Scams Use Leased Radio Time To Target Immigrant Listeners

SCAMS USED LEASED RADIO TIME TO TARGET IMMIGRANT LISTENERS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jennifer Levitz jennifer.levitz@wsj.com]
Fraudsters seeking to take advantage of immigrants are finding an easy route via radio stations that lease blocks of air time to anyone willing to pay. Some of these stations are part of major foreign-language media chains, such as market leader Univision Communications Inc. Yet station managers say they make little effort to check the bona fides of the people they allow on the air. The practice of "time brokerage" is more likely to lead to deception than traditional advertising because those buying the time often disguise their pitches as regular programming. In Kansas and New Jersey, people pretending to be lawyers bought time for Spanish-language shows offering immigration advice, which served as promotions for their bogus law practices. Time brokerage is appealing to radio-station owners because they can receive $150 to $500 an hour for air time with little effort. Buyers of time "come in, perform their act and leave," says Bill Parris, a consultant for MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting Inc. The New York City company owns about 45 stations whose air time is all brokered. In a wave of radio industry consolidation, media chains have been snapping up FM stations with good signals, leaving a pool of small AM stations that can still be bought for relatively little. Station executives who speak only English are often unaware of what is happening. At WLQY and elsewhere, managers often lease time to one entrepreneur who then subleases it to another, so there isn't even the minimal screening normally given to an advertiser or buyer of time. About 500 foreign-language radio stations in the U.S. now engage in time brokerage, double the number of a decade ago, according to David Schutz, co-founder of a San Diego consulting company that specializes in station acquisitions. The stations draw loyal immigrant audiences who have few options for news or information in their native languages.
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