"I can't think of a term for the lowest part of a male voice, the part that"
I don't know the word either. The opposite of falsetto? Truesetto?
"sounds like a frog croaking. Some really annoying radio announcers try to sound authoritative by descending into that voice at the end of their sentences."
Other than Ted Baxter I haven't noticed that exact thing, but I'll keep my ears out for it.
It doesn't surprise me. I have noticed the use of tone of voice to imply things that would be improper for them to say and are improper for them to imply.
One news woman in her 40's stationed in Iraq or Af these days once, while in a studio, not on location, leaned forward and said something almost in a whisper. She seemed maybe to be trying to be sexy, or else taking us into her confidence. Any of the possibilities would be bad.
And NBC evening news two Sundays ago said that Obama had declared swine flu a national emergency (which allows federal money to be used even when they set up a tent in the hospital front yard, and other administrative things) and then said "Suprisingly, calling it a national emergency doesn't help much to solve the problem".
So now the NBC network is using sarcasm or maybe it was meant only to be funny, but either way, it's a bad way to report what they laughingly call the news. They seem to have confused their show with the news on Saturday Night Live. It's so sad.
Also I've noticed, and this probably relates to your observation, that the last sentence of many stories in local and national tv news tries to summarize or reach a conclusion or state a moral based on the rest of the story, but often the summary is wrong, or the conclusion is ill-founded, or the moral is unsupported or stupid. They would really be better not pretending to be wise and skipping the last sentence of most news stories.
"Gary Eickmeier Hey - I spared you guys from my annual "Holloween" vs "Halloween" rant."
Posters should say where they live, and for which area they are asking questions. I was born and then lived in Western Pa. 10 years
Indianapolis 7 years
Chicago 6 years
Brooklyn, NY 12 years
Baltimore 26 years