My life in commercials

The saying goes “you otta be in pictures.” Well, I guess for me it’s, “you otta be in commercials.” Having been in the media business for the best of seven years now, I’ve seen all the “magic” that goes into TV and radio…at least on the local level. At first it is pretty neat to see it happen, after all, for the most of your life you only see/hear the result of media. You really never get to see (or appreciate) what goes in to making that happen, which is too bad because there’s a lot. A lot of time, a lot of people, and a lot of effort. But I’m not going to pass myself off as some great contributor…my duties lied in computers and web sites. What I did never really made a difference on-air…except this one time…

Part of local TV is local commercials. The station where I worked did quite a bit of their own production for promo commercials. So one day the Promotions Director walks into my office and asks, “do you want to be in a commercial?”

My instinctive answer was, “No,” but he persisted and then lured me in with the promise of food, “I’ll buy you dinner.” Unfortunately, that usually works on me.

So at that point I was destined to be in a commercial…and what part would I play? Why a nerd, of course! The commercial was for ColumbusJobs.com, which at the time was brand new and getting a big push by the station, which was part of the investing team. The commercial had me and one other guy posing as what I can only assume are data entry staff at a “corporate” job web site, called MondoJobs.com. Don’t ask what the parody is here, I think Monster.com (which is funny because now ColumbusJobs.com is a partner of Monster.com). But I didn’t care, I was in it for the food. And the only other thing I know is that I had a lot more then than I do now. Ouch. Although, the best thing about the commercial is that I was the good looking one! Ha!

We shot the commercial in about 30 minutes, short and sweet. I never really thought to hard about where this commercial would end up. I knew it would be on TV but in the back of my head I thought, “bah, this will air at 2am on a Sunday night. No one will see it.” But I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The commercial was destined for late night play, but when it first aired it did so in prime time during Jeopardy. Too bad Jeopardy isn’t one of those shows that no one watches. For the next several months I could see any friends, family, and neighborhood folks without them mentioning it. The commercial aired for a long time too, well over a year after I made it.

So I got my free dinner and considered my commercial life to be over. Whoops.

I left my gig at the TV station to be at a radio station and again I was master of all things internet and web. And once again I had no intentions of being on-air for any reason whatsoever (although I do think being a DJ would be a great job). But then one day this week an e-mail flew in from one of the production guys asking for help. He needed voices for commercial skits. There was no dinner this time, but I volunteered all the same.

I feel more comfortable behind a microphone than I do in front of the camera. Back in the days when Napster was king and “podcast” wasn’t yet a word, me and the wife hosted a (very) low-rated internet talk show. Using the word “rated” is really calling it more than it was. We were in a basement with two microphones, a Radioshack mixer and fridge full of soda. We were in college and while others went out barhopping, we were rambling to the world for two hours a week - but it was fun nonetheless.

I actually just dug out the old recordings from the show and put them here on the Toast as a little tribute to when we had more free time than we knew what to do with. Since podcasting is now the hip thing to do, why not put CAVEradio where it belongs? So stop over and relive the magic…because I’d bet $5 you missed the magic the first time around.

Classic CAVEradio Podcasts

But I digress…I volunteered to be a voice in a commercial. I sat down at the microphone and the producer, Bob, said, “hey, you’ve never done this before have you?” I replied with an honest, “No,” and he thought for a second. “Maybe I’ll just have you do the short lines then,” but I quickly asked that he give me what he needed and to let me know if I’m not good enough. Bob apparently missed CAVEradio when it was in its prime. He delivered the lines and I took the ball and ran. I think Bob was impressed and after a few minutes my job was done. It was a lot of fun and I’d happily volunteer again. I dig radio. Audio is so much easier to work with than video, plus since the CAVEradio days I’ve sort of had this affinity for doing radio.

So if you’re listening to the station you’ll hear me as Golfer #2 in this commercial. Of course, who listens to AM radio anymore? At least I know it won’t run during Jeopardy.