One of my morning listens as I drive to office is Radio One (94.3 FM, from Mid Day Group). The RJ for the morning show is Prithvi and he does a fairly good job of keeping me engaged through my drive.
But last Friday, he did something that surprised me.
One of the segments in the show is called ‘Morning Dose’. Simple enough concept – people write to/mail him contact details of others who they think deserve a cranky, anonymous morning dose and Prithvi takes care of it. These are usually (and obviously) obnoxious calls and Prithvi goes the whole hog in making that person as uncomfortable as possible before revealing who they are talking to…and the fact that they are being heard by all of (well, at least the number of people who are tuned in) Bangalore.
Last Friday, he called someone as usual. That guy is supposedly a marketing executive, so Prithvi asked him about his telephone bills and why they are so high. The poor man on the other side said that he always pays his bills 3 days before due date and was wondering why he got this call in the first place.
Till this point, things seemed normal enough.
Prithvi went on with the charade for a few more seconds – more about why his phone bills were so high and why he’s not doing anything about them. The other guy got exasperated at a point and Prithvi told him that he was a stupid man who did not do anything about those huge telephone bills. The man got upset and asked Prithvi what he meant. Prithvi said that he could do something about those bills…like switch to another network!
I sensed something was wrong…but eventually the other guy got annoyed enough to disconnect the call. It was then Prithvi said we, the listeners, need not be stupid and can switch to a better network. He went on to add that we can opt for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and switch to Idea (Idea Cellular)!
Idea has been the first Indian service provider to start advertising for MNP and they have quite a high decibel campaign going on. But this plug on radio seemed to cross a line.
To give better context, Prithvi promotes a LOT of stuff for advertisers, like most other RJs – his giveaways are from advertisers and they get an extra line/slogan from Prithvi…seems perfectly fine. He even specifically talks about offers and sale in the city, usually from advertisers – again, seems normal enough.
But this one seemed different – here was an RJ, in his regular segment, in his usual morning show calling someone stupid for not doing anything about is mobile bills and plugging an advertiser right within the segment!
How different is that from a paid spot in say, Bombay Times or Bangalore Times (city supplements of The Times of India)? Wouldn’t this be like a regular print column promoting a specific advertiser’s product/service on unsuspecting readers, however done within context?
To be clear, paid spots in mainstream media are not wrong per se – it is the intention of the content owner to conceal the fact that a piece of content is paid for (or influenced) that may be wrong. In this case, the content is not even news – it is regular programming from the FM station. Such programs could be sponsored, like television programs and perhaps this segment was sponsored by Idea. Considering there was no mention of this segment being sponsored (so far, at least) and the fact that the RJ used a normal guy’s (forced) exasperation to promote an advertiser, I wonder if it crossed a line. One could argue that all content on FM stations (in India, where they are not allowed to broadcast news…yet) are purely for entertainment’s sake and such paid-for spots are no big deal within that realm.
Do you see this instance as being different from usual promotions on FM radio? I’d love to know your opinion.
Picture courtesy Mouldfish, via Flickr.