Shock-radio ubermeister Howard Stern has some advertisers in a tizzy over his recent assault on tender Canadian eardrums.
A ‘handful’ have pulled ads from the self-proclaimed King-Of-All-Media’s morning slot on Montreal’s chom-fm and Toronto’s Q107, most notably The Toronto Star, which announced its departure from Q107’s broadcast in a news story last Saturday. The article included a quote from a Star editorial that ran the day before:
‘We can’t afford to shrug off this kind of verbal abuseÉ Anyone who cares about Canada’s traditions of tolerance and civility – radio listeners, broadcasters, advertisers and federal regulators – has a responsibility to stop the pollution of our airwaves.’
Strange words for an organization that relies on free speech for it’s livelihood? Maybe, but it’s also a pretty good indication of the kind of hand-wringing Stern’s hugely successful, puerile brand of satire has engendered.
His calculated-to-enrage comments about the French in the debut Canadian broadcast, along with each show’s steady stream of sexual references, have generated over 250 written and faxed complaints to Canada’s broadcast regulator, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, raising the spectre of censorship via that body’s powers to initiate prosecution and revoke broadcast licences.
This presents a quandary for advertisers.
With 20 million daily listeners in 40 North American markets, two books on The New York Times Bestseller List and an autobiographical movie to his credit, Stern’s probable reach into local Canadian markets is too strong to ignore.
On the other hand, this is Canada, a quietly-liberal country where ethnic humor and raw scatology are tut-tutted by a vocal chunk of the population. The advertisers now shunning Stern seem to be searching for the middle of the road.
‘Basically, a handful of advertisers have decided to shift their spots out of the Stern show, but not out of Q107,’ says Pat Cardinal, the station’s programming director. ‘They didn’t cancel their ads altogether, they just moved to another day part. We’ve had a lot of interest, though, from new-to-Q107 organizations who want to get some space on the Stern show. From an advertising standpoint, the overall response has definitely been positive.’
Station executives won’t discuss which advertisers have come or gone, but it has been reported that Bell Mobility, Adventure Electronics and Stroh Brewery are among those that have pulled out of the chom broadcasts and the Ontario government has said it won’t advertise on the Q107 broadcast.
Queried as to whether the reaction of the public and advertisers to Stern’s debut would force chom to rethink its position, program director Ian MacLean says, ‘Absolutely not. It’s evident that there are an inordinate number of radios tuned to chom-fm right now. There’s an enormous amount of attention being paid to this, sampling is very high and the overwhelming majority of comments we’re receiving now are positive.’
Media buyers also seem unconcerned by the controversy.
‘As far as we’re concerned, we don’t make value-judgments based on the type of programming in a day part,’ says Sheila Cohen, group media manager for Harrison Young Pesonen & Newell in Toronto. ‘We leave that up to our clients. All we care about is the audience that’s generated and, if it’s not a problem for our clients, we have no problem buying time on the station.’
And that’s the key to all this. The BBM Bureau of Measurement’s fall survey began Sept. 2 (the Day Stern hit Canada, no less) for release on Dec. 18. Because it measures reach in the crucial pre-Christmas period, the fall survey is considered the most important of the year, forming the real basis for ad rates. Even if both stations drop the shock-jock after the new year, they’ll have achieved a big spike in a crucial period.
It all comes down to money.
‘Your newspaper knows I will become the primary ad medium in Toronto and you’re pulling your ads hoping I’ll be thrown off the air,’ Stern told Toronto Star journalist Peter Goddard (whose coverage of the issue has been sympathetic to Stern), in a live call-in press conference on the Sept. 10 show.
‘Your newspaper doesn’t care about anything I say,’ Stern continued. ‘Your newspaper is damn-well worried that I’m going to be able to cut your advertising rates. You’re a bunch of hypocrites.’
