A letter from The Signal’s Executive VP: Purloined viewers, purchased ‘fans’

(Credit: socialbakers.com)
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As many of you know, I have lived in this community since 1984 and raised my family here. You probably also know I serve or have served on many nonprofit and business boards here in the SCV.

It takes a lot to get me “riled” up; however, after reading the article entitled “The Real Story Behind SCV Signal.com,” posted by Carl Goldman on the KHTS website May 8, I must set the record straight with a few facts that Carl neglected to mention in his post.

First, Goldman acquired the internet address (or URL) scvsignal.com and linked it to his own website, clearly with the intent of confusing and misleading readers who thought they were going to The Signal website.

More deceit greeted them with a landing page welcoming them to The Signal. Only after that subterfuge did a click take them to the KHTS website.

Asked twice to remove the link, Carl refused without financial gain, responding the second time with, “We thought it would be funny.” Only during a third, more forceful meeting with The Signal’s new owners did the KHTS co-owner agree to sell the URL for what he said it cost him.

In addition, Carl has misrepresented the KHTS “Engaged Audience” numbers on the radio station’s Facebook page; those numbers offer an important statistic for advertisers on the site.

Based on a recent report from Socialbakers.com, a social media tracking firm that charts statistics on all social media, KHTS shows 50,700 Facebook fans compared to The Signal’s 36,600 Facebook fans.

However, when you break those numbers down, 30,480 of the KHTS fans live in the Republic of Turkey. Only 17,845, or 35 percent, reside in the USA.

(Credit: socialbakers.com)

The only way I know this can happen is to purchase “likes/fans” to bolster your claimed Facebook audience. The Signal site has 36,600 fans, of which 34,200, or 94.3 percent, actually live in this country.

[flipbook pdf=”https://signalscv.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/12195205/FB-Overview-Compare-2017-05-11.pdf”]

Sounds like a pattern of ongoing misrepresentation and deceit by KHTS.

So, Carl, can you answer these three questions:

1.) Did you redirect the URL scvsignal.com to a landing page with The Signal name on it which, in turn, was directed to the KHTS website?

2.) Did you purchase a significant number of Facebook “likes/fans”?

3.) If you answered “yes” to one or both questions, do you really think these were ethical things to do?

We think these are simple questions that should be answered, and probably most advertisers will be interested in those answers.

Finally, you proffered that any legitimate news organization would contact the subject of an allegation before it was published. You claim that at our initial meeting with employees on Jan. 1, 2016, my business partner and the paper’s new publisher promised to bury you and Mr. Wilk.

Did you ask the publisher if he had said that before you made the claim? Because I sure don’t remember you at the meeting.

He made no such statement. If he – or I, for that matter – wanted to “bury” you, this information would have been released more than a year ago. I only address it now because of your claim to high ethical standards.

Russ Briley
Executive Vice President

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