There is just something darkly strange and funny when a person is killed by a block of frozen urine dropped by an airplane.
I hate this kind of shit too. If I want to listen to music in the morning I’m SOL, as the only music station here I like has that scourge of humanity ManCow on in the mornings.
I’ve learned to love NPR
What the heck does your commendable ability to laugh at yourself have to do with this?
Laughing along with everyone if you stupidly hurt yourself is a fine thing. But it’s quite different when someone actually dies in an unusual accident. Their family and friends certainly wouldn’t be laughing. There’s no excuse for anyone to make fun.
Yeah, I know you expressed your distaste for the actions of the DJs in the OP. But your story and your sense of self-deprecation have nothing to do with this issue.
“There is just something darkly strange and funny when a person is killed by a block of frozen urine dropped by an airplane.”
Has that actually happened?
No. No. A thousand times NO. This is why I gave up on Mancow, this is why i have stopped listening to wacky zoo radio. This is why i have lost the last bit of patience that i had with radio.
There is no accounting for juvenile mentalities! Having said that, why should one have to turn on a serious show just to get the weather forecast and a few headlines? A bigger problem is that someone is hiring talentless hacks, taking them seriously,ever producing more crap. And deregulation has deeply wounded radio that does not suck.
Lighten up, Francis. You’re confusing two very distinct issues. Nobody’s arguing Arbitron ratings here. Nobody denies these types of things get ratings.
High ratings or not, continually doing prank phone calls and making fun of deaths is, by my definition and those of others in this thread, talentless hackery. I don’t care to argue ratings. If you’d care to argue that making fun of a local drowning victim by saying “maybe his trunks were too tight” actually constitutes talent, then I’m all ears.
Sgt. J, I didn’t know the broadcasting industry had military-style ranks.
Now, let me introduce you to the concept of individual responsibility.
Let’s say I create and market Dr. Firefly’s Patent Nostrum, good to cure all ills. And people buy it.
Does that exempt me from any moral culpability for having brewed up some useless swill and having persuaded people to consume it? Apparently it does, according to you. Apparently only the consumer and not the producer has any culpability here.
That’s bullshit. The consumers have choices (but in the limited space of the broadcast spectrum, they’re of limited usefulness, as CarnalK has pointed out), but so does McDonalds, and so do the radio stations. There’s no law forcing them to make every last dollar they can by any legal means available. They share culpability. In each producer-consumer transaction, they’re half of the moral equation.
Narrad - I said I have a dark sense of humor. Some people don’t find the movie "War of the Roses funny. Ditto Raising Arizona, Harold & Maude etc. They’re ‘dark comedies. They aren’t everyones’ cup of tea. War of the Roses concerned a messy divorce, and ultimately death, Raising Arizona was about a kidnapping, Harold & Maude had lots of suicide scenes. Not generally the fodder of comedy.
I also said that I’m sensative to the audience, so of course, I wouldn’t joke about it to the relatives of the people involved, nor to people that I sense don’t have that dark sense of humor. I joke about it with my brother, for example, but not my sister.
What my personal examples had to do with it: tho’ they don’t involve a death, they do involve situations that aren’t generally funny. My ‘burn story’ for example, concerns the time I got 2nd degree burns covering my torso, and none of the people that were around me at the time could figure out that they should call 9-1-1. One of them, for example, ran off to get a can of Solarcaine. It was similar to all those 3 stooges type of scenes.
and yes, some people laugh at them.
and others don’t.
I don’t demand that everyone have the same sense of humor as I do (though I wouldn’t be adverse to a national law forbidding SNL sketches from becoming movies).
** RT** -
I’m in the reserves now, hence my FT broadcasting profession.
Yes there is, it’s the “law” that drives free markets. If you (as the manager) don’t “make every last dollar you can by any legal means available” you will be replaced by someone who will. Same as if you (as a DJ) don’t do your best to get the highest ratings possible you will be replaced.
Your “individual responsibility” argument is crap. YOU think this LCD entertainment is “useless swill” (as for the record, do I). With medicine that can be quantitatively proven. In entertainment it’s subjective.
Radio and TV are the way they are because that’s what the majority of the available audience listens to/watches. It’s not as if you guys are programming geniuses that have come up with some revolutionary idea:
“Hey, maybe people want QUALITY, DECENT, TASETEFULL radio… why didn’t we think of that???”
In commercial radio you get ratings or you get fired. Once again, it’s not the fault of the DJ that this kind of crap is what gets ratings… its the consumer’s fault.
No, Anna the problem is that this kind of crap is what the majority of people want to hear, that’s why it’s successful. If nobody listened to the crap station would air whatever the public did listen to. It’s not “them”, it’s “us”.
Here’s the big picture:
DJ’s and Radio Station do not decide what stays on the radio. They decide what gets “given a try”. ALL OF YOU decide what stays.
Zoff:
Well, that’s the answer to the op Q:“What’s up with…” A: It gets ratings.
It’s a talent for getting ratings and making money for the station, the only talent that counts in commercial radio. Welcome to Capitalism.
Narrad - I said I have a dark sense of humor. Some people don’t find the movie "War of the Roses funny. Ditto Raising Arizona, Harold & Maude etc. They’re ‘dark comedies. They aren’t everyones’ cup of tea. War of the Roses concerned a messy divorce, and ultimately death, Raising Arizona was about a kidnapping, Harold & Maude had lots of suicide scenes. Not generally the fodder of comedy.
I also said that I’m sensative to the audience, so of course, I wouldn’t joke about it to the relatives of the people involved, nor to people that I sense don’t have that dark sense of humor. I joke about it with my brother, for example, but not my sister.
What my personal examples had to do with it: tho’ they don’t involve a death, they do involve situations that aren’t generally funny. My ‘burn story’ for example, concerns the time I got 2nd degree burns covering my torso, and none of the people that were around me at the time could figure out that they should call 9-1-1. One of them, for example, ran off to get a can of Solarcaine. It was similar to all those 3 stooges type of scenes.
and yes, some people laugh at them.
and others don’t.
I don’t demand that everyone have the same sense of humor as I do (though I wouldn’t be adverse to a national law forbidding SNL sketches from becoming movies).
I agree with Sgt. J in some respects. If the majority of listeners didn’t find it entertaining, it wouldn’t be on the air.
I hate, with a passion, morning radio. I find most of the on air (lack of) personalities juvenile and crass. It’s one of the main reasons I opted for xm satellite radio. I understand, however, not everyone has this option. If you want to listen to the music you like, what else can you do but complain about the morning show(s)?
Sgt. J - OK, the bit about rank was a cheap shot. I apologize.
Now, to the debate:
I think you’re mistaking ‘employee’ with ‘owner’.
But nonetheless, employees still have the ability to make moral choices. If they are unhappy with the means by which their employers maximize earnings, they can seek employment elsewhere.
And owners most certainly have free choice.
I didn’t say that the LCD programming was ‘useless swill’. My analogy wasn’t intended to be that precise. And my argument merely relies on people being able to exercise their own judgments about the value of things.
Actually, that’s not true. Radio and TV are the way they are because a majority of listeners who are most easily influenced in their spending habits, and have money to spend, want to watch and listen to such programming.
A middle-aged fellow like me, who already knows what he likes and isn’t likely to spend his money differently because of an ad, has essentially no impact on programming.
Young people who can be convinced to change their brand of whatever (or buy a type of product they wouldn’t have otherwise bothered with) because their ads are funny, or show women in skimpy bathing suits, or whatever, decide what our viewing and listening options are.
And in the case of television, the overseas rebroadcast market also plays a significant role. And you can figure out how that might work out: the more nuanced stuff doesn’t sell well in non-English-speaking markets, but sex and action does.
That’s a funny way to determine how the American public airwaves should be utilized, IMHO, but that’s how Mark Fowler said it should be, and that’s how it is.
Nonetheless, if WRNR in Annapolis decides they don’t want to use their broadcast license to pursue the most commercially viable path, they remain free to do so. (They exercise that freedom, incidentally.) And the same with the ownership of all the other stations.
It’s not the fault of the DJ that this is what gets ratings. It’s the fault of the DJ if he stays in a job that he finds objectionable - or if he doesn’t find it objectionable, despite the fact that practically anyone with human feelings would. And it’s the fault of the station owner/management, who isn’t going to lose his broadcast license for making a few less bucks, if he demands the use of objectionable programming to drive up ratings.
One more thing: if the producer (the radio station, McDonalds, whoever) is supposedly in the inflexible grasp of the market, how come the consumer isn’t in the inflexible grasp of the ads that the producer spends so much money on?
McDonalds, for example, spends a ton of money to get me to do something I might not otherwise do, or to get me to do it more often than I’d otherwise do it - buy their burgers. If you’re saying the forces of the free market absolve McDonalds from the moral responsibility of pushing unhealthy food on us, how come the forces they unleash to get us to buy it don’t exempt us from the moral responsibility of buying it?
This seems awfully imbalanced to me, since powerful forces are acting on both sides, but only one side is granted absolution under your worldview.
I agree solidly with Sgt. J here. The bottom line in radio is “Do people listen to it?”
I hate most morning radio (though I confess to being a fan of Howard Stern). I was glad to see Opie and Anthony go. In my opinion, they were not at all funny. They tried so hard to be outrageous that it’s all they were. Their whole gig was acting stupid and seeing what ridiculous things they could get people to do.
I used to listen to them on occasion if I had nothing better to do, but stopped completely when they had a gay guy give oral sex to a woman to win tickets to an N-Sync concert.
There’s nothing funny about that, it’s just stupid.
BUT…
They had a large following. Lots of people listened to them, their WOW stickers are everywhere, and I’ve seen people get really angry over changing the station from 102.7 when those idiots were on. I have no doubt some other station will pick them up, because they get ratings.
Do I blame them? No, they’re just morons. Do I blame the PD at WNEW? nope, it’s his job to put on things that get ratings. So the blame falls squarely on the people who listen to the show, who call in to the show, and who call their stations and ask to get the syndicated show brought to their market.
If nobody ate it, nobody would sell it. So if you want to get local loserboy morning jock off the air, call the station and say you don’t listen to him because he’s not funny. Call his advertisers and say you quit listening to the show they advertise on because it’s not entertaining. Then (and this is the important part), QUIT LISTENING. Listen to local news radio. Listen to the Oldies station. Listen to the Classical station. Listen to your kids as you drive them to school. Heck, listen to a CD.
But quit listening to the show you say you hate so much. THAT is how you get rid of a dumb DJ.
But the bottom line is that this stuff gets ratings, and that’s why it doesn’t go away.
True. But, to continue my example, Opie and Anthony are not exactly tortured artists, longing to move the human soul but trapped in a capitalist cage. They’re idiots who long to move the human bowel. Nothing more.
Now THIS is profound, and true. I agree that it’s sad, but unfortunately, the majority of people who get involved in radio at the GM- and owner-levels are not in it to enrich the lives and experiences of the audience. They are in it to make money. In the case of WRNR, Bravo to them. They appear to be one of the few exceptions in today’s market. I believe that the thing that is ruining radio is corporate ownership chains, opening cookie-cutter stations in every market. And one of the worst is Clearchannel. Ugh.
As far as McDonald’s forcing you to buy their burgers, I think you make a pretty weak argument. The bottom line there is that you are free to choose your meal. Nobody puts a gun to your head and forces you to eat a Big Mac. The sole responsibility for what goes into your mouth is yours.
And I repeat that I’m not debating the issue of ratings. The OP said it was a dickhead thing to do and I agreed. You were the one who quoted me and started arguing ratings.
I’m no rocket scientist but I understand that ratings = money and the brilliant idea of “not listening if you don’t like it”. That’s why I don’t listen.
My point, once again, is that it’s assholish behavior that betrays a serious lack of comedic talent. I don’t know how to make that much clearer. I’m not equating talent with ratings, it’s you who are confusing the two.
All this talk about ratings-- and I don’t for a minute disagree that a PD or DJ’s job is only as secure as his last book – is ignoring one important point: Arbitron ratings only tell you about people who already have their radios on.
Total radio listenership has been on the decline for about a decade now, and with so many other options available – especially in the car, with cheap CD players, easy CD burning technology for the home, and new players like XM – it’s probably going to get lower.
Consolidation, which has lead to both stale programming and a massive growth in syndicated programming over local radio, has caused more and more people to do without radio at all. I rarely ever listen to the radio in the car, and I never listen to it at home. And I used to work in radio.
It’s entire possible that stations could pick up more overall listeners by not pandering to the lowest common denominator, simply because by word-of-mouth they could get people to turn on their radios who don’t listen now. But heaven forfend they go after that market. It’s all about stealing the other guy’s listeners now, which is why formats have become so interchangeable.
Joe, I never said McDonalds’ was forcing me to buy anything. But nobody’s forcing them to operate a business, or to sell unhealthy food. They’re choosing to do that.
That was my point: that the free-market forces acting on them no more give them a pass, morally (not legally) speaking, than the forces of the ads acting on me. The transaction has two inseparable halves: they’re selling me a tasty but unhealthy burger, and I’m buying it. (We both know that if I buy it, I will eat it; it’s extremely unlikely that I’ll stick it in my ear. It looks nothing like a Babel fish.) From a moral perspective, how can these two halves be separated?
With the deregulation of radio in '96 anyone still on the air is lucky to even have a job. It’s the right of every employee to seek another job, but it’s the responsibility of most people (like me) to worry more about feeding my kids that working for a moral company.
Again, I’m more worried about feeding my family than deciding to quit a job because “even though people want to hear this I shouldn’t say it.” This is (arguably) bad taste, not snuff porn.
You’re right.
Why should they? This is a business, not a social engineering program to tell people what is proper entertainment. Making money giving people what they want is a bad thing? You’re problem is with capitolism, not radio.
Because that’s the way a free market economy works. Nothing bad happens to the public if they don’t pander to McDonnald’s or a DJ, but if the DJ and McDonnald’s don’t pander to the public, they go out of business. Consumers have all the power.
You’re crazy if you think there’s some vast untapped audience and ABC, NBC, INFINITY, CLEAR CHANNEL, CITADEL, etc… just ignore it to do LCD programming because they feel like it. As evidence by what you hear on the radio today, they don’t give a flying fuck what’s on the air, as long as it makes money. Every station in America would be playing chamber music and airing lectures on pig farts if that’s what worked. If you think they could make more money another way and just like “bad taste” crappy radio better you’re a moron.
RT
by this logic
Providing any product or service that is unhealthy (even though “bad taste” has not been proven to be unhealtyh) is immoral. Ice Cream? Candy? Yummy greasy bacon cheeseburgers?