Miami Station's Voice is Back in the Closet
You've heard of coming out of the closet, well the voice of WSVN and a number of other stations is back in the closet.
Scott Chapin does voice overs for stations all around the country and he records the VO's in a hall closet in his Ft. Lauderdale closet.
He got his start doing it for WSVN in Miami in the late 80's. From there, stations all over the country were calling him and he was heard, but never seen from coast to coast.
The stress and the phone calls got to be too much and Chapin retired and came out of the closet.
"I was fried because of the stress of having a different station calling you every 10 minutes, so I hung it up," he said of his retirement.
This past January, he returned to his home station WSVN and a dozen other affiliates nationally.
The station's contract with another voice-over artist was about to expire and WSVN officials welcomed Chapin back, according to station officials.
"I think Scott Chapin is the voice of Channel 7,'' said Alice Jacobs, WSVN's vice president of news. "And when people hear him, they think, 'Oh that's 7 News.' He has a very distinctive and powerful voice."
"I was thrilled to come back,'' said Chapin, 62. "This is where I got my start."
"I like to be the guy hidden in the closet,'' he jokes from the tiny acoustics-friendly closet where he works 7 1/2 hours a day recording voice-overs.
"People can't believe he works out of that little hall closet,'' Susan Chapin said with a laugh. "It's basically mine and he gets a little bit of it."
Chapin said there's an art to doing what he does, dramatically recording dozens of teases to the big news stories of the day to grab viewers' attention.
"I always have a rule in my head: If it's a crime thing and no one is hurt or killed, I can go a little harder on it, but you've got to know where that line is. If someone is injured or someone is killed, you have to pull it back. You've got to know where the line," he said. "
Chapin says he likes his role behind the camera and enjoys being the guy behind the scenes.
H/T Sun-Sentinel