Talk Radio Walks Promotional Line
It’s getting rough out there in the world of talk radio. If you don’t believe it, just look at the lengths to which stations are going to get listeners’ attention.
In the most recent example, a campaign running on KABC-AM (790) features an announcer who intones, “People are talking about KABC,” followed by a series of noticeably scripted comments by several other voices, praising the station’s programming and hosts.
But the voices in question do not belong to the people who came up with those thoughts. The advertisements were delivered by “random people” connected to the station’s production crew, according to KABC programming director Erik Braverman.
Station officials say there is nothing misleading or inappropriate about the ads. KABC executives selected comments made by members during focus group research and had its staff find speakers who “closely approximated” the ages of the original respondents.
Still, when one person recently called into “Mr. KABC,” who hosts the “Ask Mr. KABC” show from 7 to 9 p.m. weeknights, to ask whether the station’s testimonials are legitimate, the host quickly dropped the call and picked up the next line.
The campaign, which began last month, is part of KABC’s ongoing marketing efforts as the flagship ABC station seeks to hold onto its listenership and recover some of the ground lost to other talk stations in recent years.
Of course, KABC has no monopoly on what some might consider dubious promotional practices--even within the narrow confines of local talk radio.
Los Angeles’s top-rated talk station, KFI-AM (640), is known for its arcane promotions and gimmicks. During the presidential campaign, for example, KFI hung posters in bus shelters with tongue-in-cheek, risque slogans playing off President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s names.
In July, the station posted billboards for “The Phil Hendrie Show”--whose host takes on the identity of several characters as part of his nightly act--that simply stated: “Hendrie. Suicide. 10-1-01. KFI 640.”
The advertisement is meant to spark intrigue in the program while promoting the station as edgy, said Bill Lewis, director of Los Angeles AM marketing for Clear Channel Communications, which owns KFI.
“Suicide’s a strong word We want people to know we are an opinionated radio station.”
While the idea of playing with the content of man-on-the-street testimonials may sound relatively mild, such advertising has come into sharper focus since revelations about movie studios running ads featuring what turned out to be their own employees to promote films.
About seven years ago, according to Lewis, KFI ran listener testimonials on television similar to KABC’s current radio ads. After a direct-marketing campaign to solicit feedback from listeners, the station invited 50 to 60 of the most outspoken respondents to audition for the 30-second television spots.
The result: three commercials featuring the 20 or so finalists, who were made up and then shot at a handful of the Southland’s “familiar settings,” such as the Third Street Promenade.
“We don’t give people lines, [but] we’ll ask them a pointed question” to elicit a response, Lewis said. “We have enough listeners not to have to hire any.”
While both the KABC and KFI campaigns play with reality in different ways, their producers seem not to be too worried about whether such advertising sleight-of-hand tricks listeners or in any way undermines the station’s credibility.
“It’s all imaging. It’s no different than what music stations do when they claim they are the No. 1 station--and that is really subjective,” KABC’s Braverman said. “I don’t think it’s misleading. It would be misleading if we made things up, but these were verbatim comments.”
In addition, as long as testimonials serve as a hook to build an image and attract listeners--in a business where every tenth of a rating point can translate into thousands of dollars--how literally the public takes such commercials is irrelevant, said Al Peterson, the talk editor for Radio & Records magazine.
“It’s all about getting an image and the recall factor,” he said. “I don’t know that anyone in L.A. ever really believes that these people really are typical listeners--it’s like when actors say a restaurant is their favorite, and you know that’s not true.”
The general assumption, then, is that listeners are savvy enough to recognize such material for what it is, and isn’t.
“I think most people can spot the difference between what’s credible and not credible,” Clear Channel’s Lewis added.
“A testimonial is essentially the next best thing to word-of-mouth if you can identify with that person.”