A San Francisco talk radio station pre-empted three hours of programming on Friday in response to a campaign by bloggers who have recorded extreme comments by several hosts and passed on digital copies to advertisers. This article at NYTimes.com explains and I posted on this when it first came up.
For a dozen years (a long time ago) I co-hosted a one-hour daily call-in show. We did silly shit and almost never got into politics. But we picked the topics for the most part and if the water had gotten too hot, we’d have just stopped taking calls.
That bloggers can now record what we say and send those recordings to our advertisers, urging them to stop advertising on our show… well, that just changes the rules of the game. Big time. Nothing gets a station manager’s attention like a cancellation from a sponsor. “We can always find a new talk show host. Sponsors? Not so easy.”
Your politics will dictate who’s “right” in the story above. But like it or not, yesterday’s “broadcast” is today’s “conversation.” And sometimes it’s all shouting.
“Just because I do something stupid, doesn’t mean you need to do it, too. Some of the places listed on this site can be extremely hazardous. Adding to that, many of them are also on private property, which means you could be ticketed or arrested if you go there without permission.