After graduating from college, I attended broadcasting school. Students would record mock radio air shifts and meet with an instructor, who would critique everyone's announcing skills. At one session, a student, who had always sounded like himself on his previous tapes, submitted a tape of himself doing a pretend shift for a classic rock station. We were all puzzled as the tape played, and the student did the entire shift speaking in a throaty, raspy growl. All of us, including the instructor, listened without comment. When the tape ended, the instructor pressed Stop, paused, and asked the student, "Now, why did you do that?"
About five years later, when it was still fairly unusual for radio stations to stream online, I listened to an album rock station I'd never heard before. I burst out laughing when I heard the morning DJ back announce the music in the same contrived growl that the student had used during that session. Apparently, at least one program director then favored the Wolfman Jack/seen-it-all detective who smokes five packs of cigarettes a day hybrid announcing style.
