What's An Announcer's Test? - Complete Voiceover

In broadcasting’s early days, announcers had a critical job. Tasked with informing the public about everything from the mundane (the latest baseball score) to the essential (the attack at Pearl Harbor), networks needed voices that were clear, easy to understand, and good with challenging pronunciation on without much preparation.

It was easy to find people who wanted to be announcers, but finding those the right combination of skills was tough. To make sure prospective announcers had the chops for the job, networks developed the announcer’s test.

In the 1930’s applicants to NBC’s announcer corps were tested with toungue-twisters, like this:

The seething sea ceased to see, then thus sufficeth thus.”

By the 40’s cold reading tests were the norm at NBC, CBS, and the BBC in the United Kingdom. And as the job evolved, the networks added a new requirement: olympic-level breath control.

Radio Central New York tested potential announcers with long scripts designed to challenge even the deepest lungs. One of these was popularized by the comedian Jerry Lewis, who thought it was so odd that it was actually funny. He performed the script as part of his comic sets on variety shows through the ’50s and ’60s. Here’s it is:

One hen.

Two ducks.

Three squawking geese.

Four limerick oysters.

Five corpulent porpoises.

Six pairs of Don Alverzo’s tweezers.

Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array.

Eight brass monkeys from the ancient sacred crypts of Egypt.

Nine sympathetic, apathetic, catatonic old men on roller skates, with a marked propensity toward procrastination and sloth.

Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who all stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time.

The task was to get through the whole thing in one breath without sounding rushed or like you’re running out of air by the end.

If you’re wondering who Don Alverzo was, no one seems to know! Maybe he was a radio engineer or station staffer, or maybe it was just a made-up name for the script.

Announcer tests are still used today for certain work categories such as live announcers at award shows, sports events, and late night shows.

Most of the work voice actors do these days isn’t live, but that doesn’t mean we can’t practice with these old scripts. Here are some ideas for how to go about it:

Think about your enunciation, but don’t over enunciate.
Start with a nice big breath, but don’t sound like you’re saving it for the end.
Make sure your phrasing is logical given what you’re saying, and not tied to the amount of air you feel you have available.
Read at a brisk pace without rushing through it.