Mike Kinosian who writes for Inside Radio wrote a wonderful article on the voice over careers of Joe Cipriano and John Leader (who was friends with my voiceover idol Ernie Anderson).
A great read. Thanks Mike!
The blogosphere can be a tough place as my multi-lingual VO pal Liz de Nesera found out over the last week.
That troublemaking voice over blogger Bob Souer and some his commentators brow beat poor Liz into starting a blog. 😉
Well she couldn’t take the pressure and finally caved. You can read her blog here.
Fear not Liz, Bob and company have guided you into a wonderful tool of social media and creativity. We look forward to all your posts which are now linked to my blog.
Creating the Unofficial NBC Nightly News Voice Off was an epiphany for many reasons not the least of which was the power of the web.
1. Until the very moment I came up with the idea, I really hadn’t been searching for a breakthrough idea for the blog which would garner lots of attention. After the event’s successful completion, I’m still not. While the blog is an important web marketing tool, it remains for me a creative outlet that, while I hope others enjoy, laugh and learn from it, doesn’t need be anything else besides that outlet. I am however thrilled that the blog provided a useful channel through which the idea could blossom. For those two reasons, I really am happy I have the blog.
2. There are so many tremendous voice over talents that I “met” for the first time through this exercise. Many I had known of for years and some are even great friends but coming across so many heretofore unheard (by me) voices was a real treat.
3. Finally, the big epiphany: some voiceover talents (not naming any names nor does this part reflect upon the aforementioned names) are crappy marketers.
Well, there goes all the new professional goodwill I just engendered from the Voice Off. But I feel if I address the issue, folks can learn from it. And folks, I witnessed all this first hand.
Lesson 1 – If you do not have your own voice over web site, I consider you a voice over wanna-be. Ouch, harsh! “But I have a page on voices.com and voice 123,” you say. Good, that’s right, direct your prospective client to your page there and hope and pray they don’t start fishing around the other talent pages on those sites (some of whom will do a 10 minute narration for $5 and a cup of day old coffee, just to get experience). Bad odds. Spend the money, get your own web page (or full site) and create a brand. Stop whining about money and do it!
Lesson 2 – Telephone numbers are not optional. Maybe you have a studio in your home and you don’t want clients calling your house and having your 10 year old answering the phone and, while sounding cute, still sounding unprofessional and I get that. Get a cell phone number, make that your business line, plaster the phone number everywhere and always answer it professionally. But get a phone number. Here’s your slogan – “The Telephone – its how business gets done!”
Lesson 3 – An email signature block is mandatory. Typing “Joe” or whatever at the bottom of an email doesn’t cut it. Every email you send out is an electronic business card. People may have kept your email just to have your contact information…unless of course you DON’T have it on there and then your important email really becomes expendable. An email signature block, which you can set up on most software to go out with every email automatically (so you really have no excuse) should contain at minimum your name, your company name, your phone number and your web site where folks can find your demos.
There are only two people now who know of your errors, you and me. And as you can see, I’m not using any names in the crappy marketers section. So quietly go about fixing these changes and go make some money. Nobody else will know how you did it cause I’m not telling.
For decades, Bill Rice has been the voice of ABC News, going to back to when Harry Reasoner and Barbara Walters had their ill-conceived and ill-fated on-air partnership.
Ever since, Bill’s steady voice has been heard as that news division covered some of the greatest tragedies in our history.
As the news divisions’ overnight program “World News Now” celebrates its 15th (now 16th I guess) anniversary, the show did a long over due piece on Bill Rice’s announcing work for ABC News and the ABC Television Network.
1.11.08 5:00 p.m. ET – – VOTING IS NOW CLOSED.
We have been blessed with some terrific voice over talents willing to share their abilities with us on our unofficial, unsanctioned and possibly unholy quest for a new announcer for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Of course, if NBC takes my original advice and gets Michael Douglas back into the voice over booth with proper vocal direction, he’ll surely nail it the second time and we’ll all be back selling pencils on the street corner.
But for now, we vote! And here are the rules that I may change or amend to suit my fancy at any particular time (as my parents used to say) “just because!”
Rule 1 – Please listen to all the voices here (its a faster loading page now for more enjoyable listening). Not just because it’s polite but because as maybe the one person who has heard all of them, especially from names I was not initially familiar with, I don’t want you to miss the joy that I’ve had of discovering some new talent.
Rule 2 – You may not vote for me. There are so many reasons why this rule makes sense:
• It would be bad form to be voted best on my own blog
• The appearance of my vocal talent being somehow considered superior to my peers within my blog would be gauche
• This avoids me suffering the embarrassment of either losing or not being voted for at all (OK, now you know the truth, deal with it)
Rule 3 – You may not vote for yourself
Rule 4 – Please vote only once. If you have so much time on your hands that you can vote more than once, you’ve got business or family problems that require your immediate attention.
Rule 5 – Please order your choices as best or first (1st), gooder or second (2nd) and good or third (3rd). I will tabulate all the scores and announce the final top three finishers, with prizes to be determined by how reasonable or ungodly high my Christmas bills turn out to be.
Rule 6 – Voting takes place right here in THIS blog post within the comments section below only. It’s up to you if you want to be anonymous or not but I’m only giving you three choices so your friends shouldn’t hold it against you if you don’t vote for them. If they do, get new friends.
Go vote and tell all your friends, the polls are open!
P.S. If you haven’t already SUBSCRIBED to this blog, hit the orange subscribe button at the top of the blog. If you need to get a blog reader, this is the FREE and easy one I use.
P.P.S. 12/30/07 – This evening I received a call from a voice over friend of mine who is watching the voting here with great interest and enjoyment. He said he wanted to make it even more interesting and asked if he could donate a prize. I said that wasn’t really necessary but he cut me off and shut my mouth when he said the prize was a MXL 008 Large Gold Diaphragm USB Condenser Microphone. He wants to remain anonymous (what a character!) So this prize will be included to one of the top three vote getters. What a gracious and unexpected donation, thank you!
If you are a voice talent in this voice-off, right about now would be the time I’d start contacting friends, family and anyone who owes you a favor to LEGITIMATELY place their votes. The voting will be open for at least another week.
UPDATE: As of 12/27/07, the nominations/auditions are now CLOSED! Thanks everyone…join us in the voting here.
As you’ll recall, I put out an unofficial open casting call for auditions (that link is also where you can find the Nightly News theme music)for the announcer position on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.
To following are the submitted audition (in the order they were received) for your listening pleasure. Thanks everyone for participating.
NOTE: A FASTER LISTENING PAGE HAS NOW BEEN SET UP ON THE AUDIO’CONNELL VOICE OVER TALENT WEB SITE – LISTEN TO ALL THE AUDITIONS HERE!
12/27/07 – THE AUDITIONS/NOMINATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED. Thank you all. Look for our voting post HERE!
1/12/08 – THE WINNERS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED. Please check out the top 3 HERE
