Pat Fraley\’s “Everything They Expect You To Know But Nobody Teaches” event in Buffalo, NY 2009

Well it was more like just a Saturday but the hardest working teacher in voice over was in the Nickel City this weekend as Pat Fraley presented his at Crosswater Digital Media.

It was hosted by my primary voice acting teacher, my agent and, best of all, my friend Toni Silveri who has run The Voice Actor Workshop of Western New York for many years (in addition to All Coast Talent). Toni and Pat worked together on voice over projects often when she lived in L.A.

It should be noted that one of the first things Pat spoke about Saturday was how incredibly fortunate we are here to have Toni as a teacher as “she is on par with the best voice acting teachers anywhere in the country.” I know that to be true.

The class was sold out and I wasn’t going to attend having been to a number of Pat’s courses, all of which I enjoyed immensely (as I have often noted here). Toni, however, needed some “day of” help which I was glad to provide cause these events do require some leg work (and I have fantastic legs…they are both short AND stumpy).

Voice Teacher Pat Fraley and Crosswater Audio Engineer Dan Innes

Quite unexpectedly and very graciously, Pat included in me in the class when I wasn’t tending to my primary support duties. As usual, there was a ton of good stuff with some great voice talents (and wonderful people) from across New York, Ohio and Canada. The day’s basic theme (specifically regarding the “tricks” section) was how to stand out and be different in auditions and performances. It’s not a new concept to most but then again most of established voice talents aren’t executing these tricks enough on a regular basis and the new folks are still figuring out where to stand so this is valuable insights for everybody.

My favorite takeaway from the day (and there were many) was the Series of Three Techniques in which Pat discuss the smartest (my term but it fits) way to give a variation on your performance, often request by directors as “series of three”.

Male Voice Talents Dan Nachtrab and Peter K. O\’Connell

One of my other favorite parts of the day was getting to meet up with male voice talent Dan Nachtrab who drove up from Dayton, OH to be a part of the class. Dan and I have known each other for many years via the VO-BB.com so it was a real treat to visit with him not only about voice over but about Dayton, home of the University of Dayton Flyers, the college of my youth that didn’t say “no!”

Tags: commentary, community, university of dayton, 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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I was visiting LinkedIn and realized I hadn’t spent much time connect with folks within the groups to which I belong. Specifically, I was reading about folks in the two University of Dayton alumni groups on LinkedIn.

I’m from the UD class of 1986 which does not seem like twenty-three years, one wife, two kids and twenty five pounds ago, but it is.

While I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me – given the news for the past year – I was taken aback by all the UD graduates who are out of work…talented, experienced folks, not simply new graduates (who I’m sure are experiencing job search challenges too.

I’ve got very little to offer these University of Dayton folks who are out of a job right now, no magic pill or super advice.

But I do have my networks.

There’s my LinkedIn network, my Facebook, network, my extensive off-line professional network of colleagues, clients and friends. That’s another thing twenty-three years since graduating from college gets you.

So I posted in both University of Dayton LinkedIn groups the following:

Hi Folks:

I was reading through many of the LinkedIn bios of University of Dayton grads on both UD alumni groups and WOW, are a lot of alumni (talented, experienced UD grads) out of work. This sucks but I’m not willing to just ignore the problem without trying – even in a small way – to help.

I’m fortunate; my voiceover business is going well as is my marketing business. But I understand how hard lean times are so I’ll simply offer this:

IF any of you are in the fields of broadcasting, media, advertising, marketing or web and you want to connect with me, feel free. I’ll accept your connection – even if we never met on campus. You’re a UD grad and that’s good enough for me.

THEN if you need or want an introduction to anyone in my network, ask. I’ll set it up. I’ll open the door – your talent and knowledge will have to keep it open. But I am glad to help get you started.

If you’re in engineering or law (or some other major that didn’t mentioned), my connections simply aren’t as strong but if you think I can help…I will try.

I have no idea if this will work for you or not but the way I see it, it’s a start, it’s free and something good may come from it. In any event, I hope it helps.

Best always,
– Peter

I’ve already made one connection with a person looking for some help and if that’s the only success, then great.

It helped me remember that we are not helpless to help. We ALL have connections but we all don’t think about them and how they can help others (hey, all this just occurred to me today and we’ve been in an economic meltdown for more than a few months).

So my question to you is: what will you do to help? I don’t mean you helping UD grads, unless you want to. It can really be anybody.

But you have to reach out to them…they don’t know you can help. Sometimes, like in this example, it can be electronically by pressing a few buttons. You can find people to help at your school, your neighborhood, your church…or something else, you choose.

And it’s not a heavy load- all I promise is an introduction to someone in my network for people who have shared a common experience with me: we all graduated from the University of Dayton.

In this experience, all I needed to do was realize I could do something…and I did.

So can you, this is just a friendly reminder.

Tags: commentary, community, facebook, linkedin, social media, social networking, university of dayton by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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Quite frankly if I were a program director at a radio station, I wouldn’t have hired me in 1982.

I came across some old reel to reels of air checks and production demos from WVUD. The one I have has some technical problems that maybe I can fix but the rest of the world can probably only handle a minute of my God awful jock talk.

I apologize in advance for stealing the next 90 irretrievable seconds from your life to hear a 1985 air check of a 23 year old disc jockey in Dayton, Ohio.

LISTEN:

You have free reign to take me out to the barn in the comment section below, once you stop the bleeding from your ears.

Thanks for reading.

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Tags: announcers, commentary, radio, university of dayton, voice talent, voiceover, WVUD by peter k. o'connell, your friendly, neighborhood voice-over talent
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It was 1985 and I was working at WVUD in Dayton.

The previous Christmas, musical artists in the UK under the leadership of (now) Sir Bob Geldof had recorded the incredibly impactful song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The song included a collection of the day’s top artists who donated their time and talent to raise money for the famine in Africa.

It was a singularly amazing combination of musical artistry, song writing and performance.

In January of 1985, at the end of the American Music Awards, scores of artists commuted from the award show to the A&M Studios to record the Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie penned “We Are The World“. It too was singularly amazing.

My recollection of the song is so fresh because as production manager at WVUD, I was tasked with recording the song off of our satellite upon its release and our station debut it in our market. Downloading a song off satellite was hardly an everyday occurrence in 1985. We usually waited for the records to arrive like every other radio station.

On Good Friday, April 5, 1985, at 12 o’clock noon on WVUD and over 8,000 U.S. radio stations, regardless of their format, played “We Are The World” at the same time. For those seven minutes you literally could tune in almost any radio station and hear the same song. It was a shining moment for radio.

There were concerts and fund rasiers and on Good Friday, 2008 – 23 years later, still more famine.

Can’t we use the millions of dollars paid to Paris Hilton to have a TV Show camera follow her around to buy grain for entire regions of starving people? Are our priorities still that askew?

Let’s not forget the hungry while we enjoy our Easter celebrations. We may not think so but someday it really could be us.

Tags: commentary, radio, university of dayton, WVUD 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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