Re: WBZ-AM protects purity of airwaves again

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

At 06:52 PM 1/19/99 -0500, you wrote:
>This morning (Jan 19) WBZ-AM briefly reported the 
>story of a rap performer called Old Dirty Bastard 
>getting in trouble with the law.  But they referred
>to this surely talented and estimable personage as 
>"O.D.B."  

I can't speak for Peter Casey, but I do know WBZ tries its best to avoid
any language that would offend families.  In the case of Old Dirty Bastard,
there are southern stations which do in fact refer to him as ODB, probably
for the same reason.  Censorship is a touchy issue on matters like this--
for years when I was on the air, the format dictated how far we went with
our language:  for example, when I was on an album rocker, we played songs
that said whatever because it was part of our "outrageous" image.  But when
I worked at AC or news/talk stations, we stayed away from the 7 words you
aren't supposed to say, and played it safe regarding language (this is
especially true in conservative markets-- and I don't mean conservative as
a political philosophy-- some cities have listeners who are much more
easily offended by "bad language" than others... it is the wise PD who
programs to his or her own individual audience, regardless of what would go
over in New York or LA).  

I know that during the Starr hearings, there were some stations with older
adult demographics that used all kinds of euphemisms for the words in
Monica's deposition.  You and I may think the whole thing is silly, but for
stations like WBZ, they feel they have a certain image to maintain, and
part of that image involves being "family friendly".     

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