[cma-l] 'Celebrity' Voiceovers in idents/sweepers

[Terry Lee]

Hello all, 

A query - it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.

One of my young presenters has come in with personalised idents that
feature the voices of famous musicians. He paid for these online somewhere
(not sure how much he paid). For example, the voices say things like: ³Hi
- this is Jessie J² ³Whats up this is Ed Sheeran² etc before another
(non-famous) voice over idents the presenter and station.

Generally speaking I¹m not keen on station imaging happening without me
knowing anything about it, but my main query was on the ethics of using
celebrity voices in such idents for the station. Jessie J, Ed Sheeran etc
have probably never heard of us - let alone endorsed us as a radio
station. We do play their music though (so its not like these idents are
completely misleading).

Would you play such an ident on your stations?

Cheers,

Terry Lee

Radio LaB Coordinator
University of Bedfordshire
terry.lee at beds.ac.uk