There was some particular PSA I was interested in downloading (forget which one now) that was listed at psacentral.org, but the psa link provided was dead.. So, I was trying to track it down via looking through the original submitters website, other related links, and even the internet archive. Never found what I was looking for, but the quest did lead me to eventually somehow fall across http://media.newsinfusion.com - This site has no web pages, nor any kind of information about it.. it's just a bunch of audio files.
A particular group of files listed simply with numbers ranging from 15311/ to 15497/ caught my interest..
When you click on one of them it gives an option of format (m4a, mp3, ra, wma, zip), and sometimes also selection of language, and/or location (ie: Houston or SanFran or whatever).. Anyway, I listened to a bunch of them in mp3 format.
They are all 60 seconds long and each subject matter various greatly. One is tips to spraying your light bulbs with air freshener to enhance room atmosphere, another about the benefits of canned foods, retirement happiness studies, sea food to prevent heart disease, telemarketing fraud, celebrity snacks, like Special K chip instead of potato chips, How to save money at the gas pump, natural disaster mental health surveys, designing Tiki yard areas, pet medication myths, room and furniture painting tips, etc..etc. etc...
The presentation of each is much like a little newscast (sort of), and most of them end with the announcer saying "I'm Lee Shepperd", some of them end with I'm "John Triddon". There might be others. Also it's evident that many of them are sponsored by name brand products, but they're not commericials really, you'll have to listen to a few to see what I mean.
These one minute clips could make nice filler material.
I've not been able to find out who these announcers are, nor exactly what the media.newsinfusion.com website is, but do know that the PSA websites often link directly to the content stored at media.newsinfusion.
Anyone familiar with this stuff? Or how to find out if it's use is free like the PSA's are?
It's sime cool short format filler.
Ahhh.. I found the answer.. What had happened is I fell into a backdoor and didn't know where I was. The actual website is http://www.newsinfusion.com
NewsInfusion.com is a free multimedia sharing portal for viewing or downloading professionally-produced news and informational audio and video content. NI allows both general users and professional journalists.... ...consumers, bloggers, content editors, producers, and news gatherers or web users of all kinds to browse, download, share and even broadcast these assets. The content and materials posted on NI are available for the free and unrestricted use of broadcast news entities and the general public.
So it is free content we can use!
News Infusion and others like them have been around for decades. They're Public Relations firms hired by companies, personalities, celebrities, organizations, etc to basically get their name out into the public. Back long before the intenet while working in "regular radio" I received a packet from these folks and others like them about once a month. Chock full of scripts that read like the clips here, except of course they were styled for local announcers to read them. I often used the material on my shows because generally it is often interesting and amusing, and even though not presented as a commercial always managed to have a brand name plug, or organization or industry reference in it, which was never a problem for me because as consumers we are aware of and use products daily. Back then some of the scripts even included a toll free phone number I could call where I could record (no downloading back then!) a clip to use within the body of the story as an actuality. It was pretty slick actually. Clearly nowadays with the internet the service has been rather fancied up. I'm trying to remember some of the other companies... News Insights I think was one of them. I probably have a stack of their old press releases up in a box in the attic. But if you read the rest of their "about is page" they comment about how they're hired by Fortune 500 companies for public relations to spread news, etc. Odds are the Special K chip idea was paid for by the Special K people, and Special K certainly paid Tyra Banks to be their spoksperson. So, Special K gets a plug, Tyra gets paid and also gains free exposure to the public, the PR company gets paid, Special K believes they get more sales in the end or at least gets to write off the expense as a business expense, and we get a nice professional piece to use on the air.
It's entirely possible, for example, that Tyra Banks people may have hired this firm to keep her name in the media, THEY found Special K was looking for a certain type of person to plug their product in the name of goodness, and the company connected Tyra to them and the promos were made. The PR industry at this level is quite complex and interlaced. Read a few PR trade publications and you'll see what I mean.
I say use the ones that you find fit your style and format and enjoy! PR firms have been doing this since the beginning of time.
Tim in Bovey