[BC] Re: Imus Firing

[Rich Wood]

------ At 11:15 PM 4/12/2007, Alan Kline wrote: -------

>For all of Les Moonves' posturing about doing the right thing for 
>their other employees, it all comes down to caving in when the right 
>people push.
>
>It's a sad day when the network which once defied Congress to 
>protect journalistic freedoms collapses so easily.  And all the more 
>ironic when one considers that CBS is still fighting the FCC over 
>the Janet Jackson and "Without a Trace" incidents. They might as 
>well give up on those...
>
>I guess this truly was a "Bad Day at Black Rock"...

It's very sad and very unfair. As I've said before, Imus was toast 
from the moment he said what he said. CBS is run by a TV guy who 
couldn't care less about radio. Can you imagine this happening with 
Mel Karazin at the helm? One of the Board members is a former head of 
the NAACP. Jackson and Sharpton are self serving vultures who cause 
fearful advertisers to abandon anything controversial. If CBS hadn't 
caved you can safely bet that Jackson and Sharpton would have carried 
their threats to each advertiser and organized at least one boycott. 
I wonder (knowing the answer) if advertisers will now abandon Urban 
stations playing Hip Hop that far exceeds the offensiveness of Imus' remark.

I'd suggest we start a pool to bet on whether that happens, but it'd 
be like shooting fish in a barrel. There's too much money involved to 
let any moral or ethical values get in the way. This whole mess is 
mired in hypocrisy the likes of which we rarely see in an industry 
riddled with it.

Imus was fired, pure and simple, because the money was drying up. 
Claims by NBC and CBS about their high corporate values and billions 
of internal emails demanding higher standards are laughable. When 
they demand their stations clean up the hourly insults to Black women 
I might fall for it. Until then, it's typical PR damage control. My 
sources tell me very few affiliates threatened to cancel the show and 
were content with a suspension. Justifiably they weren't going to 
carry the best of replacement but didn't seem to have a problem with 
Mike Barnicle sitting in for a couple of weeks.

It's also possible the show wasn't doing as well as they wanted and 
there was pressure to replace an aging talent with some young thing 
with a fraction of his experience. Ask Bob Conrad, formerly of NPR, 
how that one works. It might be the perfect way to get out of a contract early.

There's more to this than we're being told.

Rich