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Swinger Dating Service Vies For Publicity In Bay Area

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By WALT BELCHER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 19, 2008

TAMPA - Is Tampa a hotbed for swingers? Let me rephrase that. A Canada-based online dating service that encourages extramarital affairs wants to run television commercials in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market.

Noel Biderman, chief executive of the Ashley Madison Agency, says his company will begin running commercials on local TV stations in January.

He could not say which TV stations in the market will accept the "Life Is Short, Have an Affair" spots. The Tribune has not been able to confirm whether any stations plan to air them.

"Times are hard, but they are not that hard. We won't take them," said Pete Nikiel, spokesman for WTSP, Channel 10, which aired a report this week on Ashley Madison.

"The company may have bought the time, but I guarantee this kind of ad wouldn't get aired," said Ken Lucas, general manager of WMOR, Channel 32. "We would review the content, and it won't pass."

In a telephone interview today, Biderman said his ads are running in several major markets. He wants to place them in Florida because "the state has a large swingers' community."

He said Ashley Madison already is attracting a lot of online traffic in Jacksonville and Miami. The Web site claims nearly 3 million registered users (143,000 in Florida).

The site offers an "affair guarantee program" for $249 that promises a subscriber will find that special "someone" within three months or get a refund. Searching for "someone" has additional costs, including requirements to send Ashley Madison "gifts" and text messages to other subscribers.

Ashley Madison is known for generating controversy that in turn generates free media coverage. In August, the company put up a provocative billboard in Times Square that came down in three days after massive media coverage and public outrage.

Then the company said it wanted to buy an advertisement in the official program of the Super Bowl (to be played in Tampa in February). That got a lot of media attention -- until the NFL rejected the advertisement.

Ashley Madison also has created a stir in Boston this month when the company placed some radio commercials and then claimed TV commercials were going to be aired.

That generated newspaper and television reports and resulted in the Roman Catholic bishops of Massachusetts issuing a joint statement condemning advertisements that encourage infidelity.

Biderman said the news coverage sends people to his Web site and that his commercials usually are played free during newscasts.

As for the morality of his business, Biderman said, infidelity has been around longer than his dating service.

"It's called the human condition," he said. "In our DNA. We're not meant to be monogamous."

Reporter Walt Belcher can be reached at (813) 259-7654 or wbelcher@tampatrib.com.

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