did anybody hear howard stern on letterman? (or maybe you're watching it right now.) being someone who's in radio, he's making me think a lot about what i do. now, i am certainly in no position to be fined excessively like he has, but i can sympathize because i've been threatened with internal penalties for what i say and play on air.

i'm just wondering what other opinions there are, especially, i guess, from people who aren't in radio. does this even matter to you?

I saw it. Don't really know what to think. Given that I am someone who mainly listens to CDs in the car, I am not necessarily excited about satellite radio. But I do know some people who have it, and it is surely more appealing than the limited scope of what radio offers. My radio listening is basically 20 minutes a day cause I wake up and get ready to a retro 80s station.

That Alanis song sucked.

I'm not a fan of Stern's, but his appearance was great. He made me want to buy a subcription to a satellite radio service. What a great salesman. I don't listen to radio mainly because I don't know of any good stations to listen to. I've lately become a fan of internet radio, but I do not have broadband, so I can only listen to low quality streams when I am online.

This stuff might be for me.

He was handing out free radios at Union Square at noon. I walked passed the park at 1. Damn.

He's going to be doing this sort of thing for another year. I'm betting he's driving his current bosses nuts. Heh. Heh.

Most of what I do in radio is bland and boring because of the existance of the FCC and because my boss already went bankrupt once for lawsuits and isn't willing to chance anything again. Part of my blaise efficiency comes from working in formats I have no passion for, but much of it comes from disgust at the FCC and being fed up with timid employers. Just a paycheck now.

My views on the FCC are extremely negative. My attitude has always been "how dare some government official tell me what I can and can't say in the name of some nebulous public decency concept." They were established to make sure that emergency bandwith wasn't interfered with and that the distribution of frequencies was orderly, NOT to be morality police. They make me ill and always have.

they are the "aired thought" police.

i once played the "darling come here & f*ck me up the..." lords of acid song on-air once. wasn't caught. i cannot be charged for an unheard crime.

Hey Z, do you have a show here in philly??? if so are ya allowed to say which one? I don't listen to a whole lot of radio around here but occasionally i go spinning through the dial just to see what's playing.

I graduated in Radio (and sadly do not work for it) but either way, I watched stern last night and was quite impressed with what he was saying. I could go on and on about a whole lot more but my bosses are coming my way, so i gotta cut this short.

what were the lawsuits all about?

i live up in the lehigh valley and my show's on wdiy. i'm actually on right now, until 4. i think our signal at 88.1 gets trumped in philly, but there's always webcasting at wdiy.org.

he's too busy thinking of a new username to reply.

i felt that zing all the way here in the midwest...

ZING!

Yeah, ooh. Ouch. I'm so zinged. Feh. User names are like farts. They don't require effort, but come out anyway.

As for the lawsuits, I dunno, he won't talk about it. It was before I worked for him. A co-worker says it has to do with a DJ who got pissed off one night and talked about someone on the air and used mucho profanity at about 2 in the morning. I guess the person took the station to court and my boss ended up with like a hundred grand in court costs and fines. Anyway, it makes his mantra one of "don't piss anyone off who can sue us, cause we can't afford it."