This is probably a bleedin’ obvious question, but… I’ve listened to endless hours of crappy radio morning shows while driving, and the “crank call” is one of their usual offerings. Is it safe to assume that all these calls are fake and they just hire an actor to play the victim?
I wouldn’t be surprised, but in at least one of them, the prankee said “Hey aren’t you XXXXXXX (fill in name of radio personality here)”, so I don’t think they all are.
I dunno, I think that could easily be a “humorous” scripted moment as well.
On each show, I noticed that the “calls” all run about the same length of time and end in the same way; I don’t think a real victim would give permission for a lot of them to get aired.
I find it hard to believe that in this era of CallerID that anyone is able to crank call anyone else. And personally, I don’t find them to be funny, ever. Of course, I am an old grouch… 
Do you really mean a crank call, in which an apparently crazy (often bigoted) person calls in to the DJ/presenter, or are you talking about a prank call where the DJ/presenter pretends to be a crazy person calling some unsuspecting civilian? These are not at all the same thing.
I should have thought that the former were mostly for real, but I would not be surprised if many of the latter are fake, with the callee in on the joke, and very possibly an actor rather than who they are claimed to be.
I guess I was talking about “prank calls” where the DJ calls some random person with a silly premise. “Uhh… we need you to evacuate your house to make room for the King of Spain”
Why would you assume they aren’t real, and have to be scripted?
And haven’t we had this discussion before?
Not saying they’re necessarily scripted; I just picture the radio station having a few voice actors on hand who can humorously argue back at the caller. As I mentioned earlier, the calls all seem to follow the same pattern. I’m guessing that real calls would often be less entertaining and also get into messy permission disputes.
I read a recent article about an NYC actor and something they mentioned as an aside is one gig they use to make rent is recording prank calls for radio stations. They mentioned that nearly every call you hear like that is fake. I don’t know if that is true but I found it surprising if it was (I assumed that some were fake but not most).
A nurse named Jacintha Saldanha committed suicide and left notes blaming DJs. The DJs called pretending to be British royalty while Saldanha was on duty at a hospital where Kate Middleton was being treated. She had reportedly made multiple suicide attempts prior to the prank. Still, the DJs apparently felt great responsibility for her death and the owners of their station offered a large sum of money to the nurse’s family.
While it doesn’t involve death, this DJ prank call backfired in a spectacular way. It doesn’t sound fake, but who knows?
This prank call, originally hosted at Car Talk, is probably genuine since the woman’s father actually set her up. 
Are you kidding me? This sounds painfully fake and scripted.
I always just assumed that they taped the prank calls the afternoon before, and they just didn’t use the ones where the prankee hangs up right away/doesn’t respond the way they expect them to/recognizes the voice of the guy from the radio show.
Traditionally, the prank calls were unscripted; it’s quite clear from listening to Don Imus’s “1200 Hamburgers to Go” that the guy at the McDonald’s is no actor.
Radio stations, even large, lucrative ones, are notoriously cheap.
The reason DJs do that sort of thing is not because it’s particularly compelling radio, it’s simply because they have airtime to fill and prank calls cost nothing. It doesn’t help the bottom line at all to have a bunch of voice actors just sitting around just for the purposes of staging prank calls.
I believe the War of the Roses prank was originally true, but find it really hard to believe that people continually fall for it, let alone give permission to the radio station to air it. Here’s an article from a few years ago with voice actors claiming it’s all fake.
They used to be real and now they are mostly not. Now in order to air someone’s voice on the air you have to be given specific permission. If you tape a person with the intent of putting them on the radio you must tell them before you tape them. It used to be that you could tape someone and then get them to agree afterwards.
This is just for the US other countries have different laws.
Thanks, great article. Sounds like these calls are definitely fake, especially if they are “calling” some random Joe with a humorous petty dispute. But it’s possibly real if they take the trouble to call well-known people like Sarah Palin or the British royal family.
Yes War of the Roses is fake. The bit is owned by Clear Channel. The actors who do it go on station after station around the country.
Prank calls on radio used to be real. At least some of them. Now it is illegal. The FCC changed the rule several years ago. Now they are fining radio channels if they air prank calls. No one is on the air without knowing they are on the air first. http://www.lsglegal.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=178&Itemid=60
ETA: of course that only covers the US. The prank involving the Royal Family was from Australia.