"Fleecing the Lame" - Commentary by Tony Seton

Fleecing the Lame

I happened to be listening to a cheesoid AM radio station the other day where a friend does a morning news/talk show. I don’t listen because the signal is so poor where we live, but I checked in through the static this particular morning to find out if my friend was back from vacation. As he wasn’t getting any calls, I dialed in and told the young lady I had a comment. She took my name and after some clicking and clucking sounds, I was disconnected, presumably inadvertently. That’s how they run that station.

Anyway, while I was listening, I heard a spot for the Midwest Life Insurance Company of Tennessee, which said that you wouldn’t jump out of a plane at 17,000 feet without a parachute so you shouldn’t be without their life insurance. The ad was delivered in one of those semi-breathless don’t-miss-out voices that automatically clicks up my auditory firewall, but I overrode it because I’m interested in what messaging different stations do, what kind of time they are selling, and to whom do they think they are broadcasting.

I figure it this way. The radio station’s sales staff doesn’t care a whit who buys time on their station so long as the purchaser’s check clears the bank. They’ll promise the moon -- oh, everyone listens to our station -- but it is up to the advertiser to decide if the people tuned in might possibly become buyers of the goods and services being peddled. That’s good for the radio folks, since most agencies buying time nationally, especially in smaller markets, are thoroughly clueless about the locals’ buying patterns; they’re just taking a 15% commission on the money they’re spending.

What does it say about a station that sells to companies that suggest that jumping without a parachute is like not having insurance? I mean, first of all, the metaphor doesn’t make any sense, but secondly, do you really want to be programming to people who would fall for such stuff? Not that such folks don’t comprise a significant tier of radio listenership -- they’re not really good for much else -- it’s just that there’s something tawdry about fleecing the lame.

Of course low-rider radio isn’t alone. There are whole television networks devoted to hawking high-glitz trash to couches filled with retirees and housecows whose minds have all the function of a clogged rain gutter. Kinda like, too, the scalpees at the redskin casinos -- hey, they get to build them because they’re Indians -- who are merely pawns in our devilish capitalist redistribution of the wealth.

This commerce is a sordid aspect of our society. We should purchase what we need, not squander resources because some not-even-clever huckster tickles our brainstem with the glint of a bauble or the sizzle of salt-‘n-grease.

And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.