Re: scam at WALE

["Pete Ferrand" <pete@vermontel.net>]

I think it was last year some time that the aforementioned J.C. Clayton of
WALE called me at WNTK and asked if I had any religious programming that I
would like to distribute. Since I didn't it made for a pretty short phone
call, but he seemed courteous and straightforward.

WALE has to my knowledge contacted people over the years who were
self-employed in some type of business that dealt with retail customers,
such as accounting, stocks, health food and such, and approached them with
offers to produce a program and put it on the air for a fee. When I worked
in RI a few years ago I heard some of them and some were called in to the
station by telephone - for an hour or two at a time.

I don't know whether any misrepresentations were made, but it didn't sound
like good radio to me. I wonder how many of these people were successful at
promoting their businesses and stayed on to renew their contracts - that
would be the ultimate test of whether this worked. It could be that WALE is
trying to scam people who are, in turn, trying to scam others.

Back in the early 70's I ran across an outfit in New Jersey that was
reselling time to it had bought on radio to "producers" with the promise of
having sales people find sponsors, something that never materialized, but of
course they made it sound like an easy way to get into radio and make money.

While time-brokering has been around almost since radio and tv began, I
think the overall impression I get of WALE is that it's not so much of a
scam as it is a poor deal. People spend money, they get shows on the air,
but it looks like they pay a higher price for less audience than they could
elsewhere.

In this world if you don't know what you're doing you will get taken
advantage of.

- -Pete

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