XM Satellite Radio Backlash 594
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.
Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Not free speech, free enterprise! (Score:5, Insightful)
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!")
It's the best sort of reaction to censorship. (Score:3, Insightful)
Speech, Schmeech... It's a Business (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
The government is still kind of censoring this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
isn't a free-speech issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds like bad business practice to me. Offer a service people want and pay for, then yank the rug out from under them when they get what they want. And, if they are refusing to cancel subscriptions, sounds like a class action lawsuit. Putting them out of business would make a good point.
Re:Registration Required? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is a free speech issue (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights [wikipedia.org]
If those who own the printing presses censor what the rest of us write, we do not have freedom of the press.
If those who own the medium of communication censor what we say, we do not have freedom of speech.
In the market context, freedom of the press is dependent on the existence of a large group of publishers, so that if one publisher refuses to carry what you wish to publish uncensored, you can find another that will. Essentially, this requires a true market (an effectively infinite number of players, low barriers to entry, etc.)
Radio broadcasting is not a market.
Cancelling WHAT ads? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uncensored only means it's uncensored by the FCC over the F word and topless titty (which, admittedly, isn't a big problem on the radio). But anybody who you sign a contract with is gonna maintain some editorial control over what you do, and if you suddenly started spouting Nazi propaganda, they wouldn't want to be associated with you. Now, we're currently undergoing one of those public hysterias over shock radio, so everybody is hypersensistive, and it's an overreaction in one sense. But....
Mostly what's going on is that shock radio has jumped the shark. It's going out of style, and this is what it looks like. Imus caught some heat, and it turned out he had some listeners but no loyal fans to defend him. Stern went to Sirius and a fraction of his audience followed. It's not that the radio stations are becoming more censorious, it's just that the shows are now disposable, they don't make enough money anymore to make it worth the hassle.
Re:Response (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Speech, Schmeech... It's a Business (Score:2, Insightful)
It fascinates me that people insist that their free speech right is only to be protected from the government, as if it's perfectly ok for someone else to come along and violate them at will.
Just about every other right people believe they have is protected by law: right to life and liberty (murder and unlawful imprisonment), right against search and seizure (theft, robbery) and quartering others against your will (trespass). Hell, we even have laws that protect our right to privacy that the scotus believes are "unreasonable", such as stalking and peeping tom laws.
Free Speech Def. Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
The real issue is that there are people who actually pay money for, and listen to this program. They want what they want, and right now XM isn't giving it to them.
Re:Registration Required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free speech is not merely the absence of censorship. That is why we built the Web in the first place. A world where only Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch have a voice is not a world of free speech.
There are only two satelite radio systems and there will soon only be one. Even if you are Bill Gates you cannot set up your own because they require a license for the radio band.
So censorship by XM is certainly a free speech issue even if you beleive that only censorship by governments count.
In reality most repressive governments end up outsourcing their censorship. That is how it happens in Iran most of the time. In Russia the Putin regime makes sure that only its allies get to keep a radio or TV license.
This is of course a result of the defenstration of Imus for his racist remarks. Of course Glen Back and Bill O'Riely still spew their filth every day. And the talking heads on the cable networks see absolutely no contradiction between accusing the blogosphere of being 'angry' and 'hate filled', then interviewing someone like Ann Coulter who has just written a book accusing liberals of treason.
The difference between the Opie/Anthony and Imus situations is that Imus targeted a bunch of college kids with racial abuse. Opie and Anthony made fun of three powerful women, all of whom are fair game.
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:2, Insightful)
So, is making jokes about rape on national radio "right"?
Re:Response (Score:5, Insightful)
The public doesn't award Grammy Awards, it's an industry award including some of the beloved RIAA members [wikipedia.org]
Of course, they're sooo with it. Like when they gave "Jethro Tull" a Grammy for "Best Heavy Metal Album" or something like that.
It's a political award: nothing else.
Re:Why not a free speech issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
We have both of those rights in the United States. That's not the problem
That also explains why so many people in power have a real problem with the Internet, on so many different levels. The Internet is a worldwide end-run around what those who own big media, and big government, want their customers/citizens to see and hear. The Internet gave that ability to billions of people in a few short years, and power brokers worldwide are still having trouble coming to grips with that. The Internet also serves as a collective memory: politicians hate that because once they say something it's available and accessible forever. People that publish nude pictures of themselves have the same problem.
So far as I'm concerned, broadcast radio (AM, FM, XM, Sirius, whatever) can take a hike. They've had nothing to offer me since the seventies. Talk radio? News?! Bah. Music? What music? If I want music I'll jack in my MP3 player, if I want news
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:3, Insightful)
1) What they said wasn't grossly racist and offensive?
or
2) What they said was grossly racist and offensive, but once they are hired they can't possibly be fired or have any disciplinary action.
or
3) They are supposed to be grossly racist and offensive, so any complaints about it should be ignored.
Free Speech is UNIVERSAL (Score:5, Insightful)
No, "free speech" refers to our inalienable right to speak freely, limited only by restrictions on harm it does to others.
The Constitution does not constrain only the government. This kind of thinking comes from the basic fallacy that "the Constitution gives us certain rights". No: we have certain rights, and we people create the government to protect those rights as described in the Constitution.
For example, you cannot keep slaves on your private plantation. There are many other Constitutional controls that obviously do not stop at your property line.
There is, however, the right to control one's own private property, primarily by controlling access to it by other people. And there is the middle ground, private property to which access is granted to the public, even by degrees (eg. from a parking lot to a shopping mall to a diner to a private club to an invite-only house party).
And then there's the in-fact results of the exact circumstances of private owners prohibiting certain rightful actions. If only one club prohibits speech, and there are plenty of other venues, then that club is not suppressing the rights. But if every venue for speech is private, and prohibits speech (or every golf course prohibits Germans), then that prohibition is suppressing the rights, and the government has business removing the infringement on the rights.
Satellite radio is an exclusive (literally - it excludes nonsubscribers) club, but it's offered to the public. And, especially since the Sirius/XM merger, it's a very limited venue. There's some worthwhile debate of whether alternate media offer alternate venues, like Internet and broadcast radio. Today they do, since satellite radio is a small audience that is also reachable with audio telecasts. But they might have a majority audience, or perhaps one demographic segment of its audience is large and otherwise not reachable. A future lawsuit might have to decide on the actual situation.
Opie and Anthony have a contract, in which it surely states what speech can get them thrown off the air. Subscribers have contracts which surely state what content can be removed suddenly and without warning. Those terms are enforceable, without violating the Constitution. Not because there is free speech as unlimited as in a public park - and certainly not because the government has no jurisdiction in the encrypted satellite band.
But because of how our actual rights are protected by the actual situation, in its real details. When our rights are at stake, the Constitution is there to protect them. But not when someone's just waving the Constitution because they didn't get the entertainment they can get elsewhere.
Re:Response (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
1) The kind done by governmental bodies, which has the force of law, and is often constrained itself by "free speech" guarantees. That's de jure censorship.
2) The kind done by private entities, which can be legally circumvented, but which can go beyond what the government is allowed to do. That's de facto censorship.
Each of these is a Bad Thing. If the government is non-democratic, de jure censorship is inherently destructive to the betterment of society, and infringes on the rights of the individual, because there's no way to effectively challenge it. If the private entity is a monopoly or has insufficient competition*, or if it is highly influential (e.g. religious bodies), de facto censorship can be just as bad, for the same reason. So saying "that's not censorship; it's not the government" is missing the point, and offering rather cold comfort to anyone who has had their work suppressed or their reading/entertainment options limited by self-appointed censors.
*Whether that applies is this case is certainly subject to debate, and I don't have a strong opinion on that point; I'm talking about the general principle.
Re:Response (Score:5, Insightful)
I think XM did the same thing. People who didn't care much for Opie and Anthony were the ones offended, not the fans of the show. In responding to complaints of consumers that don't (and likely will never) listen to the show, XM did more damage to their company by angering the people actually paying to listen. I would imagine the same thing would happen to SIRIUS if they suspended Howard Stern. Its great to placate the hurt feelings of others, but not at the expense of your current consumer base. XM is now in a position where people who didn't listen to Opie and Anthony are still not paying for the XM product, while people who did listen are also deciding not to pay for the XM product anymore. Oops.
This has nothing to do with free speech ! (Score:3, Insightful)
If you guys are going to argue that anybody who owns a medium should have no control over its editorial line, you are seriously wrong, IMO.
Granted, you cannot expect to be able to speak up without *any* form of consequence, but that's a private citizen issue. The only thing the first amendment assures you is that the government will not prevent you from speaking (and should protect your life from the results of such speech I guess).
As some pointed out here, the issue here is what XM promised to deliver and if it held up to it. If not, then paying customers are gonna leave them and that's the end of it.
Opie and Anthony were hired because of that kind of stunts, and XM knew what to expect from them.
Nobody here has any idea of what limitations XM gave to them and if they went over them. If there is a breach of contract or whatever issue of that kind, let them deal with that in court.
But please do not start saying that a news-paper/TV station/radio should publish anything without control over their own publication, because it's not true.
Re:Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo. XM hired these guys to do pretty much exactly what they did. XM's commercials even bragged about how they their various celebrity shock-jocks could get away with saying anything, unlike their broadcast-radio counterparts.
Incidentally, I felt the same way about the Imus scandal, though in that case at least the use of publically broadcast radio made FCC intervention a possibility - XM doesn't even have that thin of an excuse.
Re:Registration Required? (Score:5, Insightful)
The editor obviously confuses the right to free speech granted by the constitution (that the federal government won't infringe the right of free speech) as being synonymous with the abstract concept of free speech. It's clear from the wording that the drafters of the constitution were aware that the right itself and the protection afforded by the constitution were synonymous, however this seems to have been lost somewhere.
Censorship is a free speech issue, no matter who is performing the censorship. Whether it's the federal or state government, or a private corporation, preventing people exercising the right to free speech makes no difference. The only difference is that it's only a constitutional matter if the federal government is involved.
(Disclaimer: I am not an American, nor a lawyer)
Damn Right It's A Free Speech Issue. (Score:4, Insightful)
Back in the days of our forefathers the king was also in control of business through either direct control of resources or indirect control over charters and taxes. Now corporations have multinational presence, and force governments to "compete" for the boosts to gdp they offer with bought legislation.
Many corporations have more assets than developing word nations, and bill gates could easily fund an army to seize half of africa if he wished, but corporate weasels learn well from the past and are now content to manipulate the puppet strings and cry "private property" whenever groups call a spade a spade.
When clearchannel controls more than half the radio market they carry as much or more power than government, and need to be held responsible for censorship.
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
As far I see, this doesn't prevent, slashdotters to make stupid jokes about French,
and Bush was elected again.
*Sigh*, you know the fate of the one who bring bad news..
Re:People Against Censorship (Score:5, Insightful)
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>
Re:I knew something was wrong with XM... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Speech, Schmeech... It's a Business (Score:4, Insightful)
property rights -> limitations on governmental power -> civil liberties -> equal protection -> civil rights
Private property rights should trump civil liberties & civil rights, and to suggest otherwise undermines all freedom.
Really? So let's say that Alice enslaves Bob. Alice claims that this makes Bob her property. Bob claims that he has a civil right to not be enslaved. You're saying that you'd agree with Alice?
I think you should go back and rethink your position.
Re:Opposing View (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Response (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is, that's what he was HIRED for. He was there to appeal to other like-minded old coots. The basketball team he offended didn't actually seem to care about what he said at first. Why should they? They're about my age, and if they're anything like me even remotely, they hadn't even heard of the guy before. And I'm pretty sure his regular listeners weren't offended. The only real explanation seems to be people who don't like him but know about him got offended. So, why should that have mattered?
At this point, would someone hire Ann Coulter without expecting her to suggest that raping, killing, and forcing religion onto some ethnic/religious/political group is not the solution to all the world's problems? Would someone hire Al Sharpton without expecting him to blame all the world's problems on racism and inequality between races?
Extremists exists on all sides, and when you hire them, you have to realize some people are going to be offended. Heck, even the not-so-extremes will still be faced by SOME outrage. But the question is, is this outrage from your target audience? If I said sliced bread sucks, should slashdot ban me under pressure from the sliced-bread lobby? My guess is that the two demographics have little overlapping.
So, this is a roundabout way of saying, longtime Opie and Anthony fans probably know that this is how they act on the show, and likely didn't care. The people who DO care don't listen to XM radio to begin with. So, where exactly was the problem?
Re:Response (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I've never seen or known of anyone with an XM radio who wasn't driving a taxi, and I've never heard anything come out of the many taxi-installed XM radios but talk.
XM fucked up big time. Class action lawsuit?
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is all about freedom of speech (Score:3, Insightful)
XM does not own the frequency. It is on lease from the FCC for a limited time, pending renewal.
Also, I failed remember about what monopolies on communications networks meant: Because they do have a monopoly, they should be required by law to carry X program if paid for. If we trust them to temporally control a chunk of spectrum, they had better make it worth it to us citizens by allowing content they dont like.
Why isnt a clause like "Will promote the public welfare by obeying the Bill of Rights" in all FCC contracts? It is in our ham manual.
---By that same analogy, should I have the right to spraypaint 'BUSH SUCKS' on all the billboards I can? I mean, it's obviously political speech, something well within normally constitutionally protected bounds.
Bad analogy unless one company owns all billboards. And Billboards arent a chunk of our RF spectrum the last I checked.
---Even if you get offended over this, pick and choose your battles. He didn't even get canned for something he said off the air. XM disagreed with what he did on their airtime, and they had every right to can him. You miss his show? Cancel your subscription.
Thats the rub: I've never heard of this guy, nor have I any inclination to listen to him, nor have I listened to XM/Sirius. I liken this situation to that of a Phone operator (AT&T or like) disconnecting a business because they didnt like what that business does (you name it: pornography, alcohol stores, sex toy shops, phone spammers).
We have here a company who runs "uncensored" channels, buys temporary permission from the FCC, and maintains a corporate charter while revoking free speech (but what I understand, quite disrespectable). That, I see, is the problem.
Even the KKK was able to petition, with the help of the ACLU, to peacefully march in Skokie. Even that trash of a group should be able to have a say in public streets or airwaves.. It would serve to show how disgusting they are, but they still deserve that freedom. What do you think the phrase "I disapprove of what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it" means? (attributed to Voltaire, but possibly not his work).
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Which, really, is funny. The Dixie Chicks are hardly the first liberal country artist. It's interesting how, say, Willie Nelson or Steve Earle aren't banned. It's almost lke the *real* problem is that the official country market just doesn't like uppity women.
Re:XM not canceling account (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Registration Required? (Score:5, Insightful)
Silly me.
Re:Registration Required? (Score:2, Insightful)
I have the right to print whatever I want, but that does not mean I have the right to use my neighbor's printing press. I have the right to say whatever I want, but that does not mean I have the right to use my neighbor's satellite network .
People have the freedom to speak, including Opie and Anthony. With internet distribution, people are even free to broadcast themselves in voice or in print at relatively low cost, something the writers of the constitution never could have even dreamed of. But the right to speak on XM involves the use of someone elses' very expensive and limited equiptment to amplify their message, and to me that is a very different issue entirely.
Re:Registration Required? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, it is clear that you are not American and not acquainted in American law. The reason this isn't a free speech issue per se is that there are two speakers here each attempting to assert themselves. The first speaker is Opie and Anthony, who want to say something controversial; the second speaker is their employer, the owner of the forum (XM radio), who wants to say that the controversial thing is bad. These two speakers' rights are opposed in this case; you can't have both. In America (not sure what country you're from) we recognize Opie and Anthony's right to say what they want, and we also recognize the forum owner's right to leverage their own forum in whatever way they deem appropriate (actually, we do have some limitations, like profanity on public airwaves, but that's the general concept). Both of these rights are clearly defined, so if Opie and Anthony want to say their thing, they will have to find a forum which will permit to say it.
So concisely, this isn't a free speech issue because Opie and Anthony still have the right to say what they want, just not wherever they want to say it.
In this specific instance, it seems like a bummer for Opie and Anthony because XM Radio promised them they would be uncensored. Nevertheless, that would amount to a contractual dispute, not a free speech issue.
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
I said nothing about their military prowess. They were just right about being against the illegal invasion of Iraq. After all Iraq had no WMDs, they had nothing to do with 9/11 and, being a secular state, had nothing to do with any type of religious extremists and the leaders of the US knew this as has been proven by several Congressional and Senate hearings.
You probably still believe that all the 9/11 terrorists entered the US illegally via the 'open' Canadian border. When in actual fact the all entered the US legally from Europe and the Middle East using legal obtained documents.
Re:Right about what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:None for me, thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Bingo, and this is the reason that Howard Stern will never be treated similarly on Sirius. Where Opie & Anthony's impact on subscriber numbers can be measured in the thousands, Howard Stern was and is a key factor in the satellite radio decision of millions. Heck, Sirius gave Stern a bonus of $80 million less than a year into his contract because of the huge jump in subscriber numbers they feel they got from his show.
I suspect that the situation was similar with Imus. Nothing he said about the Rutgers women's basketball team was any more offensive than thousands of comments made by him and his cronies in the past. It was just that a) this time there was a public backlash and b) he doesn't bring in the listeners that he once did. If his employers still considered him vital to their business he would have gotten his suspension and then been right back on the air.
None of that, though, is to say that XM acted properly in this situation. While I don't care about Opie & Anthony (their previous controversies turned me off, I wasn't a morning talk listener and I've since become a Stern listener), XM at the very least implied by hiring them and tolerating them up until now that the show was to be uncensored. If you're going to make that claim, then I think you have to back it up, even if they're taking shots at management (maybe even especially then) - at least until the contracts are up when you can just let them go. I feel similarly about the Imus firing in that his employers knew what they were getting into every time they gave him a new contract.
Re:Right about what? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, stupidity is being illustrated here, but not by the Dixie Chicks. George W. Bush moved to Midland, Texas, when he was 2 years old. Most people are going to identify with the state they spent the vast majority of their lives in, not the one that they have no memory of living in because they were a baby.
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
How does being on the receiving end of hundreds of years of slavery and oppression justify making statements which affirm the hateful, misguided views of those behind that oppression?
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Response (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe that holds true for extremists as well.
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, do a bit of research before mouthing off on topics you know nothing about.
Re:Response (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes when discussing Iraq, North Korea et la are all irrelevant. Except that, for the cascading and ever changing reasons given by the United States administration for the invasion of Iraq, could be and have been applied to any number of other regions in the world. Some of which are even worse than Iraq ever was. And the United States administration always either differed to the United Nations or said that they were internal matters and without United Nations sanctioning it intervening would be a breach of International Law. So if this was the case for not intervening in say Rwanda, Cypress or North Korea, then to invade Iraq as it did with out express sanction from the United Nations Security Council, remember Iraq had not attacked the United States so there was no self defense clause to invoke, must also be a breach of International Law and thus by the United States administration's own admission, illegal.
Instead using half truths, the US Administration manufactured a big lie to initiate a self defense clause, which have been documented by both US and international sources and used it to try to implement the "Project for New American Century" (http://zfacts.com/p/775.html) using Iraq as the initial building block (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulszmnTbwjM)
References are slightly populist but core data is correct.