For many years the CBC had their standard announcers test.
It was run when I took it by its inventor, an Englishmen named George Rich.
By the time I took the test in the 1980s it was laughably out of date and yet the CBC allowed Rich to still administer the test to an absurd extent.
I took with prep from a woman I knew who also took it -- and failed as I did.
But after you took it Rich would give you the answers about how you should have answered.
For instance, they had a sentence where you had to refer to "a flaccid Belizean Junta."
Nobody in the 1980's would pronounce it FLAK-sid Belezian JUN-tah.
It would be pronounced by everyone as FLASSid Belezian HOON tah.
When he failed me on the pronunciation I pissed him off when I pointed out that the most senior announcer at the CBC, who was Knowlton Nash at the time, would never say FLAK-sid or JUN-tah.
On another part of the test I had to read a paragraph about describing a small town in England.
I had a lot of acting training at the time and I thought I gave a pretty good read.
But he told me my read was terrible because he wrote that about his home town in England and I did not read it with the proper feeling at all.
Later I submitted a demo tape to one of the CBC radio execs.
His assessment of me was I had a "beautiful" radio voice, but it was just too "priivaty" sounding.







 

black bugs blood and red bugs blood.
sister susie saw seven silver swans silently swimming over the silver shining sea.
 

I remember from ages ago someone telling me an old BBC annunciation test was reading the following over and over as quickly as possible till you muffed it up.

Red Leather, Yellow Leather

I also read an announcer tip where you take a pencil and hold it as far back as you can in your mouth, then read a script with it held there. Then, when you remove the pen and read, you usually tend to overannunciate words, but not to an uncomfortable level, just not as much slurring.  That was a biggie when creating demo tapes.