Trailer/promo voice overs

In the 1990s on Anglia TV the continuity announcers never seemed to voice trails - in fact, most the the trails were voiced by Ali Ballantyne and Nick Jackson - even for local programmes.

I note on the BBC a lot of trailers do seem to be voiced by the same few voices, but these are not voices I hear doing continuity - unless I just missed it.

So do ITV and the BBC just book freelance talent to do the voiceovers as needed, or, as with continuity announcers do they have a handful on the staff to do all the promos?

Back in the day itv promos where mainly voiced by the company who made them.

Yes for the other part. Up in Scotland stv use the ca and freelancers including ex stv ca staff. Of course there have to redub all promos from itv.

In sure Mr c can confirm that bbc scotland maily use ca for local trails. Its how we spotted cameron jumping ship from stv to bbc.

A lot of BBC1 trails in the 90s used to be voiced by Alan Dedicoat, who was not a TV CA (except for a few pre-recorded regional annos, I think?)

Channel 5 had separate voiceovers from the CA in the early years. I'm sure they still do.

Yes, back in the day when the presentation department made a few trails a day in a gallery down the corridor (some were even live) they booked a different voiceover artist to the duty announcer in Con. That working practice kind of stuck, so when lots more trails were made routinely (and recorded to tape) they continued to book seasoned and familiar voices like Graham Skidmore, Mitch Johnson and Alan Deadicoat for trails like Saturday Night Highlights, while programme voice over artists might be booked for a trail for their own show. There were plenty of other regulars. I think the management liked that fact that trails voiceovers and channel announcers were separate. The announcers were very much the voice of the channel .. sit up, pay attention, a programme is now starting .. whereas the stuff in between was "promotions".

In the late 90s there were recording sessions from 9am until 6pm every weekday to get all the trails made. The trails, having been edited elsewhere previously, would be sound balanced, captions added and the voiceover added, the tapes dubbed so BBC One and Two had their own copy and several vhs copies were made for logging, archiving and previewing purposes at the same time. Busy and time consuming work for a budding VT operator. Especially when you consider all the tape labels week hand written in those days too and every transmission tape had to have the appropriate paperwork completed too. One of the first shifts I did in there, back in 1996, was the B team (BBC Two) and they'd booked Penelope Keith to voice a trail for something like "100 years of Country Life Magazine". Totally star struck as she walked in. The smile was soon wiped off my face as a bunch of tapes was hurled in my direction and I was told to load them up pronto.

Several versions of each trail would be made all in one go, so you could end up doing it half a dozen times to end up with:
Generic
Coming Soon
Next Thursday
Thursday
Tomorrow
Tonight
In half an hour

Trails were recorded on tapes starting at timecode 20:00:00:00 to distinguish them from programme tapes that (should) start at 10:00:00:00. Variants of trails started at 20:00:02:00 then 20:00:04:00 etc.

Daft the things you remember eh?

The art of good trailer making has long been dead (along with most other half decent pres).

Loads of effort used to go into seasonal and themed promos featuring weekend / evening line ups.

Long gone are the days when the viewer would stick with the BBC1 or ITV line up all night. We consume programmes, not schedules. So it's all about a small roster of single programme promos now repeated on a loop. Many parts of the schedule just get no promotion at all.

BBC NI mostly use the Continuity Directors/Announcers to voice the trails. Two of us are also trail producer/directors, split across the two departments.

We often script, self edit, create the graphics, perform the voiceover, and then go back to Pres to playout our own trails.

Generally, you use a 'pool' of approved freelance voiceovers, that's been OK'd by the Creative Director (if a Promo Producer really wants a specific voice/talent then there can be exceptions). Rates differ at various voiceover agents agencies but generally, it's £250-£300 p/hour range. When you have several promos to get voiced, we really make them hard of the ££ for that hour.. Sometimes the sessions can be 10 mins to voice, the voiceover leaves but another couple of hours to mix and then sent back via FTP.

Some memories from former Trails producer Bernie Newnham at http://tech-ops.co.uk/next/2010/11/stories-4-pres-b/

Fairly sure there are others on that site too.

No, I'm sure they don't do that anymore, at least when I've been watching.

Channel 5 has separate promo voiceovers, most Creative departments do.

I'm guessing using CA's to do promos might mean there might be a clash in the junction where the promo is voiced by the announcer who happens to be on shift. Particularly in the days when idents had no form up, there wouldn't be a clear audio gap.

Also I presume for an announcer doing continuity and doing promos is two different things, I recall back in the days the ITV regional announcers used to do promos, some of them would struggle with upbeat/excited and would either sound a bit ridiculous, or voice everything like its a link into the news.