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XM Satellite Radio Backlash
mrchubbs writes "Sponsors and subscribers to XM Radio are protesting the decision by XM management to suspend the Opie and Anthony show for comments made on an uncensored channel. Subscribers are canceling subscriptions — some estimate that between 20,000 and 40,000 have cancelled. Some are even smashing their radios in protest. Sponsors are pulling ads. Also, there is some evidence of XM not honoring cancellation requests, forcing multiple calls to finally get accounts canceled." Of course this dispute isn't a free-speech issue. "Free speech" refers to a prohibition on censorship by the government; XM is free to do as it wishes with the content it broadcasts, within the law.
And, as The Dixie Chicks found out, the public is free to respond as they see fit.
And things are happening just exactly as they should! It's a free enterprise system and people are voting with their dollars exactly as they should. I'm really happy to see the enormous backlash even if I am a little surprised by it.
Cable TV was supposed to deliver the kind of raw material that the public craves. It wasn't able to sustain it. Satelite radio is supposed to deliver the kind of raw material that the public craves. It has been delivering but the moment someone decides "too far" then they are removing the key value that the public craves.
They should either reverse their decision immediately (for the sake of stock holders!) or go out of business. They no longer offer on their hype and promise... now they are just another radio source and as such, has nothing to offer over terrestrial radio.
(I felt the same way when Dell outsourced its support to other nations... Dell said "everyone's doing it" and I replied, "but that's the advantage Dell had over all the others...their last unique value and now it's gone!")
Siriusly, my name is not Surely!
You have been eaten by a Hurd of GNU.
Calling the channel "Uncensored" is a marketing ploy. Every workplace -- especially radio stations -- have limitations. XM logically figured that an impromptu bit of business in which the US Secretery of State is raped crossed those limitations, particularly since XM's uber-management is in the process of calling in every US government favor it has to grease the skids for a clearly lucrative merger with their lone competitor, Sirius.
It fascinates me that this is framed as a "Free Speech" issue. The airwaves that XM uses aren't of the public variety, it has nothing to do with constitutional amendments.
You know, for a generation raised on digital music, you sure all get caught in the same groove, sounding like broken records, a lot.
It's hardly a censorship issue. XM, as a private company can hire ad fire whoever they like
I hear this argument a lot - That doesn't make it any more accurate.
It very much still counts as censorship - Just not the "protected" kind that the government can't do.
Yes, Sirius has the legal power to get rid of any of their employees, within the terms of their employees' contracts and various antidiscrimination laws. But that doesn't make it right, and we need to stop putting up with crap like this, much less justifying it with "as a private company...".
It's totally time that we, the people, are empowered to tell them, those other people (who don't count as much as we), what they can and can't do with their property.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
It's totally time that we, the people, are empowered to tell them, those other people (who don't count as much as we), what they can and can't do with their property.
I consider myself rather cynical, but even I wouldn't call employees "property".
More importantly, though, "those other people" don't exist as people! Call me crazy, but I strongly believe that real live humans should have far, far more rights than fictional legal entities.
Why, you might ask?
Simple - You can't imprison a corporation (and only rarely do we imprison the leaders thereof; lookup "hydra" on Wiki for an idea of the effectiveness of that). You can't kill a corporation (well, you can, but in 230 years of abuse by our corporate masters, the government has only used it a very, very small number of times, and never for actual "crimes" such as Bhopal - No, they've used it in reponse to manipulations of another legal fiction, the economy). You can't meaningfully impose any punishment on a corporation, beyond fines (which with very, very few exceptions amount to nothing more than a nuissance, "just the cost of doing business").
So, that leaves us with entities with the rights of real live humans, with absolutely no morals, a single-minded obsession with profit, and no reason to fear serious punishment.
So yeah, I damned well do think we should have the right to tell these legal fictions what they can and can't do with "their" property - Starting with not allowing them to own property in the first place.
I consider myself rather cynical, but even I wouldn't call employees "property".
Neither would I. However, XM owns a bunch of microphones, and they get to decide in which direction they want to point them. The microphones are their property.
You are not qualified to say what is and isn't "right" about what can be said on TV and radio.
You might be grossly offended by a rape joke, I might simply not find it amusing, someone else might chuckle.
We all have different moral standards.
As another example, what about insulting someone's religion? I couldn't give a shit if a broadcaster goes on a rampage against Christianity, but the Archbishop of Canterbury would clearly disagree with me.
Stop allowing others to censor what you don't like, just don't watch it.
</liberal rant>
-George Carlin
You can't take the sky from me...