I've noticed that a lot of the 80s-early 90s shows had obscure announcers, and many of them only did one or two shows. Like Ed Mackay on TJW'90, Larry van Nuys on TTD'90, Ken Ryan on Bumper Stumpers, etc. Furthermore, even the "bigger" companies were often going off the board to pick their voice talent. Why was that? Not enough resources to hire someone more famous? Smaller pool of experienced announcers who were active? Lack of availiabilty among the few veterans who were still working? Contractual obligations to certain distributors?
One that always sticks out to me is Mark Driscoll for NYSI'89. Anyone know the story as to how he got picked? (Replacing him with Don Morrow also seemed odd, since I don't think Morrow had done anything else for G-T.) I could see that they probably passed up Gene Wood since his plate was pretty full in 1989 (Super Password, Feud, Concentration, WLoD — was he still doing Your Number's Up, too?), but it just seems so strange that they went with an unknown quantity who'd never done a game show before, instead of someone whom they'd used before, like Bob Hilton or Rich Jeffries. I wonder if maybe G-T just wanted to try something different, which might also explain Burton Richardson doing TTTT'90.
M.G. Kelly doing Wheel also seemed kind of an oddball pick. This one struck me as odd, since it seems like they had decent time to find a replacement — especially since Jack seemed to have left before Season 5 ended. I base this on the fact that a.) Charlie is clearly heard on from a late Season 5 episode, and b.) several people telling me they recall hearing both Charlie O'Donnell and Johnny Gilbert fill in on daytime in Summer '88. What I also find odd is that contemporary articles call M.G. the "permanent" announcer (or at least, there's no verbiage implying that he was only a fill-in), and yet he only made it to February 1989.
tl;dr: How did some of these unknown quantities get picked? Some of them just seem downright random.