Ah yes, the radio guru of finance took millions to hype a time-share-exit company, which required time share owners for fork over $5000 first (sometimes much more) on the promise they would get it back when the time share got, uh, exited,
And you can guess the end of the story.
Seriously kids, nothing good happens on radio talk shows.
Here’s a quote from the WaPo
{{ The evangelical Christian financial guru repeatedly told his millions of followers to use a timeshare-exit company.
“I never could find anything until I found this company called Timeshare Exit Team about three years ago,” he said in a December 2018 segment. “We started endorsing them, and I’ve had so much fun”
Fun for Ramsey, but not for you. [LOL]
intercst
I’ve always wondered about the legal liability difference when a host endorses something as a means of advertisement vs simply running a commercial for the product. It is certainly common for a radio host to seamlessly go from covering a topic to a paid endorsement, all without any noticeable verbal ques that suggests anything other than a relevant testimonial - and if they are getting paid for the testimonial (especially if they have not actually used the product/service), I feel like the jeopardy has to be higher. Unlikely commercials, there is not a quickly worded disclosure of no assumed liability.
I listen to POTUS often and Smerconish probably does this every day.
Hawkwin
Not a fan of the talk to endorsement transition.
If you read the article Goofy posted, Ramsey made a 9 minute long defense of the timeshare fraudster on his show right after the $150 million lawsuit was filed. That’s well beyond the “talk to endorsement transition.”
Also kudos to the Washington State Attorney General going after this guy. You’d never seen an investigation of this kind of fraud in Texas. Heck, they’d be taking campaign contributions from the fraudster.
intercst
I read it, but those comments are after the fact and are likely immaterial to the lawsuit (unless they amend it to add such as Disney did with DeSantis).
Doesn’t really address my original query.
When I was at Westinghouse stations we had a strict prohibition against endorsement of any kind. No host or DJ was allowed to use the words “I” or “We” or imply that they’d tried the product or anything of the sort. I don’t know what caused them to institute the policy, but I always thought it was a good one.
And speaking of “good ones”, some of the people were so talented they could make you smell the bacon while they were talking about it without ever using the “I” or “we” words. They made a lot of extra bucks doing “personalized” ads without them ever actually being personalized.
It’s funny. Howard Stern was one of the first to widely mix endorsements into the “show” part of the broadcast. Snapple, 1-800-MATTRES(S), etc …
I got into employer handbooks but it is not worth discussing.
Maybe not the “personalities”, but the mother ship that issues their paycheck. Notice the “news” hyping Apple’s latest gadget today? A “celeb” can always hide behind the “compensated endorsement” disclaimer, saying “I was paid to read a script”, but what can a TV station, or network, hide behind, when they pass off promoting a product, or a company, as “news”?
Steve