Incitement to Murder?

BOORTZ: You know what? I, for one, am tired of putting up with this crap. And you want to know why I moved out of Atlanta and only spend a couple of weeks a year in this town? That's one of the reasons. Carjackings, violence, people getting shot. It's ridiculous. This city harbors an urban culture of violence. And I want you to look around. You drive into the city. The railroad overpass is on the downtown connector covered with graffiti. And that-- That is just an advertisement for everybody coming into this town that we really don't give a damn about those who would screw up our quality of life around here. We really just don't care. We don't care enough to paint over graffiti on the overpasses that come into our city, advertising welcome to Atlanta, here's some of our finest graffiti, from some of our finest urban thugs and their little gang signs. And pick up the paper tomorrow morning. Read about all the carjackings. Read about the innocent people shot for the pure de-hell of it.


This town is starting to look like a garbage heap. And we got too damn many urban thugs, yo, ruining the quality of life for everybody. And I'll tell you what it's gonna take. You people, you are - you need to have a gun. You need to have training. You need to know how to use that gun. You need to get a permit to carry that gun. And you do in fact need to carry that gun and we need to see some dead thugs littering the landscape in Atlanta. We need to see the next guy that tries to carjack you shot dead right where he stands. We need more dead thugs in this city. And let their -- let their mommas -- let their mommas say, "He was a good boy. He just fell in with the good crowd." And then lock her ass up.

So what exactly does it take to convict someone of incitement to murder in this country?  If this doesn't qualify as a broadcaster telling his audience to kill people, what the fuck does?

And racist?  How dare you even think it?  He's a Republican, they get away with condoning murder and prejudice...

Why I Still Don't Listen to WFPL

Over a year ago I posted a piece about WFPL, a Louisville NPR news/talk station. It was a first person essay explaining why I can't stand to listen to them anymore. Much to my surprise, yesterday I received a lengthy response which I have copied, along with my response to the response, below. I get my NPR and PRI content via podcasts now though I occasionally hear WFPL in the evenings when my girlfriend or others have it on. They still play the same music behind their sponsor slots and I have to put my fingers in my ears and hum. Note that "Anonymous" says he or she doesn't "get a chance to listen to WFPL very often." I have a feeling that's true of most of the staff.

Anonymous said...

I work for Louisville Public Media (formerly the Public Radio Partnership) which is the home of WPFL, WUOL, and WFPK. I don't get a chance to listen to WFPL very often and must say I haven't heard these conditions that the blogger talks about.

What I DO KNOW is that, during business hours (8-5 M-F) we certainly know when a station is on or off the air. There are "dead air" electronic monitors connected to radio receivers that sound a loud alarm when one of the three stations has no audio for more than like a minute or so. So, we are monitoring the on-air signal from the transmitter and not just what is going out of the studio.

Now, I am not sure that this alarm is audible at the Receptionist's area. She has enough to do with routing calls and dealing with walk-ins and can't hear any of the stations. That fact that she wouldn't know doesn't surprise me in the least.

Occasionally for maintenance we have to take the transmitter off the air for brief (or longer) periods. No one may know about this except for the Engineer.

A lot of WFPL is automated. No one is there overnight. If you ever hear two shows at once, it is most likely that someone left more than one pot up on the console. Yep, that's user error - but sorry that no one is there to apologize to you for it.

If you hear a promo over an ongoing show, it could also perhaps be the same reason. Often the hosts will cut their promos while their show is on. Of course, you monitor what you are doing at the time and not what is going out so one pot routed to the wrong place is going to cause this problem. This is NOT dead air so the alarm doesn't go off.

There is no substitute for a person manning the console 24/7 to make everything go smoothly. This position was eliminated years ago to save costs.

With all of these faults, WFPL is like basically no other station in the country. Most markets have one Public radio station. Some markets don't even have that many! A market with one station is trying to be all things to all people all of the time. News maybe for an hour, then classical music around dinner, then Jazz at night and they might even sign off before midnight. To have a station that is all news/talk is pretty much a rarity!
11/27/08 12:47 PM

Alan Evil said...

So, by virtue of your singularity it is acceptable to fail in some instances and be mediocre in others?

I thank you for the lengthy rebuttal except you rebutted very little. There were three specific reasons I stopped listening to your station. Let's review them again, shall we?

1. The music. You are still using the same song snippets behind your sponsor announcements. That drives me bat shit crazy! The music is horrible. It probably wouldn't bother me at all if I only heard it a few times, but every last note of what you use now makes me grind my teeth. You pay someone to "produce" your music for you. FIRE HIM.

2. Your automatic switching system can remain maladjusted for weeks at a time and you do not staff WFPL to cover 24 hours of broadcasting so the station can crash and burn after 7:00pm and there's nobody there to fix it. Admitting that you "save costs" by not having a human in the control booth does not make it the right way to run a radio station. An alarm that sounds in an empty room... that's like that tree in a forest with noone around.

3. State of Affairs is still on and I still don't listen to it. You guys produce some good stuff but State of Affairs managed to fail most of the time. I really don't know if it's improved because I've stopped listening to WFPL.

When it comes down to it, if you people would just change the fucking music regularly I would send you some money and become a listener again. But as it is I simply can't stand to listen to your station because of that music. It's like you don't want to wash your underwear or clean the glass in your front door. It's as if you really don't care what your station sounds like to the people that listen to it every day.

The original piece about WFPL is a first person observation and a negative critique. I won't sing your praises because you're obviously doing just fine at that on your own. The way WFPL is run at the most basic level of broadcasting programming over the air is lame in my opinion. My breast has not swollen with pride because you're so special. You may be a one of a kind but that doesn't make you great. It just makes you one of a kind.
11/29/08 9:18 PM

Democratic Convention Coverage

So we decided to watch and listen to the opening speeches of the DNC last night. In the living room KET (that's Kentucky Educational Television) was showing PBS's coverage while in the kitchen NPR's coverage was playing. While visiting my aunt we also saw some of CNN's coverage. I must say I was more than disappointed by both NPR and PBS. I expect breathless excitement and self centered reporting from CNN et. al. but I expected to hear and see the speakers on public broadcasting. Unfortunately narcissism was running unchecked on both outlets with constant talking and "analysis" from overly large cadres of the usual talking heads on both channels. While a former Republican was giving an excellent speech, NPR's staff was burbling about how signs were being handed out, and interviewing people on the floor. During the introduction for that speaker (which was a good speech in and of itself), PBS was showing their panel of "experts" analyzing something that hadn't even happened yet! NPR's coverage was particularly vacuuous with numerous mentions by the staff members of their own shows where they will have plenty of time to analyze the speeches the next day!


In short I give our public broadcasters a big F for failure. CNN, Fox, and the rest of the 24 hour "news" vomit on cable are doing just fine at talking breathlessly about how important they and their coverage are. PBS and NPR should shut the fuck up and let us hear the speeches.

Radio

I just heard on NPR's All Things Considered a letter from a listener. One line was, "It's not every day we hear our favorite band on the radio." I think that just about says all that needs to be said about American radio.


But I'm not the type to stop at "all that needs to be said," am I?

If American radio were any good, most people would be able to say they hear their favorite band(s) regularly on the radio. I am sure (going out on a limb here as I have no poll results to draw on) that amongst people who consider themselves music fans you will find very few who listen to music on the radio at all.

If you exclude the truly rich radio environments like New York, Atlanta, L.A., etc., and look at all the rest of the country you will find the music that is locally available is homogeneous and extremely limited. This means most Americans who are really into music will never hear their favorite band on the radio. All Americans everywhere can hear the vapid crap the music industry is marketing at us but few Americans can hear anything else... on their radio.

I'm a fan of radio. I think radio can be amazing. But I know that variety in radio is a thing of the past for those of us outside the major metropolitan areas. We have to move to our iPods and satellite radio but this removes that amazing touch of having this other person playing music for us.

I can remember listening to the FM radio late at night in the middle of nowhere in far eastern Kentucky and hearing some guy playing me some records he liked, and then tuning around on AM and hearing the voices of djs in Chicago, Nashville, Memphis, and New Orleans. The strange blasts of Mexican radio. Now we have the same Clear Channel stations everywhere we go. If you're in the middle of Kansas you're going to hear the same thing you'll hear in the middle of Kentucky or anywhere else more than 50 miles from a big city. There was a time when those music stations would've been locally owned and operated by people who were playing music for the people around them. Now the music is a carefully manipulated blend of nauseating crap that the dinosaur music industry in this country understands how to "market."

There was a time when a song would be released, and hundreds if not thousands of djs would decide whether or not they were going to play it and then tens if not hundreds of thousands of listeners would call in and asked to hear it again and that's how a hit became a hit. Now the record companies ship a million copies of a song, negotiate with Clear Channel and its competitor(s) for "rotation" and "number of plays" and voila, you've got a number one single. The thing the record industry doesn't get: A hit is now meaningless.

I am developing a long screed about the fact that marketing as a business is the parasite that is killing its host. Look for it.

Radiolab, Best Thing Since Sliced Bread?

Looking at my fellow Americans that eat a lot of sliced bread I can't say that sliced bread has been all that good for us. But that's just the cynic in me. My Grandpa loved white bread though he knew intimately the entire process of raising wheat to the point of having the grain ground. Like so many Americans, he just loved that almost-dough consistency and the sweet chewiness of it. Can't stand white bread, myself, but I don't mind some sliced multi-grain kind of stuff.

So anyway, I thought I'd point out that Radiolab is probably the second best show on the radio, right behind This American Life. And if the two were starting out in a race at the same time (TAL has a pretty good head start at this point) I'm not sure who would be winning. Radiolab not only tells interesting stories fabulously, the show sounds absolutely amazing. At its best it's literally trippy with sounds swirling around, stretching, phasing, and echoing. I know it's just Pro-Tools. I know what he's doing. I still enjoy the matter of fact way they insert samples of their guests speaking into the host's set-ups, use effects for transitions, and replay samples from earlier in the show to emphasize the scope of the discussion. There is a nice question and answer report between the two hosts that flips between segments. The shows are almost all available for download via podcasts and every last one has been very good at least.