THE STERN VOTE, CONT'D: You thought the Stern voters were alienated before... now, Howard has been pulled from the air on all Clear Channel-owned stations, after an "offensive" bit aired on this morning's show. The cancellation was the result of a "zero tolerance" policy for "indecency" which was imposed on all Clear Channel on-air employees earlier in the week, apparently by someone who had never heard the Stern show before. As a result, until Stern assures executives that he "will conform to acceptable standards of responsible broadcasting," the show will no longer be heard in Fort Lauderdale, Orlando, San Diego, or Pittsburgh. Therefore, Floridians who appreciate raunchy morning-time humor are basically screwed, because Clear Channel also fired local morning host and Hulk Hogan confidante Bubba the Love Sponge earlier this week.
This is of course nonsense; Clear Channel is so scared shitless of avoiding fines from the Bush FCC that they're willing to alienate massive segments of their audience. Don't they realize that to an extremely large segment of the population, "zero tolerance" equals "zero fun"? And with the FCC going nuts post-Janet, the Bush Administration's insistence in re-igniting the culture war will only serve to even further separate the president from the "Stern voters" I spoke of earlier.
The press release announcing the news includes phone numbers and e-mail addresses for two of Clear Channel's in-house PR people; the over/under on death threats to those addresses in the next 24 hours should be around 1 million.