"Lock the doors and close the blinds -- we're going for a ride..."

I was listening to the nationally syndicated Don and Mike show yesterday afternoon when news broke than Don Imus had been fired by CBS.

First a bit of background: Don and Mike have been in radio for about three decades now -- two of them together for a bit over 20 years. They had been top earners in the Washington, DC morning radio market for quite a while, and then signed a deal to move to "afternoon drive time" on the same station which, at the time, had Howard Stern in the morning. They are heard in about 30-40 markets nationwide, and have earned top ratings in quite a few of them.  Their format is now "talk radio" with a heavy emphasis on comedy. Some would call them "shock jocks." I particularly like their show because they often go "behind the curtain" and discuss the radio industry (nationwide and in Washington, DC) in great detail.

They're certainly not fans of Don Imus. They poke fun at him all the time for being old, irrelevant and simply not funny. But they, too, feel that his words were not fire-worthy.  (Disclosure: "Don and Mike" and Don Imus are both employed by CBS Radio.) It's an extremely subjective precedent to them.  What happens now if they mock Al Sharpton on the air? Could that be deemed as racist and a fire-able offense?  What specifically is the line drawn in the sand? That hasn't ever been clear, and crossing this invisible line could mean losing one's job.

They also acknowledge that they don't know -- and will never know -- all sides of the story.  About 90% of Don and Mike listeners (and listeners of that particular station) are white. There's an "urban contemporary" station also owned by CBS radio which also garners top ratings where about 90% of the listeners are black.  The morning drive personality there, Donnie Simpson, is also pretty well known in the radio community and happens to be friends with Don and Mike.  Why not create some kind of radio summit where the listeners can have some kind of forum to talk about this once and for all?

Apparently it's in the works.  I'm interested in seeing how it turns out.

But this morning after listening to a morning show on my predominantly white station and hearing the endless calls from one particular point of view, I decided I would switch over to Donnie Simpson to see what he had to say.  I happened to catch the tail end of the news -- which was chiefly about the Imus firing. I found it interesting that the same woman who did traffic on my regular station was doing it here --- but it was a different traffic report focusing on the approaches to DC from Prince Georges County, an area which is more predominantly black.

And then I listened to music. A lot of music. You know how morning shows either have no music or a lot of banter interrupted by one or two songs at a time? This happened to be a mix of about sixteen minutes of music -- five different songs in total -- played consecutively. I got to work before I could even hear a bit of what Donnie had to say.

You know what's going to happen to Don Imus? He'll eventually get back on radio after all of this dies down.  Maybe it will be satellite radio first, but he'll be back on terrestrial radio eventually once the advertisers realize that he still has a market of folks who will listen to him and listen to their ads. That's really all it's about.

Either that or he'll die first. Lordy that man is old!