Wild promo alleges Kiss bilked listener
Don Day | November 11, 2009
The “I made the switch” radio games are nothing new. Stations air promos that help build up their brand image by impressing on listeners that lots of people are changing stations.
KWYD/Wild 101 has been airing a series of these promos – featuring voices of purported listeners listing off the reasons they stopped listening to KSAS/103.3 Kiss FM.
On October 17th (and presumably at other times), Wild aired a promo that made a strong claim: that Kiss FM had bilked a listener out of a promised prize. The Wild promo was direct and specific. The female voice in the promo said that she “used to listen to 103.3″ but stopped. Why?
“I was… invited to their Kissmas Party last year and won the Rockband and the Wii, but never got them.”
While that would be a good reason to stop listening to any particular radio station – it also implies that a high-profile local business is cheating someone out of a prize worth hundreds of dollars.
For the last several years, Kiss has held an event each holiday seaseon where qualified listeners are invited – then given one of a number of announced prizes.
IdahoRadioNews.com reached out to managers for both Peak Broadcasting, which owns Kiss and Impact Radio, which owns Wild.
Impact General Manager Darrell Calton would not comment on the record. I had hoped to learn several things – including whether the listener called the station at random or was found through some other method. I was also curious to know the name of the listener and if they had contact information, because I would have liked to verify the claims made in the promo.
Peak SVP Kevin Godwin says he hasn’t heard the Wild promo – but refuted the idea that a listener could have been promised a prize, then not have received it.
“There isn’t a possible way that someone wouldn’t have got their prize for the Kissmas party last year,” he said. “Everyone that qualified actually picked out their own present for the Kissmas promotion at the event.”
Godwin said the station received no complaints from any listener about not getting a prize.
“If we ever make a mistake, we always make good on it and do our best to take care of our listeners,” he said. “We can’t worry about what other stations are saying, we are very focused on only what we can control.”
