What happened to Seth Rogen's voice? TTC stopped playing divisive transit PSAs after just one month

'We ran the risk of perhaps overstaying our welcome and overdoing it a little bit,' said communications director Brad Ross. 'We did what we needed to do'

Nationalpost.com
September 26, 2018

After piggybacking on Vancouver’s idea to make Seth Rogen the voice of a campaign to promote etiquette on public transit, the Toronto Transit Commission stopped playing the clips he recorded for them after just one month.

The TTC confirmed Thursday that the voice-overs, in which the comedic actor lectured passengers on the finer points of how to behave themselves on the subway, were gradually phased out at the end of August after running across its network of stations since July 31.

Some TTC riders who had heard the voice-overs wondered aloud in recent days about their disappearance. One person tweeted to Rogen on Wednesday to say they were looking forward to hearing his advice when they take their first subway trip, unaware that they would now need to go to Vancouver, Rogen’s hometown, for such an opportunity.

The TTC didn’t initially plan to run the announcements --which elicited a mixture of praise and irritation from its ridership --for any specific period of time, the service’s communications director Brad Ross said. He decided to wind the campaign down at the end of August out of concern they could become repetitive and begin to wear on people.

“We ran the risk of perhaps overstaying our welcome and overdoing it a little bit,” Ross said. “We did what we needed to do.”

In a dozen brief, colourful announcements that aired throughout the campaign, Rogen asked TTC riders to adhere to an array of behavioural norms. In different clips, he told listeners to refrain from holding subway doors open (“I don’t need the hassle, or the delay, so leave dem doors alone!”); to stop resting their feet on empty seats (“While feet are cool, please leave them on the floor”); and to never, ever leave clipped fingernails or the crumpled remains of their dinner behind at the end of a commute (“I can’t believe I have to say this! Just stop!”).

Social media posts show reaction to the recordings was mixed. Some riders appreciated hearing a celebrity’s voice in the midst of a long, banal commute. But others thought the announcements were obnoxious.

“I hate the new Seth Rogen TTC announcements so freaking much,” Stephanie Cooke tweeted. “It just sounds like a very loud man yelling into the PA system. It’s very jarring at 7:30 a.m.”

Other riders bemoaned their inability to understand the recordings over the TTC’s public address system. “It sounds just like Charlie Brown’s teacher’s voice,” tweeted Lisa Pedersen. She said she enjoyed the announcements when she could actually hear them. Another rider who liked the voice-overs asked where they had gone in a tweet to TTC customer service on Monday --only to be told that the representative on duty didn’t know.

On Friday, the TTC customer service account responded to a complaint about Rogen’s “screaming”: “I’m sorry they weren’t to your liking. I heard the announcements and they did not sound like screaming. Did you find they were too loud? Some of the feedback we got suggested they were too low.”

Ross said most of the feedback the TTC received from riders was positive, though the service couldn’t provide exact numbers before publication. It was a fun summertime project, he said, and a worthwhile attempt to educate people in an offbeat way about how to act respectfully while in transit, a common source of tension between commuters.

“The real challenge around etiquette is that the public don’t want to be lectured. They don’t want the overlords of the TTC wagging their finger at them about, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that,’ like we’re their parents,” Ross said. “We try to make it light. That’s what we tried to do with Seth.”

The TTC didn’t pay Rogen for his work, but spent $2,300 producing the campaign, a sum that included recording and editing costs as well as travel expenses for a two-day trip Ross took to California to help tape the announcements.

“All of the press we got, all of the Twitter impressions we got --honestly, you can’t buy that kind of advertising to raise awareness. People know about it, people remember it, people talk about it,” Ross said. “We’re a $1.8 billion-a-year operation. I think $2,300 is absolutely justifiable.”

Rogen arranged his deal with the TTC after he agreed to voice etiquette PSAs for Vancouver’s TransLink transit service, which abandoned a voice-over campaign it had planned with Morgan Freeman on May 24 after CNN published a report in which eight women accused Freeman of sexual harassment and inappropriate behaviour. Stephanie Ip, a reporter with The Province and the Vancouver Sun, which are owned by Postmedia, had suggested on Twitter a day earlier that Rogen could be a suitable Canadian alternative to Freeman.

TransLink announced Rogen’s etiquette campaign online on July 26. The recordings are scheduled to run on platforms, trains and buses through the end of October.

When Rogen’s PSAs began to run in TTC stations on July 31, the service credited veteran city Coun. Norm Kelly with brokering the partnership. Kelly, a prolific Twitter user, barged into Rogen’s conversation with Ip in May to tell the actor he should tape voice-overs to be played in Toronto.

“I’ll do the whole country!” Rogen responded at the time.