And now, as major advertisers evaporated with the recession, the quality of advertisers is changing as a slew of marginals who station managers would once not have accepted, have taken over the airwaves.
Hiring professional voice talent to read an ad probably costs less than one well-placed spot on a major radio flight but I-recorded-it-myself! spots, once limited to car dealers and roofing companies, now run for loan companies, heath care providers, restaurants and products. Many have "I'll break your kneecaps," Chicago-style elocution.
Reciting the phone number has always been the payoff for direct response radio ads and it's often repeated twice. But only since the recession have phone numbers on radio ads actually become the ads, so many times are they repeated. No copywriter costs there!
And speaking of obnoxious, "Are Your Toenails Yellow And Ugly?" "Are Your Teeth Broken and Missing?" "Do You Suffer From Bladder Incontinence?" ads, normally buried in the back of "personal care" catalogues, are radio front and center these days.
Of course the recession brought out legions of debt consolidation and credit counseling companies promising to make "the collection calls stop." But in between are offers for EZ mortgages and loans of the sort that got us in to this mess. (See: learn from experience; not.) Stations are also shamelessly turning over entire hours of programming to financial analysts selling proven investment strategies and hawking the only safe place for your money right now (gold.)
And speaking of outsourced content, ABC Radio Networks now inflicts the sappy The Huckabee Report on listeners by former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee who's discovered, like Sarah Palin, it's more fun to be a talking head former governor than governor, leaving you more time to write your memoirs and hunt.
Another source of recession-era unpaid content are public service announcements or PSAs that tell you you're a bad parent and or you may be suffering from lupus. Some state departments of health have also been running H1N1 scare radio spots because they bought too much vaccine and can't get rid of it.
The recession has had one good effect on radio ads, though. Some advertisers like Geico and Netflix have amped up their satire.
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