Hip-hop stations’ bill-paying promotions resonate

WASHINGTON â€”  Any doubts one may have about a national economic recovery can possibly be confirmed in the corner office of Darryl Huckaby, vice president for programming at WKYS-FM (93.9), where several thousand faxes of his listeners’ overdue bills -- everything from the mortgage to the gas company, tuition and even child support, plus enormous cellphone fees -- are stacked almost hopelessly.

Since the hip-hop station resumed its annual “PYB� contest (“Payin’ Your Bills!�) last month, offering a chance each hour to pay as much as $939 of a listener’s overdue bill, it has replaced three overburdened fax machines and amassed somewhere near 20,000 pleas for financial help.

WKYS (slogan: “The People’s Station�) picks several faxes at random daily. The name on a bill is read over the air and the listener has 9 minutes and 39 seconds to call back and win.

This is unlike the usual contest in which someone wins a concert ticket or round-trip airfare and seems merely happy about it. Here, people weep and praise the Lord. And it’s clear who the bad guy is: The Man.

One woman -- whose hysteric, sonically piercing winning moment is replayed constantly in commercials -- managed to stave off a collection agency with her winnings. The collectors had been seeking the insurmountable sum of “about $400, I think it was,� says midmorning DJ Jeannie Jones, who can be heard sharing the winner’s joy: “Girl, I’m paying your bills!� “God is good!� the listener screams back. “WKYS is good!�

“It gets to the heart of our listeners and who we are, and truth be told, a lot of people out there are still struggling,� Huckaby says of the contest, which concludes Friday after giving away about $20,000. “They just need a little something to make life a little better.�

Huckaby started the contest about five years ago when he came to WKYS. Nationally, bill-paying contests have caught on at hip-hop stations in New York, Detroit, Houston, Wichita and other markets. Sitcom star Steve Harvey, who hosts a syndicated morning show in Los Angeles on KKBT-FM (100.3), runs one called “Scrilla for Your Billas.�

Stations with other music formats have also tried versions of PYB, but they tend to play down the idea that any listener might be in a desperate financial bind, and instead offer prize money “to help out with those pesky after-Christmas bills.�

Not so at WKYS, where “the bills� take on an almost mythic quality of shared oppression.

In the contest, the bills are continuous bad news, brought to you by Verizon, Sprint, utility companies, Visa, the landlord or the collection agency. But the bills are also something to be conquered, goals to be achieved. “Payin’ Your Bills� sometimes sounds less like a handout and more like a discourse on pride and self-worth.

To listen for a few hours is like receiving unfiltered news reports from the working poor. You wind up rooting for Tarrance Thomas to call back so they’ll pay his Washington Gas bill -- which isn’t astronomical by winter rate standards but still tops $100. The minutes tick by and Thomas doesn’t call. His bill goes back in the stack.

Not everyone in the PYB stack is about to go under financially. Some people have sent smaller bills.

“Phone bills for $60?!� marvels marquee personality Russ Parr, whose antic-filled morning show is syndicated nationally. “If I’m going to enter this thing, I’m going to send in the biggest bill I can find. Not some $60 phone bill.

“Here’s one, now this is good,� he says, referring to an AT&T; Wireless bill for $896.43. “Now that’s a smart person.�

Smart to send in the largest bill she could find, sure. But how smart is a cellphone bill that grows to $896?

At WKYS there is no discussion, at least on the air, about how a phone bill can get this high; there is only commiseration and sympathy. People aren’t ashamed to share their bills with the station, and the station doesn’t lecture them.

There are other things to win on the station, such as a chance to go to the NBA All-Star Game in L.A. But that kind of contest can frequently be unaffordable to winners in the end, Huckaby says: “We’ll give away a nice trip to a football game in another city, but a lot of times, even if you get your tickets, the hotel and airfare paid, something still gets in the way. The hotel wants you to put down a credit card and you might not have one.�

Parr says: “It’s the ‘disconnect’ notices that really get me. We had this one lady and she called in when we called her name and you could tell it was getting pretty desperate. It was a cutoff notice from the power company. We get her on the line and she can’t even say her name she’s so .... We had to stop the tape� -- conversations with listeners are taped in the seconds before they go on the air -- “and let her get her composure. I took her bill upstairs and said, ‘We got to get this one paid real quick.�

Sipping coffee, Jeannie Jones turns out to be as much of a knockout in person, in her snug, geometric-print dress and black leather boots, as her sultry, homegirl voice would suggest. Of all the on-air personalities, Jones seems to personify most the familial feel of the PYB contest.

“More people are out of work,� she says. “And my listeners are smart and quick and tight. People are calling with master’s degrees and they’re out of work. As much as the president likes to say the economy and job market are on the upswing, I don’t see it.�

Jones gets out her next desperate fax. It’s Tahlisha Mason and her Washington Gas bill of more than a few hundred dollars, with a disconnect notice. “You got nine minutes and 39 seconds, girl!�

Jones goes to a commercial. The vibe of bills paid and unpaid emanates from the studio window and out over the deadened winter landscape: Tahlisha, where are you? The phone lines buzz and Tahlisha, 32, materializes in the nick of time.

“You take this gas bill,� Jones tells her, “and you tell them to take this ugly stamp they got on here saying they’re going to cut off your gas, you tell them it’s too cold outside for that. You tell them your bill is paid.�