The Spirit of Radio?
What the FUCK!!? K-Dough's Canada reports that CFNY-FM "the Edge" alternative radio in Toronto is running mealy-mouthed weasely-assed bullshit anti-abortion commercials?? This is a fucking outrage!! When I was in T.O. it used to be my favourite station... what has it come to?!
I was in advertising when CFNY first came on the dial; I've still got one of their old "Spirit Of Radio" posters (circa 1982) kicking around here somewhere. NY was always an edgy alternative station, which limited its audience and made it difficult for me to convince clients to buy airtime on it (an old boss of mine once said "our clients don't want chicks who listen to NY, they're all nuts" - what a creep, but I had to laugh since I was one of them and knew it was true). I've been out of advertising for ages, but I know the Toronto radio market is more fragmented and more viciously competitive than ever, so things can't have gotten much better for NY. It's a tough old world, so I guess when the fetus brigade showed up with their Save-the-fetus ads and their custom-made christian moneyclips, CFNY caved and hoped nobody would notice. Wrong!
This isn't about stifling the wingnuts' freedom of speech. They have a right to make their idiotic pronouncements, hand out their bullshit pamphlets, air their cataclysmically stupid commercials and spew whatever wankitude they want. I don't give a flying fuck if they dance around naked under the full moon with pigs' entrails wrapped around their necks, film it and run it during the second half of the superbowl. My issue is with a radio station that's made a business out of selling itself as a progressive voice in Toronto being a party to disseminating such regressive crap. They're not being true to their image, their audience, or their other advertisers. And one has to wonder how far they'd fall -- what's next, a Focus on the Family commercial, "Stop Gay Marriage"? If I were a media buyer with contracts on CFNY, I'd be on the phone screaming until those goddamn ads were pulled.
CFNY made a PR mistake, and unless they correct it, they'll suffer. They should decline any further association with the anti-choicers, like the Bank of Montreal did after their "Life Card" Mastercard fiasco. Although the wankers will complain, as they did after BoM dropped them like a hot potato, that it's "the feminists'" fault that businesses shy away from them, the reality that they have yet to accept is that their ideology isn't widely shared by Canadians, so businesses that associate with them suffer. When businesses suffer, they tend to correct, "abort" if you will, the cause of the suffering. CFNY should do likewise, and practice safer ad sales in the future.
(h/t K-Dough's Canada)
I was in advertising when CFNY first came on the dial; I've still got one of their old "Spirit Of Radio" posters (circa 1982) kicking around here somewhere. NY was always an edgy alternative station, which limited its audience and made it difficult for me to convince clients to buy airtime on it (an old boss of mine once said "our clients don't want chicks who listen to NY, they're all nuts" - what a creep, but I had to laugh since I was one of them and knew it was true). I've been out of advertising for ages, but I know the Toronto radio market is more fragmented and more viciously competitive than ever, so things can't have gotten much better for NY. It's a tough old world, so I guess when the fetus brigade showed up with their Save-the-fetus ads and their custom-made christian moneyclips, CFNY caved and hoped nobody would notice. Wrong!
This isn't about stifling the wingnuts' freedom of speech. They have a right to make their idiotic pronouncements, hand out their bullshit pamphlets, air their cataclysmically stupid commercials and spew whatever wankitude they want. I don't give a flying fuck if they dance around naked under the full moon with pigs' entrails wrapped around their necks, film it and run it during the second half of the superbowl. My issue is with a radio station that's made a business out of selling itself as a progressive voice in Toronto being a party to disseminating such regressive crap. They're not being true to their image, their audience, or their other advertisers. And one has to wonder how far they'd fall -- what's next, a Focus on the Family commercial, "Stop Gay Marriage"? If I were a media buyer with contracts on CFNY, I'd be on the phone screaming until those goddamn ads were pulled.
CFNY made a PR mistake, and unless they correct it, they'll suffer. They should decline any further association with the anti-choicers, like the Bank of Montreal did after their "Life Card" Mastercard fiasco. Although the wankers will complain, as they did after BoM dropped them like a hot potato, that it's "the feminists'" fault that businesses shy away from them, the reality that they have yet to accept is that their ideology isn't widely shared by Canadians, so businesses that associate with them suffer. When businesses suffer, they tend to correct, "abort" if you will, the cause of the suffering. CFNY should do likewise, and practice safer ad sales in the future.
(h/t K-Dough's Canada)
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