Rambling with Gambling | Tom Clifford Guest Appearance

Family Tradition Ends

It was announced that John Gambling would be doing his last radio show on Friday, December 20, after 27 years... ending a family tradition that has lasted since the 1930s & '40s. And according to the Guinness Book of World Records; "Rambling with Gambling" is the longest running radio show in history.

In 1997, I had the good fortune to sit-in with John as his Traffic Reporter For-a-Day on his early morning WOR radio Show. Ah, it was a chilly December 10th morning as I recall... and dark too. 5:15 AM was the call time at WOR Studios - 1440 Broadway. We did the traffic at 6:40 AM and that's when the fun would begin with celebrity characters detailing the roadways of New York.

John was a pretty good sport and great foil straight-man. We had something in common of a theatrical nature, in that he and I were both on the soap 'Loving'. He played a Fire-Chief in an episode and I had the Doorman gig as Sturgeon for about 2 1/2 years. I did a lot of voices on that show...including King Kong!

Here's John in the studio at WOR. For a highlight of the December 10th, 1997 show: Click to hear show

 

Here’s how it all got started.

Minding my business in Nov of ’97, I got a call from Anita Tapia, a pal of my apartment days in Queens.

She told me that WOR was running this contest for a stand-in traffic reporter on the John Gambling Show.  She thought I’d be a shoe-in if I did some imitations reporting the traffic as my audition.

The rest is history. You can hear part of the audition at the opening of the program.
By:  +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services

New tech A-D-V-A-N-C-E-S opportunities !

Got something of an education on this one.

Advance at Home PT - had asked for a message program after seeing a Special Offer email  the New Hyde Park Chamber ran for TC & Company in October. TC & Company Special Offer - NHPC Email

At the time, Advance had a rudimentary phone system and was using Google Voice to administer their navigation of calls and outgoing messages. Google Voice accommodates wave & mp3 produced audio files.
Problem was, Google only allows 30 second lengths of outgoing message and Advance had much more to say.
By December, Advance had done some homework into the VoIP market and selected: Ring Central as their new business phone provider...Well, talk about voice & production options. Plus, they were now able to avail themselves of Ring Central's On-Hold feature. TC & Company wound-up producing all their VoIP programs. Here's a portion: Click to hear - Advance at Home Physical Therapy (Message Program)

 

By: +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services

ATD refers TC & Company

Always  a pleasure to receive business from a referral. ATD COM installers of VOIP & telephony systems that had known my work for various other clients recommended +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services for more than a talented professional voice-guy. They needed talent that was savvy enuf to be able to work the system prompt parameters. 

Ensemble Travel Group and Price, Raffel & Browne, we're being equipped with a state-of-the-art VOIP systems that would allow audio file uploads. But, if there were glitches, they wanted the assurance that they'd be online with system announcements. That meant doing the announcements  'old-school' ...L-I-V-E!
By:  +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services

 

Blog Talk Radio - Radio Magic

 

John Reid, renowned magician is our guest on Blog Talk Radio program - "Practical Social Media".

  John is an accomplished magician, an immensely creative balloon designer and owner of Tricky Business (Magic Shop) in East Meadow, New York. He performs regularly at parties, conventions...even the White House. I had met John at a Networking meeting that Joann Winkart was throwing for the Victims-of-Sandy relief fund at K.Pacho's event venue in New Hyde Park. 

John had designed a 'balloon' dress for Joann and it was the rave of the evenings ceremonies. He had talked about the social areas of business and was considering doing an on-hold message and maybe other creative when he re-vamped his new media. I visited John's facebook business page Tricky Business and 'liked' it. After his feeds on his performances and balloon creations, I had called and asked Caitlin, his manager, if he'd consider doing a BTR show. John was performing in Utah and would have to wait for his return. We taped the interview on Nov. 5th, that would later be broadcast on Nov. 7th, after some post editing with +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services 

Here's the link to a re-broadcast of the show that aired Thursday, November 7th, 2013. John was a regular plethora of information about his business, the social media he chooses to make it grow, the talented people he collaborates with and his desire to be the B-E-S-T at what he does. Click to Play:  

By: +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services

"Quick Cuts" video production Tips

Here's a quick lesson on the ease of putting together a "Quick Cut' video.

 
I was asked to help-out with some camera & production work for the New Hyde Park Museum during their street fair on September 21st. Just shooting yourself or participant while talking and later putting a few finishing touches with a basic movie editor like Windows Movie Maker, allows for a social video post (YouTube/Facebook etc) with all the SEO benefits.

Do as many 'takes' as necessary and get it in-the-can as they say for editing out the flubs later. When you edit, you can chose the beginning & end of the piece, maybe adding a title or simple fade-In's & fade-Out's.

Here's Frank Scaturro for Congress doing his thing at the fair. We did 2 takes because one of them had a jet going by. With a nice title and some polish of the sound & video, makes it look fairly professional.

By: +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services 

Halloween "Out-Break" at the Mortuary

Just in time for the season to start creepin-in, the Mortutary breaks-out its 'Zombie OutBreak' spot!

Featuring the fast talking creepy-guy; Tom Clifford, with a slash of un-n-e-r-v-i-n-g video cuts...to make Patient Zero a dead-ringer for fright! The voice is a combo of nasty snarl with some evil (Vincent Price) tongue-in-cheek goin for it. Been in demand since Elswarro started puttin it to use almost 10 years ago. Jason Swaar is an independent film maker and can be found at: Jason Swaar interview - Halloween Date Base 

Click to play TV spot - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwWhNoq1zsQ

By: +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services 

Hey, you never know

In-A-World where you can be at two places at a time, it's still amazes me that a guy from N.Y. can do a scary voice for a firm in Arizona and somehow have it make its way back to N.Y. to play on N.Y. cable. Click to play TV spot

That's the story behind this weeks mutli-media campaign for Karts Raceway that features its 'Fright Night' venue for the Halloween Season. It all starts with seeing the spot quite by accident last October. Figured, maybe worth a call to Karts to see if they ever want to use that scary/creepy-voice for some custom media. Well, it wasn't all that easy. I'd have to say that it took almost a full year of calling indiscriminately every couple of months to finally speak with the owner and find that he would be ecstatic to use my voice for all his Halloween media and my other voices for the racetrack for the rest of the year.

It started with customizing their Tv & Radio spots to gate announcements, website audio greetings, outgoing answer machine messages to in-the-park tutorials.

By: +Tom Clifford, VoiceOver & Creative Services