Everyone,
I would like to address an issue that recently came to light regarding the liberal media and their attempt to steer their agenda on all of us. As many of you know my wife and I own Bite The Bullet in Seymour Indiana, as a small business that’s in a somewhat remote area we recently decided to expand our advertising to promote the shop.
We contacted White River Broadcasting and came to an agreement to purchase some advertising time and we came up with an ad to run that featured my wife narrating a spoof of an “invest in gold” commercial. The commercial says that if you are scarred about the unstable economy and your hard earned savings shrinking to nothing that you should invest in guns from Bite the Bullet. The tag line at the end of the commercial is “Listen to that…(sound of pump action racking)…That’s the sound of security from Bite the Bullet”. That commercial ran last weekend on two of White River Broadcasting’s stations and during the first hour of Rush Limbaugh for the past two weeks. On Wednesday of this week we were informed that our commercial had been edited at the request of the Station Manager. It wasn’t until after they collected our money, sent us the ad to approve, and ran the ad for a week that they then decided to inform me that they edited out the tag line that included the sound of the shotgun being racked because it was “antagonistic”.
You can imagine how frustrated I was when I initially found out about them editing my ad. I took the night to think about how to proceed as White River Broadcasting is scheduled to do a live feed at the Grand Opening of our new shop, tomorrow, July 21st. I decided to contact my sales rep at White River and discuss the matter. He talked with the Station Manager this morning and not only did they stick by the decision to edit my original ad but they also informed me that especially in light of the horrible shooting in Colorado I could not mention the following: home defense, personal protection, defense, or protection of any form with a firearm or they wouldn’t be able to air any material containing the above. They told us that their attorney had weighed in on things and supported the decision.
I was faced with a difficult choice. We’re big supporters of the 1st and 2nd amendment and thought their censorship was strictly their management’s/attorney’s attempt at interjecting their own opinions on the matter. We initially wanted to cancel their contract and receive a refund but with them providing a live feed tomorrow I made the choice to continue as planned and get this information out to the public. I hope that those of you that are able to come to our Grand Opening of our new shop tomorrow will voice your opinion to White River Broadcasting and vote with your radio dials. We are unable to support a business with such views and will be ending our relationship with them shortly and have already deleted them from our radio presets.
Sincerely,
Mark Hopkins
I would like to address an issue that recently came to light regarding the liberal media and their attempt to steer their agenda on all of us. As many of you know my wife and I own Bite The Bullet in Seymour Indiana, as a small business that’s in a somewhat remote area we recently decided to expand our advertising to promote the shop.
We contacted White River Broadcasting and came to an agreement to purchase some advertising time and we came up with an ad to run that featured my wife narrating a spoof of an “invest in gold” commercial. The commercial says that if you are scarred about the unstable economy and your hard earned savings shrinking to nothing that you should invest in guns from Bite the Bullet. The tag line at the end of the commercial is “Listen to that…(sound of pump action racking)…That’s the sound of security from Bite the Bullet”. That commercial ran last weekend on two of White River Broadcasting’s stations and during the first hour of Rush Limbaugh for the past two weeks. On Wednesday of this week we were informed that our commercial had been edited at the request of the Station Manager. It wasn’t until after they collected our money, sent us the ad to approve, and ran the ad for a week that they then decided to inform me that they edited out the tag line that included the sound of the shotgun being racked because it was “antagonistic”.
You can imagine how frustrated I was when I initially found out about them editing my ad. I took the night to think about how to proceed as White River Broadcasting is scheduled to do a live feed at the Grand Opening of our new shop, tomorrow, July 21st. I decided to contact my sales rep at White River and discuss the matter. He talked with the Station Manager this morning and not only did they stick by the decision to edit my original ad but they also informed me that especially in light of the horrible shooting in Colorado I could not mention the following: home defense, personal protection, defense, or protection of any form with a firearm or they wouldn’t be able to air any material containing the above. They told us that their attorney had weighed in on things and supported the decision.
I was faced with a difficult choice. We’re big supporters of the 1st and 2nd amendment and thought their censorship was strictly their management’s/attorney’s attempt at interjecting their own opinions on the matter. We initially wanted to cancel their contract and receive a refund but with them providing a live feed tomorrow I made the choice to continue as planned and get this information out to the public. I hope that those of you that are able to come to our Grand Opening of our new shop tomorrow will voice your opinion to White River Broadcasting and vote with your radio dials. We are unable to support a business with such views and will be ending our relationship with them shortly and have already deleted them from our radio presets.
Sincerely,
Mark Hopkins