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St. Pete Times Bashes WWBA
- Thread starter smedge2006
- Start date
D
DaleGriffin
Guest
Nothing illegal here I would be willing to bet anything that there is a disclaimer that this ad was a paid program and to consult a doctor blah blah regular diet blah blah exercise somewhere in the program... And the claim "overnight" obviously does not mean in one nighttime, no reasonable person would be surprised they did not lose 10 lbs overnight..
Must be nothing going in St. Pete right now because this is more of a commentary on a guy who needs to find other things to write about or a new gig.
Must be nothing going in St. Pete right now because this is more of a commentary on a guy who needs to find other things to write about or a new gig.
Maybe you're inured to the relentless drone of infomercials across the AM dial every weekend. I have to think some of the P1s of talk radio aren't. Yeah, yeah, they support the programming during the week... maybe true when AM radio was local. So they support the syndication during the week? Or they support the other infomercials that run during the week on some stations? Doesn't say much for the audience for talk radio... especially the conservative kind. Talk supposedly has the "smartest" audience, yet it is subjected to some of the dumbest "content"... maybe the conservative talk audience isn't as bright as the PDs like to claim it is.
It's not as if radio has a stellar reputation with this kind of advertising... Body Solutions... Seasilver... Bogdana... Bee Pollen... Kevin Trudeau's Mega Memory... etc. etc. You could fill a medium-sized prison with all the quacks, charlatans and scamsters who have populated (poopulated?) AM radio on Saturdays and Sundays...
(Sigh) Does anyone remember when AM weekend talk radio was interesting? The days of local part-time hosts doing topical talk, the FLA Lounge, etc.?
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DaleGriffin
Guest
smedge2006 said:
Sigh? How about a sigh because you just completely changed topic and implied I was talking in about content on the weekend. In reality I made the mistake of actually responding to the first post about the legalities of the informercials.
But since you wanted to basically whine AGAIN about talk radio and this time under the guise of quality weekend programming, I will play along. Here it goes, I agree with you, P1s leave the radio off on the weekends because the programming sucks. Money talk, computer shows and informercials do not bring the audience during the week why do we do it on the weekend? Answer, weekends are a waste for talk radio so they fill it with crap and walk away. Why pay a host to do a show no one will listen to?
I unlike most of the crybabies here have an answer; the smedges and Don62s of this world should pitch local weekend shows and offer to either buy or sell the time. Get your talk on and make it successful on the weekends and then get it on during the week. Show there is success and you can change the game.
Will they try to do this? No.
Will they bitch and moan? Yes.
smedge2006 said:
Don't forget financier Wade "Crook"... he was finally dropped from WHNZ's nearly all-infomercial lineup after being indicted in 12 states and fleeing to the Bahamas to escape prosecution.
As far as the stool health infomercial, WHNZ had one program where the host went on very excitedly about his daughter's "three-footer" (asking "how did something so big come out of someone so small", conjuring up a very unpleasant image). He gushes about how his child ran and summoned him to the bathroom after an exceptionally large deposit so he could see it. He also says at one point: "you wouldn't make a sandwich and leave it on the counter for three days and then eat it, would you?" Overall, it was the most disgusting show I ever heard, and sounded almost like a Saturday Night Live skit, "Colon Blow" perhaps. I brought this to the attention of upper management repeatedly, even supplying taped excerpts, but nothing was ever done. The marching orders were: unless it's actually illegal, it's okay to air if their check clears. That program did air on WHNZ probably >1000 times over several years, in a 1-2pm weekday slot (it's probably still running). At one point, it was the highest rated hour on the station, with a 0.001 share or something (a slight exaggeration).
The bottom line is: money talks (and bankers & investors control the medium). Hell, Glenn Beck is now pitching products. News people are forced to say "I'm lovin' it", as if they love McDonald's food and eat it all the time. The line between editorial and sales is gone, sacrificed to the holy name of Profit. Infomercials and paid shows eventually made up nearly 50% of the weekday programming on 'HNZ. Yet somewhere around 35,000 people tuned it at least once every week, and the station turned a profit.
And this formerly highly regulated medium (radio) has been going steadily downhill since before Deregulation. You are left with a thimbleful of quality programming diluted by a bucketful of snake oil. The real loser: the public, and they're still buying Colon Blow. So who's to blame?
Dale Jackson said:
Hey, what about me??? I'm more of a "crybaby" than either of those dudes.
Clearly these shows that talk about colon cleansers are in a gray area. Thanks to the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, passed after lobbyists put on TV commercials with Ted Danson scaring the hell out of people by suggesting Gestapo-style raids of vitamin stores were on the way, they're not required to prove anything before they put a "supplement" on the market.
The claim that we're walking around with impacted goo stuck in our innards is based on a theory about the digestive system that was disproven (by real doctors) in the 1920s. Yet it "sticks" around, aided by marketing charlatans who employ the paranoid style of talk radio ("they" don't want you to know this) to great effect.
Let's put it this way, if we had real regulators instead of people who work for the industries they supposedly regulate, this stuff would be illegal.
The last thing we need is more brokered shows on the weekends. That only makes the problem worse. The skill set to sell a show and the skill sets of talent are often mutually exclusive. That is one reason why Programming and Sales are (or used to be, before 1996 or so) separate departments at most radio stations. If you broker a show, the definition of success will be: Does the check clear? Not, does this become something that can retain audience or build audience. Generally, the people who can program a decent show are not super-sellers, and they're being asked to do something that real sellers can't even do: Sell spots on the weekends in time periods surrounded by colon cleanser infomercials.
If you want an example of why this is not a good idea, look at Jacksonville talk radio and sports talk radio. Only two hundred or so miles north of Tampa, but Jacksonville has never had local sports radio or talk radio worth a darn in the ratings. Reason: from the days of the late Jay Solomon forward, most sports talk in Jax (with the possible exception of a Jaguars show or two on WOKV) has been brokered. Sports hosts had to spend half the day as salespeople. Result: the best sellers stay on the air, not the best talents. The ratings have mostly stunk, making it necessary for the stations to sell more brokered time. Vicious circle.
Let me defer to the wisdom of somebody who has worked with many talk stations, a man with whom I disagree on a lot but who still "gets it", Walter Sabo, from his strategy paper "Playing Polkas at Night"...
http://www.sabomedia.com/papers.php?id=11
I'm sure a lot of the PDs in talk radio today think they're geniuses. Truth is, they've been living off the fumes of a previous era, when talk stations weren't all syndication and infomercials, and actually used off hours and weekends to develop hosts and concepts. Thanks to the de-localization and monetization of those off-peak times, that farm system is gone. God help the pack mentality, paint by numbers Talk PD's when Limbaugh and Hannity hang it up and they look for the next generation -- which never got the chance to bust its radio chops in the time slots that were all sold to Colon Cauterizer #12, call now at 888-PFFFFFT....
Here's what talk stations need to do. Get those hours filled with local shows. By anybody. Preferably the twentysomethings and early thirtysomethings who are, you hope, talk radio's future listeners. (The aforementioned "FLA Lounge" show was an example of this concept.) Pay them minimum wage, or barter them a couple of spots to sell. Don't broker. Brokering brings out the sellers and the business-promoters and the scamsters, not the talent. Do it, before your ace pitchers' arms all go out and you find yourself at the bottom of the Arbitron standings...
If only today's clowns could suffer the same fate as "Doctor" Brinkley. The Mexicans shut down his radio station, the gringos shut down his clinic, and he died a broken man.
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DaleGriffin
Guest
Before I go throught this I have to ask you smedge, did you even read what I wrote?
How is that response to what you quoted from me?
Dude, seriously, does this make any sense to you. I said clearly lose the tradiotional infomercials and put on something the people want, the only part I implied selling the time to was the wannabe-liberal or wannabe-local hosts that can't get on to cut there teeth. If you can't get in the door the normal way, pay your way in.
If it is on AM, it does pretty much end at 7PM, sorry those are facts. This is still a business, buy the time and sell it and show that a local show will work on an AM at night.
AGAIN, that is exactly what I said, except instead of crybabying you can not get a local or liberal host or show. I say pay to get it on, show it will work and grow it.
smedge2006 said:
How is that response to what you quoted from me?
Dude, seriously, does this make any sense to you. I said clearly lose the tradiotional infomercials and put on something the people want, the only part I implied selling the time to was the wannabe-liberal or wannabe-local hosts that can't get on to cut there teeth. If you can't get in the door the normal way, pay your way in.
If it is on AM, it does pretty much end at 7PM, sorry those are facts. This is still a business, buy the time and sell it and show that a local show will work on an AM at night.
AGAIN, that is exactly what I said, except instead of crybabying you can not get a local or liberal host or show. I say pay to get it on, show it will work and grow it.
MisterNews said:
Actually, that sounds funny, talking about your daughter having a "bowl winder". Lighten up, dude!!! Anyone have tape of this? Now, that's one I'd actually check out!!!
Pay-your-way-in won't work BECAUSE you won't get the best talent -- only the best sellers. You'll get people who try to crowd in 20 minutes of commercials to pay for the hour of (overpriced) airtime. A program that is not an infomercial is set up to fail in a brokered format, because the rates are set by demand from those companies that do the colon-blow shows. The show that isn't selling magical pills can't cover the nut, and is a financial failure -- regardless of whether it might have been a creative success. Jacksonville sports radio is full of people who "paid their way in", and the results are obvious to anybody from out of town who drives in and listens.
I think Mr. Sabo outranks you on this one. Good thing they didn't follow your philosophy 20+ years ago, or the world would never have heard of Tom Leykis, Lionel, Neil Rogers or Bob Lassiter, all of whom did local talk at night early in their careers. Imagine if any of them had had to "buy" their way in.
... and basically admitted on the air that conservative talk radio listeners are idiots... "helpless, hopeless hypochondriacs".
D
DaleGriffin
Guest
This is the real world, play by the rules or sit on the sidelines.smedge2006 said:
All true statements but, "This is the real world, play by the rules or sit on the sidelines."
But it's not the real world -- and never has been. It's an environment of artificial protection from competition (until the internet), restrictions on numbers and power of signals, and all kinds of things to keep out competitors -- and fresh ideas. The "rules" have been bent out of shape -- they used to ban infomercials altogether. A quote from University of Florida Student Senator Gavin Baker, who attended the FCC's media hearing April 30 in Tampa:
http://www.gavinbaker.com/archives/56
In the past, those who wanted to be on the radio paid their dues: in sweat at small stations for low wages, until they had achieved some degree of mastery of their craft. Now that is no longer enough. Paying dues in the eyes of Dale Jackson, literally means paying dues: cutting a check and hoping you can survive selling spots -- something the stations can't even do themselves in the time slots they wish to sell you.
Twenty years ago, there were armies of fresh-faced kids who wanted to get into radio. Now those armies are down to trickles, and you want to put up a toll-gate for the few that remain and actually have some fresh ideas for a talk radio medium that desperately needs them as insurance against the day when the youngest person who knows how to tune an AM radio turns 55 and vanishes off the demographic map. The wasteland of the AM dial -- especially in this market, a collection of some of the most wasted signals in the country in what was once a flourishing creative center of talk radio -- shows what happens when we "play by the rules."
These people could save the industry from its own shortsightedness and stupidity, if only the price of entry weren't trying to outbid Colon Jack for time on an afterthought AM station.
Responses like yours help to explain the growing number of people who hope for the obsolescence or abolition of commercial terrestrial radio in this nation.
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