Living On Air (10 page)

THREE BEEPS

“It’s an all-new Simpsons on Fox!” [
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Those seven little words changed my life.

I was a part-time disc jockey at KIIS-FM radio in Los Angeles when this guy called me out of the blue and handed me the opportunity of a lifetime. It was summertime, 1988 and I was filling in for Big Ron O’Brien on the afternoon shift, from two to six p.m. That was prime-time radio on the number one station in town. Even if it was just for one week, I was one happy guy. Meanwhile, I had no idea there was this other guy, a network executive, stuck in traffic on the San Diego Freeway trying to get home from his job in Hollywood, way out to Simi Valley. That’s a long commute, even on a good day, and that particular day, traffic was bad. The only company he had with him in the car was me, on the radio. With my voice as his backdrop he fixated on a problem he was having at work. He had recently been hired by a brand-new television network called FOX. It was only on the air a couple of nights a week and his job was to try to get TV viewers to change the channel from one of the Big Three networks to the new one. It’s hard to get people to change their viewing habits but he was smart, talented, and very determined. Together with his partner they were the golden boys of marketing. They had been over at NBC when FOX lured them
away. Their job was to find an image for FOX that sounded like what the network looked like, new, young, and exciting.

I must have been having a good day because listening to me on the radio that afternoon, he suddenly thought, “Now that’s a voice that could work for FOX.” There was that certain something about me that clicked for him. He felt I sounded youthful, warm, enthusiastic, like a guy just out of college, filled with anticipation for the future. He couldn’t have been closer to the truth, except for that college thing. He thought I sounded like the kind of person you’d like to invite over to your house for dinner. He picked up his brick of a 1988 cell phone and dialed KIIS-FM. The receptionist buzzed me in the studio. I remember the call coming in that day. I asked her to give the guy my agent’s name and number and figured, “Cool. This could be a new spot for me to voice.” My agent set up an audition and that’s when I met him.

His name was Bob Bibb and his partner was Lewis Goldstein. They were the heads of on-air promotion for FOX television. Together, those two men would launch my career to places I didn’t even know existed. That opportunity turned out to be my golden gig. I started doing television promos for the FOX network and I never looked back. The crazy thing about the way I landed that gig? I wasn’t even supposed to be on the radio that day. I was just filling in.

When I went to audition for Bob and Lew, they had me voice promos for “The Joan Rivers Show,” then spots for “The Tracy Ullman Show,” and also the upcoming Emmy awards. FOX was broadcasting the Emmys that year, scheduled to air at the end of August. It’s always a big deal for any network to present the Emmy show, but especially for FOX because it wasn’t even a full-time network yet. It was still less than one year old. None
of its shows were even nominated for an Emmy and here it was, responsible for presenting the show that celebrated the best of all that television had to offer.

I don’t remember exactly how many promos FOX produced for that one night of programming, but there must have been over 100. Bob put me on every single one. I made more money that month doing promos for the Emmy show than I would have made in an entire year as a disc jockey at KIIS-FM. [
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] There was one night when I read 20 spots and 60 tags. A “spot” is the same thing as a promo, just a different name. It could be any length of time: 30 seconds, 20 seconds, even ten or 15 seconds. A “tag” is the update of the promo. On a tag, you might only have to say “tonight,” “tomorrow,” or “next.” In SAG/AFTRA, my union, the voice-over talent is paid by the “spot and tag.” Twenty spots are roughly $4,300, a little more than two hundred dollars each. Sixty tags are $5,500, a little less than one hundred dollars each. That one session equaled almost $10,000. Jackpot! It was beyond belief.

The Emmys did fairly well on FOX that year and soon I was doing all the comedy promos at FOX: “Married…with Children,” “The Tracy Ullman Show,” a show called “Duet,” and the longest-running show of them all, “The Simpsons.” Bob and Lew hired another guy to voice all the dramas. Maybe you know him? His name is Don LaFontaine. [
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] Even if you haven’t heard of him, you have definitely heard his voice. He was the most sought-after voice-over artist in the business. I saw Don nearly every day over the next few years. He would go into one audio room, I was in another. We would switch rooms to work with different producers, then flip back again. The pace was fast and furious.

Doing promos for television had been my goal ever since we moved to Los Angeles. For the first time ever I felt like I
was really a part of show business. I found myself totally invested into the notion that whatever the particular show was that I was promoting at that moment must be the best show on television. I wasn’t lying to myself. I bought into it. I was completely immersed in the characters, the premise, the plot, and the jokes of every program I voiced. I also believed any show I was promoting was the result of a lot of very talented people putting all they had into their work, and I was determined to do that as well. I didn’t want to let anyone down.

I learned a lot about promos from Bob and Lew. They are extremely creative and absolute perfectionists, so much so, that you can find as many people who love them as loathe them. They are also workaholics and expect everyone else to work as hard as they do. I’ll always remember one Mother’s Day when I had planned a nice weekend for Ann, with our kids, Dayna and Alex. FOX was in the middle of something called “upfronts.” That’s when the networks create special two-minute presentations of all the most popular shows on TV, and also showcase their new programs. It happens every May and it’s how the networks entice advertisers to buy commercials for the upcoming fall season. Everything is on the line for the TV executives and it’s always a tense, frenetic pace of activity. Those two-minute promos are worked, reworked, and reread many times over until they are perfect, before they are presented at the upfronts.

I was at FOX on Friday, still a week away from the upfront presentations, and Lew said, “We need you on Sunday to voice some of this stuff.” I said, “Lew, I’m taking Ann and the kids to Santa Barbara for the weekend to celebrate Mother’s Day.” He said, “OK, we’ll do it later in the day.” I said, “Well, we’re going to be up there all day, on the beach relaxing.”

To his credit, he was willing to work with me. Lew said, “All right, we won’t book you until nighttime.”

This was my first experience with upfronts. I had no idea what went into it and I looked at him like he was crazy, saying, “Lew I’m out of town.”

Finally he blurted out, “Son of a bitch, Joe, it’s Mother’s DAY, not Mother’s NIGHT!”

It was so outrageous, I could only laugh, but finally, I realized what the hell was going on. This was not radio anymore. This was television and this was BIG. Millions of dollars BIG. I got back in plenty of time on Sunday night to get the job done.

I have to say, this was one of the most exciting times of my career. Everything seemed to be going my way. One month before the upfronts, I was cast in a sitcom for NBC, called “Knight and Daye” and starring Jack Warden, Mason Adams, and Julia Campbell. It was set in a fictional radio station in San Diego where Warden and Adams were brought back together by program director Campbell to recreate their successful 1950s radio team which they called Knight and Daye. I played the deejay on the air before them, Marty in the Morning. [
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] It was a summer series and we were given the perfect lead-in. Our little sitcom was going to follow the most popular show on television, “The Cosby Show.”

Good god, I thought, this was going to change my career once again. I started dreaming that in no time at all I would move from off-camera to on-camera in an NBC sitcom of my own, starring Joe Cipriano. My first day on the set the news got even better. The pilot episode of “Knight and Daye” would be directed by the very talented Bill Persky, one of the writers of the classic “Dick Van Dyke Show.” Just as exciting for me, Persky was the writer/
producer of “Good Morning World,” the TV show that inspired my last-minute dashes into work back when I was at WKYS in Washington. The A-list talent pool didn’t stop there. The creators and writers of the show were Babaloo Mandell and Lowell Ganz. They were nearly invincible after writing successful movies like “City Slickers,” “Parenthood,” “Splash,” their list goes on and on. We hit the air with huge expectations and then the ratings came out. For whatever reason, it just didn’t work. “Knight and Daye” lasted about seven episodes before NBC pulled the plug. So much for my sitcom career.

Okay, I wasn’t going to be the next big TV star but I still had FOX promos. And I was determined to be the best damn promo voice I could be. Whenever I read a promo, I thoroughly enjoy it. During a spot, you usually read an opening line, such as “Sunday on the Simpsons…” then you stop and there is sound up from one of the characters from the show playing out a scene. Many times these are some of the best jokes in the entire episode and I usually react to it and laugh along. That’s why many people have told me that I have a genuine enthusiasm and excitement about the shows I’m promoting. That I sound as if I’m smiling all the time. Busted. It’s true. I won’t say that I’m an easy laugh. I just take pleasure in and appreciate the effort to entertain me as well as the rest of the audience. Because of that, I’m able to add a truly believable vibe to my work. I find that if you jump in and get involved rather than stand back and scrutinize, the results are more positive.

Reading a promo reminds me of talking up an intro of a song from my radio days. It was a natural transition that lined up perfectly with my skills as a disc jockey. When you get ready to read a spot, you pop on your headphones, and in your ears you
hear three separate beeps, then silence. On the imaginary fourth beep, that’s when you start reading the script. Three beeps, then GO. Timing is important, understanding how to “sell” the product is important, sounding like you’re NOT selling the product is even more important. It’s about believing in what you’re saying and genuinely having a good time while you’re doing it.

Quality and speed are also necessary for a promo voice to be successful. In my line of work as a deejay, I could talk up the intro of a song on the radio to the last fraction of a second before the vocal hit. In promos, the measurement of time is in frames. There are 30 frames in one second. We leave ten frames at the end of a promo so the last letter of the last word doesn’t get chopped off. In the first take, if I leave only eight frames, you better believe I’ll give them ten frames in take two.

Working at FOX was my first experience at a television network. Sure, I had jobs at NBC and ABC, but those were radio gigs. This was different. I was surprised by a couple of things. First, nearly everyone who worked there was young, in their twenties or thirties. And second, for such a young staff, they were extraordinary. That’s what FOX had going for it. Everyone was bright, willing to try something new, anxious to do the best job possible. It was a true collaboration that started from the top.

I remember the first time I met our new head of advertising and promotions, Sandy Grushow. It was the summer of 1988 and he had just come over to television from the feature film division of FOX. I went to see him at his new office. He welcomed me warmly and literally rolled up his sleeves as he asked me to help him rewrite a promo he was working on. He’s that kind of guy. He gets down in the trenches with his people. Of course, he also knew how to play the corporate game with his peers, but even in
his suit he came across as a regular guy, just like the rest of us. It wasn’t long before Sandy was promoted all the way to the top at 32 years of age, making him the youngest executive to ever hold the title of network president.

That was the atmosphere at FOX, loose, energetic, filled with extraordinary people. From the scheduling staff upstairs, like Senior Vice President Steve Weinheimer, to the audio room producers like Susan Berman, Alison Bloom, Grace Cowper, Phil Ohler and Rob Lawe, each person did their job professionally, quickly, to perfection. It was a thrill to go to work every day. When Bob and Lew moved on, Geoff Calnan replaced them, another gifted, marketing genius. Over the years, Geoff has become one of my dearest friends and his creative brilliance glows brightly to this day. He is a true renaissance man. I think he can do just about anything.

There was a multitude of talent at FOX, but without a doubt, one of the best and brightest of all was Ron Scalera. He joined Bob Bouknight, another young, exceptional marketing talent who was already on board. As the network grew, we did too, and along the way I got to know both of them quite well, especially Ron.

Born in New Jersey, Ron Scalera had worked in New York before moving out west. Both of us were from the East Coast, both of us had an Italian upbringing, and both of us had a love for television from the time we were kids. We hit it off right away. He started out writing and producing promos, but it was obvious from the start that there was something special about Ron. He knew exactly what he wanted in a spot from the beginning. He was able to visualize how the promo would look and sound before he ever cut anything. It was like a golfer who visualizes his shot before he hits it. He sees the flight of the ball and knows where it will land, then makes it happen when he hits the ball. Ron knew
what the end result would be before he even started.

As a director of voice talent, Ron also knew precisely what he wanted from his voice-over people. I can’t tell you how wonderful that is for someone in my position. I didn’t mind doing multiple takes on a read for Ron, because he knew how to get you to where you needed to be, and when you got there, he was done, no more takes. This sounds simple, but there are many very creative people who don’t have that vision. For them, it’s more of an “I’ll know it when I hear it” sort of thing. That means you end up throwing a bunch of different reads up against the studio glass until they hear something that works. It can be frustrating and lead to tempers flaring up and voices going hoarse. Ron may have had you read a bunch of times, but you knew where you were going and trusted him completely.