Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

gers long to spot phoney network stars after one song. Watch out for station officials who charge money for auditions. Frequently the managers of small stations charge anywhere from a dollar to five dollars an audition. T*£ WARE of giving your talent free, even if you are a be0 ginner, unless you are sure of your station's good faith. It's a common practice to give a beginner a weekly program on the supposition that some sponsor will listen in. Sometimes the studio even charges you for the privilege of broadcasting. In one case two or three radio stations hired a man as "vocal and dramatic coach." He didn't get a salary. He didn't need one, because he got free talent for the stations on his list and made money for himself besides. He'd tell those who auditioned that they were fine, but that they needed a little more experience and microphone technique. Then he'd send them to a "school" with which he was connected and assign them programs on the station. Every week when they came to do their free broadcasts he'd tell them how great an improvement the school had made in their work. It could go on for months, the school getting the pupil's money, the station his talent — and the pupil himself getting exactly nowhere. I know a girl with a fine voice and considerable talent. She had been singing for nothing over a local station, hoping to get a sponsored program. At last, the chance came. She sang once on a commercial show, for which she was to receive seven dollars. But the days went by and the program manager, who had been supposed to pay her, made no move to do so. At last she plucked up courage and asked him for the money. He pretended not to know what she was talking about at first, but when she insisted he grew ugly and let her know plainly that she'd better forget about the seven dollars if she expected to continue singing over that station. Even if you get a salaried job on a small station your troubles aren't necessarily over. Announcers and other staff artists have been known to be paid off in checks post-dated thirty days, on the plea that the station is short of funds at the moment but will surely have enough to cover on the day the check carries on its dateline. When that day comes the bank sends the check back marked "N. S. F." — but meanwhile the station has secured thirty days of the artist's time for nothing. And if the artist is sufficiently gullible the station is sometimes able to string him along for still another thirty days. If you're the father or mother of a child who performs on the air, watch out for the type of program which popularizes a group of children by means of a sustaining program, then puts them all into a valuable act and exploits them for nice profits of which the children and their parents see little or nothing. It's been done. Perhaps you're a beginner not in the performing end of radio, but in the advertising end. Perhaps you've often wanted to tell the world— or your own neighborhood — what you have to sell, and have only been deterred by the high cost. Well, if so, check up on the radio salesman who offers you a program for lower prices than that quoted on the rate-cards of established stations, because the chances are there's something wrong. A simple, but very effective, trick is employed by some stations — to broadcast free, unsolicited programs for famous 16 IF YOU'VE BEEN TAKEN IN BY THE LEECHES WHO USE RADIO TO PROMOTE THEIR SCHEMES, REPORT THEM NOW national advertisers. Of course, the advertisers in whose name the programs are put on the air know nothing of what's happening, never hear the programs, never receive bills for them. But the station which has broadcast the fake program solicits paying clients by saying, or even printing, that such and such famous firms are among its customers. Not simple, but fearfully complicated, is another petty racket which one married couple thought up and put into practice. Twice a week they would dress up in overalls and leave their home at four in the morning. Busily they delved into ash cans and refuse barrels, peeling the labels off discarded tin cans. These labels they took home and carefully sorted. Then they'd go to see the local distributor of a well known brand of canned goods and talk him into paying 1 100 or so for a test radio program over a small station. Maybe they couldn't get $100— okay, they'd take $50. On the program they'd offer a small prize — say a toy balloon — in return for the label from a can of the goods being advertised, as evidence of purchase. A few weeks after the broadcast they'd be back in the distributor's office, carrying 10,000 or so neatly packaged labels and a list of names and addresses culled from the telephone book. Obligingly, they'd offer to mail out the toy balloons, and the distributor would give them the balloons and the necessary postage. Thereupon the couple would sell the balloons and the postage stamps, too, and wouldn't be heard of around that distributor's office again. . . . It sounds like a lot of work which might more profitably have been turned into honest channels, but that's the way it was done. Don't put too much faith, either, in the small station which claims to cover a lot of territory. Find out how many watts it is supposed to be broadcasting on, and then find out how much territory, on an average, a station with that amount of power should cover. If the station in, question has a listening area larger than it should have with its published amount of power, you'd better steer clear of it. Permission to increase power must be obtained from the F. C. C, but many small stations go right ahead and increase their power anyway, without permission. Then they point out to prospective advertisers what a lot of territory their programs reach — and at no extra cost to the client, either. That their illegal power increase has caused them to interfere with a distant station on the same wavelength doesn't worry these gentlemen in the least. test AGAIN, look before you leap if you are offered a i program, half the prfce to be paid when the contract is signed, the other half to be paid only when — and if— the program has increased your business. The proposition may be strictly on the level, and again it may not. This is how it has sometimes been worked: A promoter approaches a merchant or distributor and offers him a one-broadcast program composed of well-known and popular vaudeville personalities who are appearing at a local theater. The half payment down, half if business improves, offer sounds pretty swell to the prospective advertiser. All these famous people whose names the promoter is rattling off so glibly, on his program! If they boost business, he figures, he won't mind paying the second half of the money; if it doesn't get (Continued on page 77)