It's the beginning of the weekend. You've set up your booth in the carnival at the local county fair the night before, it's Saturday mid-morning, the crowd is thin and a little disinterested.
You start your spiel. Again, For the ten thousandth time.
The crowd stands off at a distance, too great a distance.
Suddenly from the back of the crowd a voice is heard. Someone who seems to have seen you before, maybe last year. Talking loudly to whoever will listen, the talker has seen your product, has bought your product, loves your product.
With a carefully measured, mounting enthusiasm, it's almost as if the talker and you are working off a script.
But that can't be, can it?
Too much coincidence, and too easy to get caught.
Right?
Wrong.
In the carny trade it's called "shilling" -- the talker at the back of the audience is the "shill" -- and over time it's been honed to a fine art.
Scene change: AM Talk Radio.
Find here an online application form where you, too, can become a for-pay talk radio caller.
I first heard of this over the last weekend via Twitter. (I may be a little behind on this, or maybe the story's just getting legs).
The story itself seems to have been broken in an article dated February 11, 2011, on "Tablet: a new read on Jewish life" titled:
Radio Daze
This week’s parasha introduces a medium for distinguishing truth from falsehood. On the radio, where actors are hired to read scripts and pretend to be real people, things aren’t so simple.
Let them tell the story:
"Last year, a young man called in to a radio station with a problem. He’d recently attended a bachelor party, he said, and a friend of the groom-to-be, clueless of the unwritten etiquette of maledom, brought his girlfriend along, derailing what was supposed to be a weekend of gambling, girls, and general debauchery. The caller told his story with passion and verve, and then asked the station’s listeners for their advice on how to treat his clueless pal.
Or at least he would have, had this been a real conversation. The young man—who asked to remain nameless in order to protect his chances for future employment—was an actor, and the staged call an audition. A short while later, he received the following email: “Thank you for auditioning for Premiere On Call,” it said. “Your audition was great! We’d like to invite you to join our official roster of ‘ready-to-work’ actors.” The job, the email indicated, paid $40 an hour, with one hour guaranteed per day.
But what exactly was the work? The question popped up during the audition and was explained, the actor said, clearly and simply: If he passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio. He would never be identified as an actor, and his scenarios would never be identified as fabricated—which they always were.
“I was surprised that it seemed so open,” the actor told me in an interview. “There was really no pretense of covering it up.”"
Continuing:
"Curious, the actor did some snooping and learned that Premiere On Call was a service offered by Premiere Radio Networks, the largest syndication company in the United States and a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, the entertainment and advertising giant. Premiere syndicates some of the more sterling names in radio, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity. But a great radio show depends as much on great callers as it does on great hosts: Enter Premiere On Call."
mkay... well, no one ever said Talk Radio was supposed to be real, did they?
Well, actually they did, and do. The founding premise of drive-time, AM Talk Radio is that it's just plain 'ol folks calling in to spout off on whatever is bothering them in their busy, day-to-day working-class lives.
"Radio Daze" finishes with:
"We’ve come a long way. Far from harbingers of truth, our media are now increasingly used to shake the foundations of the real. We know this to be the case with television, where the stars of reality programming are frequently found to follow the blueprints of writers and producers. And we know it to be the case online, where identity has become a playground and masquerading the norm. But radio seemed different. We listen to radio because the voice, we think, doesn’t lie. The voice is immediate and intimate and present. We attach ourselves to radio personalities with an intensity we’d never dream to extend to, say, television hosts—just look at the fierce and unparalleled devotion to Howard Stern—and this is because we feel as if we know them and trust them.
It is time to question this notion as well. The next caller you hear, the next personal story that makes you sniffle or shout with rage, may be the doing of someone at some faceless casting agency, hiring actors and writing scripts designed to titillate. The point is, without something like the hoshen, an object capable of channeling the celestial spirit and telling truth from lie, we’ll never know."
OK: so maybe all of this is just not too earthshaking, given our cynical, manipulated world view.
Well, for a minor dose of deja vu, take a look at a partial list of clients for Premiere On Call:
Fox News Radio Network
Fair and Balanced news that provides top of the hour newscasts actuality services, branded audio sounders, and more.
The Glenn Beck Program
Known for his quick wit, candid opinions and engaging personality, Beck has attracted millions of viewers and listeners.
The Rush Limbaugh Show
Affiliates of The Rush Limbaugh Show form an elite group of radio stations that have helped redefine the political landscape while becoming the most popular talk stations in their markets.
The Sean Hannity Show
Hannity is the second-most-listened-to talk show host in America who is heard on more than 500 radio stations nationwide by 13.5 million weekly listeners. The Sean Hannity Show launched into national syndication on September 10, 2001...
And just to be Fair and Balanced(tm):
Keep Hope Alive with Reverend Jesse Jackson
An American icon, international statesman, and one of our nation's leading civil rights advocates, Jesse Jackson takes on current topics in a weekly nationally-syndicated radio program.
Sooo...
Some of the most popular programs devoured by the working-class, Joe Sixpack, drive-time AM Talk Radio world are -- wait for it -- deliberately manipulated!
Knock me over with a feather!
A carny would call this, again, "shilling".
Personally I call it "lying".
I wonder what Joe Sixpack would think...
- bp