Radio Sales Café

Happy Friday, everyone!

Here's this week's poll question:

Excluding clients who voice their own ads, how many different voice talents do you use for commercials on your station?

Looking forward to reading your replies!

Other than clients, about eight to ten different voices which consist of all of our staff - someone in the community who happens to sound pretty good or one of our clients who sounds really good with their own commercials and loves doing other (non-compete) commercials. This is a great way to involve your existing clients tighter with the station.........why in the world do we need that big deep strong radio voice anyway. No offense to you big strong radio voices out there.

We are fortunate to have big staff of voices since we have stations in several markets but we use everyone traffic manager receptionists as in life variety is the spice of life!

I think we use about 40 or so. We farm out most of our production to places like JustSaySpots.com and Write Creative and others, and we look for the places with the most voices. I believe it adds texture to the sound of the station.

We are a fairly small station so most of the staff gets involved in voice work and we are fortunate to have another station in another market that we can get voices from too. In total we use about 10 voices for commercials. We have two that we use for the corporate sound for promos and station idents.

We utilize an outside firm (Waitt) who add about 12 voices to our inhouse staff, which is about 7. However, we tried to push most production to Waitt and save the last minute stuff for our local staff. I really think having a variety of voices and limiting the amount of commericals with our own jocks voices helps the sound of the stations and sets us apart in our smaller market.

We use about fifteen voices other than clients who prefer to voice their own commercials. This includes our regular staff of three full timers, a contract VO company and students from our owners two broadcast schools in Atlanta. Occasionally, we will use someone from the community that has a good voice and likes to hear themselves on the radio! Our voices and commercial are as eclectic as our clients and our local weekend shows!

one female
others, I usually voice and produce them myself

We use Cascade Broadcast Services from Spokane for a portion of our local production and they have 5-6 voices, in house we have 9-10, plus we have an intercompany voice exchange system that provides access to all of the voices within our company. Agree with Chris that voice talent is not only important to maximizing client results but is an important element of your station's sound.

We are also a fairly small station... we have 5 on air voices, occassionaly our sales people will record. We have probably a couple handfuls of clients who record thier own commercials.

Only three: myself, the station manager and the traffic manager. It makes it difficult to keep spots separated by voice.

As Lt. Columbo would say, "Just one more thing..."

Joel's comment gave me an idea. For anyone here on the Cafe who, like me, voices ads but doesn't have a lot of voices to chose from, I'd like to propose a swap program. I could voice an ad for someone here, and in return, they'd agree to record one for me. This would be a purely cooperative venture, no money changing hands. If you're interested, send me a messsage.

We utilize 3 voices...two males and one female for our spots...

10 here plus 5 at another property we own. Still not enough.

Hey Don,

We would love to hear the voices of your station. I will be happy to send you some our spots and if you like our voices we would be happy to swap with you. A station can never have enough voices!