Kidd Kraddick in the Morning Rocks the Radio with SnapStream

April 2008

Kidd Kraddick and his team of producers use SnapStream Enterprise to integrate television into their nationally syndicated morning talk radio program, “Kidd Kraddick in the Morning”

The Situation

It’s in the job description of a morning show host to step out of bed and be ready to engage listeners for five hours straight; And developing material that listeners find entertaining and useful is no small task. Kidd Kraddick in the Morning, like other morning talk radio programs, has always used television content as a means to discuss and comment on current news, sports, pop culture and entertainment.

Their first efforts to incorporate television into the dialogue involved various television recording devices setup in their production studio. Aaron Cappotelli, Executive Producer, and his team would schedule daily recordings of TV shows such as celebrity tabloid shows, awards shows, and late night talk shows. Then, every morning they would manually skim through the recordings for segments and stories that it might be interesting to discuss.

However, faulty recordings, lack of recording capacity, and the inefficiency of manually reviewing recordings quickly challenged this workflow. “Our initial recording setup was completely inefficient. For example, say I had recorded the Grammy’s and we want to use an audio clip of something the host had said. If I hadn’t committed it to memory I could literally spend an hour fast forwarding through a four hour program,” said Aaron.

The Solution

In August of 2007 at the NAB Radio Show, Kidd Kraddick happened to stop by the SnapStream Enterprise booth. “We couldn’t peel Kidd away from the SnapStream booth. He was fascinated by this thing that could digitally record a bunch of TV on one system and then made those recordings searchable,” said Rob Chickering, Vice President of Engineering at Kidd’s production company.

Now, with a SnapStream Enterprise TV Server installed at the “Kidd Kraddick in the Morning” production studio in Dallas, Texas, the Kraddick team is able to schedule recordings once instead of on a day-by-day basis. And the SnapStream Server’s recording capacity assures that recording aren’t missed and it’s allowed them to up their recording schedule. And using SnapStream’s powerful search technology, Kidd Kraddick and team are able to easily search within recordings, while on the air, to find information and pertinent audio clips that can be clipped, extracted and incorporated into their program. The production team not only uses the clips for audio purposes, but they are able upload the video clips to their website. “If we wanted to add to a story we had broadcast, we would have to scour the internet looking for video clips. Now we have the video clip and can upload it to our website,” said Aaron Cappotelli.

Adopting the SnapStream Enterprise TV Server at “Kidd Kraddick in the Morning” has alleviated the stress and pain of recording television and SnapStream’s search technology has made it possible to integrate television commentary in completely new ways.

The Results

Producers of Kidd Kraddick in the Morning have changed the way they record and monitor television. The Enterprise TV Server has provided them with the following added benefits:

Ease of Scheduling Recordings: Before, recordings were scheduled manually and involved setting and replacing VHS cassette tapes. Now recordings are made automatically using the SnapStream Enterprise program guide and the system’s hard drives ensure that there’s always capacity to make new recordings.
Powerful television search technology: The manual labor of searching and skimming through recordings was inefficient and costly. SnapStream Enterprise’s powerful television search technology eliminates this manual labor, making it possible to comment on television in ways that weren’t possible before.
Clipping/Editing: It was not uncommon for the producers to keep a running log of specific times within recordings for editing and clipping purposes. Clipping can now be done directly within SnapStream Enterprise using SnapStream television search features.

About the Kidd Kraddick in the Morning

Kidd Kraddick in the Morning is syndicated by Yea Network and is currently on over 70 stations across the United States. Kraddick is a radio veteran and joined on the air by Kellie Rasberry, Big Al Mack and J-Si. For over a decade Kidd Kraddick in the Morning has been one of the top morning shows in the country.

Figures

Figure 1: Kidd tries SnapStream Enterprise at the 2007 NAB Radio Show in Charlotte, NC.

Figure 2: The show's Executive Producer searches through recordings for useable on-air audio clips.

Figure 3: Kidd uses SnapStream Enterprise to pull up relevant audio clips for inclusion during an on-air broadcast.