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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

The Carolla Media Blitz is ON!

Trigger Warning: Adam Carolla, Don Imus, and Glenn  Beck mentions follow.
Adam Carolla and his Batchelder fireplace

From just a couple of observations, it looks like an Adam Carolla media blitz is on.  I happen to be a big fan of The Aceman since his Loveline days.  Nowadays, something from his site is streamed on my computer nearly every day.

Don Imus, notsomuch.  Yesterday I was tired with my local morning radio stations and happened to catch him talking about Adam Carolla.  I figured Ace was back in the news for something like this, and I stopped to listen.  No news item was mentioned, but Imus waxed on a bit about how smart and funny Adam is.  And he is, at least in the opinion of his many fans, so there is no revelation there.  However, the article contains a reference to President Me: The America That's in My Head, his new book.  Maybe it was this Salon article, that Adam spoke about on yesterday's podcast.  At any rate, Imus didn't mention that article or he didn't bring it up while I was watching, he just spent a few minutes talking about Adam Carolla, on a show that doesn't talk about anything without a sponsor.

This morning on the Glenn Beck show, I caught him quoting a comedian to the effect of - "when is the LGBT community going to raise hell about the lack of Jewish roofers?" I know that is not exact, but those elements caught my attention and, sure enough, the segment was all about Adam Carolla.  Almost as if Bernard Mcguirk had sent Imus' script over the Beck's people and it was reworded, the repeated points were how smart and funny Adam is.  Beck added that Adam is a very good businessman too.  The Adam Carolla love lasted a full segment.

If Adam mentions those guys on his shows, I missed it.  He mentions Dennis Prager sometimes and is a guest on Prager's show too, so I'm not seeing any reciprocity action here.

I know, two data points are not evidence, but there are a lot more than two data points here.  We have two shows at opposite ends of the audience spectrum talking about the same thing, the same way, within 24 hours of each other.  As a listener to talk radio for most of my life (yea, I was that kid) I can say that when certain things come up on several shows in this way, it is part of an advertising campaign.

From years ago I recall the Dawn Dishwashing liquid claim of washing a zillion dishes being discussed on several shows in the same week.  I think they got Stern, Roe Conn, maybe even Loveline, and the Don and Mike show to talk to them about the claim.  All of those shows tried to come across as independently finding this claim as outrageous and having Dawn representatives on the phone for at least half an hour to talk about it.  Sounded like an advertising campaign that was outlined, if not completely scripted.

They all did something similar when Queer Eye for the Straight Guy made it onto cable television.  Every week, some element of the show was discussed for half an hour.  They didn't have show representatives on every week or anything, but when Roe Conn is describing his shaving style as "I can't just go with the grain, I have to go both ways" the day after Kyan Douglas was featured on Queer Eye giving detailed shaving instructions, and all of the other radio shows were talking about that episode too, one wonders.

So, let the book tour begin!  And good luck to Adam in his new movie Road Hard, which sounds a whole lot like Jerry Seinfeld's Comedian.  But hey, how many different ways can you do a documentary about hard working comedians traveling all over the country?

Ⓐ Steve Ⓐ

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