What if ... ? wondered Cleveland disc jockey Shane French. What if a cat was tethered to a helium-filled balloon and launched toward the heavens, and callers to his station offered periodic reports, and finally, one gallant listener fired a gun, popped the balloon and brought the cat down gently. Would that be great radio or what?
It's what passes for great radio these days. On April 29, French kept the hoax going for more than two hours, fueled by recorded "calls" from "witnesses." It ended when police, suspecting a hoax after so many worried inquiries from animal lovers, visited the station and persuaded French to announce that none of it was true.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday May 28, 2003 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 68 words Type of Material: Correction
Radio pranks -- An article about radio pranks in Monday's Section A incorrectly stated that the agent for fired shock-jock-radio hosts Opie and Anthony did not expect them to work in radio again. The article should have said that the agent, now seeking a television deal for the duo, is not currently seeking radio work for Opie and Anthony but expects them eventually to return to that medium.
Nine days later, a Denver-area radio station copied the hoax and was delighted by the same results: a bigger, longer-listening audience and coverage on local television and in newspapers -- easily worth the complaints of the offended.
Hoaxes, pranks and stunts have been part of radio for generations, back to the granddaddy of them all, Orson Welles' 1938 Martians-invade-New Jersey broadcast, based on H.G. Wells' "The War of the Worlds," which inadvertently created widespread panic. There's rarely anything inadvertent in today's broadcast stunts, which feature an uneven variety of edgy cleverness and malicious manipulation. Radio stations with shrinking promotional budgets but a desperate need to stand out in their conglomerate-dominated world have taken on-the-air goofery to new heights.
The mischief plays out on a largely deregulated landscape. The Federal Communications Commission has a 10-year-old rule banning hoaxes, but the rule has enough loopholes to exempt all but the most catastrophic incidents.
The agency's 4-year-old Enforcement Bureau has never filed a hoax case. With prank- sterism -- mean, silly, sly or merely stupid -- unchecked in its merry romp across the nation's airwaves, perpetrators and listeners are on their own to separate right from wrong, never mind real from fake.
The tension between civil order and 1st Amendment rights was well-illustrated by the Cleveland cat stunt. French, who goes by the nickname "Rover" on WXTM-FM 92.3 "Xtreme Radio," said he never considered that people would call 911 when that "cat" took flight. But he was obsessed with jolting his morning drive-time audience.
"Our listeners really have an expectation of waking up in the morning and saying, 'I can't believe this is going on,' " said French, 27. "For 30 years, this is what radio has striven to do." No one in his right mind would take the hoax literally, figured French's boss, program director Kim Monroe.
