Tonight! An All-New Fantasy Island! Then At 9...

You can hear his voice when you read the words: “The Loooooove Boat!”

Ernie Anderson was a new kind of network announcer. The staff voices at NBC were all very good. But they all had a very even, matter-of-fact delivery. CBS was the same. At ABC, Ernie soared high or growled, depending on the programme he was plugging. You have to be a bit of a ham and an actor to do it. And, even then, you have to have a special talent for it.

Anderson started out like many announcers. He worked at small stations and moved on to bigger and bigger ones. He finally reached Cleveland in the late ‘50s and moved into television. Within a couple of years, he played a horror show host named Ghoulardi, directed by a fellow named Tom Conway. Thanks to a recommendation from Rose Marie, who happened to be in Cleveland, Steve Allen hired Conway, who had to change his first name to Tim.

Being a non sequitur isn’t the usual way of jump-starting a career in the big city, but that’s what happened when Anderson moved to Los Angeles. This question appeared in a weekend magazine in the Southam newspapers in Canada on Sept. 13, 1969. Evidently they never watched a 1969 ABC series occasionally emceed by Conway called Operation: Entertainment, where the pair and guest stars entertained at various military bases. Interestingly, about four different syndicated columns had this question, all within a few months of each other.

Q. Who is Ernie Anderson? He is always shown in the audience of the Carol Burnett television show. Heather Wood, North Portal, Sask.
A. Until Carol Burnett started introducing him, Ernie was simply a character actor, and a sometimes straight-man for comedian Tim Conway in club dates. He was best known for his commercials, including a nifty one about potato chips that we don't get to see in Canada.
Then one night Ernie went along to see his friend Tim appear on Miss Burnett's show and, lo and behold, Miss Burnett spotted him in the audience while she was conducting her usual question and answer period. "There's Ernie Anderson," she said, suddenly, and it got a laugh.
Ever since, whenever Tim is on the show, Ernie attends and is introduced. When he isn't there, Carol still says "There's Ernie Anderson," and CBS simply cuts in an old tape, so that he seems to be there. It's worked out well for everyone, including CBS, which has capitalized on it by producing thousands of "Who is Ernie Anderson?" bumper stickers. Ernie sits back, in his San Fernando Valley home, with wife and kids, and reads his newfound fan mail.

This was before Anderson was announcing the Burnett show; Lyle Waggoner was doing it at the beginning. It’s certainly before he became the promo voice of ABC’s prime time shows.

His voice became so well known that newspapers wanted to talk to him. Here’s one interview, from the April 9, 1985 edition of the Boston Globe. Anderson doesn’t sound like JFK, so it’s surprising to realise he’s from Massachusetts.

He Uses His Voice to Entice You
Ernie Anderson is prime-time pitchman for ABC-TV's programs
By NATHAN COBB
Globe Staff
EAST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — The voice rumbles around in the semi-darkness and cigarette smoke of ABC-TV's Audio Post 6, cutting through the Beachboys' version of "California Girls" like the thunder of a Harley-Davidson through a quiet night.
"Nathan's a Jersey boy who's headed for the promised land . . . the land of warm sun and beautiful girls . . . Califorrrrrnia Girls . . . the movie . . . all starting at 8, 7 central . . . on ABC."
"I had a frog on 'promised land,' " Ernie Anderson complains, his voice suddenly shedding several layers of titillation. "Can we do 'promised land' again?"
The voice. You know it but you don't, like an elusive melody that won't quite dislodge itself from your memory. A few hints: think of the network ads for "Roots," for "The Thornbirds," for "Winds of War," for "Hollywood Wives." Think, oh yes, think especially about this — of the voice that suggests all things are possible aboard "The Loooooove Boat." Think of 61-year-old Ernie Anderson, ABC-TV's prime-time pitchman, the Lawrence-born announcer whose resonance, roughened by years of chain smoking, makes each upcoming show sound as if it has the power to raise the dead, let alone the ratings.
Anderson's is the deep, familiar voice of ABC's lead-ins and promos, although such work represents only one of his many voice-over announcing jobs. On this particular sunny afternoon he will spend just 50 minutes inside a darkened studio hyping segments of "Wildside," "Three's A Crowd" and "Who's the Boss?" The combined audio and video tracks will then be sent via satellite to ABC's main facilities in New York for airing later in the week.
His attire is pure Southern California chic: striped fluorescent sweater, pink pants, black penny loafers. His face is well-tanned and deeply lined. When he speaks into the microphone, peering at his script through reading glasses whose frames seem to have been chosen to match his fire engine red socks, his left foot keeps time while his right hand does the conducting. He tends not to listen to playbacks. In fact, he seldom watches television at all, except for sports and occasional movies.
"Lunacy," he says.
Lunacy? This refers to a scheduling change that has him driving to another Los Angeles studio this evening to re-record several spots because of an unexpected Presidential news conference. "Lunacy," he says again to no one in particular as he twists open a bottle of cherry soda. "It's lack of planning. There's no reason to be fooling around in the studio at 6:30. No reason at all."
This means that Anderson will spend much of the afternoon driving around Los Angeles in his $37,000, black 1985 Jaguar XJS. He will drop into his agent's office, visit a local recording studio where he does voice-overs for a number of products and services (Honda automobiles, Parkay margarine, for example,) and drive to the Griffith Park Equestrian Center, where his two thoroughbred show horses are stabled. Mostly he will talk, greeting people with "Hey, babe" and "Hiya, honey," pressing the flesh, killing off the afternoon.
As he negotiates the traffic, Anderson talks about growing up in Lynn and Marblehead, attending Lynn English High School and Suffolk College, and eventually dumping his Boston accent for something the rest of America could understand. "I just tuned it out," he explains. "I had to lose it if I wanted to work outside New England." (His voice has remained behind however: He does the lead-ins to all the news shows on WCVB-TV, Ch. 5, and is the voice of radio commercials for The Metro dance clubs in Boston and Worcester.)
He also talks about radio jobs he held in Montpelier, Providence, Albany and Cleveland. "In Providence," he recalls proudly, "I was the hottest disc jockey in town." He was big in Cleveland, too: "I played Ghoulardi, the host of a TV horror movie show. People still remember me in Cleveland."
Anderson began recording sports promos for ABC-TV during the late 1960s, shortly after arriving in Los Angeles. From that modest beginning he has grown into the network's heavy-throated audio symbol. "But I don't actually live off ABC," he explains. "I live off my basic income, which is commercials. I don't really need the ABC money. And it can be a hinderance because I'm on so much. Sometimes I'm seen as an old voice. A Southern Califonia Chevy commercial came into my agent's office the other day, and the directions said, 'Not Ernie Anderson or an imitator.' "
Anderson's ABC style can make some shows sound like they've been lifted straight from the front page of the National Enquirer. Others seem to carry all the importance of a cure for cancer. "You go after the show pretty much on its style," he says. "But in order to earn my money, I've got to do something more than simply announce. I like to make a difference. If it's a sexy show, like 'The Love Boat,' I try to make it sound sleazy. Well, maybe 'sleazy' isn't the word. Like, maybe 'innuendo.' "
But Anderson also says he thinks the promos often reveal too much, thereby giving viewers reasons not to watch. "If it were up to me," he advises, "I'd tell them less about the story line, unless it's something like 'The Fonz is getting married tonight.' I mean, you say something like, 'Be sure to be watching when Jane meets Dave tonight.' Well, who the hell are Jane & Dave? Most people don't even know. But they do know that Jane and Dave sure ain't The Fonz."
Anderson is a suburban rancher who lives in a rambling, antique- laden house on three-quarters of an acre of land in Studio City. It is a life which features seven automobiles, six cats, five children (of the nine he has fathered), four birds, three dogs, his second wife, and a larger-than-life plastic cow which stands on the front lawn. On this particular day Anderson's chores include picking up his 14 year-old son, Paul, at a nearby private school.
"Hey, Dad, I got this great idea for you," Paul announces as he clambers into the back seat of the Jag. "You should put out a home videocassette called 'How to Train Your Voice.' It could tell people how you do what you do."
Ernie Anderson points the car back into heavy traffic, spinning the steering wheel with one hand. "The trouble is, I don't know how I do what I do," the familiar voice replies. "I just do it."

Another profile talked about the Camel Lights that weren’t far from his reach. If they helped him with his 27-year career at ABC, he paid a price. Anderson died on February 6, 1997 of lung cancer. He was 73.