Who are those people that call Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc? Ya ever wonder about that? Wonder no more...
Well, it turns out that many (if not all) of them are blatant fakes, actors hired to make "interesting" or "supportive" calls. Yep, that's right, they're paid shills. And they come from a place called Premiere Radio Networks, which is, not surprisingly, a subsidiary of Clear Channel Communications. The people you hear "calling in" are often nothing more than paid actors reciting a script, but pretending to be real, live callers.
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]"Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service," read the service's website, which disappeared as this story was being reported (for a cached version of the site click [a href="vny!://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:V-DrnPsRQeoJ:www.premiereradio.com/shows/view/premiere_on_call.html+premiere+on+call&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.com"]here[/a]). "We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we'll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won't hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners."[/p] The actors hired by Premiere to provide the aforementioned voice talents sign confidentiality agreements and so would not go on the record. But their accounts leave little room for doubt. All of the actors I questioned reported receiving scripts, calling in to real shows, pretending to be real people. Frequently, one actor said, the calls were live, sometimes recorded in advance, but never presented on-air as anything but real.[/p]"Premiere provides a wide variety of audio services for radio stations across the country, one of which is connecting local stations in major markets with great voice talent to supplement their programming needs," Nelson wrote in an email. "Voice actors know this service as [em]Premiere On Call[/em]. Premiere, like many other content providers, facilitates casting—while character and script development, and how the talent's contribution is integrated into programs, are handled by the varied stations."[/p][a href="vny!://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/58759/radio-daze/"]vny!://www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/58759/radio-daze/[/a]
[/p][hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"][/p]So it seems that most (or maybe even all) of those lunatics you hear on Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, etc...they're fake. This doesn't surprise me- what surprises me is how widespread this fakery is. You'd think people like Limbaugh or Beck could come up with real people to call their show...but they can't, and that should give you something to think about, no?
