That reminds me. I need to send away for this teeth-whitening formula advertised on the Internet. Because this picture really sells the product! What also sells? Those infomercials on AM radio all weekend long. If you get stuck in event traffic and accidentally hit one of those ads, you might get sucked into it, thinking you are listening to a legit talk show.

The host is interviewing a guest who wrote a book, or sells a miracle formula [they are not called drugs] and the host gets really excited as the show progresses. Now, he is no longer objective. He sounds something close to Art Bell, buying into the alien body snatching scenario being told him. 

Gold is a great investment. We have been told this forever. This price fluctuates. Hey! Just like the stock market and …real estate. Risky? No, its GOLD!  The price at this moment is $913 an ounce USD. Since 1982, average annual gold prices have stayed between $300 and $450 per ounce. So, gold looks like a great investment, if this was 2004.   [You remember what happened in 2004? While the gold price was about $400, the housing market was booming! Now, the housing market is in the dumpster and the value of gold has doubled]. Should you invest in gold when it is at this price? Should you buy your gold from the guy that advertises on the radio? No, I don’t think so. He can’t even afford studio time to record his commercials. It sounds like he is phoning it in from a pay phone outside a Burger King. Kind of cheesy.

Feeling bloated and irritable? You need a colonic! Weekend radio across the AM dial is crammed (no pun) with ads about colon cleansers. Choose your poison. What great radio entertainment though! Poop talk.  There is actually a half hour infomercial specifically about poop. How it should look, how it should float, what you should eat to make it float. It used to be against the Broadcast Code to even mention slang terms like poop. But they did away with the Broadcast Code years ago. I guess it put a crimp in the potential entertainment value of the medium. Now, we can say poop on radio & tv. Life is better here.

Infomercials bring advertising dollars to radio, but practically no audience. That’s not what broadcasters should be doing in these troubled times. They should have a great product, a great sound, that they could run 24/7.  Instead, radio is boring, sounding the same here as radio in Palm Beach or Des Moines. This is just another reason radio seems to be losing audience the way newspapers are losing readership.

No related posts.