Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Upset City
Sunday
March 21, 2004
The first weekend of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament is over... and the three different winners I picked in the three pick 'em pools I entered have all been eliminated. Stanford, Mississippi State, Kentucky, boom boom boom. Ouch.
In that sense, I'm glad I didn't go to today's MSU/Xavier game in Orlando. I would've been totally bummed out about State's loss, and even being there to see Vanderbilt's improbable comeback win over NC State wouldn't have been enough to keep me from leaving in a sour mood. Besides, I had my "in person" fill of NCAA hoops on Friday.
Regardless of what you think about the FCC's politically-motivated witchhunt on so-called indecency in radio, the apparently arbitrary application of its fining system is puzzling, to say the least. When my boss, Bubba The Love Sponge, got slapped by the FCC, they hit all of his affiliates. Yet this week, WKRK Detroit was fined for an episode of the Howard Stern that aired on dozens of other stations nationwide, while the other stations in the network escaped unscathed. Even FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, someone who I seldom agree with, made a very valid point in his dissent:
"Second, the Commission recently reaffirmed that its indecency enforcement will address not only the station that is the subject of a complaint, but also any other station that aired the same programming. Yet here, the Commission proposes a fine against only WKRK-FM in Detroit notwithstanding that this program airs on numerous stations across the country."
What a horrible, horrible system that's in place with the FCC. It disgusts me...
|
