Being entertaining – which should be every air talent’s #1 goal – isn’t about punch lines. It’s about how you see the world.
George Carlin saw the world as a series of oddities worthy of comments. “A house is just a place where you keep your stuff… while you go get more stuff.”
Jerry Seinfeld sees the world analytically: “What is it with Grape Nuts? No grapes; no nuts.”
Rodney Dangerfield envisioned a life of getting no respect. “I told my dentist my teeth are turning yellow. He told me to wear a brown tie.”
My friend Jon Rivers once listened to an aircheck of a “not there yet” talent, and said “He knows not. And he knows not that he knows not.”
The great Howard Clark, back in the days of playing vinyl records, once started one on the wrong speed, and said, “Hands of a surgeon; mind of a tractor.”
How you see the world, and your place in it, creates your on-air persona. The way you see the world creates your “camera angles” and shapes your vocabulary. (This is what I work on with people more than anything else.)
The odd thing is that the more personal you get in expressing how you see the world differently than anyone else, the more people you connect with.
