Clear(channel) Hypocrisy?
A little while back, I offered up my discourse/harangue on the idiocy of broadcast indecency standards in the US. I've now had a chance to revisit the issue and found it even more bizarre than before.
Washington, DC is known for having absolute garbage radio. Infinity and ClearChannel essentially have a lock on the entire FM market, and the congested nature of the eastern seaboard pretty much curtails the introduction of any new players in the market. (I'll leave the sad saga of WGTB for others to tell... but it's interesting to me that the Jesuits a few hundred miles north have taken a much more liberal approach to their radio license.).
WBIG-FM is the ClearChannel-owned "oldies" station (which recently rejected the notion of relevant music before 1964) and features a "Jammin Saturday Night" with lots of disco music. As some may recall, our pals at ClearChannel were among those who suggested that Americans might be offended to hear certain songs on the radio in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Also keep in mind that ClearChannel made a HUGE deal about firing Howard Stern from its airwaves on 2004, neglecting to mention that Stern's program aired on only 6 of over 1200 licensed stations across the nation.
Anyway, we were driving home from grocery shopping on Saturday night and turned on the radio (too short a drive to bother with my XM set-up), and were intrigued to hear the infamous "In the Bush" by Musique. A little while later, we were treated to "More More More" by the Andrea True Connection. Double entendres are one thing... but these songs are barely single entendres. The lyrics are unmistakeably (and in the case of "In The Bush," crudely) sexual.
To be clear, I'm no prude and I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with these songs. However, I do take issue with these songs being aired in the early evening on a Saturday night, when unaccompanied minors are likely to be in the listening audience. Major radio station conglomerates certainly have the ability to prescreen and limit the on-air play of 30-year-old records -- as opposed to the spontaneous utterances of an award winner in a live, real-time broadcast. If one were to complain, CC would just pass off the incident as the act of a rogue DJ, but I honestly think the FCC should be more outraged at this kind of display than the Golden Globes awards ceremony. (Yes, I kinda lost the train of thought somewhere in here... but that's bound to happen in the world of non-professional writing from time to time...)
I'm old enough to have been around when "More3," "In The Bush," "Love to Love You Baby," etc. were actual AM hit records. I can safely say that I had no idea what they were about - I suspected something sexual, but I couldn't be bothered to figure out what. They may be lewd, but they're also above the heads of most people under 12. Thus I wouldn't panic too much if my daughter heard "More, More, More."
Today's crude lyrics are a whole other story, however. Lines like "I'm into having sex, I'm not into making love" not only eliminates the ambiguity, but introduces a whole noxious worldview. I wouldn't write a nasty letter, but I would change the station.
(uh, forgive the horrid grammar above)
Like Mike, I am also old enough to remember these songs from the first time around. Am pretty sure I had an inkling of what they were about, but sustained no damage. In fact, I was a savvy enough kid to figure out what kind of material my parents would deem not-kid-friendly (swearing, mostly) and create a diversion at just the right time, so they wouldn't turn the radio off.