Unofficial NBC Nightly News Announcer Search at audio’connell, Voice Over New Year’s Resolution Contest Winner, Harry Shearer Questions The Donald’s SAGiness, State of the Voice Over Industry in The Biz, and some audio feedback from Sanjo Ogunseye in the VOX Box.
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Tags
Donald Trump, Harry Shearer, NBC, SAG, Sanjo Ogunseye, September Day Leach, State of the Voice Over Industry, Unofficial NBC Nightly News Announcer Search at audio’connell, Voice Over New Year’s Resolution Contest Winner
Transcription of Vox Talk #52
Female: Episode 52
Male: You’re listening To VOX Talk, the voiceover industry’s number one podcast brought to you by Voices.com. It’s about voice acting, growing your business, and sharing your knowledge. VOX Talk is a show that you can be a part of. Getting involved is both fun and rewarding. It’s time for this week’s episode of VOX Talk with your host, Stephanie Ciccarelli.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Welcome to VOX Talk and happy new year! This week, there’s so much to share with you and the voiceover industry is just ripe with excitement.
Male: The Loop, informing you of news and current voiceover events.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Our top story features some creative commotion at the audio’connell blog. Peter O’Connell was more than a little disappointed by the choice of voice actors NBC selected to replace the former announcer for the NBC Nightly News.
Hollywood actor, Michael Douglas, just didn’t cut the mustard according to many sources so Peter decided to do something with the problem himself by opening an unofficial contest at his website to find a replacement announcer.
With over 60 voice actors stepping up to the challenge, voting for the unofficial voice of the NBC Nightly News is now in full force. Have you heard these voices yet? There’s stiff competition for anybody and the great news is, is that they’re all professional voice actors.
Also, an unidentified animation voice over artist has sweetened the pop by donating a microphone. To listen to the contestants and vote, go to audio’connell.com/blog as link from the VOX Talk Show Notes.
While we’re talking about contest, last month voice over coach’s Julie Williams at voiceoverchocolate.com and Marc Cashman of cashmancommercials.com invited me to take part in a contest they were putting together calling for voice actors to submit their voice acting new year’s resolutions in exchange for the opportunity to win some cool prizes including an hour of telecoaching from each instructor and a one year premium membership to Voices.com, among othe treats.
After three dozen plus submissions, a winner was selected based upon their creativity and actionable goals. To keep you from suffering any further suspense, the winner of the Voice Over New Year’s Resolution Contest is September Day Leach. Here she is now reciting her winning new year’s resolutions.
September Day Leach: Greetings! My name is Maybelle and I am a professional Fairy Godmother. I am writing to you on behalf of one my charges, September Day Leach. I understand that your contest has some fabulous prizes in store for the winner and according to this wish I just received, my September sure could use them.
You see, she is moving from Atlanta, Georgia all the way across the country to Los Angeles next year, all by herself. She is leaving behind all of her friends and family just to chase her star and she has called on me for some help.
Now, I’ve already taken care of transportation. She was out of pumpkins but managed to dig up some bok choy which I was able to mold into a Honda and she has been a very good girl by avoiding going to the mall with her seed money from a few choice gigs I was able to get her. But I still think she needs a little something more and having all of these great coaching and exposure time with her move could really help launch her career.
September assures me, should her wish come true that, she will never ever, ever plug her microphone directly into her sound card again. She will stand up for every recording. For 2008, all extra money will go to marketing and equipment. She will stay in touch with her real and internet voice over family while she is on the Westcoast. She will stay focus on her dreams every day. She will only stalk Brad Pitt once every two weeks.
If you could help, I would be most grateful and would be happy to throw in a few incentives as well. How about making those holiday calories not count? All green lights for one week? We’ll talk. Sincerely, Maybelle Mary Weather, Fairy Godmother.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: Thanks, September for sending those in. In closing, Harry Shearer, one of the voice actors on the Simpsons is a bit suspiscious as the to sagginess of a certain Donald Trump. Yes, the Donald! Not to be confused with the Don. At any rate, Donald Trump’s appearance on David Letterman show is giving Harry reason to suspect that the real estate mogul, Donald Trump, isn’t being as straight as he could be about his status with the Screen Actors Guild.
Shearer speculates that if Donald were not a member of SAG which sources assert he isn’t, as a supposed non-member, Trump would have easily crossed the picket line to be Letterman’s first guest had the Writers Guild of America not reached an agreement with Letterman’s production company, Worldwide Pants.
Is Trump being disingenuous about his SAG membership? Have your say at voiceovertimes.com.
Male: The Biz, helping you grow your voice over business.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: In the Biz, I’ve got some great news to share with you. Before the big hurry went off in Time Square, CEO David Ciccarelli of Voices.com release the annual state of the voice over industry report as compiled by the staff at Voices.com.
The report is a treasure throb of market research that relates directly to an increase in voice over work for voice actors as well as identifies key niche markets that are fueling the boom. If you haven’t yet picked up your copy, you can download it here on the VOX Talk Show Notes or on the VOX Daily Blog.
Some really important trends to keep your eyes and ears up for anything to do with wireless technologies, podcasting, and audiobooks. Audiobooks are hot. Coming in at an industry evaluation of $2 billion. According to Blackstone Audio President, Craig Black, the audiobook market will go from 4,000 audiobooks for a year to whooping 24,000 over the next four years.
If you don’t have an audiobook narration demo yet, consider that audio book publishing companies are looking for voices of all ages, types, and timbers.
Audiobooks are likely the most significant area of growth, do much impart to the domestication of MP3 players. Did you know that 12.3 million US households will be listening to podcast by the end of the decade? That’s right! You are not alone.
Voice over isn’t just for cartoons or commercials you know. Other applications with an increasing demand for voice overs are GPS systems, video games, wireless technologies, and more.
Voice over has always been present but 2008 promises to bring it to the forefront. Even the Knight Riders Series is being revamped with the soap opera star cast and a steamy kick car voice actor Canadian comedic actor, Will Arnett.
So, if you’ve been wondering how you should be spending the opening days of the new year, download the state of the voice over industry report and get cracking on your marketing plan.
Male: VOX Box, sharing your audio feedback.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: This week, I was touched to receive a piece of audio feedback from Sanjo Ogunseye of Nigeria, a faithful listener of the podcast. Let me take a moment now to air Sanjo’s message.
Sanjo Ogunseye: Hello, Voices.com. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time. I’m so (inaudible 00:07:15) and voicing from my home studio in Lagos, Nigeria. In case you’re wondering where that is, it’s in Africa.
This past year has been awesome especially with the resources at Voices.com. I’ve improved so well, not missing any episode of VOX Talk, voice experts and of course the recently included voice casting. All these for free.
Well, I’m about to up my game. This year, I’ve decided to take my voice acting career to the next level. Getting the paid membership at Voices.com. Well, my comment is just to say thank you to Stephanie, David, Lorenda, and the rest of the Voices.com family.
Once again, thank you.
Stephanie Ciccarelli: I can’t say how much it means to me and to the members of our team to hear from you. Thank you very much Sanjo for sending me your recorded thoughts. I look forward to hearing from more of you too. If you send in your message, I’ll air it here on the podcast. One of the perks is that you’ll get a link to your website. If that’s an incentive for you, you can reach me at [email protected].
Thank you for listening to our show this week and for staying subscribed. If this was the first time that you’ve listened to the show, you can subscribe for free to VOX Talk in the Apple iTunes podcast directory.
One last thing before we go, check out the Voice Over Experts Podcast and listen to a new episode featuring Frank Frederick. It’s a goldmine for niche marketing. The link to visit is podcast.voices.com/voiceoverexperts. That’s all for now. See you next week.
Links from today’s show:
Unofficial NBC Nightly News Announcer Contest
September Day Leach, winner of the Voice Over New Year’s Resolutions Contest
Sanjo Ogunseye
Comments
I haven’t been making the time to listen to these podcasts – was listening to the Voice Over Experts podcasts, but these are great! I will carve out a few more minutes in the week to keep up to date!