Most TV people will know Gary Vosot isn’t for real just by seeing his name. VOSOT, in broadcastese, means Voice Over Sound on Tape.
The fake name of this fake newscaster is a wink at the business he started out in, which now gets a sharp elbow pretty regularly.
“At the very least, people don’t know if I’m real or not,” said Matt Evans, the real man who portrays the pretend reporter with News Action News, in a phone interview with Poynter.
“You either are Gary Vosot or you’ve worked with a Gary Vosot,” Evans said.
For three years during college, Evans worked as a cameraman for a small cable station. After graduating with a journalism degree from St. Michael’s college in Vermont, he got a job with WGMC TV3 in Worcester, Mass., then went to an ABC affiliate in Providence, R.I. In 2004, the station reorganized and started changing the nature of the jobs. Evans, who wanted to use what he’d learned as a journalist to tell real stories happening in his community and not just fill air time, left the business to pursue comedy full-time. He moved to New York City and soon, Gary Vosot showed up.
Evans used experiences from his first career in an on-stage monologue and “that became the start of Gary.”
Now, he maintains Vosot’s Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook pages, and two years ago, shot a pilot called “Breaking the News” about Vosot and the medium-market Westchester station where he works, News Action News. In the show, Vosot’s able to keep things together on camera, where he’s pretty vain and self-involved, but off-screen, he’s a mess.
“It’s comedy, but there’s truth in comedy,” Evans said. “That’s why people respond to it. I’m the guy that can say what they’re thinking.”
Vosot also does some pretty healthy trolling of real news people and news about real news people (that’s how Poynter first ran into him.)
I hid a 100 of these at #NAB. #NABShow #NAB2014 #NABShow2014 pic.twitter.com/arQu5QLf9W
— Gary Vosot (@GaryVosot) April 8, 2014
25 local news men with great hair. How am I not even on this list? What a joke. @GetGoodHead @eegan9news @FTVLive http://t.co/dWCoXKBPoi
— Gary Vosot (@GaryVosot) April 15, 2014
@Poynter I've never had a Mike, Jennifer or Kelly and I'm pretty sure the average is a year tops.
— Gary Vosot (@GaryVosot) April 22, 2014
Over the last few years, Evans said, friends have shot and edited his videos, including his wife, Christine Walters, who is a TV writer and producer for an original Web series on NickMom. Evans is now a freelance writer for Comedy Central, and he’s out hustling Gary Vosot, the show and selling the book of news tips that came from a year of Gary Vosot tweets.
Some Gary Vosot advice:
You can absolutely use file footage from the late 90's. #filefootage #TaxDay #taxes
— Gary Vosot (@GaryVosot) April 15, 2014
And some Matt Evans advice:
“I think it’s just about not taking yourself too seriously,” Evans said, “and doing the job. Yes, you’re the face, but the story isn’t about you. That’s what Gary is.”
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