RALEIGH, NC, August 10, 2016 – – audio’connell Voiceover Talent has relocated its studios from Buffalo, NY to Raleigh, NC. Proudly born and raised in Buffalo, company owner and male voiceover talent Peter K. O’Connell made the announcement today citing family, rather than weather as the reason for the move.

“It figures that now that Buffalo is on the rebound and enjoying a well deserved resurgence in popularity from both a business and community perspective, I move away,” O’Connell joked. “It was a nice opportunity for my children to be closer to their grandparents and all the other benefits of the move just sort of presented themselves to make the choice easy,” said O’Connell.

The company’s voiceover studio is already up and running in Raleigh with some voiceover projects having already been completed there. O’Connell noted, “One of the great things about voiceover today is you can live darn near anywhere and as long as you have superior acoustics, excellent technology and great customer service, clients will find you.”

While the studio’s address changed, the phone, email and web addresses remain unchanged.

About Peter K. O’Connell

From Fortune 500 companies to companies that think $500 is a fortune, multi-award winning male voiceover talent Peter K. O’Connell has shared his voiceover skills with a wide variety of companies globally. Some of Peter’s clients include General Electric, Kraft Foods, PBS Television Network, Shell Oil, Western Union, Bacardi Rum, Deloitte Canada, Rich Products, U.S. Army, Starz Cable Television Network, BlueCross BlueShield and SunSetter Awnings.

Known as America’s Friendly, Neighborhood Voiceover Talent, Peter is a natural born storyteller whose voice-over work has been featured in radio and TV commercials, corporate narrations, political commercial voice-overs, TV network promos, e-learning narration projects and other media productions. Originally from Buffalo, NY, now living in Raleigh, NC, Peter owns audio’connell Voiceover Talent, a division of O’Connell Communications, LLC. Peter can be reached via audioconnell.com.

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Maybe you feel the same way, but I can only tolerate so much of Facebook recently, with full-blown idiots of every political persuasion hell bent on proving their idiocy to the world. Ponderous. “Hide” is a useful FB tool. Yet I still check in occasionally on FB to check on the world.

Aside from the above silliness, some sad and unexpected news made it in to my Facebook feed last week.

The Voiceover Bulletin Board (the VO-BB) closed up last week. You can still read it, but you cannot post anything new. Foundress of the board and one of my absolute favorite female voice talents, DB Cooper, got frustrated at some feedback she got from a post of hers and turned over the closed sign on one of the most important internet sites for aspiring and professional voice talents.

I don’t begrudge her the right to shut the place down whenever she wanted and for whatever reason she chose. She can’t begrudge me, though, the right to be sad it’s gone.

When my friend (and another killer female voice talent, Connie Terwilliger), directed me and others to the VO-BB so many years ago, I didn’t realize how this new place would change my professional and personal life with industry news and insights, new friendships and a place to be silly (well, and plain stupid…sometimes I was stupid in my posts but an apology usually fixed that).

Thinking about the board and its members and the discussions (and jokes and rants and drama….we’re talking voice actors here…always drama), I started to piece together how so many of my current professional and personal relationships started on this board.

How?

Fellow voice talents who’s comments I read on the board; those who read my comments on the board; voice-over talents who started a business relationship with me because of the board; voice actors who I met at an industry function who knew of me through or because of the board; FaffCon (always FaffCon, which began through the VO-BB); Bob Souer inviting me out to lunch, which beget multiple meetings among VO-BB’ers for years (with more always to come).

So I’ve just made a quick list of voiceover folks I’ve met via all the above permutations that came about because of the VO-BB. Each of these folks have truly made my voice-over journey so much richer because they have been some part of it.

The list has left me a bit gob smacked (and guilty, for fear of those I have no doubt and inexplicably left off, with no malice intended). But I list it as a tribute to what DB created and nurtured over all these years, on her little plot of land on the interwebs.

In NO order of priority:

1. DB Cooper
2. Bob Souer
3. Doug Turkel
4. Connie Terwilliger
5. Liz deNesnera
6. Bruce Miles
7. Philip Banks
8. Lee Gordon
9. Peter Bishop
10. Rowell Gormon
11. Amy Snively
12. Diane Maggipinto
13. Todd Ellis
14. Mandy Nelson
15. Frank Frederick
16. Mary McKitrick
17. Elaine Singer
18. Chuck Davis
19. Anthony Mendez
20. Dave Courvoisier
21. Dan Friedman
22. Tom Dheere
23. Ben Wilson
24. Pam Tierney
25. September Day Carter
26. Moe Egan
27. Jeffrey Kafer
28. Donovan Corneetz
29. Tom Test
30. Vance Elderkin
31. Kara Edwards
32. Caryn Clark
33. Bobbin Beam
34. Terry Daniel
35. Roger Tremaine
36. Lance Blair
37. George Washington, III
38. Erik Sheppard
39. John Florian
40. CC Petersen
41. Melissa Exelberth
42. Jodi Krangle
43. Chris Mezzolesta
44. Dave DeAndrea
45. Craig Crumpton
46. Bob Bergen
47. Michael Schoen
48. JS Gilbert
49. Diane Havens
50. James Clamp
51. Trish Basanyi
52. Monk Schane-Lydon
53. Jane Ingalls
54. Paul Strikwerda
55. Bruce Jacobson
56. Darren Altman
57. Mara Junot
58. Fran McClellan
59. Dale Leopold
60. Lori Berman
61. Talmadge Ragan
62. Scott Pollak
63. Lauren McCullough
64. Randye Kaye
65. Melanie Haynes
66. Larissa Gallagher
67. CC Heim
68. Jordan Reynolds
69. Kristin Lennox
70. Martha Mellinger
71. Rosi & Brian Amador

I am at once heartened and heartbroken when I look at the list, the members of this always-welcoming club. While I expect we will continue our friendships, it seems we shall not have this special place to visit and update.

Maybe it will come back again and maybe we will appreciate it more and treat it better if it does rise again. If not, at least we had it for a time.

“And”, to quote Robert Frost, “that has made all the difference.”

UPDATE: Working with D.B. Cooper, Bruce Miles has resurrected the VO-BB so this wonderful LIVES AGAIN!

Tags: commentary, faffcon, voice talent, voiceover, voiceover meet-ups // 6 Comments »

As you may have heard, FaffCon 8 – presented by Edge Studios – is happening in Minneapolis, Minnesota on August 26-28th. It’s a big deal for me because I had to miss FaffCon 7 because of one of my children’s birthdays. I never am away from home on my children’s birthdays. We had an awesome time at his birthday.

However, because of that experience (and having missed the first FaffCon because a similar reason) I know the frustration and sadness some of my voice-over friends are experiencing because they have either a conflict with the FaffCon 8 date, have different financial priorities at the moment and can’t attend or they didn’t get in via the FaffCon 8 registration queue.

All perfectly understandable reasons. Some folks aren’t going and some got wait-listed.

In either case, it’s a tough feeling because of what an awesome professional and personal voice-over experience FaffCon has evolved into. In most cases, when people have attended FaffCon, they really want to go back. And when I’ve attended FaffCon, I’ve really missed seeing and learning from those folks who could not attend. The new people are terrific…but I’m greedy, I want all my smart (new and old) friends there. But the limit is there for a good reason.

When I’ve not been to a FaffCon, I find myself wondering what all the Faffers were doing at that very moment and what they were learning. While I only missed any FaffCon for family issues and never regretted my decision to stay home, at the same time I did so very often pine to be with my tribe. There’s no way they needed to be around me as much as I needed to be around them.

Life’s decisions aren’t easy ones all the time nor are the realities we are often presented with (like not getting in to FaffCon). It’s not the end of the world to miss a FaffCon but it’s also really no fun either – especially if you’ve attended previously.

I will only offer that at each FaffCon I HAVE attended, I find myself stopping to think about those folks who are not in attendance (and who I wish were in attendance) and try and keep a positive thought for them. For them, it’s not the same as being at FaffCon. For us, it’s not the same without them.

They are always missed.

Tags: commentary, faffcon // Comments Off on faffcon 8 is coming! oh no!

As a guy who started (and pretty much finished) my radio career working in a Hot AC format, it was probably about time that I fired up the microphone and recorded my new Hot AC radio imaging demo.

LISTEN TO PETER K. O’CONNELL’S HOT AC RADIO IMAGING DEMO BY CLICKING HERE

People in radio are familiar with the term Hot AC (AC being Adult Contemporary). For those not so sure what the format includes, HOT AC plays most popular mix of music from the 90’s through today. The Hot AC format is most often music-intensive, Top 40 radio for adults, without so much rap or heavy metal/hard rock. And of course, it features a great station voice…ahem.

There are a ton of popular musicians featured in this format which includes but not limited to Adele, Coldplay, Kelly Clarkson, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Pink and of course Taylor Swift.

The big names in Hot AC when I worked in radio included Michael Jackson, Hall & Oates, Kenny Loggins and Sade. Man, have things changed since the 80’s. But that’s as it should be.

Let me know if you’re a radio station General Manager, Program Director or Production Manager in need of a new station voice for a Hot AC station or any radio format. Cause I know a guy….

Tags: commentary, radio, radio imaging // 1 Comment »

If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know that I am a bit of a traveler. I have happily visited my voice-over friends from around the United States (from Vermont to Seattle) and Canada (from Toronto to, um…Toronto).

I’ve even kept a running log of how many states I have stayed over night in all my life and have ONLY 13 more states to go before I will have stayed over night in every state in the Union!

But there is a trip planned for THIS summer that will be the biggest trip I’ve taken in decades!!!

I will be landing in a place that is familiar but still fairly unknown to me. I expect it will be, quite seriously, life changing.

Would you like to go on this journey with me?

Stay tuned to this blog all summer long for updates and visits that I will document along the way.

I won’t be so much ‘shaking it off’ as I will be shaking it up!

Stay tuned and enjoy the ride with me. As with most things I do, this will be fun!

Tags: peter o'connell // Comments Off on where is peter off to now?

BUFFALO, NY, May 26, 2016 – – Two unique video productions, narrated by national voice talent Peter K. O’Connell, have been awarded 1st and 2nd place by the National Auctioneers Association, in partnership with USA Today. The annual National Auctioneers Association Marketing Competition awarded the top prizes to the O’Connell-narrated videos in the category of Best Auction Promotional Video from among scores of entries.

About National Auctioneers Association
Founded in 1949, the National Auctioneers Association (NAA) is the world’s largest professional association dedicated to auction professionals. Headquartered in Overland Park, Kan., the NAA represents the interests of thousands of auction professionals in the U.S., Canada and across the world.

About Peter K. O’Connell
America’s Friendly, Neighborhood Voice-Over Talent, Peter K. O’Connell, has worked with a wide variety of companies from around the world in addition to these two videos awarded by the National Auctioneers Association. Some of Peter’s clients include General Electric, Kraft Foods, PBS Television Network, Shell Oil, Pitney Bowes, Western Union, Bacardi Rum, Highlights HIGH FIVE Magazine, Deloitte Canada, Rich Products, U.S. Army, Starz Cable Television Network, BlueCross BlueShield, SunSetter Awnings, Time Warner Cable, Harlequin Enterprises and Darien Lake Theme Park.

A multi-award winning voice talent who is often described as a natural born storyteller, Peter K. O’Connell’s voice-over productions have been heard globally in radio and TV commercials, medical narrations, television infomercials, political commercial voice-overs, TV network promos, e-learning narration projects (computer-based training, internet-based training and web-based training), PSA’s, message on-hold, as well as other video and media productions. Peter owns audio’connell Voice Over Talent, a division of O’Connell Communications, LLC and can be reached via audioconnell.com.
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Company Media Releases ON LINE:
http://www.audioconnell.com/media

Company Name Pronunciation:
au·dio·o’·con·nell (awe-de-oh-oh-kah-nel) or au·di-o’·con·nell (awe-de-oh-kah-nel)

Company Name Spelling:
Use lower case letters- audio’connell or audio’connell Voice Over Talent

Company Web:
http://www.audioconnell.com

Company Blog:
http://www.voxmarketising.com

O’Connell Voice-Over Resume:
http://www.audioconnell.com/clientuploads/pdf/OConnell_Peter_Voice_Over_Resume_151021.pdf

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