Joe Cipriano: That Familiar Voice
For Joe Cipriano, whose voice you’ve no doubt heard during the fleeting minutes between TV show segments, announcing has always been second nature. “I got into radio when I was about 14,” he says. “I built a studio in my parents’ basement, bought an AM radio transmitter and started doing radio shows for the neighborhood.” The young DJ went on to work for seven major radio stations and even filled in for Casey Kasem on the American Top 40 show. Now he does voiceover work for NBC, Fox, CBS, Food Network, and several motion picture studios.
It’s a grueling schedule. “I’m in the studio by 8:00 or 8:30 every morning and I work all day,” he says. “And in this business, you’ve got to be ready to go whenever it’s necessary.” He’s is on call virtually everyday. If a Los Angeles network needs a new lead-in for a sitcom while Cipriano is recording a trailer in New York, he can’t say no. So in lieu of renting pricy studios with high-speed, intercontinental connections, he created his own portable recording studio using a MacBook Pro and Apple Remote Desktop.
“Now I can work from anywhere that has a high-speed Internet connection,” he says. “I could be in Chicago or Monte Carlo and I can still get my work done. And I don’t need a professional recording studio.”
On the Air
As a kid, the lure of television was too much for Cipriano. “Even at 13 I knew I wanted to do something with television,” he says. “Either on camera or using my voice.” But Oakville, Connecticut, Cipriano’s hometown, is a far cry from Hollywood. The young TV hopeful needed a way to ease into the biz that didn’t require elaborate schemes or far-flung stunts. “I saw radio as a logical step in that direction,” he says. So one afternoon he called the local radio station and asked for a tour. He got the tour, and an after-school internship shuffling records and fetching coffee and snacks.
During downtimes at the station, the DJ let Cipriano tinker in the control room. The aspiring announcer studied local on-air personalities and did his best to mimic them. “I would hold mock radio shows and record myself,” he says. “Then I would listen to the recordings and see how I could improve.” Simultaneously, as a high school student, he constructed a radio station in his basement. Armed with an AM transmitter, a turntable, and his record collection, Cipriano broadcast hit songs throughout his neighborhood.
Cipriano’s gofer gig eventually turned into a part-time weekend job. Then, one fateful Sunday, he got a promotion. “One day the DJ didn’t show up,” he says. The 16-year old volunteered to fill in. He performed so well that the DJ offered him the slot. “He didn’t want to do it anymore and was actually relieved that I could take over,” he says. By the time he was a senior, Cipriano had secured the prime-time DJ spot at the radio, spinning top-40 hits under the pseudonym “Tom Collins.” “It was really cool because I was the number one DJ at the station and I was still going to high school,” he says. “I worked full time and did my homework during the show.”
Going Live
The spot led to a gig with a Hartford station, which led to voiceover work for commercials, which in turn led to a job at NBC. Cipriano eventually moved to Los Angeles with his wife, where he landed some movie trailer work, laying down vocals for “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Porky’s” previews. Then, in the late ‘80s, he got a job working with a little-known network that was launching an obscure cartoon called “The Simpsons.” The network, Fox, took off and soon Cipriano was the signature voice of “The Simpsons” and several other Fox comedies, including “The Tracy Ullman Show” and “Married With Children.”
He went on to cut voiceover tracks for all of Fox’s comedies, sewing smooth, upbeat vocals between sitcoms to keep viewers tuned in for the next hilarious episode. Then CBS took a liking to Cipriano’s silky style and hired him for its comedy routines. Today, Cipriano is the voice for every primetime NBC drama, delivering heavy and sometimes haunting vocals to lure the audience.