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Many televiewers wince, talk back or leave the room during TV commercials. But not earnest, 41-year-old Dick Stark. He sits on the edge of his chair, wide-eyed and alert to every move and inflection of the TV salesman. His interest is professional and his appraisal is that of a connoisseur. For when he is not listening to commercials, Dick Stark is delivering them. He sells Chesterfield cigarettes on TV's Perry Como Show and Gangbusters, Amm-i-dent toothpaste on Danger, Camay soap on radio's Pepper Young's Family. "Television has been good to me," says Stark mellowly. "It's given me something I never had in 18 years of radio: fan clubs. I have one in Chicago, one in New Jersey, one on Long Island, and two in Brooklyn."

Neutral Voice. Most announcers, even in such a major radio & TV center as Manhattan, earn less than $10,000 a year. But about a quarter of Manhattan's 400 announcers have annual incomes of from $10-$50,000. And a select few, including Stark and such topflight professionals as Ed Herlihy, Ben Grauer and Ralph Edwards, make more than $50,000 a year. Compared to TV actors, TV announcers are a moneyed aristocracy.

What makes a good announcer? Dick Stark's basic ingredient seems to be averageness. He is of medium height, has thinning hair and a bland, open face that is naggingly familiar to people. Stark says: "Everybody thinks I went to school with him. I've just got one of those faces." He was born in Michigan, grew up in California, graduated from Cornell. This geographic spread has given Stark a "neutral" accent that can't be easily identified with any region of the U.S. Network executives have a theory that national audiences are distracted by such regional characteristics as the broad "a" of New England, the twang of the far West, the drawl of the South. Much better, for their purpose, is a man like Stark who sounds as if he came from nowhere and everywhere.

Calico Touch. The successful announcer needs more than a voice and a passable appearance. He must be what the admen call "sincere." This means that his devotion to the product he is selling rivals the dedication of an old-style Japanese samurai to his Emperor. Stark is everywhere conceded to bring the "utmost in sincerity" to his commercials. Says NBC Vice President Ted Cott: "He's got the real calico touch." According to CBS's James Sirmons, when a TV director wants super-sincerity in a commercial, he tells the announcer: "Give it the Dick Stark treatment."

Practiced performers like Stark and Ed Herlihy (who often doubles as a master of ceremonies as well as an announcer) achieve sincerity by aiming their sales talk at a single individual instead of the millions in their audience. Herlihy plays to a Mrs. Lucey in Maine. Stark says: "I play to Mom Schlegelmilch in Garrettsville, Ohio. When I was a radio announcer she wrote and said I sounded like one of her boys. When she saw me on TV she said I looked like one of them.".

Both men are expert practitioners of the "throwaway," a device for slurring or racing over the unimportant words in a commercial. This technique was brought to its finest flower by Announcer Ralph Edwards. Explains Stark: "Every sponsor has to put some weasel words in his copy that you've got to learn how to handle. Suppose an announcer has to say: 'If you use Blank face cream you can hope for a more beautiful complexion.' You've got to get that word 'hope' in to keep the lawyers happy, but as much as you can, you'll throw it away."

Two Equals Seven. Stark and Herlihy acknowledge their debt to Ralph Edwards, the first of the folksy, sincere-type announcers (the most successful: Arthur Godfrey). They are also uneasily aware that fashions change in announcers, as in everything else. For a while, TV was threatened by an invasion of women announcers--e.g., Betty Furness, Wendy Barrie and Singer Dorothy Collins. But Herlihy says: "Sponsors have found that the average woman listener would rather get her information from a man. Women will watch Betty Furness selling a refrigerator, but what they're thinking is 'I wonder where Betty got that dress.' " One new fashion is a trend toward such mature, grave, slow-spoken types as Longine's Frank Knight, the sort of men, explains CBS's Sirmons, who look like family doctors, lawyers or bankers.

Like all announcers, Stark and Herlihy are haunted by the possibility of blowing their lines. Herlihy made one of the first U.S. television commercials back in 1941: when he saw the TV camera bearing down on him, he forgot every line he had carefully memorized. Announcers still shudder at the thought of the classic fumble made by Radcliffe Hall. He was racing the clock to complete a bread commercial before his show went off the air when, to his horror, he managed to turn the tagline "Always demand the best in bread!" into a whopping spoonerism.

Announcers often dislike commercial cliches as much as listeners do. On Stark's list of pet hates are commercials beginning with "Yes!"; or "y'know, folks . . ." and the phrase "Do it today!" Herlihy detests "Listen!"; having to say, "The supply is limited, so act now!" and "Don't take my word for it, go out and buy a box today." Stark also has a heretical notion that "I can sell just as much of any product in two minutes as I now do in seven." Unfortunately for televiewers, there is little chance that any sponsor will give him the chance to try it.

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