Moronic Quote Of The Day
Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content and Howard Stern's show blew right through it. -- Clear Channel CEO John Hogan,
announcing that he's yanked Stern's syndicated radio show from all Clear Channel stations.
Let's try to make sense of this. Clear Channel wants to protect its listeners from Howard Stern's show. Yet, if listeners want protected from Howard Stern, why are they listening in the first place?
Hogan should just admit the truth of the matter. Hogan's new decency standards have nothing to do with protecting listeners. Rather, he's spinelessly sucking up to the witch-hunting FCC to avoid fallout (so to speak) from the Super Bowl halftime show.
Or maybe there's more to it. This is wild speculation but is it possible that Clear Channel is using the FCC deceny crackdown as an excuse to put the screws to a competitor? Viacom/Infinity Broadcasting -- which owns the Stern show -- competes with Clear Channel in the syndication business. In recent years, Clear Channel has quietly dropped non-Clear Channel syndicated shows from its radio stations and replaced them with its own syndicated shows. Perhaps Hogan's hot air about indeceny is a well-timed ploy to get Clear Channel out of its contractual obligations to broadcast Infinity's Stern show, thus clearing the way to replace Stern with CC-syndicated shows.
