Now Playing: Imus Fallout-The Effects The Losses
The Imus story is on the top of every newscast, every blog and search engine and financial publication. I don't condone what Imus said and I can certainly understand why many people where angered by the statement, still right or wrong, Don Imus is a true personality and media legend. For those of us radio junkies who tend to read between the lines and always appreciate a true perspective Jacobs Media said it best on the JM Blog this week "terrestrial radio has just lost another star that it cannot replace" And while there are valid points on both sides, Don Imus publically apologized for his slur. Maybe he shouldn't have gotten off the hook too easily, but would he have been fired had it not blown up to such proportions in the media? Here's a last thought from Perry Michael Simon from All Access News-Talk-Sports, "Well, I guess there's not much going on in talk radio this week, so...
Frankly, I don't want to talk about the Imus thing, precisely because everyone- EVERYONE- else is talking about it. It's amazing how suddenly everyone's an expert on a show relatively few people listened to and a team about whose existence most people didn't care. Overnight, Imus became Public Enemy Number One, the Rutgers team ascended to sainthood, and a stupid, unfunny, off-hand slur became The End Of Civilization As We Know It and an excuse to indict the entire talk radio culture. And the cable talk shows were overrun with "experts" ready to make their pronouncements on guilt, innocence, virtue, free speech, hip-hop culture, charity, and radio.
I did not market myself as an expert on this one, because I really didn't want to be one of those people. I have my opinions, and I know what I would have done had I been in a position to make a Solomonic decision to solve the "crisis." But it would have been pointless, considering that I'm not in charge, nobody in charge was consulting me, and going on some cable show where the only way to get your point across is to out-shout the guy in the other little box on the screen wasn't going to do anybody any good. I watched and listened to a lot of those discussions this week, and I heard almost nothing that approached sanity or a calm, proportional reaction to the situation. But that's how the other media cover radio- they don't, until something minor and stupid happens, at which point they overreact until it's an international incident.
If there's one instructive thing to take out of the Imus situation, it's something I've told you before: you can get away with a lot, but the one thing your bosses will absolutely not tolerate is when they get "those" phone calls, meaning complaints. In this case, the complaints were bigger than just phone calls, and they went way, way up to the top of the company, to folks who just do not want or need to be bothered with trouble from some radio show right now. When it becomes clear that those complaints aren't going away anytime soon, not until "something is done," you're toast. Does that mean we're all doomed to walk on eggshells and stick to inoffensive material that won't rock any boats or generate any kind of reaction that might displease corporate? Man, I hope not. "
