Who fired Imus

WARNING - LONG SCREED POSTED BELOW


Oh...I love the Imus non-sense for the pure stupidity of it all. I really do. It has exposed the fault-line in American media empire that ought to remain hidden.

There is NOTHING about this that has ANYTHING to do with the First Amendment. This has EVERYTHING to do with who funds the entertainment/media machine. Imus was fired by the advertisers. MSNBC did not fire him nor did CBS - they actually cowered in fear of agitating the companies that spend huge sums of money to run silly ads in between content. While some of the various enemies of Imus may be picking over his carcas, this whole sordid mess reaffirms my core belief that if you are trusting anything that comes from network or cable (i.e. has a commercial in it) then you are kidding yourself.

Is Lou Dobbs a loose cannon? Of course not, he is a ratings juggernaut since he started his anti-illegal immigrant rants (remember a few years back when he was banished to the 11pm shift on CNN and in danger of getting the ax?) He starts agitating and now he's back to 6pm and is a marquee name in the CNN stable. You know, Aaron Brown was the one person who I actually would stop and watch from time to time. I really liked him - I thought that he tried to mix in some useful content betwixt the pablum and did it with a wry smile. Then Katrina blew by and Anderson Cooper goes down to New Orleans and gets "mad". Bye bye "nice" Aaron, hello "mad" Anderson. This fundamental shift towards vitriol and salacious details (CNN virtually stopped reporting anything else when Anna Nicole died) is driven by short term goals in viewership - which is driven by who??? Yup the advertisers. No secret there....been that way for ages.

What is particularly interesting now is that it took so litte pressure to get Imus fired. There was almost no resistance by Viacom & CBS chairman Sumner Redstone, no real leadership from CBS prez Leslie Moonves, and GE tossed Imus as soon as P&G called and said that they were pulling spots during the daytime (not on Imus' show, but for the entire daytime - which is how MSNBC actually structures their ad deals - you don't buy a show, you buy a window of time). Both CBS (which is still partially controlled/owned by Viacom) and GE/NBC failed to go to the mat for someone who has made them money, and in the case of CBS/Viacom - A LOT of money.

However for Imus to keep his job, there would have to be a substantial discussion about how people address each other in the media; be it in songs, or videos, or on talk radio, or news shows, whatever. Both GE and CBS/Viacom would have to start answering difficult questions about ALL aspects of their media empires. If they kept Imus, they would have to make pledges to clean up their content or make statements that the company thinks the content is just fine - in short, the company would have to take a stand on how it makes its money. And that is far too large a discussion to have with advertising revenue hanging in the balance.

So Imus gets the ax and we are back to Ho this and Ho that on MTV (Viacom/CBS), Ho this and Ho that on Clear Channel radio stations(oddly taken over by private equity now that their cookie cutter formats are becoming less profitable), Ho this and Ho that in movies by Universal (GE subsidiary), Fag this and Fag that on Disney/ABC, and so on.

The politicians are powerless to do anything other than whine vaguely about race relationships and being respectful (filler) because this is all pure capitalism. When you operate in a capitalistic model (as the media sometimes does) - you can be fired for saying anything/anytime/anywhere. The only thing that protects people from being fired is their inherent value and earning potential (remember that past earnings mean NOTHING). Note that as soon as Imus' earning potential was threatened, so was Imus. But these same advertisers will support the same hate speech on other outlets - and that is their perogative. When media subsidiaries have given the bridle and the whip to the advertisers, then the subsidiaries will have to do the bidding of the master.

Imus is just a symptom of a much larger "problem", or perhaps condition. Americans have subsidized the majority of their entertainment content by advertising and seem quite happy to do it. But, from a business perspective, I feel that this sort of messy exposure just drives people to pay for content and skip the adverts - Podcasts, iTunes, satellite radio, webcasts, blogs, etc. When episodes like Imus come up, people might actually stop and think about their options - these sorts of things can break the consumptive intertia of the masses. These couch potatoes might get a vague inkling in their head that there might be other choices - and in fact, there are alot of options out there. You just have to pay a little to get them.

I'd say pay for your content and then you get to vote with your pocketbook.
Some examples:
1. Drudge had an excerpt about Frank Rich holding forth on the whole Imus thing in Frank's "famous" Friday column. If you every needed a reason to dump that horrid liberal pretentious screed called the Times, it would be Frank Rich. Such banalities can be found on many blogs (including mine) for free and with far less condescension. I refuse to accept having some journalist (with the easiest major at univeristy) be pendantic because they write for the "Times". And when you stop subscribing to the Times, you send a message. I did.
2. The Post did its series over the Winter on "Being a Black Man" - I found it exploitative and degrading. I stopped reading the paper. Plus the coverage has gone downhill over the past two years.....far less content and far more "analysis" which is usually as insipid as most blogs (including mine) and I can read those for FREE!
3. The WSJ has really great content in all kinds of different areas and I keep subscribing. I really like it and I vote (with my dollars) for it.
4. The New Yorker is as good as ever and it gets my dollars. A must read for anyone who likes esoterica.

The way that you consume things (anything really) is effectively voting in favor of one thing or choosing one thing over another. Same thing with media content. Do you really want to give your proxy to Proctor and Gamble to decide what content is fit for mass consumption? Or Verizon? Or Ford?