[NYTr] Nader: Payola to Right-wing Radio Talk Shows

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Aug 11, 2007
http://www.counterpunch.org/nader08112007.html

Payola to Rightwing Talk Shows?

GM Radio

By RALPH NADER

Just when one guesses that the standards and practices of national talk
radio could go no lower, General Motors comes along to show the way to
new lows.

Automotive News (August 6, 2007), the leading trade journal for the
industry, reports that GM is wooing the radio stars. Its article led
with the headline: “Puff Piece. Rush Limbaugh is one of the radio
personalities GM is working with to talk up its vehicles.”

Reporter Mary Connelly writes that “GM says it doesn’t pay the stars
directly for their endorsements, although it advertises on their shows.
It gives them new GM cars and trucks to drive for two weeks each month.
The company also invites the celebrities to Detroit for private
meetings with top executives and VIP tours of GM facilities. The
attention is paying off.”

Sam Mancuso, GM’s director of brand marketing alliances, told Ms.
Connelly that his company made contact with 17 national radio hosts
along with numerous local talk show personalities in cities such as
Dallas and Los Angeles.

Mr. Mancuso is pleased with the results. The talkers are talking up GM
vehicles on their programs—no doubt encouraged by GM’s ample
advertising budget on those same stations.

He emphasized that GM does not give these radio celebrities any
scripts. Which allows for the kind of impromptu creativity that he said
reflects a “real emotional connection” with an audience that “knows
they are being genuine.”

This is just what you need to know about a company’s engineered
vehicles—words which flow from an emotional connection garnished with
free use of vehicles and other freebies!

Take Rush Limbaugh’s effusions to his dittoheads: “GM has a ton of
momentum,” he exhaled, “GM cars and trucks have never been better.”
This assertion doesn’t tell his followers much, however, inasmuch as
GM’s cars have never been hard acts to follow.

But the Rush doesn’t stop there. He waxes further: “They [GM] are
working hard and they are thinking smart. Believe in General Motors,
folks.”

Before you can aspire to do that, you have to believe in Limbaugh and
all the other talkers – takers of GM’s largess. Atom Smasher, a
modestly named Dallas disc jockey, was positively oozing on the air: “I
am driving around in this Cadillac, and I am not going to want to give
it back – the Cadillac SRX…. To all the guys at GM: Good job.”

His crosstown colleague, Chris Ryan, might as well have been crossing
over to his advertising buddies and doing the ad. But this was not ad
time. This was program time when he declared: “Have you seen all the
cool things that’s going on at GM? I have. If you’re thinking about a
new car, you got to look at GM.”

The auto industry has long been brazen when it comes to using its
advertising clout. Way back when he was in Dayton, Ohio, Phil Donahue
was cut off from car dealer ads after having a program on car dealer
deception.

The Washington Post found local auto dealers going over to its smaller
competitor, The Washington Star years ago, after a Post columnist tore
into car dealer fraud. The dealers made it possible for the Star to
start an auto puff section with their ads.

More than a few talk show hosts already read their station’s ads.
That’s not enough. GM, viewing the inundation of product placements in
movies, is pushing the envelope of advertising integration through talk
radio program content.

What is surprising is that GM purportedly enlisted not only the
expected suspects like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Bill O’Reilly
but also Bill Press and Ed Schultz, know for their liberal views.
Attempts to reach Press, Schultz and Hannity were unsuccessful. Surely,
they will be explaining their relationship shortly.

In the radio music disc jockey world, taking such freebies would be
considered payola to push songs. Under Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) rules, such gifts would be illegal.

So, what about the talk radio arena? Good question. If the freebies are
fully and regularly disclosed, then maybe there is a distinction
between what is unlawful and what is unethical.

In any event, the FCC needs to investigate. Secretary of Commerce,
Herbert Hoover, later to become President in the nineteen twenties,
called radio “a public trust.” He believed the public airwaves, being
owned by the people, should convey no advertisements whatsoever.

What a gap between the arch-conservative, Herbert Hoover, and today’s
so-called conservative talk show gabbers!

[Ralph Nader is the author of The 17 Traditions.]