I don't know what got into Jeff Jarvis here. I guess the specter of govt censorship scares him so much that it must be invoked no matter how remote it is. Thus he goes from Clear Channel's recent attempts to enforce some tighter standards to "the death of broadcast".
If this is resulting from "govt intimidation", then why is only Clear Channel doing this? The answer is obvious - it's a competitive decision. Face it, the rudeness on radio will have to stop getting worse at some point if only because we're running out of taboos to break, and some people will pay to *avoid* this kind of crap. If they can know that tuning into Clear Channel stations will leave them comfortable, then the company has succeeded in building a brand.
Hey Jeff, why don't you work in some Howard Stern-like shtick into your blog? If it's that popular, you might be doing yourself a favor, right? Of course that's absurd - JJ runs a terrific blog, which is why I'm so startled by this post in the first place.
The bottom line is that if the govt forces it, it's censorship. If the private enterprise does it, it's standards, or what the rest of us might call "taste" or "class". Let time and the investors tell us if Clear Channel is doing the right thing.
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