Word: starks
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Neutral Voice. Most announcers, even in such a major radio & TV center as Manhattan, earn less than $10,000 a year. But about a quarter of Manhattan's 400 announcers have annual incomes of from $10-$50,000. And a select few, including Stark and such topflight professionals as Ed Herlihy, Ben Grauer and Ralph Edwards, make more than $50,000 a year. Compared to TV actors, TV announcers are a moneyed aristocracy...
What makes a good announcer? Dick Stark's basic ingredient seems to be averageness. He is of medium height, has thinning hair and a bland, open face that is naggingly familiar to people. Stark says: "Everybody thinks I went to school with him. I've just got one of those faces." He was born in Michigan, grew up in California, graduated from Cornell. This geographic spread has given Stark a "neutral" accent that can't be easily identified with any region of the U.S. Network executives have a theory that national audiences are distracted by such regional...
Calico Touch. The successful announcer needs more than a voice and a passable appearance. He must be what the admen call "sincere." This means that his devotion to the product he is selling rivals the dedication of an old-style Japanese samurai to his Emperor. Stark is everywhere conceded to bring the "utmost in sincerity" to his commercials. Says NBC Vice President Ted Cott: "He's got the real calico touch." According to CBS's James Sirmons, when a TV director wants super-sincerity in a commercial, he tells the announcer: "Give it the Dick Stark treatment...
Practiced performers like Stark and Ed Herlihy (who often doubles as a master of ceremonies as well as an announcer) achieve sincerity by aiming their sales talk at a single individual instead of the millions in their audience. Herlihy plays to a Mrs. Lucey in Maine. Stark says: "I play to Mom Schlegelmilch in Garrettsville, Ohio. When I was a radio announcer she wrote and said I sounded like one of her boys. When she saw me on TV she said I looked like one of them...
Both men are expert practitioners of the "throwaway," a device for slurring or racing over the unimportant words in a commercial. This technique was brought to its finest flower by Announcer Ralph Edwards. Explains Stark: "Every sponsor has to put some weasel words in his copy that you've got to learn how to handle. Suppose an announcer has to say: 'If you use Blank face cream you can hope for a more beautiful complexion.' You've got to get that word 'hope' in to keep the lawyers happy, but as much...