By the fall of 1980, PromoSpeak had become the mother tongue of the entertainment advertising industry. Major components of this jargon included random promo copy outtakes, earworm soundbites, and arcane TV production terms like MOS, butt edit and flash frame.
PromoSpeak was characterized by a riffing style of delivery that often strikes non-speakers as compulsive -- possibly involuntary -- vocalization. Borderline Tourette’s, even, when drugs and alcohol were involved, which was frequently the case.
While its origins are impossible to date, a recent linguistic study pinpoints Hollywood at the dawn of the 1980's as the epicenter of the Golden Age of PromoSpeak.
There were at that time perhaps three or four dozen of us Big Three Network on-air promo writer/producers working out here. Ours was a tiny but hardcore tribe of native PromoSpeakers.
Quick and dirty. Shoot from the lip. In our little L.A. back alley of the advertising world, it paid to have that West Coast PromoSpeak right there on the tip of your tongue and ready to roll.
Especially if you were heading into audio post to room produce a voiceover session with Artie Abbott, Hollywood's Pope of PromoSpeak.
Vimeo password: ARTIE (all caps).
Artie is a fictional Left Coast Promo character based on our own legendary Ernie Anderson. He's our tribute to the Master. Ernie was the Voice of ABC in the 1970s & '80's; and all these decades later he’s still the Voice in Our Heads.
