• Excerpt from The Dallas Morning News,
    March 31, 1996
    The Dallas Morning News is Dallas' highest subscription daily
    - Al Brumley/Radio-

    I hate it when radio stations say they're the first to do something. What that means is that I have to call up radio experts all over the country to find out whether it's true or not. And even those experts can't be sure that some 50-watt station in Burpitup, Minnesota hasn't made the same claim.

    But this week, I'm giving KLIF-AM (570) the benefit of the doubt.

    The station has put together a 30-minute TV infomercial and claims to be the first radio station in the country to have done so.

    Station manager Dan Bennett says he got the idea for touting his station via infomercial about a year ago. He chewed on it awhile and then talked it over with Jovan Philyaw, who made all those Susan Powter 'Stop the Madness!' infomercials.

    'And his eyes kind of lit up and he said, 'You know, I don't think that's ever been done!' Mr. Bennett says.

    The infomercial centers on the slogan, 'If you change your dial, you'll change your life' and features several vignettes to illustrate that theme.

    The strangest one shows a man riding down a country lane in his pickup with a sheep dog in the passenger seat. When the man switches his radio to KLIF, the dog turns into a beautiful blonde woman in a mighty short dress. The man floors it around a corner, no doubt anxious to reflect on the good fortune that has come his way.

    The program also includes KLIF's most notable local personalities: Norm Hitzges, Kevin McCarthy, Mike Fisher, David Gold and the Sports Brothers, Leon Simon and Wally Lynn.

    It will run 100 times over the next five weeks on channels 27 and 39, and on some cable access channels.

    If you watch the whole thing, you'll notice that it gets a tad repetitive, 'but that's for a reason, Mr. Bennett says,. 'The average person watches an infomercial for about seven minutes.'

    Mr. Bennett says he simply wanted to 'do something different to break out of the box.'

    'I want people who have never tried AM radio, or who have tried our competitors, to try us,' he says.

    Overall, the commercial has more cheese in it than a Hickory Farms party platter. ('Whoa! Just feel the energy coming out of this room!' says the chirpy host, Joette Rhodes, as she walks past Mr. Bennett's office.)

    But as goofy as the infomercial is, it makes KLIF sound like the best thing to happen in radio since Paul Harvey realized there was more to the story.
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