Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, March 29, 1991 TAG: 9103290547
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A clerk answers and hears the chirpy, melodious chatter of a disc jockey from a radio station in Roanoke, Va. It is a city the clerk may never have heard of, and a radio station and a DJ he has never listened to.
The DJ asks the clerk: Where were you born?
Victory or defeat hangs in the balance - not for the clerk, but for a game participant in the K-92 radio listening area.
By the time that faraway clerk picks up the phone, someone in Western Virginia has already predicted whether the 7-Eleven worker is foreign-born or bred right here in the U.S. of A.
The unsuspecting clerk's participation and his heritage will determine whether the caller to K-92 wins a prize.
If the clerk is not a native, and the caller has guessed correctly, we have a winner.
It is a callous game, ignorant of or disdainful toward the feelings of all those who have joined our American struggle.
"We've done it occasionally," says Kevin Kenney, the general manager of K-92, WXLK-FM. "It's done by a lot of radio stations nationwide. It's not intended to make fun of anybody."
But it does. It preaches the politics of exclusion, of setting you apart from me, of them from us; of turning a gush of nationalism into a torrent of suspicion.
Why 7-Eleven? The Dallas-based chain of convenience stores has 6,600 shops.
"It's because we're on corners all across America," says Don Cowan at the 7-Eleven corporate office. "We have 45,000 employees, and when you employ that many people, you're bound to be a melting pot.
"Obviously, we're sensitized. We would hope that people who think that's funny would become more sensitive to the ridicule they're inflicting."
This is not the first time he's heard of 7-Eleven clerks taking broadsides. Some stand-up comedians appeal to the base element of humanity: We all want to be part of the group and there is no more effective way to confirm our membership than to isolate someone who is not.
Kenney says the idea didn't originate here in Roanoke, and that is a relief. K-92 gleaned the 7-Eleven scheme from a service that provides ideas for radio games.
The skits are standard radio fare. They're part of what keeps listeners tuned to one frequency and builds loyalty to a product - a radio program.
And not all stations vie for all listeners. Each tries, instead, to dominate a chunk of the demographic pie.
Maybe K-92 isn't aiming for my heart, or ears, and maybe I'm oblivious to the humor of asking a 7-Eleven clerk about his heritage.
Or maybe not. Maybe the promotion's offensive tone cuts across sub-groups of people and is rude to everyone.
Regardless, it's over.
Kenney said the station did it half a dozen times at the most and dropped the idea - not because of some self-examination but because announcers tired of it.
Right result, wrong reason.
Cowan says a Los Angeles station tried the same 7-Eleven program but dropped it, too.
The DJ prompted an outcry in that ethnically diverse city and was suspended.
by CNB