Posted on 03/07/2011 9:23:56 AM PST by Erik Latranyi
Last year, a young man called in to a radio station with a problem. Hed recently attended a bachelor party, he said, and a friend of the groom-to-be, clueless of the unwritten etiquette of maledom, brought his girlfriend along, derailing what was supposed to be a weekend of gambling, girls, and general debauchery. The caller told his story with passion and verve, and then asked the stations listeners for their advice on how to treat his clueless pal.
Or at least he would have, had this been a real conversation. The young manwho asked to remain nameless in order to protect his chances for future employmentwas an actor, and the staged call an audition. A short while later, he received the following email: Thank you for auditioning for Premiere On Call, it said. Your audition was great! Wed like to invite you to join our official roster of ready-to-work actors. The job, the email indicated, paid $40 an hour, with one hour guaranteed per day.
But what exactly was the work? The question popped up during the audition and was explained, the actor said, clearly and simply: If he passed the audition, he would be invited periodically to call in to various talk shows and recite various scenarios that made for interesting radio. He would never be identified as an actor, and his scenarios would never be identified as fabricatedwhich they always were.
Curious, the actor did some snooping and learned that Premiere On Call was a service offered by Premiere Radio Networks, the largest syndication company in the United States and a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications, the entertainment and advertising giant. Premiere syndicates some of the more sterling names in radio, including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity.
(Excerpt) Read more at tabletmag.com ...
There was a thread about this a couple of days ago so I was interested to see if Limbaugh said anything. He led off the show today going over this.
Might lend some credence to the FReepers who think Rush uses FR for some of his show prep. Not that there is a darn thing wrong with that, the crew here is bleeding edge on lots of stuff in the news.
Liberal hype! They want to believe so BADLY that people don’t really believe in conservative values. A person would have to be a paid actor to actually believe that stuff, right?! Not buying it for a minute. It is so transparent.
Republican ACTORS need to get work..Somehow.
/SARC!!!!!!
IF this were even remotely true, as an actor, this WOULD have crossed my DESK!!!
i reckon it’s OK for hillary to bring in staged, planted questions to her meet/greets?
Good gig. I'd do it. Too bad they took the website down :-(
“i reckon its OK for hillary to bring in staged, planted questions to her meet/greets?”
Just because the Left needs to do these things, they just can not fathom the right not needing to do the same. Just like rent a mob, they only know staged events.
They fear the real people of this country. So, they think slander will work. HA!
Yep. Immediately following Sheriff Dupnik's press conference following the Tucson shooting, FReepers started calling him "Sheriff Dipstick". Nor saying Rush's fertile mind couldn't have come up with the same nickname, but it started here.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
I see this as another attempt by the left to discredit conservative media outlets and to try and drive a wedge between conservatives and these shows.
Anytime this happens to Rush, he usually nails 'em as a leftist seminar caller or someone who tries to punk him. Rush has thousands of real stories of leftists making fools of themselves, that are free. He never has to pay for that stuff.
You just signed up 5 months ago just to post that?
They usually start with “I used to be a Republican, but....” then comes the DNC talking points. They’re very easy to spot, like trolls on FR.
The link on Premier is about two thirds down this page: http://www.premiereradio.com/category/view/prep_and_research.html
Rush handled this BS as a “housekeeping matter” right out of the box today.
GO RUSH! bttt
And this actor probably would sound “real”.
Now, when I listen to NPR’s On point or some of their other call-in shows, the people calling in NEVER sound “real”, most calls sound faked.
And I have no problem with the practice. These shows are primarily entertainment, and if a show has a dull spot and the conversation needs to be kick-started, a synthetic call works.
What makes me suspicious is that they’d have the actor actually call in. Why not do the call during the preshow prep and put it on a cart for the producer to run at precisely the correct time? Calling in, getting a clear line, and getting through the screener sounds risky when radio shows are timed closely.
so... an entertainment show hires entertainers?
*yawn*
why are we supposed to care about that?
I don’t think it should matter whether a talk show host uses actors to call in or uses screen callers to choose which callers to air. All talk show hosts are going to control their show in some fashion.
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