Why does the firing disgust you? I could see disgust if the Government forced the firing but certainly not a private company.
Allow me to explain.
The radio station is a private company with employees who are hired “at will.” The entirety of their revenue comes from advertising. If they lose their revenue they go out of business and lose their investment. They depend on their DJs, who are very much in the public eye, to maintain good public relations. They do this so that they will have a lot of listeners who will in turn listen to the advertising so that they can charge money to the advertisers. If things go well, they can charge more and more money for said advertising.
With me so far?
The actions of those DJs was a public relations disaster. For an employee who is charged with maintaining good public relations, they showed gross incompetence. This alone is grounds for dismissal.
Even if they wanted to keep them, had they done so they would have lost a huge percentage of their listeners and nearly all of their sponsors. I think that you would have to agree that this would be a poor business decision. This alone is also grounds for dismissal.
All of that being said, Oregon is an “at will” State. They don’t need a reason to fire them. There is no DJ’s Union.
Gonna have to agree with Haj on this one. I was going to say it sucks they got fired, just because of what’s happening with Howard STern, etc, but Haj hit it on the head.
Point taken hajario. But you mentioned the government and force. If that happened, it would certainly bring out the Jesse Jackson in me, and I’d be outraged I tell ya! For the record, I am sickended about what they did, but if I didn’t want to listen to it, I have a volume and tuner knob.
Are you new here? It’s called a discussion, you dweeb. No one said that people don’t have a right to be outraged about anything.
What we have here is a disucssion about why certain things upset us. Perhaps when we see things from another point of view, we can change our minds. In fact, that’s exactly what happened here, your idiotic post notwithstanding.
Actually, you fucking shitforbrains, I was commenting on the “WHY are they posting THREE THREADS about Cause X and not even MENTIONING Cause Y?” trend in the Pit, but I wouldn’t expect a drooling illiterate such as yourself to understand the finer points of sarcasm. Perhaps you should return to your cage, chimp, and get back to flinging banana peels and feces and calling it discussion.
I live and work in the Seattle area. My job is driving a cabulance (essentially driving a van modified for wheelchairs and taking clients to/from medical appointments).
While working, I listen to talk radio, mostly of a decidedly liberal bent. A show I listen to, The B.J. Shea Experience (it’s a local Seattle “shock jock” show, and, no, I don’t have rude stuff on the radio with a client on board unless they request it) had some commentary on Marconi’s idiocy, including descriptions of the offenses. BTW, Marconi’s show was rerun on a local Seattle station, but I never heard it.
Anyway, B.J. described the incident that got Marconi fired: playing a soundtrack to the execution, the screams, and the laughter of Marconi and his sidekick laughing at their own cleverness.
After hearing B.J.'s description, I fully agree that the idiots perpetrating this satire should have been fired. Not only was it in really poor taste (and you have to go really low for me to consider something in “poor taste”), they ran the risk of alienating listeners and advertisers. I don’t see how they could have kept their jobs at this station. I don’t think advertisers try to reach the “psycho-heartless” demographic. Not enough out there to justify the expense.