I haven’t conducted many interviews recently on Broadcasting Brain.  I used to do E-Mail interviews under the banner “Catch The Brainwaves” and I found myself wanting to try them again.  This time around I’m calling them the Thoughts From series.  This is the first interview in this new series.  The format is still the same, though:  I E-Mail the questions to the interviewee and have them respond.  It works very well.

Terry O’Reilly is the mover and shaker behind the award-winning audio production firm Pirate Radio & Television.  He also hosts the insidiously insightful CBC Radio radio series The Age of Persuasion and co-authored the book of the same name with writer/producer Mike Tennant.  Disclosure:  I am big fan of The Age of Persuasion, so this was a real treat to do.

How much of your daily information fix comes from “old” media (newspapers, radio, TV, magazines, etc.) vs. “new” media (blogs, E-Mail lists, websites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc.)?

Daily, I get info from online news sites, blogs, websites, Twitter, etc. I also devour magazines and I love newspapers, but like to hold them in hand. They pile up all week, and I read them all on Saturday mornings with a big cup of coffee. My wife laughs at my habit of even reading old newspapers, ones that I didn’t get to, that may be three weeks old. But I read everything. Big reader.

Assuming that you are a person of a certain age (but we won’t pin you down to which age, despite what Wikipedia says), have you found the changes in technology over the past 20 years to be easy to adapt to or have you experienced any challenges?

That is a very good question. I love the distinction between “digital natives & digital immigrants” – which I use in my speeches a lot. Being a digital immigrant, I must say, overall, it’s been easier than I thought. Some speed-bumps in the early days, and I have to admit that I do call on our Pirate tech guys fairly frequently, but when I take a big look back, it’s been a surprisingly smooth transition. (When I started in advertising, faxes hadn’t even arrived yet. We sent everything by cab in those days. Everything. Edited radio by razor blade, used White Out in typewriters. Ah, the good old days.)

Do you find that the speed, ease of use, and reach of new media have introduced sloppiness and inaccuracy into communication, are things just about the same, or has communication improved in the digital age?

I do think there is an increased level of sloppiness and inaccuracy now. I went to see Malcolm Gladwell speak recently, and he said his expertise, his unique advantage, was his ability to research in a library. He could do it better than anyone else. But now, with the internet, anyone can find anything. So it’s no big accomplishment. Technology has made his unique ability somewhat pedestrian in this day and age. But – but – so much of what is available at our fingertips is inaccurate. And those inaccuracies spread like wildfire on the net, so it’s even difficult to find the original thinking, because the same documents have been embedded in site after site.

Could you survive a day without a cell phone or PDA?  A week?  A month?  Or is it irrelevant to your daily routine?

Ha! I’d like to say, yes, of course I could go a week without it. That would be a lie. My cell phone has become an incredibly important part of my daily routine. Even as a director who is locked up in recording studios for hours, it lets me check emails and respond, and keep my business going, instead of a Tsunami of emails building up, looming at the end of the day. It is homogenizing us all to an extent. For example, in a studio the other day, we were all looking at our cell phones at the same time, and I asked what time it was. Everyone said 3:41. Interesting, that all our phones had exactly the same time, because all cell phones get fed the exact same clock time now. It’s a small thing, but we all see and hear the same things now due to PDAs and the net. Someone said there is no “local” anymore. We’re all one big community now. Not sure yet if that’s good or bad.

Does Seth Godin really know what he’s talking about when he says that the mass media are dying (or dead)?  He seems to be on the mark when it comes to newspapers.  Or does mainstream media (particularly television) still have a future, especially in the realm of advertising?

Historically, radio didn’t kill newspapers. TV didn’t kill radio. The VCR didn’t kill movies. So when you look at it in that context, the answer is no, mass media will just re-adjust and re-calibrate. Just saw some new research yesterday. It asked adult Canadians what their favourite ads were and where they saw them. 79% said on TV. Only 5% could recall seeing anything on the internet. Kind of shocking when you see such a huge migration of marketing dollars moving online. Interesting. The big question, of course, is “Will it be different this time?” Is something more profound going on. Time will tell.

How do you deal with the contradictions and differences of being both a media maker (Pirate Radio and Television) and a presenter/host of a nationally syndicated public radio program (The Age of Persuasion)?  Or are there any?

I don’t feel any contradictions. Our radio show (and book) is all about looking at advertising from the inside out. Mike Tennant and I are both working ad men. We’re not journalists, or academics or pundits. We’re in the trenches. We just wanted to bring the public on a fun and wild ride through the hallways of advertising. Show the public how we think, why we do what we do, and how marketing decisions are made. That’s the platform of our show, so it’s no secret.

One thing I’ve noticed about radio broadcasters or people who normally work in audio format is that many of them tend to hold their faces very still (e.g. Don Imus) while they focus on using their voices – pitch, tone, volume, speed, rhythm, enunciation, etc.  You do voice work but you do presentations and speaking.  Did you ever have to consciously work on body language and facial expressions as part of your public speaking work or conversely have to “tone it down” when doing radio?

Yes, a little. You do have to stay very still while sitting in front of a microphone. But when public speaking, you want to be more animated. I do notice that when I’m recording Age of Persuasion, I use my hands a lot, to gesture. So the leap to the stage was a small one for me. Remember, too, that all ad people have to be good presenters in a boardroom, and that takes a lot of animation and theatricality. So the job makes me expressive as a rule.

Were there things that happened while writing your book with Mike Tennant that completely surprised you?  Put differently, did the process of writing and publishing a book meet your preconceived notions of book writing and publishing?

Learned a lot through that process. First, we had to create a “spine” for the book, whereas the radio show doesn’t have one, per se. As well, our editor would sometimes say, “That sounds like a radio line, make it a print sentence.” Mike and I would bristle at that a lot, because we wanted our jump to print to capture the sound, pace and style of the radio show. So sometimes we listened, sometimes we stamped on our hankies to keep the writing intact. We had no idea that the author is responsible for getting all the quote permissions and pay for them. We had no idea that the authors had to gather all the photos and pay for them (that’s why there are none in our book, too expensive). We had no idea we had to pay for someone to create the index at the back of the book. So, the writing was a joy, but the mechanical part of putting a book together was definitely a learning process. The book tour was a great experience. Meeting fans of the show is the very best part.

Pretend you wake up one morning and you discover that the Internet was destroyed overnight and won’t be restored for a long, long time.  What’s the first thing you do?

Save and store all the information I’ve pulled from the net over time. Then renew my library card and call Malcolm Gladwell.

Do you have any wisdom or advice that you’d like to share with our readers?

More than anything, I believe in trusting your gut feelings. The day I started doing that, my entire career changed. When you’re young, you have to pay your dues and learn. But there will come a time when you will start to hear your gut feelings, and the trick becomes to “trust” your gut feelings. Hard to stick your hand up in a room full of senior people and say you completely disagree with the prevailing sentiment in that meeting. But that day will come, and it will be your coming-out party. Your career will change that day for the better.

Thanks to Terry O’Reilly for spending the time to respond to this interview!

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• Someone interviewed me for a change and some disclosure
• Thoughts from Hugh MacLeod of GapingVoid.com
• 10 Thoughts From Julien Smith
• Four part Q&A series starts tomorrow!