A follow-up to this story, where Opie and Anthony Show featured guest, "Homeless Charlie" vividly describes holding down Condeleesa Rice and raping her. XM has responded by suspending the shock jocks for 30 days. Audio link.
XM Radio announced today that the company has suspended Gregg "Opie"
Hughes and Anthony Cumia, hosts of "The Opie & Anthony Show" and
ceased broadcast of the show for 30 days, effective immediately.
XM Radio deplored the comments aired on "The Opie & Anthony
Show" last week. At the time, the company strongly expressed its views
to Opie and Anthony, and they issued an immediate apology.
Comments made by Opie and Anthony on yesterday's broadcast put into
question whether they appreciate the seriousness of the matter. The
management of XM Radio decided to suspend Opie and Anthony to make
clear that our on-air talent must take seriously the responsibility
that creative freedom requires of them.
As a company, XM provides customers with tools to control what they
listen to on XM. "The Opie & Anthony Show" appears on one of XM's
explicit language channels (XL). Whenever a radio is tuned to an
explicit language channel, the letters "XL" continuously appear on the
screen. XM frequently mentions on its explicit language channels that
the content may be inappropriate for certain listeners and tells how to
"block" channels that feature this type of content.
I think XM did the right thing here, but to downplay the incident by saying it's an "Extreme Language" channel misses the point. The show wasn't offensive because of the language. Opie and Anthony can spew the f-word all they want on satellite radio, "Homeless Charlie" described a brazen and specific act of violence against a sitting Secretary of State. There is no warning label that would make that acceptable.
Opie and Anthony, who last week
apologized for the sex comments, struck a more defensive tone on
Monday's broadcast. They lamented the state of radio and what they
perceived as excessive reactions to comments made by themselves and
other radio disc jockeys.
"We're under the same scrutiny as NPR—it doesn't make sense," they said on Monday's show.
That's just absurd. To say that NPR would get just a 30 day suspension for one show if it was littered with profanity, explicit sex, and specific threats of violence is truly ignorant. The FCC would come down on them like a ton of bricks. Opie & Anthony were suspended because of public outcry. 30 days from now they will go back to their same routine, sans the rape fantasies.
Recent Comments