Lee Rogers KSFO vs. Advertisers and Management
- Lee Rogers, ABC Disney Radio station KSFO 11/30/2006 05:09 AM
(The Lee Rogers and Melanie Morgan program, KSFO 560 AM)
(Audio link, short clip. Longer clip for context here - and if you are the 'numb nut' who wrote him the letter, drop me a line, I'll send you the link.)
UPDATE 12/01/06 It seems that this post was picked by by Mike at Crooks and Liars, (1,297,091 page views this week This Week. Hi Mike and C&L readers! The amazing journalist and scholar David Neiwert at Orcinus, 26,270 page views this week, Hi David and Sara and Orcinus readers! At First Draft, by the brilliant journalist/blogger/writer Allison Hantschel, Hi Athenae, Scout, Tena, Holden and FD readers! 20,802 page views this week. And of course during Thanksgiving I got linked from Media Matters, in which Morgan's "painting a bull's-eye" on Pelosio comments got picked up by MSNBC Keith Olbermann who is on TELEVISION! Wheee! I'm sure that the PR people at Disney are THRILLED by this! Over 2 MILLION people now know about Disney Radio hosts Morgan, Rogers, Sussman and Brenner's violent rhetoric directed at Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, Muslims, Arabs, blacks and of course all liberals.)
Note how Rogers positions his comment as a defiant comeback to some rational email from a listener about global warming. Rogers is the "artist" with his "free speech" on political issues being questioned! But what he is really doing is sending a message to his management at Disney and the advertisers who pay his salary on commercially supported broadcast radio. (So when they tell him not to say the F-word does he ignore that too?)
Why use this method? Because it wouldn't sound decent for Rogers to say what he really meant, "Nobody can tell me to stop talking about torturing and killing people by attaching electrodes to their testicles. Or cutting off fingers and penises like Brian Sussman!" And if, like Morgan, your talk of painting a bulls-eye on Nancy Pelosi even makes the national news (As it did on MSNBC) you don't even have to give a real apology! Just make a joke of it! Heck Rogers will even SET YOU UP for the joke.
So if you are an advertiser, say FedEx , AT&T, or Philips Norelco who was told by management that since Rogers reads your commercials "We have Rogers under control. Lee won't talk about burning people alive, stomping them to death, torturing them with one of your products like the Sears Brand Diehard battery." please understand that NOBODY TELLS HIM what NOT SAY to TALK about on THIS RADIO program! So their assurances don't really mean much. (And your other choices? With the traffic guy who calls products shitty? The other hosts who talks about hanging journalists and painting a bulls-eye on Speaker-elect Pelosi? Who mock your product and programs like Sussman? I really feel sorry for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Listen as Sussman and Brenner mock their Spare the Air advertiser. BAAQMD paid good money to be mocked relentlessly on a Audio Link, audio link Audio link. Can you image how embarrassing it was for the ad agency that placed THOSE ads? They do the same to PG&E, but I guess they don't care that their energy program ads are mocked.)
And management? Rogers probably thinks you are weak because you send him memos and use your silly, reasonable words. Words like,
"Stop the killing Muslim talk. Stop the castrating Bernie Ward "jokes". Stop
reading an advertiser's commercial right after you talk about blowing a black
man's bleeping brains out. Stop talking about 'doing something
unpleasant to someone's cojones' right before Morgan reads the commercial for Bright Smile."
(Audio link to cojones comment followed by Bright Smile ad)
(Did you notice that Lee seems obsessed with testicles? Maybe he feels his manhood is threatened by suggestions that he follow some guidelines? ) To him reasonable suggestions become "ass kissing" and a management that finally says "that's enough" and lets someone go are "gutless nothings" (audio link)
I guess to Rogers those advertisers and management are just so UNREASONABLE and don't care about his "right" to spew violent rhetoric using the publicly licensed broadcast radio station and advertising dollars!
Maybe Rogers, like he said just Monday about Arabs and Egyptians, only responds to force. Maybe he thinks ABC Disney management are like his soon to be new boss, Farid Suleman, "a lying Egyptian or Arab" (audio link) Rogers knows that your memos and phone calls mean NOTHING to him. He, like Brian Sussman and Melanie Morgan have COMPLETE management support (audio)! Morgan is married to the General Manager, Rogers said he has photos of top-level management "coming out of the No-Tel Motel at 2 o'clock in the morning with a slut", I don't know what Sussman's leverage is- his machine guns?)
Rogers KNOWS he is a CASH COW. He is Irreplaceable! All thanks to him, KSFO is fat and sassy (audio link) . Who are they going to bring up? Anti-Muslim, pro-torture, "global warming-isn't-caused-by-humans" believing former weatherman, Brian Sussman? "The Babe in the Bunker" Barbara Simpson? Of course if Rogers quits due to hearing problems they will still have to replace him so I guess maybe he IS replaceable.
But Media placement agencies, if anyone gives you any assurances that KSFO radio hosts have changed or will calm down, or they will not mock your brand (like they do HP, British Airways, USAir) or tell you that they will stop talking about cutting off someone's testicles right before your ad, remember. NOBODY TELLS HIM WHAT TO SAY on this RADIO PROGRAM.
He will of course position this as an EPIC battle. You know, like the kind that he wants the Government to carry out in Indonesia. Where he is the brave Muslim killer and you are the corrupt evil wearing UN blue helmets. And when some UN soldiers dies on a mission to prevent violence, it is a opportunity for a good laugh by Morgan, "Officer Vic" and Ann Coulter.
Of course I'm just a "dip bleep goo goo" with a tiny blog unread by Disney or ABC Radio or BBDO or GSD&M. I don't have as much reach as someone on a Disney Radio station like KSFO which has a publicly granted license allowing voices to be broadcast all over the Bay Area. I'm not making a "ton of money" though the support of advertisers. Actually it would be nice if the advertisers did notice me. I'm really trying to help them protect their brands. That should be worth something. Their agencies should thank me.
But I guess I'm just a liberal cockroach who should have his head cut off. Or be hanged. Or castrated. Or stomped to death. And I really shouldn't be pointing out to advertisers how much KSFO Hot Talk hosts sound like the radio hosts at RTLM, Hutu Power Radio, in Rwanda. They even use the same terminology! (KSFO cockroach Audio Link) (RTLM cockroach Audio link).
I'm sure someone will point out how different they are. It's not as if listeners to Hot Talk Radio ACT on these violent suggestions (Chad Castagana) or that people tell their followers where to find the cockroaches er em liberals, (Michelle Malkin). Yes things are VERY different in America! I wonder if Disney will make a movie about all this? I hope I live to see it.
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