John Osgood

As a boy, John Osgood was enthralled by the maze of wires, the glow of tubes, and the array of other parts inside the family’s stereo console and television. He remembers many trips with his father to use the tube testers at nearby drugstores. His father gave him a two-transistor radio kit from Radio Shack for his birthday one year. When he was ten, he got a Radio Shack AM radio kit with five tubes. He and his father spent several weeks putting it together and it worked perfectly. His father’s interest in ham radio further amplified his interest in radio theory and electronics. For a school fair, John and his father put together a telegraph key and a sounding device to create Morse Code. The project, made from scratch, included making an electromagnet from a nail surrounded by several hundred turns of copper wire. John also drew a poster listing the alphabet and numbers from zero through nine, and the codes for each. The telegraph and poster earned John an Honorable Mention.

During his grammar school days, John also wrote “newscasts” in the basement of his house and delivered them to anyone who happened to be around. Later, he attended Georgia State University, where he was a newscaster at the campus radio station, WRAS-FM/Album 88. He earned his B.A. in Journalism and a minor in Speech with emphasis in public speaking.

He began his professional career at WMBB-TV in Panama City, Florida, and at a radio station in Panama City Beach. He was a radio announcer, played music, recorded public service announcements, and also took the transmitter readings required by the FCC. After briefly working part-time at both locations, he was hired full-time by WMBB. There, he ran the audio console, edited videotape, took network feeds, directed projects, and recorded voice tracks for commercials and promos.

John returned to Atlanta in January 1997 and did freelance work for ABC NewsOne, the affiliate feed service of ABC News. He took feeds, edited video, wrote scripts and participated in conference calls. An additional freelance video editing gig at WGCL-TV (formerly WGNX), led to full-time employment there in the summer of 1998. John is now a freelance video editor and owns a 17-inch MacBook Pro with the Final Cut Studio Suite.

John is also a producer at the Georgia Radio Reading Service (GaRRS), the statewide radio reading network for the blind and visually-impaired. He operates the audio console, uses Adobe Audition 2.0 to record and edit material for air, and handles live broadcasting duties. In the summer of 2007, John was one of nine staffers and volunteers from GaRRS who interviewed participants in the National Federation of the Blind’s “March For Independence,” held in Atlanta on July 3, 2007. Excerpts of those interviews aired July 4-5, 2007, on GARRS. For their coverage, John and his colleagues were honored by the IAAIS (International Association of Audio Information Services) for the “2007 Program of the Year: On Location.”

John looks forward to sharing his voice, editing skill and production experience with others. His voice demos are available upon request, either on CD or in MP3 form. For more about his experience and services, he can be reached at jaoatlanta@att.net.