FASTVOICE
Radio show host and voice
talent
Wolfgang Messer about the
burning question: How do you
start a radio career in Germany?
(to view the german version click here)
Well - nowadays the best way is: No useless education,
reject any
payment offers, volunteer washing of the car of your boss at
the
weekends, good knowledge of a radio program automation
software, fluent
pronounciation of the word "voice tracking" and a glimpse at
the
"Bild-Zeitung" (a german tabloid) from time to time. In
former times it
was a bit different (listen! grandpa tells fairytales from
the stone
age!): The first "radio" steps for me where in the mid 70s
of the last
century on 27 Megacycles (or Hertz) with 40 channels and 5
Watt AM ERP
(CB radio of course - if I'd had 28 channels less and only
0.5 Watt it
would have been legal here in Germany - don't tell the cops
- it's too
long ago for legal action).
Nevertheless I could sometimes reach Hampton/Virginia from
my tasteful
coloured youth room - with Turner amplifier mike (down left
in the pic)
and 5/8 lambda fiber glass antenna at the balcony (usualy
used on
cars). Of course nobody could watch TV unjammed in the house
when I was
transmitting. After some years funky radio was replaced by
funky music
because singers like Gary Glitter, Alice Cooper and guitar
heroes like
Nile Rodgers forced me to play electric guitar, founding a
band and
turning my room into a mini studio. A friend built a huge
speaker box
for
my guitar which would be capable of hiding all the WMD Mr.
Bush still
seeks in Iraq. It was built after my plans so I couldn't
blame the
friend that this box sounded more than lousy. I never used
it again
after the first try.

My parent's home became more and more limited for my space
and acoustic
needs so I had to take a job and a own appartement (to avoid
the word
"shelter"). A local newspaper was brave enough to offer a
guy with a
very mediocre high school degree a 2 year education to
become an
editor. Maybe they where seduced by my former trials as a
publisher of
a pupils newspaper with a monthly circulation of 1,000 -
financed
only by ads and distributed for free at all high schools in
the city.

From 1981 on I had the full program at the local newspaper:
Writing and
editing articles on a brandnew Linotype text computer (about
as big as
my guitar box - wrote green on black), missions in various
editorial
departments and as a fast reporter (see above right), taking
pictures
and developping (it was the pre-digital era), layout pages
etc..
Besides I did some jobs as "disc jockey" with an own sound
system and
live mixing for some local bands as a one-man-P.A.. Please
forgive the
special look at that time with the glasses and the beard -
it was a
sign of the times ;-)

In the little spare time I served my 2nd passion motorsports
- with
some Enduro bikes on cross tracks and as a bike- and car
tester for
some magazines and the newspaper (e.g. the test for the 10th
birthday
of the classic Yamaha XT 500, pic down right). My report
about the
biggest european biker meeting at the Contidrom near
Hannover was made
multimedia: printed and as a little (and very bad) radio
report in
germans biggest youth radio SWF 3 - my first step into radio
- hoorray!
Playing music played more and more a minor role - sometimes
at New
Years Eve parties with listeners that were forced to stay
with lots of
alcohol (down left).
"Explore new borders" was the motto for the mid 80s: The
german
Bundespost started the Internet predecessor Screen text
(Btx), at first
in the teletext like "Prestel"-norm, later in CEPT which had
a bit more
details and pixels. The local newspaper founded an own
division to be a
content provider including a real time news service which
sometimes
worked 24 hours a day (e.g. at the Olympic Games). You may
have guessed
that I joined this division because I always wanted to be on
top of new
developments (down left you see an example of a Btx page for
the horse
races in Baden-Baden 1984). Another challenge was the first
local radio
in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg (Stadtradio Freiburg)
where the
local newspaper was one of the partners. Of course I joined
the project
for a one-month-practical training. The airchecks of my
first reports
and news are nowadays used in jails worldwide to force
confessions out
of the poor prisoners. Nevertheless it was a good training
and the
listeners had always the possibility to turn the radio off.

The private living room (above right) had since turned into
a middle
sized audio production studio where I produced higly
complicated and
extremely noisy tracks with 2 cassette recorders with the
"ping pong"
method replacing a multitrack machine. The amount of effect
devices (on
the bottom) was in vice versa relation to my musical skills.
The same
chaos as in my living room must have been at that time in
the brains of
politics that built the legal conditions for private radio
in the
state. Until then we only had some kind of public radios.
They gave the
licences and frequencies for too small regions to multiple
candidates.
One of them was of course the local newspaper I still was
working for.
1988, after 5 years as an editor I was one of the builders
of a local
radio called "Radio Merkur". That included all the work to
install a
technical and journalistic infrastructure. You may not
believe it but
the first test programs and station IDs where produced in my
living
room "studio" above right because the radio itself had no
technical
equipment at that time.

"Congratulations - you won!" was one of the favourite
phrases soon
after at several field live shows in department stores of
the region
(above left), up to 7 hours program per day where produced
in the city
studio with less than 10 employees, the rest of the program
came per
satellite from Radio Luxemburg (RTL) that spend us radio
newbies some
weeks of training before we started our own program. It took
only half
a year to climb the career ladder like a rocket: From vice
studio boss
to studio boss - the former boss was shot back to the
newspaper because
of total incompetence. Unfortunately not all of the morons -
especialy
in the management - where forced to change to other
companies. So I
left the station at the end of 1988 with the best the radio
could
offer: An extremely capable audio technician called Iris
Trenkler.
Together we started our own business - with two brandnew
tape machines
(Studer/Revox PR 99 MK III) and the equipment I already had
in my
living room. We aquired and produced commercials, bought
airplay time
und worked free as show host and technician for some local
and regional
stations (e.g. down left for Radio 7 Victoria in
Baden-Baden).

The official founding of the company Spectrum word- &
music
production was in 1989 and the business started so well that
we could
build a new studio after a move to another house. The giant
double
glass window between recording room and mixing hall could be
refinanced
in less than a decade - big deal! In other words: After the
next move
in the little black forest community Buehlertal we build the
studio 2
scales smaller - the average voice talent doesn't need more
room as a
dog in an animal asylum. More space only costs the money of
the
customers and they don't have that money any more. As a
compensation
you get the beautiful view over the rhine valley for free -
invaluable.

Pictures: W. Messer/R.
Lemke (SWR 1)
After each time about 4 years of hosting shows at Radio
Victoria, Radio
RPR (Ludwigshafen) and Radio Regenbogen (Mannheim) I worked
from
september 2001 to december 2009 for the public radio SWR 1,
until the end of 2003 as part of the company Spectrum,
afterwards as a
freelancer as host and sometimes editor of the night show
from midnight
to 5 a.m. at weekdays and to 7 a.m. at sundays. In addition
I was one
of
the four hosts of a special music show called "Kopfhoerer"
(which
means headphone, see pic above right) monday to friday from
10.30 p.m.
to midnight. Since spring 2009 I'm also working sometimes as
german
overvoice for the news show at german/french "ARTE TV".
Besides this radio und TV jobs I'm recording and
distributing voice
productions via data transfer (in every format you like -
from mp3 to
wav.) per DSL for companies worldwide - from the german
telephone
announcement for a flag company in scotland to the german
voice on a
commercial CD-ROM of an agriculture machine company in the
U.S.
province. The same voice has
already
been heard in german television and in cinemas and of course
in
numerous radio commercials between northern Germany und the
italian
Lago di Garda (where there are also german radio programs).
These files
are recorded in my own studio with 2 Mac computers (with
ProTools) and
some peripheric
equipment. If you
have a service or media production that needs a german
voice you
can contact me over this e-mail-adress.
I will answer as soon as possible.
> to the audio demos
> to the former Fastvoice
Honda NSX
< back to main content