VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

[Philip Banks]

Is this a sign of something?

I only have records going back to when I moved the shop to Portgordon. Every month for 7 years I have done some UK local radio commercials. Whilst the UK local radio ad market is not a major part of my business, something always turns up.

In the UK Monday is a Bank Holiday so nothing is going to happen to change what I have just noticed. August 2009 income from UK local radio ads ZERO. How do things look from where you're sitting? We have numerous cases of radio stations going bust and one radio group even handed back the license it was granted before it started broadcasting.

[Rob Ellis]

Don't know about there in the UK, but during most of my radio daze here in the US (mid 80s-mid 90s), it seemed that there were a LOT of investors/business entities/entreprenuers buying radio stations and groups of radio stations----thinking that it was like acquiring a money-making machine (which it was, for awhile, in many cases)........in many cases these owners had little or no familiarity with the biz, and were doing it mostly to make money.

Not the kind of qualities that make for a long-term presence in the industry

(kind of like the mortgage industry in the same time period)

When times get tough, those fitting the above-mentioned description are usually the first to go. And unfortunately a lot of dedicated, sincere and talented people got taken down in the process.

This may sound cold, but maybe the industry is shaking off the bad blood that permeated during the 80s-90s boom years of radio. Hopefully the industry will survive the blood-letting

So---there's my diatribe on the subject......

[Deirdre]

Same here.
My small-market radio stuff is nil.

The only thing that has been picking up is industrial narration.
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[steveanthony]

I, too, was in radio before it became a speculator sport. But I digress.

Industrial narration has been picking up considerably in the past couple of months. But radio of any market size - nothing.

[Bill Campbell]

My production business is 50/50 TV/Radio.
Business has been off about 20% in the last twelve months.
It's slowing inching back up.

US radio stations are still full of commercials. Clients are paying less for airtime, yet somebody still has to produce and voice them.
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[Frank F]

There are two parts to this situation which has been presented on the VO-BB and discussed with alacrity many times; First: P2P sites and low-balling beginners, Second, local advertisers tightening their belts and allowing the stations to produce spots as a perk to buying an advertising schedule.

The above scenarios are also permeating the local television and cable TV markets. I have seen the trend before and in the past have changed my concentration of efforts to the "industrial/educational" or long-form applications for income production.

My viewpoint is the commercial arena constitutes less than 10% of the voiceover work I create; making the genre' "dessert rather than the meat and potato's" of my business.

Radio and television advertising is in upheaval mode. Advertising agencies are either going bankrupt or closing down altogether. Talent agencies are closing their doors across this nation and quite possibly throughout the world. This to shall pass as the world embraces traditional concepts in how to implement new media and different economic factors.

The shake-down of those who "can" and those who "do" has begun. I applaud your keen observations Phillip, Rellis, and D.B.

Toodles

F2
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Be thankful for the bad things in life. They opened your eyes to the good things you weren't paying attention to before. email: thevoice@usa.com

[Drew]

Radio? What's that? Oh, don't answer that. It's coming to me. Wasn't that something where they used the electromagnetic spectrum to transmit either amplitude modulated or frequency modulated waves consisting of locally produced, relevant news and entertainment? If I take a trip to the attic...which I won't 'cause it's like a hunred (that's how we say it here) degrees right now, I'd find this little framed license called a "1st Phone". It let me "play" with the transmitter, limiter, and other stuff.
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Skype: andrew.hadwal1
Although I have a full head of hair, I'm quite ribald.

[Bruce]

Unless things have changed lately, American radio stations rarely hire outside talent to voice their adverts. A large portion of the ads are provided by the advertisers/ad agencies/networks and most of the rest are voiced in-house by the on-air people or the production manager, and occasionally sales reps and whoever is wandering by the building.

I hate to say it, but radio's in big trouble, especially the big conglomerates. With the hundreds of new content choices popping up every year, the audience and therefore the value of radio properties is dropping rapidly. So they're cutting expenses like crazy. We have an 8 station complex here in the city and they've got something like 8 live announcers for the whole complex. Most of their stations are "tracked" with pre-recorded announcers who do it on the cheap or they play network shows. A top country station let their high-priced personalities go a few months ago and replaced them with small market announcers at low wages. They're not likely to be hiring the likes of us freelancers anytime soon.

A quick guesstimate shows me at 40% radio/TV ads, 40% narrations, and the remainder is TV shows, video games, voice talent demos, production and writing. Writing is the only thing that's really dropped versus last year and that's because I haven't been pushing it and agencies are trying to do more of it in-house.

B
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VO-BB Member #31 Enlisted June, 2005

I'm not a Zoo, but over the years I've played one on radio/TV. .

[bobsouer]

I find it quite astonishing that I have billed more revenue from local UK radio in August 2009 than Philip has. Not by a wide margin, but still more than zero.

That said, I have monthly retainers with a few US stations that continue at least for the time being. No way to know for how much longer, but I'm grateful. My bread and butter has always been long-form narration work, corporate industrial work in the past and now nearly all eLearning work.

What I'm concentrating on now is doing more documentary work. That's going fairly well. In the last 2 months I've booked 1 independent television show narration, 1 short-run series on the Discovery Channel, 1 short film documentary and 2 feature length documentaries. I'll know by the end of next week if there's a green light on another feature length documentary.
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Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[Jeffrey Kafer]

I rarely do commercials. So it's interesting to sit back and watch all of this. My paltry work is all audio books and real estate tours. The two least lucrative kinds of work.
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Jeff
http://JeffreyKafer.com
Voice-overload Web comic: http://voice-overload.com

[Lee Gordon]

[bobsouer]

Lee,

Actually, in the UK for some time now there's been a whole cottage industry of voice talent who are hired by local radio stations as the voices for their commercials. That's what I was mentioning in my earlier post. I was hired by a production group in the UK to voice 1 radio commercial for airing on a local radio station. Doesn't pay a great deal of money, but if you do enough of them it ads up to a tidy sum.
_________________
Be well,
Bob Souer (just think of lemons)
The second nicest guy in voiceover.
+1-724-613-2749
Source Connect, phone patch, pony express

[Lee Gordon]

Actually, I do the same thing here. Once a week I record a batch of commercials for a small chain of radio stations owned by an individual who loves radio, rather than by a big chain run by bean-counters.
The pay is low but it is steady. And it generally takes up less than 4 hours of my time each week, half of which is driving to and from the studio.
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Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

[Philip Banks]

My income from local UK radio commercials peaked in 2003 at 2.25% of total fees.

I'm not sure if it's the case now but a few years ago some people were doing 30 ads per day for local radio stations via ISDN. At the union rate for the average size station that would amout to an annual "salary" of $240,000.

In most towns and cities in the UK commercial stations have one problem; bearing in mind the point of a local station is to be local in terms of output the BBC local stations blow their commercial counterparts out of the water.

Here are the listening figures for "THE BIGGY", London. Get it right here and the world is your oyster.


•BBC Radio 4 (14.2%)
•BBC Radio 2 (10.4%)
• Magic (6.5%)
• Capital (6.2%)
• Choice (1.4%)

Commercial radio stations in London are not getting it right. Think about the "profit motive" of ccommercial radio. It needs to engage me as I have money to spend, it doesn't do it.

From what I can see, both in the UK and the USA this is what's happening.

Door bells rings.

Salesman to house owner "Good morning Ma'am. $100 please"

House owner "What?"

Salesman "$100 please"

House owner "Why should I give you $100 ?"

Salesman "I'm a Vacuum cleaner Salesman and I make $100 on every deal"

House Owner "I haven't bought a vacuum cleaner from you"

Salesman "Oh you don't have to as I don't have any. I stopped buying stock and offering guarantees, got rid of the admin people to save money. Now my expenses are much, much lower and I make $100 on every deal."

House Owner "How's business?"

Salesman "To be honest, since I restructured the business I haven't done a single deal. You're not a business person so you wouldn't under, you see we're in a global recession."

[Lee Gordon]

And now, I can't get Monty Python's "Burglar" sketch out of my head.
_________________
Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice