We'll Be Right Back

The bane of every broadcast outlet are the incessant pauses that have to be taken to sell somebodys stuff. Early days of radio or television took very few breaks per hour, because advertisers were willing to pay out the wazoo for air time.
In the 50's, it was not unusual for a half hour show to have one sponsor for the entire show. On television, the show would open with some announcer saying, "Brought to you by....", and 15 minutes later, a live 60 second commercial would sell the product. At the end of the program, the announcer would come back with, " This show has been brought to you by....", and that was that. I did a ton of live commercials on radio, and wrote almost all of them. Ads were, "in house" productions, then something started where the sponsor himself wanted to voice the spot. I, almost always used humor, and many character voices I would do to try and get the best response possible for the advertiser. Early radio ads made sense, and people listened. Now, ads on radio and television can cause riots, boycotts, 15 hours of discussion on CNN, and are as rediculous as one can imagine.
It seems that creatures other than people, are the main spokes things for television products, and I cannot imagine why. There is a huge bee with an accent like Ricardo Montelban selling you allergy spray. Multi colored cartoon bears with toilet paper stuck on their butts,green blobs having a disco party in your stomach, a duck with Gilbert Godfried's voice selling insurance, and a lizzard selling another brand. Yo quero, Taco Bell?
The gecko ads are curious. Madison Avenue decides to make the company employees look to be as stupid as possible. One of their ads shows a man, supposed to be the CEO of Geiko, I surmise, having a conversation with an accented lizard, and decides he is going to fall over backwards and have the 4 inch reptile catch him, and this guy is playing the head of the company. Sure, buy your insurance from us. Wait till you see the rest of the people in the office.
Demographics are the target in television. If you are home sick, incapacitated, or retired, you will be bombarded with ads selling you AARP, life insurance, free wheelchairs, or help with the biggest plight on the planet, Mesothelioma. A stupid device to crack an egg, every time you turn on any channel during daytime TV.
Ever notice when some cleaner is being promoted, the area cleaned has not been cleaned since the Johnson Administration? Even the cleaning utensils, i.e. mops and brooms are regarded by humans in the commercials, as ordinary talking items, and it is commonplace for old sponge mops to pack a bag and get on a bus. Why is it, whenever a somewhat tedious task is being performed in these commercials, it is always by some woman, shaking her head in disbelief, a huge schlock of hair hanging over her face, and is always, always filmed in black and white? Recently, an ad for a special pair of rubber gloves was being offered to help alleviate a horrendous issue in this country...peeling potatoes. Yes, yes, I know, something we all dread, and would rather go to the dentist than do, ever. So here's these gloves. Rubber gloves...with some sort of bumps all over the palms of the gloves. The idea is to grind off the peels..isn't that amazing? But wait, there's more. Announcer espouses the quality of this miracle idea.."No more peeling for hours!"..enter the black and white clip of the woman struggling in vain to get the peels off with a potato peeler.
The most heartwarming part of this ad is announcer then telling you what you can do with the 74 pounds of potatos you just sanded smooth...you ready?..."You can make, mashed potatos, potato salad..and tons of french fries with the french fry do-dad, a $20.00 value, your's free! The potatos in this add, are pristine, no eyes, splits or discolorations at all. But one thing they never told you. The potatos had to be boiled before these gloves would work. Nothing I like better than boiled french fries. Have you seen the one about the electric stair chair? This thing is attached to rails on a staircase, and can transport you up or down, while you sit and enjoy the scenery of your wall. The announcer opens this spot up with the following.." Most senior citizens suffer the most falls causing them great injury. The answer to this? Don't fall". Wish I thought of that the last 3 times I took a header down the cellar stairs.
Have you, or somebody you, know died from taking this drug? I did, but I'm dead, so can't join in on the class action lawsuit. Got a headache? Try New Clompamaosin. You'll feel better in 15 minutes. Some people who use Clompamaosin suffer hair loss, rickets, false pregnancy,bleeding from the eyes, ears and rectal area, scurvey, coma, diabetes, excessive vomiting and body odor, infected gums,stroke, heart attack,cirhosis and genital fungal growth...but man, you won't have a headache.

Another inovation in advertising is cramming 45 seconds of dialogue into the last 10 seconds of a commercial. This is radio's version what is at the bottom of the TV screen, in print one sixteenth of an inch high, in 35 lines that you can's read on a 60 inch screen, even if you had longer than the 3 seconds it is shown there.
The tricks to get you to buy things have been around a while. Remember GL70? To this day I have no idea what that is, but it worked. I still remember it. Now there's a whole slew of things nobody knows anything about, but I am not going to run out and buy something because it is now made with South American Hoodia. Have we lived this long, somehow without il casei immunitas? Now made with real chicken?? What the hell was in it before? I saw a box of macaroni and cheese, with a banner printed across the front reading, " Now even more cheese taste." That's not possible.
The bag of powered cheese cannot taste more cheesier. It's powered cheese. After you cook it in the oven for 45 minutes, the instructions warn you that the product will be hot. Thanks..appreciate the concern.
Order before midnight tomorrow. If you call in the next ten minutes..soon to be put back in the vaults for ten years. All designed to make you think you heard something else. Years ago, when mail order was the thing, you always had a PO box on the address. There were no PO box numbers your order went to. That was a way for the seller to track where the business was coming from. Still done today on informercials. If the PO box number you send on your order is 1 2 3 4, well, let's say thats at TV station code in Chicago. They get 300,000 orders with that PO box code. Conversly, the PO box is 5 6 7 8, and they get 22 orders, they pull their sponsorship from that station, and try somewhere else.
We'll double the offer, ABSOUTELY FREE!!! Just PAY shipping and handling, and postage, and processing, and tax, and this means you could have made two of these things in your cellar from old car parts for about a fifth of what we're charging you.
The bottom line for me is, if a sponsor wants you to respond to his ad, he will not use mini print or speed talkers, he won't offer you a free duplicate of the thing you are ordering, that you don't even need one of anyway, nor will he use double talk to make you think you heard something else and have to dive for the phone immediatly, or try to sell you a $300 item with the scam line that you can TRY it in your home for just $14.95. So many people get sucked into this sort of deal, it is astonishing.
There was once a company up here called Tommy Van Scoy's Diamond Mine. They're long gone now, but once I did a parody live on the air about this place. Tommy had an unusual voice, like the Carvel Ice Cream guy did. I called it Jockey Van Short's Diamond Dump, and rattled off the most rediculous spot I could think of. Later that day, they pulled their advertising for what I did. Somebody from there must have heard it. The GM of the station was wild. The next day, they called back and increased their advertising on the station. Seems, for some reason, they got more feedback in one day from the parody I did than at any other time they could recall.
The power of advertising. You never know what is going to work, and sometimes why it does But things have changed in that world, and I don't think for the better. Just ask Chuck Woolery. "We'll be back in 2 and 2". That phrase is now in the same category as Tippycanoe and Tyler too. If Chuck was still on currenty TV, he mostly would be saying, "Right back at cha in 6 and 6."
Back in the 80's there was a guy trying to foist upon the American public a product called Dream Away. This guy looked like he had produced sleeazy movies all of his life. He told you to take these pills, and you would lose weight overnight. You would just dream it away. The FDA and the FCC shut them down because it was a scam. Gee, what are the odds? To this day though, I remember that commercial, because it promised the weight would go away while you slept, and I still wonder where it went, in your bed while you slept. And you thought bed bugs were nasty.

Molly McEvoy

In radio over the years, there a scant few stories that touch you for the rest of your life. Such was the story of Molly McEvoy.
The community first heard of Molly on the airwaves of virtually every radio and television station in Western Massachusetts. Molly, a six year old beauty was stricken with a life threatening diagnosis. For who knows what reason, this child, in order to survive, had to have a heart and double lung transplant, at the same time. No one reading this, unless you are the parents of this little girl, could ever comprehend the severity of an operation like this.
As the date for the surgery came, tens of thousands of people listened for the latest updates on how Molly was doing through this ordeal. We waited...and waited. This operation was not only about Molly. It was about some other child, somewhere, who for reasons we will never know, became the organ donor.
The following day, the news was encouraging. Molly was on the mend. A life barely started, and she went through a trial that no adult should ever have to endure.
The daily updates soon faded to weekly ones, then monthly. Molly and her folks were on the local news a couple of times. For a while, she became sort of a girl in a bubble because of infections, illness, all the things that had to be controlled due to this incredible operation, and a never ending supply of daily medications.
I believe it was a few months later, that the McEvoy's name again appeared in the news. With all the technology, all the precautions, all the medicine, the worst possible word arose. That word was, "rejection". During the plethora of doctor visits, it was discovered that all three organs, for some reason were failing. The prognosis was bleak. Surgeons and specialists from everywhere converged in person, on the phone, in mail, trying to come to an agreement on the most effective way to resolve Molly's steadily worsening condition. When the dust cleared, and the papers settled down, a team of doctors notified the family of the best, and only option they believed they could provide. The operation had to be repeated...again. Exact same scenario.
The family made preparations as best they could. The major factor in this repeat attempted miracle, was another donor. The implications of that are too big to understand. You want your child to live, yet you pray for another solution so that another child does not have to die.
When the second surgery day came, the feeling in the Pioneer Valley was the same as the first time. It was eerily similar in all aspects. We all listened to the news and waited for this virtually unknown scenario to unfold. Late in the day the news began to trickle in. For a second time in less than a year, the surgeons and staff had pulled off the impossible. A double lung and heart transplant.
In old time movies, when news came that the war was over, everybody threw their hats into the air. If everybody that was listening to the news about Molley that day had a hat on, when the bulletin came over, the hats would have eclipsed the sun.
Once again, daily reports came and became weekly, then monthly reports. For the most part, the news was positive, and reassuring. Molly was going to make it now, and hopefully only have to worry about a lifetime of pills to stay strong.
Weeks go by, and I get to WMAS at 5 AM like I have been doing for years at that time. At 5:30 AM, the sattelite goes off, and Hello there, we are now local. Kevin Lynn was the news guy this morning, and he rattled off the news. I always "kind-of" heard the news in the background, catching a few words here and there, and as Kevin was going through the trials and tribulations of this planet, I heard the name Molly McEvoy. I cranked up the volume on my earphones, my focus completely on Kevins voice. This time, the story concerned the entire family again. But this was not a medical issue needing drastic attention, but a story about how tha McEvoys insurance company had said to them,"OK, that's enough, we want out now, we can't pay anymore, so later dudes."
Molly needs medical attention for life, and whoever this insurance provider was backs out. I might be wrong on the amount, but I believe it was over $350,000.00 that this family was in debt, might have been more, or less, I just can't recall, but whatever the amount, it was an immense amount of money.
At 5:35, when Kevin finished the news, I put a song on, and called him into the main studio. I played another song, and we ruminated on this situation. When I went on the air, I discussed it at length, and said that we, the comminity should try to help. Inside, I had no clue whatsoever as to how to help this family with this horrible situation that has now arisen. It is now 5:50 AM, I go into the first commercial break of the morning, and during this two minute break, something occurs to me, I call Kevin back in, tell him to sit down, and didn't tell him why. He sat there befuddled, we got on the air, and I announced to him and the audience that I wanted to raise $10,000.00 for this family, and I would do it by staying on the air, non stop for as long as it took. As Kevin and I were the only "in house" program at the time, all I had to do was not go to sattelite at 10 AM, and just stay there, announcing this plan all day long. Off the air, Kevin said, "Ten Thousand Bucks? You think you can do that?' I told him I had days to do it before I fell asleep, and away we went. For the next four hours, I did my show, spoke often of the new plight of the McEvoy family, and at 10 AM, I had $1200 bucks, plus.
The day rolled by, and the calls came in. Two grand at noon, 4 grand at 3PM. It seems that some folks in radio have egos the size of Rhode Island. I never did, and never will. WMAS broadcast on both AM and FM, and that afternoon, one of the FM egos stopped me in the hall to ask how this fund raising project was going. I told him I was staying on the air day and night till I hit 10 thousand for the family. He then informed me that I was a dreamer, I didn't have an audience the size of HIS audience, and I should be more realistic, and shoot for five thousand. This feeling inside me was one of almost rage. I wanted to lash out. Here is someone I have to work with, and he tells me to be realistic. I walked away from him rather than explode. There was nothing to stop me from doing this for this family who has been through unbearable weeks and months of worry.
Dave Madsen from channel 40 heard about this also. He called me and said he wasn't going to do just a story, but he was sending a crew to do a live shot on the 5:30 news.
By five o'clock, we were around six thousand, and I knew I was going to be in for a long night, but I was now on the air almost 12 hours, and raring to go. Needless to say, a lot of people were getting involved in this. Stores in the area put out fish bowls, companies took up collections, BANKS were donating money! Right after 5:30, channel 40 showed up and we took to the airwaves. That was the straw. The phone lines were cooking all over the station with donations. Around this time, I noticed something I never saw before or since. Every WMAS employee had stayed to answer phones and take donations. The whole sales department, the General Manager, and a lot of FM guys, and the FM guy was telling his audience to go to the AM side, and listen to me. Absolutely unprecidented. Some lady from Vermont was listening in her car while driving home to Vermont. She called as she traversed up 91 and donated $250.00....amazing.
At 6:30, this caring,giving community had donated $8900 dollars, and I would stay there till I had my 10 grand. By that time, most of the station had cleared out except for a few, including Kevin Lynn, the news guy. He stuck it out all day with me. The impact of the News 40 broadcast was the determining factor in this effort. Someone took a picture of me, my wife Linda, Carolee Salerno and a melting Kevin Lynn in the studio. To this day, this picture hangs on a wall in my home. That's it at the top of this post. Old friend Dave Madsen came through for the family by sending a crew to the station, but Dave is always there for those who need help. This area is blessed to have such a strong caring man at the helm of the news department at WGGB.
At 7:20 PM that day I took to the airwaves. A little, small AM radio station had managed to garner $10,300.00 in less that 14 hours. It was the most exhausting day I have ever spent in radio, but I would stay there till I reached the goal for this family. I was being realistic. I know New Englanders. When in need, we help our neighbors. To that FM guy. Thanks for the help. Your lack of caring inspired me to never give up that day.
As it worked out, I was unaware that a fundraiser was to take place at Smith College the following Sunday. An incredibly gifted pianist, Zach Davids was to perform a piano concert, including a song he had written months earlier. The song was entitled, "Molly's Song", and it was somewhat reminicent of Jim Brickman's fine work, but make no mistake, this was Zach"s music, and he is probably the finest pianists I have ever heard. More amazing, I believe he was 16 at the time of this performance. Zach, too, wanted to help this family. I showed up unexpectedly at the college, and spoke during a break of Zach's music. Tucked under my coat was a manilla envelope with a large amount of the proceeds that I presented to Molly's father in front of the audience, and announced the final total of the radiothon. On the air, I told the audience I would not announce the final total till it all came in. After all was said and done, we were about $200.00 short of the original total.
Western Mass. did it. OK, so it wasn't the hundreds of thousands they needed then, but it was a start, and I hope it led to other good things for the family.
A few weeks after the radiothon, I was working in front of my house. A fair amount of foot traffic is common there in warm weather. A lady who goes by on occasion stopped to talk to me. She had heard much of the radiothon that day, and asked if I could do the same thing for her grand-daughter. Instantly, I felt knots in my stomach. Did I want to help? Of course. Could I? No, I couldn't. Jerry Lewis raises amazing money for MD every year, but that is planned. The Labor Day Telethon, is as much a part of Labor Day as It's A Wonderful Life is to Christmas. This scenario on the sidewalk in front of my house never, for an instant ever occured to me. How can you help one, and not another? Is my child less important than someone else's child? Does one child have to die before another can live? I never pondered this happening.
What I started for the McEvoy family was a spur of the moment idea. It was a way to help. Unlike The Labor Day Telethon, it was not prepared, it was not promoted...it was not expected. To try and do this on a regular basis could not be done. I tried to explain this as delicately as possible to this lady. She left, dejected, and to this day I feel her pain, as it has never left me. I never again got involved in a project like this, and I never will. It is far too hurtful to people who have life or death issues in their lives.
We passed through the summer and into the fall. My morning show was on every day. One morning I went in at 5 AM as always. At 5:30, Kevin Lynn went on the air with the news of all of the trials and tribulations of this planet. I just catch a word or two of his news casts as usual. This morning I heard a name that made me crank up the monitor. It was Molly. There would be no third operation. There would by no hope for any more miracles. God thinks she had enough. Time to go home little girl.
There are few things in life sadder than a small casket. Such was the case when friends and family gathered by the hundreds to say good-bye to a little girl they never knew in life, including me, but will carry in their hearts as long as they are here. To this day I wish I could have done more. So do a lot of people.