heh thats like a lot of the local news stations have a satellite wire service type of thing going on and it was discovered a lot of what was being beamed in was pretty much infomercial type of stuff
especially after a station played a 10-minute interview about some wonder cure and come to find out the corp selling the wonder cure staged the whole thing …
But a certain channel who used it a lot used to have the anchor talk over the video if it was “researchers say vitamin a cures fleas” and he expounded over a silent video it was beamed in
they would do the same thing for foreign newscasts
they get paid what an extra would get paid for the day …something like 3 or 400 dollars… some stars used to donate their appearance fees to charity after a movie tour …
I don’t think so. They used him as actual entertainment content to keep viewers watching the infomercial segments (described in OP). He used them to promote his upcoming album. No money changed hands cuz it’s a “win-win”.
Basically, the musician was the programming content and the sponsored chatter was the advertising. They also use the local/national news cut-ins and the weather segments as actual content to keep the viewer watching the “ads” in between.
Of course in addition to that they also run boatloads of regular old 30-second spots for Metamucil and Old Lincoln Colonial Liberty Washington Freedom Life Insurance.
They gotta be raking in the bucks, right? Not likely. I imagine their ratings are very low with mostly undesirable demographics. Chicken scratch.
If a multitude of music schools were trying to get free air-time in that market and one school paid a station to give them air-time THAT would be payola. That’s not what’s happening here.
But it is scummy and lame. And broadcasting regulations have changed allowing all sorts of malfeasance. I wouldn’t be surprised if actual “a Benjamin and an eight-ball” slid into a record sleeve was perfectly legal these days.
I didn’t get into specifics with my piano teacher. She only said the station ad dept had called and it was thousands of dollars. She just opened her school with 4 other teachers. They can’t afford advertising this expensive.
My friend keeps posting to Facebook “Check out this article USA today did about Primerica.”
When you read the article, it is clearly:
written by Primerica
paid content from Primerica that USA today has agreed to run
not from USA today(it contains a disclaimer that it is not from their editorial board)
Running the paid article is fine, I guess. I don’t like that Primerica agents(like my friend) pretend it is a real article run by the newspaper, as if the newspaper thinks they are newsworthy.
When I owned my distillery we sent a press release to every news station one of them came by to film a story and liked me and our product so much we were invited on their morning show to make a cocktail and then they came back 6 months later to do a follow up story. We never paid for any of it. Of course we only got a couple of dozen customers that ever admitted they saw us on the show so I would have been pissed if it cost us much.
I’m sure people pay for these spots but when one of my costars got on his local morning show it was for the same reason the show followed up on a press release.
Somewhere in the opening or closing credits there’s probably some quick announcement to the effect of “some segments in this program may be paid or promotional.” That’s really all the station is required to say.