Out of Tune

William Burroughs once wrote that 90 percent of everything is crap. Ninety percent of the shoes we buy, the cars we drive, the books we read, the people we meet.

Radio ads? At least 90 percent.

I recently drove across the country in a rental truck built during the Carter administration. With no CD, cassette or even 8-track player, I got to sample a broad spectrum of advertising on America’s radio stations. Somewhere west of Indianapolis, hunched over a steering wheel larger than a public rest room, the moon rising over another cornfield, I found myself asking, “Why does this suck?”

Now, Luke Sullivan, who knows a lot more about this stuff than I do, will tell you (and has told you, in his excellent book Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!) that there’s so much lousy radio advertising because there’s no glamour, money or prestige in it.