Quote:
Originally posted by lumberjim
My point of view is that there should be ZERO censorship. If people want to avoid watching things on TV and hearing things on the radio that are offensive to them, they are welcome to tune into a station that caters to this imaginary ground swell of people that are sick and tired of all of the foul language and sex. If there is as high a demand for this squeaky clean entertainment as Mike Medved says, then I'm sure it will be marketable, and they'll have no problem selling their product by espousing those beliefs and assuring their viewers of clean content.
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And it's ALREADY OUT THERE. On radio, you have 95% of the AM dial. I can hit half-a-dozen gospel-music stations, some easy-listening stations, some country stations and a horde of right-leaning talk stations on my way to work without even trying hard. On TV, there are lots of stations with no even potentially-objectionable programs, and networks like PAX that specifically cater to an all-Laura-Ingalls-all-the-time audience.
But it's like the gay marriage thing. No one is forcing crusaders (OR their kids) to buy a Ludacris album, listen to Stern or marry someone of the same sex... but knowing that somewhere out there, someone ELSE might be doing exactly that keeps them awake at night. To them, keeping the content that they disapprove of out of their line-of-sight isn't good enough; they refute its right to exist in the first place, because "everybody knows" that it's inherently harmful and wrong.
To which I say "fuck you AND the god you rode in on."
Whether or not Stern gets the boot, I'll be watching this summer to see if Infinity's previous pissing-off-the-religious-right poster children (Opie & Anthony) confirm the rumors and jump to Sirius satellite radio. They're currently waiting for their contracts to expire. Once that's confirmed, I'll buy a Sirius tuner strictly on principle. If Stern follows suit and also makes the jump, that's a helluva morning/drive-time combo for Sirius, and it'll be very interesting to see just how many listeners buy into it. His audience will decrease (after all, not everyone can afford new audio equipment in three figures), but by how much?