Scam I Am: Over the last 20 months it must have struck many as odd that Greg Gumbel, CBS Sports’ highly respected studio host and game-caller, was doubling as a business news feature anchor on a rival network, Time-Warner’s CNN Headline News (HLN).
Well, it was worse than odd; Gumbel was the bait in a recurring scam through which he appeared several times per day, five minutes at a time, on CNN HLN. It was a scheme in which Gumbel, his agent, CBS, Time-Warner and scores of business owners were caught in a bogus come-on.
The affair was revealed on the website StinkyJournalism.org, run by a Manhattan-based media watchdog, Rhonda Roland Shearer.
Two years ago Gumbel, through his well-known veteran agent, Barry Frank – of powerful IMG – was hired by a Florida company, Encore Television Group, to be the on-camera intro man for a series of “educational programs” that would be produced and presented as “Eye on America,” “The Economic Report” or “Our Planet.”
For two days of tapings, Gumbel was paid approximately $110,000. You bet it was too good to be true.
After signing Gumbel, Encore TV bought from Time-Warner five-minute blocks of major market ad time on CNN HLN.
At the same time, Encore contacted hundreds of businesses owners – makers of nutrition products, yogurt franchise sellers, small colleges, gizmo manufacturers – to tell them the good news: They were specially selected to be featured on highly credible CNN HLN, their story hosted from a newsroom by the highly credible Greg Gumbel, and then seen here, there and everywhere!
But there was a catch. The businesses would have to pay for the productions – “scheduling fees,” they were called, and sold for $20,000-$30,000 apiece – take it or leave it.
And so, while these segments were produced to look and sound like legitimate five-minute business news features – hosted by CBS’s Gumbel and appearing on a CNN-titled network as Eye on America (a former CBS News feature title), The Economic Report or Our Planet – they’d actually be unlabeled infomercials.
While hundreds jumped at the chance, others couldn’t afford the chance, and still others smelled stink from the start. Regardless, the infomercials, posed and presented as news, began to appear on CNN HLN. . . . . . until three weeks ago, when Shearer, having watched and wondered how CBS and CNN were able to share Gumbel, began to ask questions. She asked them of Time-Warner, CNN, CBS, Encore, Gumbel, Frank and owners of the Encore-solicited businesses.
It was then that the owner of Encore, Paul Douglas Scott, was revealed to have two years ago paid $175,000 in a settlement with the Florida Attorney General’s office for “making false representations regarding programming, sponsorships, affiliations and airtime.”
Scott, whose TV companies have undergone a series of name changes, acknowledged to Shearer that Gumbel and his agent had expressed strong objections with how the programming appeared, and that they wanted Gumbel removed. But only after Shearer’s inquiries were the ads eliminated on CNN’s HLN, at least on Time-Warner’s New York City systems. And now everyone’s looking into the scene of the slime.
Encore is being investigated, again, by the Florida AG’s office. CBS and Time-Warner attorneys and programmers are trying to figure out how something like this got past them, Gumbel is suing Scott/Encore, and the veteran IMG agent, Frank, concedes that he was “duped.”
In 2001, Fox News Channel was home to a similar scam when Texas-based Pat Summerall Productions contacted businesses it had selected to be featured on Summerall’s “Champions of Industry” segments on FNC.
The catch? To appear on that segment, voiced-over by Summerall, also a nationally respected sportscaster, the “selected-for-the-honor” business had to pay a production fee, $25,000. Those “news” spots, like Encore’s on CNN’s HLN, were never identified as infomercials.
Old scam, news scam.