The Production Director is the person at a radio station who oversees the creation or transfer of all the "other" audio heard on-the-air aside from the music, songs, and deejay chatter. In other words: commercials, promotional announcements, and sweepers. Sweepers are audio elements that provide a transition between, for instance, the end of a commercial and a song. Sweepers can also be former deejays who have lost their jobs and will do anything for a couple of bucks.
The Production Director is a strange title for this person since most Production Directors have no real staff. They don't really "direct". It's more like they farm stuff out they don't want to do themselves. They might be better named "The Creepy Guy in the Back Studio Who Assigns Everyone Busywork" - at least that's what it seems like to other staff members.
That's because The Production Director either creates (produces) commercials and promos from scratch or in some instances has to transfer (dub) pre-recorded commercials created by ad agencies to the digital computer system. Dubbing commercials is the modern day equivalent of what scribes used to do. But, instead of handwriting copy after copy of the same document, people who dub commercials have to copy dozens of commercials into the system in a process that is overly mindless.
Rub-A-Dub-Dub - Can You Handle This Bub?
Transferring (dubbing) commercials is about as exciting as watching a Don Imus adjust his cowboy hat during a spot break. By the way: in Radio we call commercials "spots". This is probably because by the time you get done dubbing dozens of them, you are dazed and seeing spots.
The Production Director is responsible for bringing commercials to life. In the old days when radio stations had budgets (you know: the 1990s), stations actually had "copywriters" whose job it was to write the commercials for the Production Director to produce. Copywriters were all executed during a dark time in Radio's past known as "consolidation".
Consolidation occurred when a few big companies purchased all the radio stations and eliminated overlapping positions. Apparently, one copywriter per station was considered too "overlapping" so they were all frog-marched to the General Manager's office and dunked into tanks of red ink until they drowned. It's a chapter in Radio no one is proud of.
