BuzzMachine

Tomorrow and Thursday, the world will be able to listen to Howard Stern for free again. And it’s going to be a good two days with a radio sitcom by Sam Simon of The Simpsons and a Gary Dell’Abate roast.

It’s a brilliant marketing move to push not only Stern on Sirius but also a new offering: an internet-only subscription to 75 of the channels online, no radio or antenna required. Note that subscribers with radios also get the internet feed included. But if you want to listen in an office or in Munich, like a letter-writer on this morning’s Stern show, you can.

More than a year ago, I argued in an open letter to Mel Karmazin (cheeky bastard, I am) that he should be doing just this: Don’t be trapped by your distribution, don’t think of yourself just as a satelllite company, be the radio company of the future.

There’s still one more thing I want: Howard as a paid podcast. As part of my subscription, I want to be able to catch up on Howard on my terms, without having to go to the hassle of recording or buying the new radio that can record. I missed the amazing show when Artie Lange talked about his heroin use and kicked myself. Thanks to a fellow Stern fan — a media exec in a suit; there are more of us in this club than you dare to imagine — I got to listen because he recorded it so he can listen to the whole show in his car. Now that Stern is being repeated around the clock, I actually find myself timing my commute so I hear different parts of the show in the morning and evening. I’d rather listen to it all on my iPod.

Once Stern et al are available however, wherever, and whenever I want them, then Sirius will truly be the radio company of the future.

Next: video.

I just called into the Stern show to read Mainelli’s rants from the comments below and to compliment Steve Lanford’s reporting. If you’re here looking for them, see the comments on this post; also here and here. And beware the Opiates.

Don’t miss the fun of watching a former New York Post hack go over the edge in the comments here.

Post writer John Mainelli gets bounced. Langford bags one.

: LATER: Link fixed now. I am proud to say that I used my Treo to blog this from a church meeting. No lightning.

Howard 100 News bulldog Steve Langford gave the New York Post a beautiful journalism lesson this morning. A few days ago, media writer John Mainelli wrote a piece speculating on spurious rumors that Howard Stern was going to leave satellite for earth again. Stern has spent the last few days tearing apart every falsehood in the story. It was an attack on Stern, pure and simple and Stern says it’s no coincidence that it is timed to the convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (poor guys) in Texas. So the intrepid Langford got Mainelli on the phone — he has been too chicken to talk to Stern on the air — and pressed him on the fact that he is a radio consultant himself advising terrestrial radio stations and he does not disclose that in his reporting. Mainelli said he has no New York clients anymore. So what? Stern and Sirius are national. It is a conflict of interest, especially because it is not disclosed. Langford Mainelli also got threatening with Langford, which was good for a laugh. Langford earns the A. Mainelli fails the assignment.

Thanks to the FCC and the official prudery and censorship of the U.S., the BBC had to think twice about airing a report by Allan Little from Swaziland. From the Editors’ Blog:

So Allan Little’s piece from Swaziland on Friday (watch it here) saw a group of BBC World producers studying the US rule book very carefully… since we broadcast on American cable networks, and have to respect “local” laws.

An image from Allan Little’s reportAllan reported on the “Ceremony of the Reed” - where the King of Swaziland chooses a wife from a parade of women dressed in traditional costume. That is, they weren’t wearing anything on top. There wasn’t really any way of avoiding the issue - that’s how they were dressed, and to have edited out any toplessness would have been bizarre.

But talking to colleagues in the US, it’s pretty clear that American TV channels have become cautious to the extreme on any issues involving either nudity or swearing.

Hmmmm. Breasts bad: see Janet Jackson. Black women’s breasts thus bad. White people cursing OK. Black people cursing bad. What to do? What to do? The BBC decided to take the risk, believing that their nudity was certainly in context. If it works for National Geographic….

My rant for Reason is up. It’s a defense of bullshit.

Our self-appointed national nanny, Brent Bozell, is stepping down as head of the so-called Parents Television Council. Well, big fucking deal. But perhaps Bozell knows that he has strung this shtick out about as long as it can go. I do believe we may be at the point of a backlash. His partner in crime against the First Amendment, our own FCC, is desperately trying to backpedal on its latest rulings; I hope the courts do not let them and we get a real challenge of their unconstitutional behavior. But Bozell et al keep plowing ahead, filing complaints against Helen Mirren for falling ass over tit at the Emmys. One of the worst offenders in this attack on free speech has been, most shamefully, my colleagues in the news business, who report the utterances of the reputed PTC as if they are news (bloggers don’t retype press releases; reporters do!). Farewell, Bozell. I only wish you were really disappearing, not merely finding another excuse to issue a press release.

Jailed video blogger and journalist Josh Wolf is interviewed by Cnet:

Q: Do you feel that all bloggers should be protected as independent journalists under California’s shield law? If not, how do you decide which ones are protected?

Wolf: I feel that people should be protected when engaging upon journalistic activities. This was a video that was published and is clearly an example of video journalism. Therefore, it should be protected as an example of journalism and I should be protected, in this situation, as a journalist. . . .

Well, here’s an example of overregulation: UK TV fans are besieging an equivalent of the FCC with complaints about Big Brother bringing back a contestant who’d been voted off.

A few bits of news on free speech:

: CBS, thank goodness, is going to make a court challenge to the FCC on the Janet Jackson case that supposedly had American culture tripping over its fallen knickers. At long fucking last. As Mel Karmazin, former head of CBS, has said: The reason CBS and other networks did not challenge indecency rulings in the courts was because the FCC blackmailed them by holding up licensing. So the indecent indecency laws have not been challenged since the ’70s. It is high time for a court case. If only they’d had the sense to mount this case before the last Supreme Court appointments.

: PBS is also ready to fight for the freedom to say a supposedly nasty word in Ken Burns’ new documentary on World War II. The occasional bad word can only liven up a Burns show, I’d say. Said Paula Kerger, CEO of PBS:

“To be able to see a documentary and to be able to let people tell their own story and not censor the words that are coming out of their mouths is tremendously important. That’s why this is such a big issue for us, and that’s why it is important for public broadcasting not to just roll over, but to be very clear that, in order to tell some stories, we may need to use language that, at the moment, the FCC is not sure they feel is appropriate for broadcast television.” . . .

Kerger said that reading recent FCC decisions on obscenity fines doesn’t help. “It’s a moving target. It’s hard to figure how to navigate through these decisions because there’s no clear guidance. We certainly have a couple of cases coming up that I hope we as an industry will stand together on and be bold.”

PBS could avoid a battle over “The War” by airing it after 10 p.m., outside the FCC’s so-called safe harbor of early prime time.

“I think this is going to be one of the seminal works of his career, and it deserves to be seen by the broadest possible audience,” Kerger said of the Burns documentary. “This is not just about Janet Jackson. This is about filmmakers with powerful stories who are not being allowed to tell those stories on public television or on broadcast television.”

Amen.

: But Steve Yelvington alerts us to the next fight for free speech.

Our nannies in the House of Representatives officially declared war on social networking yesterday, overwhelmingly passing a law that would prohibit public schools and libraries from allowing anyone not an adult to use “chat rooms” and “social networking” sites. The definition is so broad that most of the Internet could be blocked.

The law, titled “Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006,” could block not only MySpace, but also Amazon.com, most major newspaper sites, Wikipedia, personal weblogs published on sites like Blogger.com.

The standards, according to cnet:

(i) is offered by a commercial entity;

(ii) permits registered users to create an online profile that includes detailed personal information;

(iii) permits registered users to create an online journal and share such a journal with other users;

(iv) elicits highly personalized information from users; and

(v) enables communication among users.

The bill now advances to the Senate, where it can be voted on by boobs who think the Internet is made out of tubes.

This is clearly a First Amendment matter. In all the talk about the digital divide, the point is made that anyone can go to a library to use the internet. But if this is enacted, they won’t be able to go to a library to publish. Their speech will be cut off.

Oh, how I wish that just one station in this nation would have aired George Bush’s “shit” so that the FCC could fine them — or so that the FCC would not and we’d have standing to bring a civil rights suit against them for allowing his shit but disallowing ours. (See my defense of bullshit.)

Louis Wiley Jr., executive editor of Frontline, writes an amazing column detailing the chill on speech imposed by the FCC and the latest indecent indecency legislation:

The title of a recent e-mail from PBS caught my eye: “Editing of Coarse Language/New Practices.” Henceforth, producers would face two new requirements: (1) if a word is bleeped or wiped (silenced), the entirety of the word must be bleeped or wiped, meaning that “mother-F-word” would now have to be “bleep bleep,” and (2) if the F-word or the S-word were uttered to camera so that viewers could recognize it from the speaker’s mouth, the lips must be pixelated. . . .

It was former FCC Chairman Michael Powell who warned broadcasters about the direction of the indecency war. “The danger,” he said, “is in self-censorship.” It is no longer just a danger in my view. The reality is here. . . .

Sadly, public broadcasters have said too little about the danger. The consequence of the government’s assault on what it deems wayward commercial enterprises is to make public media pay a steep price in editorial freedom. We are becoming collateral damage in the war on indecency.

So stand up and fight, damnit.