business. Tracking fills the hours. The live moments are what people remember.

Done well, a tracked station can sound more local than a live one that never leaves the studio. Done lazily, it sounds like a jukebox with a weather forecast from somewhere else.

The tool is neutral. The effort isn’t.

Bill Bernardoni is the founder of Bernardoni Media & Marketing in Ottawa, Illinois, and co-host of America at 250: Due Diligence with former Voice of America White House bureau chief Steve Herman.