Honestly, if Howard Stern wasn't so outrageous, and didn't have a talk-show format to his now-legendary morning show, nor a generational following of loyal-listeners that dated back 25 years, would he be as popular as he still is today?  What typically makes �Flash Johnson', the morning-show disc jockey from KTR-wherever, popular or relevant?  The songs he plays, but that's about it.  No one cares about Disc Jockeys anymore, let's be honest and say it.  Their time has come and gone.  No one cares about their stupid bits and attempts at humor, mostly designed for their own amusement, nor is anyone ever as in love with these jack-asses' own voices as they are.  Back in the golden radio days of Payola, where Disc Jockeys were bribed by the millions to play new band records, they had some intrinsic value to the whole point of radio in context of deciding what new music got heavy rotation on the air.  But in today's radio climate, with Clear-Channel owning such a large share of the market, and dictating to disc jockeys what pre-selected song lists they are to play, always chosen by Clear-Channel, there is no need for them on that level.  As such, specifically in the case of drive-time FM radio disc jockeys, the field as a whole has grown more and more desperate to compensate for their lost significance by sinking to whatever new levels of low they feel necessary to shock listeners into staying tuned.    

The advent of satellite radio, and listener's willingness to pay for it suggests two things- 1.) LISTENERS DON'T CARE ANYMORE ABOUT WHAT THESE ARROGANT, BLABBERMOUTH DJ's HAVE TO SAY, and 2.) they're willing to back that fact up by paying to get rid of them forever.  Granted, there's the attraction of no more commercials either.  Still, much in the way MTV has stopped playing videos almost entirely in favor of retarded reality shows, radio listeners are sick of waste-of-air-space drive-time disc jockeys so in love with their own voices- and so desperate to retain listener attention- that they sink to the level Miss Jones' morning drive-time show on New York's Hot 97 hip-hop station did last week by parodying the Tsunami tragedy, a classic case-in-point.  Some choice lyrics from their parody included "all at once you could hear the screaming chinks and no one was safe from the wave. There were Africans drowning, little Chinamen swept away. You could hear god laughing, 'swim bitches, swim!' so now you're screwed, it's the tsunami. You better run or kiss your ass away, go find your mommy. i just saw her float by, a tree went through her head. and now the children will be sold to child slavery."  OUT-f***ING-RAGEOUS and SICK!!!  (And I don't mean that in any hip or positive way.)  

The difference between hacks like these and Howard Stern in terms of shock-value is that Stern actually drew millions of listeners, rather than turning them off, and away forever, to such an extreme that the executive staff at Hot 97 indefinitely suspended the entire morning show staff.  Thank God!   Host Tarsha Jones, known on-air as Miss Jones, is a primary example of the kind of waste that is polluting the FM airwaves in the last days of morning-drive time disc jockeys.  Think about the average drive-time listener, mostly parents of young children, demographically ranging in age between 18 and 32, sitting at their desks or driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic to some crummy job, about to begin working their fingers to the bone to support their families.  Many are single parents, dialing through their radio band looking for a light-hearted song to take their mind off the pressures of parenthood, and rather than stumbling across Alisha Keys or a classic Whitney Houston or Maria Carey tune, they hear- to the backing music of the �We are the World' instrumental, "so now you're screwed, it's the tsunami. you better run or kiss your ass away, go find your mommy. i just saw her float by, a tree went through her head. and now the children will be sold to child slavery."  It so repulses me that I almost want to literally vomit, and irrefutably and inarguably is an example of how desperate these Disc Jockeys have become.  Period.  No defense required, appropriate, or available to be mounted.  Funk Master Flash, perhaps among the greatest REAL DJs in world, couldn't put a positive spin on this one, nor could the suits at their corporate headquarters.

The station's parent company, Emmis Radio, through CEO Rick Cummings commented that "what happened is morally and socially indefensible.  All involved, myself included, are ashamed and deeply sorry."  The staff was also ordered to contribute one-week's pay to the Tsunami tragedy, hardly compensation for the inexcusable insensitivity they showed toward the victims of the Tsunami tragedy.  Nor toward those listeners to their broadcast who were parents in their own right, or who may have shared ethnicity with those who died in the tragedy, or who could have very well had loved ones lost in the tragedy given New York's large Indian and Muslim populations.  These animals should be fired, period.  If the FCC wants to crack down on indecency, rather than going after Howard Stern or Janet Jackson, this is a real example of where they need to be focusing their efforts and our hard-earned tax dollars.  I don't think anyone would even begin attempting to defend this, not even the most violence-desensitized inner-city gang-banger, or the coldest, hardest serial-killing convict, because many of the aforementioned are parents themselves.  Miss Jones and Hot 97 crossed not only the line, but also the point of no return, and need to be banished from the face of the FM radio waves forever in punishment and penance.  Some have argued that Howard Stern is outrageous and over the line in his own ways, and you know what, they're right- BUT STERN IS LEAVING COMMERCIAL FM RADIO!  Also, Howard Stern pioneered the concept of the shock jock, and on his worst day, has NEVER crossed the line Hot 97 did.  Even on his 1993 pay-per-view special on New Years Eve, when he parodied Michael Jackson molesting little boys, which was funny, and as it has turned out, TRUE, he was doing so on a PAY-PER-VIEW forum, very similar in vein to the freedom Satellite Radio will provide him and his listeners.  The difference between Stern and his b-and-c rate clones like Miss Jones is that Stern is both original, and by leaving commercial radio for Satellite radio, giving listeners in general a choice.

Sadly, Hot 97's behavior is not an isolated incident, and in context of the aforementioned example, satellite radio is disaster relief!  It's LONG overdue, and hopefully will retire permanently these waste-of-airspace drive-time disc jockeys permanently into their dinosaur age!  Ice Cube, on his first solo album, had the following to say about FM Disc Jockeys, "Turn on the radio take a listen, What you're missing, Personally I'm sick of the ass-kissing, What I'm kicking to you won't get rotation, Nowhere in the nation, Program directors and DJ's ignored me, Cause I simply said f**k Top Forty, And top thirty top twenty and top ten, Until you put more hip-hop in, Tune in to the radio listen for a minute, Yo G stick a f**king tape in it, Cause all the radio do is gangle, That R&B love triangle, If you're out there kicking it with the brothers, You don't care about lovers, You wanna hear a young nigga on the mic, Going buck wild, Throwing and flowing and showing new styles, That's where I'm coming from, Reality that's what they're running from, So if you're down with Ice Cube let me know that you know, Yo turn off the radio, Turn off that motherf**king radio! Turn off that bulls***! Play the music motherf**ker put the music on, Damn!"  Though this song came out in 1991, his words couldn't ring more relevant or true today!  If not for the simple fact that these hack Disc Jockeys have nothing original left to say in their own defense, then add insult to injury with the fact that they don't even have a say anymore in what songs they play, the point Ice Cube was making in his song, all you are left with is the desperate lengths of FM DJs like Miss Jones, Hot 97, and a million others like them.  Satellite Radio may be our last line of defense from these music terminators, the final frontier of freedom in hearing actual SONGS again on the airwaves, the very point of FM radio to begin with.  If you want talk radio, GO OVER TO AM!  If you want music on the way to work, however, you obviously can't go over to FM anymore, so give Satellite a try- be it Sirus or XM- because I promise you'll find a refreshing rush of freedom blow over you, clearing the airwaves of the stale, polluted cloud of decay from Disc Jockeys as a dead breed.   Satellite Radio is a chance for music listeners to take back their airwaves, perhaps their last chance...
 
 

Shameless Plug: "Dust N' Bones: The Untold Story of Izzy Stradlin" is now available for Pre-order.  The one and only book on Guns N' Roses legendary rhythm guitar player and songwriter, this biography is a must-have for any GnR fan!  Please visit www.blackmarketpublishing.com for more details!

About the author: Jake Brown is owner/operator of Nashville-based Versailles Records and a biographer who has published several books. Click here to more details.