Here’s the thing – I know some Adult Contemporary (AC) radio stations start their “All Christmas – All The Time” formats about a week before Thanksgiving in most US radio markets. They do this because their listenership increases and those listeners usually stay around after the holiday is over and into the next ratings book which boosts their ratings and allows the station to get a leg up on ad revs. A perfectly fine business practice.

Those stations are banished from my car radio pre-sets one only for the Christmas period and one entirely. Now I am a 43 male, not the demo these stations are looking for…certainly not the sex they are aiming their programming for (women do the buying) but I can’t stand this further yet commercialization of Christmas. So pulling them off my pre-sets is my silent protest and no one from either station has called me personally to ask me to come back to them (imagine that)!

But as we are ten days out from Christmas Eve, I will now allow you to begin playing Christmas music occasionally on your stations.

I know that this is the correct time because the local Album Oriented Rock (AOR) station in town has evidently been running a Bruce concert ticket giveaway in which if you hear one of his Christmas songs, you can win a pair of tickets to his concert (which I don’t think is here until Q3 ’08). I hadn’t heard about this promotion but because I ardently avoid Christmas music, I hadn’t heard Bruce’s “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” yet.

I did this morning on that station (which is always judicious in it’s playing of Christmas music) and as is my tradition, once I hear it, Christmas can begin. I know you were waiting for my signal so – there it is.

And so there’s no confusion, here’s my Christmas music contribution that features some great animation and cute voice talent performances.

Tags: advertising, commentary, radio, voice actors, voice talent by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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The great thing about being asked “what do you do for a living?” is telling people that I am a voice over talent which often times is followed up by “what’s a voice over talent?” I get to tell them about my business because they asked me…I didn’t force explaination on them. That is a sales person’s dream!

The bad thing about that scenario is how often it happens and how monotonous the explaination can feel after a while.

Well leave it to voice talent and teacher Bettye Zoller to spend the time to define it for all of us so we can just send people to a web site after they back up the Brinks truck with the oodles of money they’re going to pay us for our voice over talent.

I really enjoyed the part where she rattled off examples of the type of work we do because I often forget a few:

Voiceover talents today are hired to narrate audio books, anime, cartoons, videos, films, and cable TV programs. They are the voices of toys, talking picture frames, cell phone messages, talking greeting cards, your car’s GPS navigation system, and everything else that’s manufactured with a computer chip inside of it on which a voice track can be stored and played. Voiceover talents greet you (and annoy you!) on thousands upon thousands of those pesky recorded telephone messages and IVR systems. They talk to you through ceiling speakers while you shop in stores. You hear voiceover talents trying to convince you to buy cosmetics at your department store on a video playing over and over (looping) next to those expensive cosmetic products! The military uses voiceovers in training projects and the educational field also uses voice actors for educational endeavors. Nearly every classroom today, kindergarten through post-graduate study in universities sports a large TV monitor in a corner on which educational videos are played. Sometimes, it seems that a teacher doesn’t talk very much anymore. Rather, schools teach a majority of the time with videos.

Thanks Bettye for taking the time to slap that together. You can read the whole article here if you like.

Tags: announcers, character voices, commentary, narrations, podcasting, radio, tv, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover blog by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Two radio stations who were a part of my radio life both made news last week and since I read it in the same file on All Access, I thought I’d mention it here.

In Dayton, Ohio WGTZ-FM the now formerly Z-93 has changed its format from heritage Top 40/Mainstream to it’s a Jack-ish Adult Hits format. Now calling itself “FLY 92.9”.

I worked for four years in the Dayton radio market. WVUD (now WLQT) was an adult hits station when I worked there (it had been AOR for a time before that) known as “Hitradio 100” and later as “Today’s Music, 99.9 FM”. What made WVUD interesting was it was a 50,000 watt station owned at the time (no longer) by the University of Dayton. It was NOT a college station however. The management including the GM, Program Director and sales staff were all long time radio pros. But the on-air staff was students and that’s what sold me on the school. I was on the air there within my freshman year and never looked back.

At the height of our ratings success, a station that had been known as WING-FM (and the calls were really the most memorable thing about the station at that time) turned the wheel and came gunning right for us. Z-93 was balls to the wall top 40 and commercial free for 30 days, knocking WVUD and Hitradio down a notch or two. Licensed to the town of Eaton, Ohio someone came up with a tremendous script for their top of the hour ID: “Z-93, WGTZ-FM. Eaton, Dayton and Springfield…Alive!” Say it out loud with the right inflection and you’ll catch its brilliance. But now after more than 20 years, change has come and Z-93 is no more. Oh and they fired the entire air staff (crappy SOP). It’s not so much about mourning for me now but rather, the memories.

And to prove how much I am outta touch with the local radio market here, WECK-AM was sold by Regent Broadcasting (which bought WECK and a cluster of other station stations previous owned by CBS Radio) to Culver Communications. Culver Communications owns WLVL-AM in Lockport, New York and it’s the only local radio station I ever worked at — for one week.

Yes you read that correctly. I worked there for one week where I summarily quit and was fired at the same time. Why I’d be glad to tell you the story. I got the job to handle the afternoon drive show (which was quite an honor in what was primarily a one stop light town – kidding) and had been training there all week. The pay might have been a bit above minimum wage but I was fresh outta college and oh well.

But at the end of the week, my dear aunt who had been sick died AND my Mother broke her arm – like, within 24 hours. This was going to be a testy week, schedule-wise and I called my program director to explain and ask for some time off. He said no and that I was unprofessional and if I needed time off I didn’t need to show up for work and I advised him that the station’s transmitter might fit slightly snugly up his posterior cavity (or maybe I was nicer but its what I shoulda said and isn’t that one of the nice parts of blogging, to rewrite your history as you so choose?)

But in all sincerity I hold no malice towards the station because life unfolded and I did pretty well for myself and my family. I think it’s terrific that local ownership (a rarity these days) now runs two stations and I am oh so hopeful that Dick Greene (who owned the station when I was there but I never got to meet – I guess he waits until the second week to greet the new folks – good plan) really makes a go of them. WLVL has been doing OK for years – more power to him.

Tags: blogs, commentary, radio, university of dayton, WVUD by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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My friend and re-newed Mom (welcome baby Daphne) Stephanie Ciccarelli posted on her Vox Daily blog a fun question: “What Attracted You To Radio?” At the risk of parroting my voice over compadre David Houston who has previously done what I am about to do (and probably did it better) here is my response to the post offering you a little peek into my inner geek (oh, you KNOW you wanted to look, admit it!)

“I was in kindergarten in 1969 at Mount St. Joseph Academy (well, it was called the Medaille School then but it changed and…aw you don’t care).

Sister Donna Marie took the class on a field trip to a radio station – WEBR. Now up until that point, I was under the distinct impression that the music coming out of the radio came from a building where all these musicians stood around waiting their turn to play their songs live on the radio.

Imagine my surprise.

We stood in the control room and watched the broadcast live and I was mesmerized. Knobs and lights and oooo what’s that? A microphone! I want me one of those!

Wait, it gets geekier.

Some kids like to draw space ships or cowboys.I drew pictures of radio and TV studios.100’s of them. Microphones, cameras, technicians. Paging Dr. Freud!

Um, it gets geekier.

I’m in 2nd or 3rd grade and I come across an audio production catalog which has….microphones! Oh I thought that was the coolest thing. Lots of em to broadcast my voice. I finally got a used one and I thought it was super cool. It didn’t work, it wasn’t hooked up to anything but I had me a microphone.

Fast forward early high school where it occurred to me after everyone said I had a nice voice (my Dad had won public speaking awards in high school and my mom wanted to work in Television before women were really permitted to do such things…do you think the broadcasting bug I have was genetic?) I started reading copy from magazines like they were radio scripts. And I gave them pretty good reads. The quizzically look my Mother gave me one day when she heard this was priceless (“what are you doing?”) But I was too far gone.

College time rolls around and I am looking for a broadcasting program. I thought I would head right to one of the best broadcasting programs in the east, Syracuse University, until they said “no” (who wants to be an “Orangeman” anyway…what the hell is an “Orangeman”). The University of Dayton I liked for many reasons not the least of which was their 50,000 FM commercial (non of this public radio stuff) station broadcasting to three states with a professional GM, PD and sales staff….and all student air staff.

WVUD-FM was the equivalent of Geek Bingo!

What an amazing introduction into broadcasting and my future in radio and voice over. Sadly, the University sold the station and now one of the big radio chains owns it, WLQT (an old competitor, Kim Faris, a staple at Z-93 for years now does mornings on Lite 99.9…very nice lady).

But what an introduction and what a ride.”

Tags: announcers, audio production, blogs, commentary, media, radio, tv, university of dayton, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, WVUD by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I get funny looks for audio production students when I tell them that when I started in radio “100 years ago” we edited audio on audio tape with a wax pencil, razor blades and ¼” editing tape.

“You mean like sticky tape to hang things on the wall?”

Um, no. Never mind.

I had to have sounded the same way when I first started out when I heard about the audio tricks of those who came before me. Those ladies and gentlemen were true pioneers, not in the Conestoga Wagon kind of way but in the wonderfully inventive “MacGyver” way.

I bring this up to share with you a site I’ve come across that features a variety of technical articles reproduced for your reading pleasure on a blog called Modern Mechanix which I believe (correct me if I’m wrong here) was a tech mag “back in the day” (you do realize that today will be “back in the day” for someone in the future, right? Just checking.)

The post that first drew my attention was an article from 1937 on how Walt Disney Studios designed its sound effects…written by the folks who did it. There are a ton of other great radio and audio related articles with the hits and misses from creative people who tried…and to me, that’s the whole ball game. Try and succeed, try and fail but just “try”.

Tags: audio production, commentary, radio, technology by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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I had an interesting experience last week when audio’connell Voice Over Talent’s Terri and me were invited to speak to a class of radio broadcasting students at Buffalo State College about the voice over business and commercial production.

Buff State has an impressive communications program and boasts a famous or infamous radio station in WBNY, which includes among its impressive alumni Tom Calderone who currently oversees VH1.

Terri actually set up the whole presentation because she’s finishing her degree there (way to go!) while balancing her voiceover work and her other job with the Buffalo Fire Department (and I thought MY days were busy).

Having been in broadcasting for over 30 years and teaching at Buff State for at least 25 years, the class’ professor, Tom Donahue, is a great asset for students and was a great host for we presenters. We shared some terrific radio stories.

Presenting in front of college students is always a challenge…you really have to rev them up…I think we did alright. Students were at a select disadvantage when I presented because I’m a talker AND a walker….I’ll come up to you and finish my point with emphasis right in front of you and look for your recognition….you weren’t sleeping, were you?! (They weren’t…they were all great).

While I’ve neither the patience, education nor the talent for teaching, I fully understand why it can be a satisfying profession. Tom brought some scripts to class and Terri and I would read a couple (watching the students’ eye light up…you could tell they were thinking “that sounds just like on the radio!”). Then, I’d bring them up and we’d try 2-3 takes. The difference between performances from take 1 to take 3 really caught students by surprise.

It’s the kind of surprise some students might be able to build a career on.

Tags: announcers, commentary, commercials, peter o'connell, radio, voice actors, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover advice, voiceover meet-ups by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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