KUSA - NBC's "The Voice" is back for a new season. This week on the morning show, 9NEWS is profiling three Coloradans who make their living with their voices too.
Day 3
Anybody who watches 9NEWS hears Roger Thompson all the time. Roger is the station's official voice. He narrates the opens and closes to all of our newscasts and he records the promotional voiceovers too.
Roger does all of this from his home recording studio in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The station emails him scripts. He emails us MP3 audio files back.
His website pretty much says it all: Rogervoiceguy.com
His pipes are some of the best in the business. Some describe his baritone voice as "polished," "well-trained" and classical.
He's versatile enough to give urgency to hard news material when needed, and goofy enough to go way outside the narrator's box. One example: when he did his best "Beef it's what's for dinner" Sam Elliott impression for a 9NEWS stock show spoof a few years back.
http://www.9news.com/rss/story.aspx?storyid=176780
Roger works for other stations too around the country. But he's been our voice for more than 30 years. Keep up the good work Roger! We wouldn't be the same without you.
Day 2
If you've lived in Colorado for any length of time, chances are you've heard a Tom Shane radio ad. Shane is the voice of his Shane Company jewelry firm. By some accounts, his ads are the longest-running continuous campaign in radio history. Each one ends with the tagline 'Now you have a friend in the diamond business.'
9NEWS checked in with Shane via Skype from Bangkok where he was on a business trip acquiring rubies and sapphires.
Tom Shane founded the Shane Company in 1971 and has been voicing his own ads for almost just as long. He voices his own ads to sound "closer" to his customers.
"We really want to feel to our customers, to the public, like a locally-owned business rather than a large institution and I think being an owner-spokesperson gives us that advantage," Shane said. "The closer we can be with our customers the more successful we are."
Jewelry runs in Shane's family. His grandfather, Charles Shane purchased his first jewelry store in Cleveland, Ohio in 1929. His father, Richard Shane, joined the jewelry business after serving in the military during World War II.
Tom Shane graduated from the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1970 and spent a year in the Army Reserves.
1n 1996, he was knighted into the order of Leopold II in the Kingdom of Belgium in recognition of his lifelong achievement in the diamond business.
Shane's radio fame has led to a number of pop culture references from local music video "Colorado Girls," a spoof of Katy Perry's "California Gurls," to South Park, yet he manages to stay humble.
"It's a very sensitive issue because while I have a public persona, I try to try to maintain a very personal lifestyle and when you're in the public eye you get a lot of stuff thrown at you," Shane said. "It's not all nice, some of it can be very embarrassing."
The Shane Company is a direct diamond importer, purchasing diamonds from gem cutters, not "middlemen" and also specializes in rubies and sapphires.
Shane's son Rordan works with him, making Rordan the fourth generation of Shane leadership for the company.
To learn more about the Shane Company or Tom Shane, visit http://www.shaneco.com/default.aspx or www.tomshanesworld.com.
Day 1
Some may not recognize Maggie Roswell's name, but they will probably recognize her voice as a Simpson.
Maggie Roswell is the voice of many characters on the animated television show, "The Simpsons" including Maude Flanders, Helen Lovejoy, Miss Hoover, Luann Van Houten, Sherry Bobbins and many others.
Roswell got her start on the "The Simpsons" when she was a cast member of the "Tracey Ullman Show." "The Simpsons" was a spinoff of the popular variety show.
"Their producers came up to me and said 'we're doing this little show called 'The Simpsons,' it's like a cartoon thing' and I went 'Ok, I guess I could audition for it,' and the rest is history," Roswell said.
Her roles on "The Simpsons" have earned her both an Emmy Award nomination and an Annie Award nomination.
Roswell's acting background spans over 20 years and includes parts in the Time Conway Show, Pretty in Pink, Lost in America and some theater.
Roswell and her family came to Colorado 18 years ago to raise their daughter. Because of the move, she had to fly to California twice a week to tape the show. She left the show in 1999 and returned in 2002. She now records her parts at her studio in Denver.
"The technology has gotten such that we can do it here in our recording studio. But at the time, it was so outrageous to move," Roswell said.
"The Simpsons" has been on the air over 20 years and is celebrating its 500th episode next week.
Stay tuned over the next three days to catch our other featured Denver voices on 9NEWS 6 a.m.
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