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Limbaugh/Hannity Parent Company Admits Hiring Actors to Call Radio Shows

Once again. These callers do not call the talk shows. This service provides callers for morning zoo type shows. Stop getting your news from Kos.
 
Renee is always winning, and yet, we've never even heard from her, but that will soon change when Barbara's name becomes Renee.
 
The original poster is correct in that the callers of most political talk shows are paid employees of Premiere Radio Networks (Clear Channel), the company that employs both Limbaugh and Hannity.

It isn't that the show screens callers, it is that the host knows the questions before the producers ever answers the phone. The calls are taken on a special phone line for that very purpose. The host may take one or two actual calls during the three hour show and those calls will be taken at the very end of the program.

The direction of the show is already pre-determined, scripted and ready to go well before the show begins.

If people actually think the host is going to take a "real caller" then they don't know this brand of talk radio. The owners of these programs will not leave anything for the most part to the imagination. Could you imagine if someone called pretending to be a conservative and was actually an educated caller such as an economist offering opposing views? It would be absolute mayhem as people like Limbaugh and Hannity can't actually refute real facts with substance. Limbaugh would stutter and Hannity would scream. Not a pretty sight.
 
"I wondered where Phil Hendrie got all his great guests for many years.
Now, I know!"

A lot of Hendrie's "guests" are really Hendrie himself in pre-recorded satirical bits which get played, then he reacts to them live in real time to complete the bit. So in a way, to the degree the other shows take pre-arranged calls, they're doing the same thing, only not for comic effect but for the illusion of real dilaogue, It's even possible a lot of the calls to these political shows are pre-recorded and voicetracked, with the host reacting live to the track...wouldn't surprise me.

You won't see that on a local show except in the very biggest markets because that takes too many production and editing people to put together and script for most local shows to afford. And there are some of us in the business who wouldn't do it even if we could...the spontaneity of live, unrehearsed radio is too good to just toss away. But if your purpose is not dialogue, information or entertaining live conversation but sale of an agenda, then scripting, recording, then tracking the whole thing becomes a predictable option. Do they do it that way? It would be interesting to know--it sure sounds rehearsed, that's for sure...
 
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