TIME TO GET ON THE SOAPBOX AGAIN

For fifteen years here and in my native Mississippi, I worked as a radio personality for several different stations with a variety of formats, from country to album rock to Big Band/Standards. It was among the happiest periods of my life, doing what I had always wanted to do. I wasn't concerned that it wasn't the "big time" or making big money...I was fufulling my childhood dream.

I've always loved the radio business, and try to keep up with what's happening there although I have been out of it for over a decade. That said, I am deeply saddened to see what has happened to radio in the past ten to fifteen years thanks to corporate ownership and lack of self control.

It seems that since the latest deregulation during the 1990s and loosening of ownership rules, whenever corporate types such as Clear Channel, Cox, and Infinity enter a market they seem to have little, if any, consideration or respect for the local community. National promotions/contests instead of focusing on the local area, scaling back or elimination of local news and public affairs programming, cookie-cutter programming with tight playlists and consultants who take the idea that whatever works in Orlando, Florida will work in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with little, if any, local input.

But also part of this is the increasingly lack of self-regulation and control in what gets played. One of the most played songs now is one by urban/hip hopster 50 Cent called "Candy Shop". Some sample lyrics:

I'll take you to the candy shop, I'll let you lick the lollypop
You gon' back that thing up or should I just push up on it
Got the magic stick I'm the love doctor
Get on top get to bouncing like a low rider
After you work up a sweat you can play with the stick
I'll melt in you're mouth not in your hands...
Climb on top ride like you in the rodeo
As soon as I come through the door
She pulling on my zipper...
Had me think 'bout that ass after I'm gone
Lights on or off she like it from behind

I'm not a prude, but anyone reading those lyrics should realize that they are highly inappropriate for play on radio. Maybe on satellite services where you pay to hear what you want, but teens and pre-teens are hearing this and similar lyrics every day.

Broadcasters using the public airwaves are bound to serve their local communities, and thus if it means keeping songs with clearly inappropriate lyrics off the air, so be it. Station owners and management must begin doing a better job of self-control; if they don't, then I'm afraid that the hard conservative groups and their legislative friends in Washington are waiting in the wings, and we certainly don't want that!