VOICEOVER ARTIST RADIO-TV IMAGING

by David Kaye

I'm David Kaye. I'm a voice actor and voiceover artist. Let's talk a bit about network affiliates and network voice over.

I spend a lot of my day doing station identification and "promotional branding," as I like to call it, for radio and television stations. Those are not necessarily the network or the main networks out of New York or Los Angeles, but the feeder stations. The radio and television stations in particular -- ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox.

It's a business that I started a number of years ago based on numbers. I figured, well, if I can get one percent of all of the stations who will use me for something, then that would be great.

The business, of course, has changed over the years; the economy and things have affected it like everything. We don't know kind of what direction it is heading in, but they seem to still always need a voice to sell the station.

There was a mentor of mine who said to me many years ago, "When you are the voice of a station, they hire you to BE the station." When people listen to that radio or television station, they sort of interpret that you are the owner of that station. So, as part of my responsibilities of voice over person as doing station identification and promotional branding for an affiliate or a radio station, they've hired me to be the identifier of that station.

When someone hears that voice, they would like the listener to identify with that station. So, again, a big responsibility as a voice over person. You have to consider yourself as the owner of that station. That's how important you are and what you're telling people or what you're promoting when you're doing a promo or a station ID is you're the guy, you're the station.

It's a different style as opposed to trailer or animation. But sometimes they can combine. Sometimes, you get a producer who's producing a promo spot for an affiliate for NBC or ABC and then Florida or in Oklahoma, wherever it may be, and they might want a character.

So if you can bring in a character, you can have a bit of a range in your voice. That's money in the bank for them. They don't have to go outside to hire someone to do that; you can do a few different things. They love that. They don't have to always have you do the straight news thing.

And talking about a television affiliate, generally, is to promote their news, because their news opens and closes, promos for various contests they may have and the reads are very specific as well for each of those things.

I was always a big fan of Walter Cronkite and the different news people that I would listen to, and I sort of have them in the back of my mind when doing news promos for TV affiliate stations because it's a voice of authority, but there also has to be some kind of caring in there, some kind of nurturing. Even if he's telling you something serious, you have to get people to feel comfortable.

I mean, you can't hit them over the head with it. There are times when you can do that like, "Tonight on Eyewitness News. Right now, the air that you're breathing could be killing you! Details at eleven." There is always room for that, but there is also a way to finesse that read, where you come out of it a different way.

There are very specific styles for television news affiliates and promo work that you have to bring to the table and when you're casting that sort of thing, it's good to have an idea. If you want your voice person to be able to do a different voice or to maybe bring something else to the table, if you're bringing a serious news voice to it to maybe alter that or you might want to do a promo very light and breathy and very caring or you might want to be serious and newsy.

You have to go in and make those adjustments, so someone able to do all of those little things is great to have on your team. As a voiceover person doing network affiliate work, that's something you need to bring to the table -- to be able to maneuver, give them a news read, give them something caring, give them something different, give them something young or maybe even age it up a bit. It's important to be as versatile as possible, even when doing specific network news work.

For radio station stuff, the better you are at maneuvering your voice and finessing your voice, the better it is for your career. For example, if you're doing a country station, there's a certain person in your mind you have to see who you are talking to. You may have a bit of a bounce, country music, you know, American music; you may need to sort of bounce it up a bit and have a country feel, but not too much. Or for Top 40, your voice may need to be monotone so they can use that and play with it.

In your mind, you have to envision a producer cutting your voice and using it a billion different ways. With adult contemporary or AC, it needs to be more conversational. You're going after a certain segment of the female population. You need to know who you are talking to for all of these different formats. A classic rock format -- in your head, there's a 22-year-old guy who's still driving a Camaro and may even have a mullet. There's him and there's also the grown-up 45-year-old who digs classic rock and has a family, so you have to have those people in your head when you're communicating a promo.