Radio to VO
I would be wrong to start this blog with ‘2020 brought its challenges’ cos everyone knows that, it’s a given, and so far 2021 is also proving to be a very different world, yeah we know… but let me tell you about my 2020 journey and how it has changed my working life completely.
I spent 25 years working in commercial radio, 25 years working for the same company in commercial radio, that’s unheard of! I had the best career, the most fun, rewarding, crazy, challenging, frustrating rollercoaster ride and I was loving every single minute of it. “Radio is not a proper job” to quote my Dad, and in some ways he was right, there are not many people who can go to work every day, sit in a soundproof box, sing along to their favourite songs, recount funny stories, and inform the listeners when they need to take a different route home cos their road is closed, but that’s what I did and I loved every minute of it!
Along came Covid-19 and everything changed, but not for me, I was considered a key worker, I still went to work every day, I still did all the above, and perhaps I became even more a part of peoples lives as all around me others changed, I was one of the lucky ones!
Then I was made redundant.
The company I worked for had been taken over, way before the pandemic, lots of different things were going on in the background, we knew changes were coming, but I am always the glass half full, everything will be ok kinda person, until one day it wasn’t!
Oh boy, 25 years in one place, doing one job (ok 100 jobs but all in one place) and now it stops… what’s next?
Rather than be bitter about the takeover, I continued to have good conversations with the new company, I like them, I want to stay in their periphery, and I want to still do radio, but I also appreciate that in this ever changing time, that might not be the case, so whilst I stay in touch, I need to do something else. I have a home studio (smart enough to get that together a few years ago to supplement my income – local radio doesn’t pay all the bills) I’ll just work from home every day as a voiceover, I mean how hard can it be?
Hello steep learning curve… just cos I have voiced commercials, and presented podcasts, and interviewed celebrities, and fronted client promotional videos, and wing-walked (just threw that one in to impress you), doesn’t mean the phone is going to ring off the hook with job offers, or the email is going to be non stop with scripts to voice. Quite the opposite.
I find myself sitting at the desk I managed to squeeze into the spare room every day, with numerous tabs open on my laptop, P2P sites, google searches, LinkedIn, twitter, online shopping sites for loungewear… battling my way into this new world. A world I know like the back of my hand, a world I have 25 years experience in, and a world where suddenly I know nothing. I look for jobs, I read more blogs everything from ‘you should join P2P, you get loads work’ to ‘you shouldn’t join P2P, you won’t get anything’ my favourite at the moment is ‘get out there and make contacts and find the work yourself’ erm hello… Where? Who? What contacts? No one tells you who to call, how to find the work?
It’s a struggle, its not radio (ok I do still sing along to my favourite songs) but it’s a whole new world for me to explore, and I will make it, and I will love it, and it will be a proper job Dad!
