No Rock And Roll Fun

PROOF THAT LOCAL RADIO DJS DO HAVE VERY LITTLE BRAIN: You are presenting a live show on radio. One of your listeners texts in a joke, which you don't understand at all. Do you (a) read the joke out on air anyway or (b) delete the text and make a mental note to ask a grown-up about what it meant? If you answered (a), you qualify for a show on Belfast's Cool FM, where the idiot dj only discovered he'd just read out a sick gag relating to the deaths of twenty-three people in Morecambe Bay when the complaints started to come in. Meanwhile, a presenter on LBC just found the very mention of "cockles and mussels" so overpoweringly funny he started to guffaw his way through a guest talking about the same incident.

In other regulatory mishaps, a bemused T4 seems to be genuinely hurt that they've been carpeted for broadcasting Sharon Osbourne braying "fuck off" on her little lad's Sunday morning show and for Marilyn Manson talking about fucking - the Manson one really upset them, as they'd cut lots of the interview out already, trying to "strike a balance." We're not sure how deleting large chunks of an interview is going to head off someone complaining about the bits that get left in - "Dear Channel 4, well done for cutting out the fisting, cunt-flaps and tit-torture parts of the interview with Marilyn Manson. In light of this, I'm delighted to welcome the golden showers, dwarf-frottage and anal lick stripes you did broadcast"?

Good news for EMAP, though, who managed to get away with blaming the broadcast of the f-word on it being Christmas, somehow. Of course, nobody is losing jobs over any of this, which is as it should be - the point of regulation is there for guidance rather than vengance (we'd be happy to pop over to the FCC and explain this with some powerpoint slides and handouts) and certainly we're a lot better off with the 'learn from your mistakes' attitude than the Clear Channel style zero policy in the States. Having said which, if the BBC did use 'one strike and you're off the air', we'd be spared Colin Murray in the afternoons.