Originally Posted By DAR But if a station doesn't go after an on air personality for what they say, then you'd have to think they're okay with what's being said.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 The point is, it's the license holder's prerogative to be okay with with it, or not okay with it. If they're not okay with it, and they fire the person in question, it is not a first amendment violation. (And just because a particular license holder doesn't fire someone for a given opinion, doesn't necessarily mean they agree with it. They may disagree but love the ratings the person in question brings in. Surely you've seen countless disclaimers of the "the views expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect the views of management..." sort.)
Originally Posted By mawnck Also, TPTB at any given station can't possibly monitor all 168 hours of programming in a given week. Often programs or people get taken off the air only after someone complains, despite having been spewing the same garbage for months on end. Tends to happen most frequently to purchased-time programs - infomercials and the televangelist crowd. You'll generally find the most evil ones on the all-religious and all-infomercial stations. Those channels cater to the pond scum who can't get on any decent station. They'll air any tape that arrives with a non-bouncing check. But even on the biggest stations, off-hours programming is rarely seen by anyone except the engineering guys, and they're too busy doing other things (or too disgusted) to closely monitor the content. I got to air some of the most awful and/or amazing stuff during my master control years, my favorite being when a distributor accidentally (?) sent everyone a formatted-for-commercial-broadcast but completely uncensored copy of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which we proceeded to air on Saturday at 3 PM. (Result: no complaints, no foul.) And you have no idea how difficult it was sitting there watching the very U-matic SP video tape machine that was spewing out Jerry Falwell to a significant chunk of four states, and thinking "all I have to do is push that red stop button right there and he goes away ..." But Jerry was good at not quite crossing the line, and I needed the job. (BTW - if you REALLY want to hear some outrageous garbage on the air, learn Spanish. Cause the government regulators apparently haven't yet.)
