Radio realism

The audio you'll hear is VMFA's 1982 award-winning radio spot for "Contemporary American Realism Since 1960." For the blog, I added video of images that were included in the exhibition.

Creativity reigned -- some might say ran amok -- in VMFA's broadcast and print advertising during the 1980s, before decisions on such things became the province of committees.

One factor we had going in our favor was that it was highly unusual at the time for Richmond cultural organizations to spend money on broadcast ads, so whatever we did automatically attracted attention. The second -- and perhaps more important -- factor was that creative decisions were being made solely by one or two people in the marketing office. No advisory group second-guessed what we were doing.

One of my favorite radio spots was for the 1982 exhibition "Contemporary American Realism Since 1960." It occurred to me that one way to relate the exhibition to our own lives was to tie what we'd lived through for the preceding 20 years -- from the JFK assassination to the Iran hostage crisis -- to what had been happening in the art world.

My journalism background figured strongly in the creative process, which was also aided by the fact that my boss gave me a budget and then left me alone. I wrote the script, picked some stock music, and worked closely with John Valentine, a creative genius in audio production and the owner of AudioImage Recording in Richmond, the studio where we produced the spot.

I enlisted the help of Virginia Museum Theatre staff to voice the audio and recorded one small bit myself. I hired Gus Travers for the "Voice of God" announcer role, and John assisted by slowing down Gus's voice track slightly to deepen his voice even further. (As far as I recall, Gus was the only voice we paid for; for years he showcased the spot on his talent reel.)

On the day we recorded the spot, John and I worked with the voice talent for about two hours to lay down their tracks. We spend six more hours editing the voices and laying down the music bed. After eight hours, John and I both thought we had 60 seconds of something good, but, frankly, we'd been working on it for so long that neither of us was sure whether the spot was really a winner or merely self-indulgent.

As the session ended, John gave me two cassette recordings and a 15-ips reel-to-reel version for on-air use. It was with great trepidation that I took the tapes back to the museum to play for my boss, who would have to sign off on the project. (I was also worried because the bill for the recording studio and Gus's talent fee was close to $1,000, the most we had ever spent at the time on production of a radio spot.)

I watched my boss's face light up as he listened to the cassette tape. Then he wanted to hear it again. He asked our secretary to listen to it. He brought in the exhibition's curator to hear it. It was a hit. My boss even urged the curator to dig into his budget to find more money for increased airplay. He readily agreed.

We had put all of our limited radio budget into two WRVA programs, Alden Aaroe's morning show and Dick Hemby's afternoon show. On the day the spot was to air for the first time, on Dick's show, everybody in our office gathered around the radio to hear the on-air debut. When the spot ended, Dick did something I've never heard done before in Richmond radio: He raved about our commercial, and then he played it again!

Later that year, the spot won an Outstanding Achievement Award at the Addys ceremony, which honored the best in broadcast and print advertising in Richmond for 1982.