The strangest thing: By the turn of the millennium the key word in entertainment was \edgy."" HBO's familial-and-in-all-other-ways-violent ""Sopranos"" stole viewers from the networks. Races to see who could outshock the radio audiences lead a sex in public places contest to a prominent New York church. Reality TV deserted people on an island then deserted Paris Hilton in blue collar society, it married desperate women to a man, then a millionaire, than to a man pretending to be a millionaire and then to midgets. Eminem blew up on hooks, battle wit and anger, oddly forecasting the rise in Fox News.
And now the media is racing in the whole other direction. Clear Channel radio's Bubba the Love Sponge was recently fired. Viacom was beaten to death over an unimpressive 40- year-old nipple. The FCC has announced a plan to wield more fines, Congress is calling for hearings, parents are outraged. Clear Channel has made very public its initiatives and memos to make sure indecency never happens again, as has its chief competition, Viacom's Infinity. Media groups have opened warfare over which station is the least edgy. We are now witness to the battle over who is the blandest.
Last week, Howard Stern was suspended from all of the Clear Channel networks that ran his program. The shock jock's syndicated show, owned and principally broadcast by Infinity, was pulling in the ratings it promised. Howard was still ejected, a story covered coast to coast with press releases and wire stories. Only broadcasting Howard in six markets, Clear Channel actually did very little to counteract indecency by removing the program. But in a week that also sported the firing of Bubba the Love Sponge, the suspension of an Infinity owned radio host pushed additional focus on Infinity and on Viacom for still broadcasting. It was a publicity stunt. A popular show was removed from six markets to advertise Clear Channel's commitment to not making an impact. And Infinity will have to respond and drop someone else to show that they make no impact either.
I hate shock jocks. I hate mindless low comedy. But I also hate that decency is being used as a sensationalist point and not a well thought out one. Is Howard Stern all that much more indecent now than he was last week? When Janet crossed a line, did that line really move?
In an interview this week, John McCain said that decency standards can never be static, that what is indecent changes with the time. He noted we had come a long way from the time when a toilet couldn't be shown on television to when the FCC ruled that Bono's use of ""fucking"" on TV was not vulgar. And I can accept that. But I can't accept this method of changing what is indecent. Every time a radio show gets publicly canceled under the guise of decency, the standard for what is indecent and what is merely offensive gets rewritten. And Clear Channel rewrote that standard as a publicity stunt, to pander to the public instead of defend it.
Public morals are organic. This pissing contest of decency isn't. I hate Howard Stern's program, hate it, hate it, hate it. But hate to see the show removed under these terms.
Feel free to e-mail Joe at jhuchill@wisc.edu. He's a nice guy. I promise. He opens doors for people and puts his coat over puddles and stuff.
