Radio morality debated

Disagreements rage over standards

By John W. Barry

Poughkeepsie Journal

Lee Ferris

WDST program director and disc jockey Greg Gattine does his show Friday from the Woodstock studios. If your radio dial on Friday morning was tuned to 101.5 FM, then you heard more than just music. There was sex, drugs and rock ’n roll. Between 5:30 and 10 a.m., WPDH (101.5 FM) morning hosts Kevin Karlson and Pete McKenzie played a lot of hard rock — the staple of WPDH — and riffed on the news.

 After a national news item was read about a man exposing himself to young females, Karlson said, ’’Some guys can’t resist that schoolgirl look. I prefer it on a 21-year-old blonde.’’

- Karlson also spoke about the morning program’s Web site, which shows three pictures that it claims to be of Oscar-winning actress Charlize Theron smoking marijuana. Another picture on the Web site that Karlson discussed was of actress Sarah Michelle Gellar ’’spilling out of her top.’’ ’’She has a great body,’’ Karlson said of Gellar. ’’But not much on top.’’

Nearby on the radio frequency, but at the other end of the societal spectrum, is Woodstock-based WDST (100.1 FM), an independent radio station.

On Friday, WDST, which plays rock and alternative music and like WPDH is heard throughout the Hudson Valley, featured a live performance by the Hudson Valley Youth Jazz Orchestra.

Mayor interview aired

Also on the program, morning host and program director Greg Gattine — a former WPDH disc jockey — played audio from CNN featuring an interview with New Paltz Mayor Jason West, who later would make national headlines by presiding over several same-sex weddings. Another feature was a trivia question about the date divorce became legal in Ireland, the correct answer to which earned the new Melissa Etheridge CD for a listener.

WPDH’s daily ritual of blending raunch with rock occurs five times a week at the Poughkeepsie-based station, but never on WDST.

’’We never did it, we don’t believe in it,’’ WDST owner Gary Chetkof said Friday about risque on-air material. ’’We think it’s radio at its lowest common denominator.’’

WPDH’s approach to the airwaves illustrates a national trend in the radio industry that millions of listeners find amusing and engaging. Listeners who call in to Karlson & McKenzie and are heard live on the air repeatedly tell the duo what a great job they are doing.

’’It’s funny, it’s ear-catching,’’ said John Cooper, a resident of New York City living in Poughkeepsie and studying at the Educational Training Institute, while standing near Main Street Friday. ’’It’s no different than an X-rated movie.’’

But this approach can have drastic consequences for on-air personalities when pushed beyond certain people’s standards, namely corporate executives of large media companies that own radio stations. The atmosphere surrounding broadcast television and radio has grown tense and oversight by the FCC has become tighter since singer Janet Jackson’s breast was exposed during the Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 1, which was broadcast to 90 million people.

Firing follows fine

Last Tuesday, broadcast behemoth Clear Channel Radio, which owns 1,200 stations across the country, including 12 in the Hudson Valley, fired talk show host Bubba the Love Sponge, whose Florida radio program recently brought a $755,000 proposed fine from the FCC for sexually explicit content and other alleged indecency violations. It is believed to be the largest indecency fine in history.

On Wednesday, Clear Channel Radio announced a ’’zero-tolerance’’ policy intended to keep indecent material off the airwaves. That same day, the nation’s No. 1 radio conglomerate suspended longtime shock jock Howard Stern from six of its stations. Stern’s show originates from WXRK (92.3 FM) in New York, but was syndicated on a half dozen Clear Channel stations.

Stern’s program last Tuesday featured Paris Hilton’s ex-boyfriend hawking his sex tape of the hotel heiress. Also featured on the program were two women getting naked after losing a contest. But it was apparently a call from a listener who used the ’’n-word’’ that spurred Clear Channel’s reaction.

Infinity Broadcasting, which owns WXRK, is owned by Viacom, which owns MTV and CBS. MTV produced the Super Bowl halftime show and CBS broadcast the Super Bowl and halftime show.

On Thursday, Clear Channel Radio Chief Executive Officer John Hogan testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Technology and the Internet during a hearing on a proposed bill, the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004.

’’The timing is just questionable,’’ Gattine said of the firing and suspension by Clear Channel Radio in relation to Hogan’s appearance before Congress.

Bradley Freeman, a professor of communications at Marist and former DJ at a Clear Channel Radio station in Syracuse, said a lot of posturing is under way.

’’I think what we’re seeing is the broadcasting radio stations, Clear Channel in particular, they’re looking for some way to distance themselves, saying we are not the big bad wolf that everyone thinks we are,’’ Freeman said. ’’In fact, we are using our largess to benefit society.’’

Hypocrisy alleged

Lauren Sloane, a sophomore at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, program director and on-air personality at WVKR (91.3 FM), the college radio station, wrote in an e-mail that Clear Channel acted like a hypocrite.

’’It seems like Howard Stern has been guilty of presenting ’indecent’ material, similar to the content which recently got him suspended, over the airwaves for years,’’ wrote Sloane, an environmental studies major. ’’I don’t think that his program has been questioned in the past because the raunchy quality of his show is what has made him famous and is also what many people find entertaining. In turn, this kind of publicity, whether negative or positive, has increased the listenership of Stern’s show and has given Clear Channel a popular hit on their hands. Since radio violations are much less overt to the general public than eye-catching ’indecent acts’ on well-watched television programs like the Super Bowl, it’s a shame that Clear Channel chose to hypocritically overlook certain decency violations in certain forms of their represented media until the television airing of flagrantly indecent material incited public uproar.’’

Clear Channel Radio did not offer any comment, despite four messages the Poughkeepsie Journal left with the company.

Pete McKenzie, the McKenzie in Karlson & McKenzie, said Friday that Atlanta-based Cumulus Broadcasting, which owns WPDH and eight other stations in the Hudson Valley, issued a directive last week after the Clear Channel controversy saying, ’’You’ve got to pull back on ’that kind of talk.’ ’’

As a result, Karlson & McKenzie are dropping a weekly feature staged each Wednesday, ’’Mistress Heather’s Horny Friends Network,’’ that featured morning team member Heather Ford speaking on the air with men who patronize 1-900 sex telephone services.

’’I think a lot of memos went out,’’ McKenzie said of the radio industry.

But McKenzie, whose program on Friday included one discussion of having sex with actresses Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow and another about the sex life of teen actress Mary Kate Olsen, doesn’t see his program being greatly affected by last week’s controversy and doesn’t expect any more fallout.

Karlson & McKenzie, he said, won’t be affected to any major degree because ’’we rely on innuendo.’’

’’It’s a stretch of reality,’’ said Michael Greene, an ETI classmate of Cooper’s who is more familiar with Stern than Karlson or McKenzie, but has listened to all three. ’’It’s very funny, not offensive.’’

Offensiveness denied

McKenzie doesn’t think the material on his program, which on Friday included a call from a listener who used a four-letter word and more than a week ago described the late singer Al Jolson — who often performed in minstrel show-style blackface — as a black entertainer, offends.

’’I think it might rub people the wrong way,’’ he said. ’’But I think that most people get it.’’

Lisa Stringer of Woodstock, who primarily listens to Albany-based Northeastern Public Radio, WAMC (90.9 FM) but also tunes into WDST, does not get the style espoused by Stern or Karlson & McKenzie.

’’I kind of think it’s the left side of Rush Limbaugh,’’ Stringer said. ’’Equally stupid, just the other side.’’

Gattine, who on past editions of his show welcomed David Bowie’s bass player, the lead singer for the B-52’s and Jakob Dylan, said Clear Channel’s embracing of Stern and their subsequent spurning of him can be tracked by following the money.

’’It’s all about the bottom line,’’ Gattine said. ’’No matter what word comes out of their mouth, it’s all about the money. People want to hear that raunchy stuff. Love Sponge and Howard Stern — two of the top-rated programs. They’re vulgar and they’re raunchy and there is a huge audience. ... There are people who want to hear that. I’m not one of them. Personally, I’ll defend their right to broadcast whatever they want. I don’t believe in censorship. I don’t believe there is any benefit in censorship. People have to take control of their own lives and their own kids.’’