Mr Miyagi and The Ozzi Imaging Boot Camp – How…

I really love working with young and aspiring imaging talents. It’s a great thing to see how young people develop, get inspired and one day are better than the guy educated them. Benztown’s philosopy was always to educate, share knowledge and grow together. I often use Mr. Miyagi as the perfect role model and Australia has a lot of them. BT, David Konsky, Matt Nikolic, Chris Davis, Sidey  – just to name a few.

Triple M‘s Brendan Tacey has developed a great recruitment system, which gets youngsters into the scene and helps established producers extend their work and talent.

Check out how Ozzi Imaging Veteran BT is using his networking skills and talent for scouting new talents and aside develops the new Ozzi imaging elite. Enter BT (Head of Imaging for Southern Cross / Austereo)

‘There are 2 sides to the business… Metro and Regional. Metro being all our Capital City stations, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane.

Then our Regional Markets which include some of the minor Capital Cities and all the regional towns we have stations in.

The majority of these stations run their own race and each have their own local battles… so a 1 size fits all strategy doesn’t suit. What we make for the Triple M Brand wont fit our Gold FM brand on the Gold Coast or Mix brand in Perth. It would be to too ‘Hard’ for those audiences. However…. What we can do… is support each other across the country between the brands.

If I have built a Bon Jovi Promo for Triple M…. and then a week later Surfy (one of our production guns on the Gold Coast) needs to make a Bon Jovi promo, but has very limited time, I’ll happily supply him my promo mixout which he can then pick the eyes out of to help him build his Bon Jovi promo in less than half the time it might otherwise take.

We are so lucky as a Network to have such and awesome team of producers who all think like this and are happy to help each other out.

There is a flip side though….. and that is if this practice takes place too much, then growth in a producer can be inhibited. So it’s a fine line… but it is a way that we work between each other.

One of the biggest things for us as a Network is Talent identification and development. We have producers for all levels right round the country. We always need to be on the lookout for 2 things.

1 – Opportunities to stretch and grow our existing talent coming up the ranks

2 – New talent within other networks or not in radio at all

To flesh out the first point. A recent example is the moving of our Hobart Image producer Taylor who was producing for 2 stations in Hobart, into the role of our Western Australian Regional hub where She now looks after more than 15 stations.

Taylor will now learn a whole new set of skills producing for the larger number of stations and get a great understanding of Networking.

Taylor replaced Matt Haywood who I bought across to Melbourne to produce our Triple M Drive show that is a very sport focused Show. Matt’s passions in life are Production and Sport. Great fit for him and the company.

We moved our Hobart Commercial producer Keenan (who is in the first 12 months of his career) into the Hobart Imaging role, and replaced Keenan with Ali, who I meet while talking to the Radio School at a Uni in Melbourne. So you can see the path of growth and succession there.

Also recently, David Konsky who I know you are familiar with, took a 2 week holiday which gave Dom Evans, one of our Top Hit stream producers who works primarily on our Brisbane and Adelaide stations… the opportunity to step up and produce for our Flagship station, Sydney’s 2Day FM. (which Dom has truly embraced – and I know you are getting some Rihanna Imaging from him as an example of recent work). Stay tuned to hear more about Dom Evans’ work and career. There soon will be more…

Not only that, it gave Tim, one of Our Gold Coast guys the opportunity to step up and help out Brisbane and Adelaide a bit while Doms focus was on Sydney.

And without the support and understanding of the Gold Coast team around Tim, he wouldn’t have had the opportunity.

So again… it comes back to having great people in Production Roles around the country who understand that what they do is not just about them and doing just their job and going home. We all understand that we are also here to support one another in some way

Once upon a time, we would have pulled in a casual to fill the holes… but with greatly reduced budgets, we have to get smarter about how we do things… and this is certainly a way. Yes it can be a balancing act, but we have the right people to do the Job for us… and if they aren’t 100%, then we do what we need to in order to get them to that point through some focused training.’

Thanks to Brendan for sharing his skills and knowledge with us.