Production Director - WJJB, circa 1995
For those who don’t know me yet, my name is Diane Bean, and I live in the mountains of beautiful Western MD, and I really love the area. I grew up here, went away to college, and stayed away a couple of years after that. But, despite my best intentions, I found myself back in the city of Cumberland, and I finally realized what a picturesque place it is.
Ever since high school, I’ve been involved in drama and public speaking, then once in college, I added radio experience and voiceovers to my resume, while continuing to enjoy doing theatre (even some professional summer theatre). I studied Mass Communication at Towson University in Baltimore, with an emphasis in broadcast performance and production. I did some internships and independent studies in radio, and a fabulous internship at Flite Three Recording Studios in Baltimore, MD. I made some wonderful connections through those experiences that have helped me throughout my career.
Once back in Cumberland, I truly enjoyed my 10 minute commute to work at WJJB-FM (JIB-100, as it was known then). Don’t get me wrong — I loved living in Baltimore, but not sitting in traffic to and from work was a nice change. I took a job at this fairly new radio station as production and continuity director, but as is often the case in radio, I ended up doing so much more. Writing copy, assigning production, recording spots, features and interviews were my main responsibilities. But, there were the times that I did trafficking and billing as well. Honestly, it doesn’t seem all that long ago, but I have to just shake my head when I think of how much technology has changed in that short time.
The station was automated, and while we did have some live, local programming, much was from a satellite network. All of the spots were recorded on carts (and assigned a “cart #”), and they went into this giant automation machine that took up almost a full wall in the office. The machine would be programmed by the traffic department, and it would suck in the corresponding cart to play each commercial when it was time. Of course, there were always times when a cart would be misplaced in the automation monster, which had the potential of causing dead air, especially when the machine tried to suck in a cart that wasn’t there. Ah, the good ol’ days…
Actually, the best part was how proficient I became with a razor blade, grease pencil and splicing tape. Yes, recording was done on a reel-to-reel machine, and editing was done by actually marking and cutting pieces from the quarter-inch tape. I was quick! And I was good at keeping my pieces somewhat organized in case I needed to “undo” an edit. Boy, that undo button would have saved me a lot of time. Anyway, I bet I could still race you on the splicing block!
I eventually left that station, but continued to record spots for some clients along with other VO projects, but never stopped yearning to do voiceovers full time. However, there was always this one big obstacle that I couldn’t quite figure out how to overcome — I lived in Western Maryland, which is a driveable 2 hours away from Baltimore, D.C., or Pittsburgh, but no big recording studios in Cumberland. Most people here don’t even know what a voice talent does. Some people think I give singing lessons! Ugh! What’s a girl to do?
