Rated KCPR

91.3 KCPR, Cal Poly’s student-run radio station, could be sold away from the campus following a fundraising promotion in which two male student DJs offered to sell photos of their genitals. Mustang news already gave their name so I'll just give that link here.  Cal Cost News covered it as well here, Campus reform.org, Huffington Post and a slew of other sites. In other words this was the proverbial shit storm. Radio DJs are attention-seekers.. but sometimes as an amateur you can become accustomed to having none, and operating under the assumption that "no one is listening." Per Murphy's law this is never true when you need it to be. It began with an April 21st facebook post from the program Getting It In:

“For only $20 dollars, you can have a week of sexy snapchats featuring the hosts of Getting It In! If you’ve ever been curious if which one of us has a birthmark on our penis or which one of us has a tighter butthole, this is your chance to find out!”

They have taken down their facebook page, closed their shared Google Docs, deleted their Soundcloud account, Mixcloud account. Nothing remains online but cached data. The chair of the Cal Poly Journalism Department, Mary Glick who is ultimately responsible for KCPR has started an investigation. As a result the 46-year old station is now in mortal danger.  University spokesperson Matt Lazier said the following:

“Journalism Department and College of Liberal Arts administrators are investigating the matter to learn the full extent of the facts and determine whether administrative and/or programmatic changes should be made to the KCPR operation. As well, university administration is investigating the matter to determine if any student conduct violations may have occurred.”

the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts Douglas Epperson, was even more to the point: “I am beginning to believe that we should sell the radio license.”  But the problem is that it didn't start with JPEGs of undergrad anus. It began with the show going on air. Early in April they were wearing buttplugs on air and discussing sex shops. I have difficulty believing this was a departure form their regular show format.

However, Epperson himself admitted that he had been aware at least as the beginning of 2014 that there was a behavior problem and a "lack of oversight."In many ways this is comparable to the problems that felled WXPN back in 1975. More here.  I see the blame being spread more evenly. In my opinion the most guilty party is the one who was actually charged with being responsible... not the students. Expecting 20-somethings to behave responsibly.. that's highly optimistic.What could possibly go wrong?

Mae West too Hot for radio?

Way back in December of 1937, Edgar Bergan brought Mae West onto his Charlie McCarthy Radio Show top perform her "Adam and Eve" skit. How could this be exciting? Is this too trivial? No. It gets way better. Mae West rarely appeared on radio unless she was promoting one of her films. This was unique for that reason.. and one more.

In the 1930s Mae was already pretty famous for her bawdy double entendres. But the skit had been passed by the censor. But Ms. West sprikled a little mojo on the script reading when they took it live on December 12th. She gave new meaning to the lightly suggestive script.

The sketch starred West and Don Ameche as Adam and Eve in the Garden Of Eden. It was such a imbroglio that NBC President Lenox R. Lohr got a letter from the F.C.C. Chairman Frank McNinch. the uptight curmudgeon wrote the following:

"The admittedly objectionable character of these features is, in our opinion attributable to the lack of a proper conception of the high standards required for a broadcast program intended for reception in the homes, schools, automobiles, religious, social and economic institutions, as well as clubs, hotels, trains and other places, reaching in the aggregate a much larger number of people daily than any other means of communication and carrying its message to men, women and children of all ages."

Before the show was off the air, the NBC phones were ringing off the hooks. Letters poured in from all over denouncing the skit but the most ominous one was from the FCC, demanding a full electrical transcription of the show, a copy of the network's contract with the sponsor and the call letters of all stations that had carried the skit. To this end, six days after the broadcast, the general manager of the NBC station group banned any mention of Mae West’s name. She was gone, never to grace the airwaves again. Mae West was banned by the network for fifteen years, where it was taboo to even mention her name.  

But Mae didn't really give a damn. In 1927 she wrote and starred in a Broadway play titled "sex." Ticket sales were as amazing as you expect. But it was the 1920s so she was prosecuted on morals charges and, on April 19, 1927 she was sentenced to 10 days in jail for public obscenity. She's already done time, angry letters weren't going to slow her down, neither was an uptight curmudgeon in D.C. She went on to fame, fortune and continued to have her fun her way for another four decades. http://www.old-time.com/otrlogs2/charlie_mg.html

George Carlin's Hi-Fi Club

Nobody seems to remember that George Carlin got his start in radio.

Comedians George Carlin and Jack Burns worked at KXOL from 1959-1960. It was there in Dallas that they developed an on-air percursor to their two man act. They started performing stand-up at The Cellar Club in Ft. Worth. In 1960 Station Manager Earle Fletcher gave the two an ultimatum, "radio or nightclubs." Carlin and Burns picked nightclubs and were on The Tonight Show within months.

George Carlin was born on May 12, 1938, in the Bronx, New York City. He grew up in Morningside Heights. He ws a highschool drop out eventually enlisting in the Air Force. The Airforce left ihim in Shreveport where he became a newscaster and DJ at radio station 1480 KJOE (now gospel outlet KIOU-AM) while still serving in the Air Force.

He stayed in radio, and after his discharge in 1957 he moved to Boston where he joined radio station WEZE. Over the next few years, Carlin had many radio jobs, and in 1959 he met newsman Jack Burns at KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas. Teaming with Burns in the early 1960s, he moved to Hollywood where he came to the attention of Lenny Bruce who aided his rise to fame.

When Jack Burns left the team to work with Avery Shrieber, George Carlin began to make a name for himself as a stand-up comedian, and during the decade became a fixture on television, appearing on the Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas, and Merv Griffin shows, and writing for Flip Wilson. His first comedy album, Take-Offs and Put-Ons, came out in 1972.

that same year his "Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television" routine got him arrested at a Milwaukee concert. The charges were thrown out by the judge. That same bit later became the foundation of all radio obscenity law as the crux of a Supreme Court case, FCC v. Pacifica Radio, whose station WBAI in New York City broadcast the bit.

Station KMNY, the current occupant of 1360, opened up a slot Sunday afternoons to commemorate the frequency’s golden past. Mike Shannon, a veteran broadcaster in DFW. and co-host John Lewis named the program "the Hi-Fi Club," a revived show name from KXOL that was once hosted by comedian George Carlin back in 1959-60.

The Blasphemy of Profanity and Obscenity

I was overjoyed today to find that the FCC had "clarified" Their previous rulings on the definitions of the above. All previous definitions had been so subjective as to be unenforcable, and contained so many exceptions as to become a waste of paper.

There is a fantastic detailed article in this weeks Radio world. http://www.rwonline.com/

The new definition of profanity is as follows:

"language denoting certain of those personally reviling epiphets naturally tending to provoke violent resentment or denoting language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to ammount to a nuisance."

but in light of certain first amendment protections, the application of this effectively is limited to "the universe of words that are so sexual and excretertory in nature or are derived from such terms."

So, in this truck-sized loop hole you cant say fuck, but you can any racial slur you please. Unless you spur a riot. "violent resentment" so if you use racial slurs against black people that could be ok, unless you offend islam and spark a minor jihad.

But their examples bordered on absurd.

the utterance of the word "bullshit" on NYPD blue was deemed profane. Use of the word shit in the Martin Scorsese blues documentary was also profane. however do some unknow reason thsoe same utterances in the moving "saving private ryan" are not profane. yeah, I dont get that.

But the real winner here is the complete list of acceptable words/phrases that could previously be considered profane expletives and are no longer:

"sit their asses down"
"His ass is huge."
"wiping his ass"
"dickhead"
"kiss my ass"
"hell"
"damn"
"kick-ass"
"poop"
"sex with a dog"
"my ass"
"you suck"
"a load of crap"
"bitch"
"up yours"
"ass"
"fire his ass"

Obscenity Fines are Retarded

Do you think that FCC obscenity fines are too high? You're right.

The FCC's language fines far exceed other governmental fines. The largest fine levied by the Nuclear Regulatory Agency in 2004 was $60,000. The largest FCC fine that year was 1.2 million dollars. It was for Fox's "Married By America" bachelor party episode, in which all the bad words were edited out, and all the exposed breasts were pixillated.

WFMU was kind enough to post a list of federal fines and came up with this list of non-FCC fines imposed by the Federal Government, so you can get some perspective on the current proposed laws to increase the fines for naughty phrases to half a million bucks each: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/mp3s/index.html

$10,000 for killing a Whooping Crane.
$54,500 for releasing anydrous ammonia into the environment.
$55,000 for illegally travelling to Cuba.
$70,000 for mishandling and mislabeling hazardous chemicals.
$116,000 for improper disposal of flammable material
$133,000 for exposing employees to infectious diseases
$1.2 million for broadcasting pixillated breasts

last year FCC fined Clear Channel Communications $27,500 last year for each of eighteen indecent incidents by shock jock Howard Stern. this was already outrageous. But has since become chump change.

On February 16th 2005 , The Bush Jr. administration won House approval for a bill that would raise the maximum FCC fine to $500,000 per violation. Under the new measure, Clear Channel and Stern himself would each have been fined a total of $9 million.

Under this bill when Bono says "fucking brilliant" on the air, he and the networks would garner the exact same fine as illegally testing pesticides on human subjects. For the same price as a superbowl "wardrobe malfunction" you could cause the wrongful death of an elderly patient in a nursing home and still have spare change left over to improperly store some radioactive waste.

No wonder Stern is moving to satillite radio.
I hate Bush, this is just inane.