The end of Mark Madden? UPDATED: He's FIRED!

Sorry, zag, this isn't a freedom of speech issue. This guy's still welcome to say whatever he wants on the sidewalk or in the town square. But on the radio he's beholden to the standards of station ownership, to the standards of the audience, to the standards of the advertisers, and to the standards of the FCC, who holds the airwaves in the public trust.

 

It is "nation of wusses".....

 

And all of those "standards" you speak of -- well they are all continuing the trend of chipping away at the first amendment......

 

Zags:
His 8.0 was in one demo, not his overall rating. It was closer to 5.
And it's not an asinine comparison, when he himself called himself the #1 rated talk show in Pittsburgh, which is so delusional, it's not even funny.
WEAE does a 1.4 all day.
Smizik got that one wrong,

 

He could have said the, "I wonder if the Kopechnes sent a card" part and it would have been pithy commentary. Tough and pointed, but not necessarily cruel.

But he had to be an ass and say that he always wished Kennedy would be assassinated.

If you can't understand the difference, especially after your employer has warned you about stepping over the line, you have no business being on the air.

BTW, I'm still wondering why he felt the need to comment on Ted Kennedy on a sports show.

 

When I lived in the North Hills, I listened to Madden on occasion and this is sooo true.

Never heard the guy thank people for calling/making a good point. Everyone was a "moron."

For the longest time, I thought it was an act, a radio persona. I was DEAD WRONG.

 

It's an act.
And it finally landed him in the unemployment line.

 

Hardly. Our is a market culture as much as it's a market economy. God forbid we set standards for public discourse.

You can't on the one hand keep bitching about our declining permissive culture, and then complain about how our culture's becoming more restrictive. He went too far. If he had a bigger audience, or better numbers, or more loyal advertisers, maybe he'd still have a job. But he pissed off the wrong people. The beancounters.

And if he'd said the same thing about Bush, he'd be in the basement of the Treasury Building right now, gently undergoing questioning.

 

Larry Flynt has the right to publish pictures of naked women.

Coca-Cola has the right to decline to buy advertising in that magazine.

Flynt can make up the money from the cover price of the magazine, subscriptions and selling products directly via the pages of the magazine.

Radio doesn't have any kind of direct source of revenue. They depend on advertising. If you can't sell advertising, you can't make any money.

If advertisers don't want to buy time on your station because of the content, you're screwed.

It isn't a Constitutional issue, it's business.

 

Sorry, no. You don't get to assert how I, or others with different political views than yours, would react to someone wishing on air for the president of the USA to be killed. I feel Bush's conduct has been deplorable, but if my favorite radio host in the country said on air he wished Bush was assassinated I would want him fired on the spot.

 

So a station that does a 1.4 all day -- does more than a five (according to you, according to smizik it is an 8, but we will go with five-plus, which is still about five times the normal audience) during his three hours -- and you are still going to argue that he doesn't have a big audience?

And I bet if you compare his numbers relative to his stations and his lead-in to that of say Ellis Cannon's, who is on a much bigger station and has Hannity show as a lead-in to his, yeah, he is the top-rated talk show host in the city.

Again, I don't want this to turn into I am defending Mark Madden, because I ain't, but much like the threads about Hillary and Obama, some people are so delusional and beholden to their belief about a person they can't even concede to some of the most basic points.

 

Yeah, that's why he stayed on the air for about ten years and was the highest paid talk show host in the city.......