A former broadcasting school instructor told students during a critique session that one of the biggest challenges is that, for the first seven units of the announcing program, they have to do mock radio air shifts by sitting in a room with just a tape recorder. For levels 8-10, they would go into studio booths and do radio shows in real time with music. Until then, however, he said students "have to relate to nothing. You're just sitting there in a nearly empty room staring into space and then, out of the blue, you say, 'Hey, wasn't that a great song by Van Halen?!'"
It's interesting to recall this now in an age of frequent voice-tracking; it's all the more common now for professional announcers, who often aren't even in the same city as the radio station, to have their breaks recorded separately from the music and mixed in as needed. Although it saves money to have one announcer record breaks for multiple stations with the same format, the relating-to-nothing, canned approach removes the local flavor and in-the-moment feel that a local station ought to have, and it can't update anyone during a news or weather emergency.
