Radio Sales Café

I'm wondering because I'm a voice over artist and it seems to me, in the one or two months I've been noticing, that radio stations use their own announcers, sales people, secretaries who have nice voices but don't use paid voice talent.  Do the other people get paid extra to do voice overs/ads?  Are there ever situations when you use voice over talent?  Do clients ever ask?

Winnie,

Most radio stations have staff members, whether DJ's/announcers or full-time production people, who voice commercials on their stations.  The larger the station or cluster, the more voices there are from which to choose. However, because there are more advertisers and commercials than there are people to voice them, the same voices tend to appear on multiple ads throughout the day.  

The large national radio companies (think: Clear Channel, Cumulus, CBS, etc.) have the capacity to trade out-of-market voices back and forth.  Smaller groups and individual stations may choose to hire production firms (Randy Lawson Productions comes readily to mind) that offer unlimited production for a monthly subscription fee.  Such firms may have a "stable" of 20 or more voices to supplement the station's own employees.

Then there's the "Swap-a-Spot" network administered by Jennifer Bliss and her associates, which gives stations access to a large pool of radio voice talent on a barter basis.

Occasionally stations (or their clients) will hire a professional voiceover artist or actor to become a signature voice for a particular advertiser or campaign, but this is a relative rarity in local, direct radio.  Advertising agencies that create radio commercials and campaigns are probably the better prospects for voiceover artists looking for such work.

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Are you familiar with Bob Souer?  He's a former radio guy who decided to make a full-time career of voiceover and has been doing very well at it.  I'd recommend that you subscribe to his blog. His recent posts on the issue of auditioning for work vs. creating client relationships may prove particularly helpful to you.  Bob is a very nice guy and has lots of friends in the VO biz; he seems genuinely glad to help others find their niche in the business.

Winnie:

I think all stations understand the value of voice separation in the commercial sets, or they wouldn't use the AE's and office staff on spots.  Some stations also maintain partnerships with professional copy and voice-overs companies (like Voice Creative) to add depth to that pool.  And some individual employees will trade voice work with other stations to keep variety in the commercial sets on-air.

So if you'd like to get your voice on-air for commercials, you can talk directly to the station (I'd start with the Production Director) and see if they have time to listen to your demo, then cast you in some spots.  The challenge is most US radio stations include production costs in the time buy (calling it added vaue), so the client will not pay extra for voice actors.

Alternately, get your demo to the local agencies and production houses, TV stations and cable producers (Charter, Time-Warner, etc).  They charge for creative and usually have a budget for voice talent.

I hope this helped!

All the best to you!

Neil

Oooops!  

Neil, forgive me for not mentioning Voice Creative, too.  No slight intended.  Lawson does work for Pullman Radio, which is why he came immediately to mind.  

Happy Labor Day!

-Rod

Great info here! Thanks Neil and Rod!

Thank you everyone.  I'm going to follow up on the national radio companies and production companies and all the other great ideas here.  

 

My own personal opinion is that clients should be charged for voice talent.  I think it brings the industry down - the advertising quality could be much better.  The clients might enjoy choosing talent who audition for their spots and feel part of the process.  Then they might not mind paying.  Maybe clients could have a choice, the talent-included-in-the-price or the voice over artists they can audition and pay.  It's nice to have a choice.

Are radio DJs and announcers Union?  If so what union?  AFTRA?  Do they get paid extra for voicing commercials?  If so, do they get union wages for voicing commercials?  I'm just trying to figure all this out.  It's confusing for me.

We have a 5 station group and we want a lot of the clients to voice their own ads (the more non-professional the voice the more it will stand out). We also utilize Swap a Spot.

AFTRA is the correct union, but not all radio markets are union. In those cases, if you actually get asked to do a V.O., you may ask for $100 and get told that the guy from K-Whatsit will do it for $50. So you say $50 and they say that the guy from K-Something will do it for $25. And so it goes. 

Besides, the few times I have seen a request for new talent is when they need something unique, like a female voice with a Brazillian accent, or some such thing.

Remember Dustin Hoffman (dressed as a tomato) in Tootsie?

"I can be taller. I can be shorter."