How to Write a Radio Commercials Script
The Layout and Conventions Generally Used in the Radio Industry
Apr 15, 2009
Much has been written through the various radio industry bodies, like the UK’s and the USA’s Radio Advertising Bureau(s) and Canada’s Radio Marketing Bureau, examining the best ways to make radio a more effective advertising medium. Creatively this often takes the form of discussions on:
- How to take a workable creative brief from a client,
- How to deliver that brief back to the client for agreement and approval,
- How best to write and record effective radio commercials from that brief,
- And how to achieve the client’s advertising aims and objectives.
This for most practitioners in the creative part of industry is the “Who, What, Why,” template. Any creative work can be developed from this and put simply, most in the industry will recognise The Creative Brief Template as:
- Who is the audience being addressed or talked to (age, sex, demographic profile, interest)
- What is this audience being asked to do (advertiser contact: call, store or web visit, or increased brand awareness.)
- Why should this audience do it. (the audience reward.)
Once the creative brief is agreed the process of writing radio scripts can begin. As well as providing an agreed focus for the campaign, the brief is also the starting point for the creative use of radio, an area also much in on-going discussion and debate within the industry.
Setting down audio creative ideas on paper is not as difficult as it first might appear. An industry- wide recognised template helps not only the writer but also in the presentation of those ideas both to the industry and to the client. Unlike the written word which convention dictates should fall normally into sentences and headings, or paragraphs and chapters across the page and remains the written word, the spoken word and indeed the spoken and visual medium works on a split page.
Split the page 25% / 75%. The left hand 25% of the page will be mostly short cues, descriptions, directions, and instructions to anyone reading the page, and the right hand 75% the script itself with script wording and more details of the various audio inserts. So in theory most radio scripts contain the following:
- Centred Title header: with presentation logo; company contact and references; client name; writer; script title and duration.
- Left Hand 25%: Cues for voice talent; music; sound effects; directions and brief placing instructions for in-cues and out-cues of audio inserts.
- Right Hand 75%: contains the body of the script, with lines for each voice following the direction on the left side, as well as more detailed description of the various other non-speech audio inserts. Details of music, sound effects, and audio inserts.
The script layout will also contain some common abbreviations, such as :
- Vo - Voice Over or Talent (including description/style where appropriate),
- Mvo - Male voice over
- Fvo - Female voice over
- Cvo - Child voice over)
- Sfx - Sound effect description
- Inserts - I/c (In-cue first audio in) & O/c (Out-cue or last audio out.)
- Mix or Music - Details of music including style, composer, performer or label ref.
Any copyright information, approval signature(s) and the date is normally included at the bottom of the page. A template such as this can oviously be altered to suit the production, but a radio script presented as above will be well understood within the industry.
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