Dear Mssrs. Mays,
I am sorry to trouble you with this email. It seems necessary.
I feel I must call you attention to its content, otherwise addressed to Mr. Pugh in San Francisco.
I must appeal to you as Owner / Operators to review the standards for overt content and innuendo.
Songs / lyricisms can stir powerful emotions.
Your company clearly had insight into the emotions of the Nation, after the tragedy of 911, and clearly edited stations’ content accordingly.
Repetitive messages, lyrical, commercial, and otherwise certainly have a net effect.
Your entire business keeps this as tenet, as an advertising/ entertainment corporation.
So, one would infer that you clearly can have the additional level of insight and sensitivity to explore the themes and critique in my complaint, attached.
I hope you will not discard this critique and go right back to being busy, but instead, engage your staff in meaningful internal dialogue, respectful of you communities of license, and our collective highest ideals and aspirations as American Citizens.
Previous appeals to KMEL have been summarily disregarded and unanswered. Yes, my previous appeals have been feisty, reflecting the roiling content I too often hear via KMEL. I have filed same with the FCC.
There certainly must be higher ground for FCC licensed American broadcast entertainment, common and uncommon sense, and public service.
Best wishes …
Corey Mason
HS Educator / Parent / Citizen / Fellow Broadcaster
El Cerrito, CA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ April 22, 2010
Mr. Dave Pugh
Clear Channel / Regional Market Manager
340 Townsend Street
Fourth Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107
Who the f—k are ya’ll … who are these bi—ches…
(Transcribed lyrics … In excerpt, 1:45 pm, 4.21.10, broadcast via 106.1 KMEL )
And otherwise, Good Day Mr. Pugh,
Offended?
Ya’ll some stubborn, incommunicado folks. I have written and called several times to your company / office, and have yet to receive the favor of any reply at all.
Whose people’s station ? The most hip hop and R&B?
Both are fabrications, propagandas, easily shattered by the merest inquiry.
I have learned I will likely NOT hear from you.
I write to you as a Citizen, Parent, Educator among adolescents, (perhaps adolescent executives), and fellow broadcaster.
You must believe in the power of a :30 or a :60 repeating as you sell them daily, all day, all night, for top dollar and claim results for the sponsor of the message.
Songs, with the catchiest lyrics and beats must be among the most compelling material on your station (songs echoed by ring-tones and videos). NO ADVERTISER could afford the 60-80 spins a week you give these lyrical messages. In effect, each hot rotation delivers 60-80 transmissions of the ideational content, usually highly emotional/tantalizing.
This writer is no prude, rather full functioning, and certainly foibled, adult. This is not an artistic critique of Drake, who rocks it his way, for the Club, car, stereo or I Pod.
This IS another query of your company’s broadcast moral/values compass. Slippery slope, and on the downhill slide.
Daytime-all-ages –access-radio is NOT A NIGHTCLUB. Young children and adolescents are exiting schools at the hours you broadcast this kind of material.
Edited or not, virtually everyone learns song lyrics faster than I can teach Spanish 1.
Editing out overt cuss words, or lewd content accomplishes little. Neuro-linguistically, the bleeped content is there, blanks filled-in, inside the listeners’ head.
Again, Drake gets to record it, and I have respect for that. It’s a free speech country, and I am flexing mine right about now, too.
You get to decide on broadcast merit. So do I. I feel you need to examine your standards for same.
The lyrics to this song are readily available on-line. A casual perusal of same will reveal the (promotion of the) following themes, while I have added a counterpoint for some reflection:
Mental / emotional confusion (not clarity )
Disrespectful profane speech, toward fans and women ( egoism and sexism, not graciousness)
Intoxication and tobacco use (not taste / moderation )
Celebrity /narcissism ( not service /generosity )
Braggadocio /based on money (not upon merit of the work /society-family-community dividend)
Outfits / Clothes as vital ( trumps character? )
Looks? as vital determinants for an (intoxicated) sexual liaison ( not character/relatedness)
Music as anesthesia (not inspiration)
N-bomb salted (have we had enough racist constructions/deconstructions, yet ?)
En toto, I suggest the song should rather serve as a warning for excess, though that point is summarily missed in the environment in which you present it. A didactic presentation is certainly possible. Maybe an artistic interview with Drake, to context the song?
Drake himself finally resigns /sighs, “ I’m really too young to be feelin’ this old .” Bravo.
Am I doin’ too much ? I do not think nor feel so … I work daily among Youth who you reach, Target, cultivate as consumers. Your FM reaches into my classrooms and my neighborhood.
I LIVE and WORK in the area you pollute. Yes, pollute, akin to discarding, for example, solvents ( which have their utility, merit, and place) errantly, into a storm drain, where it does not belong, and is a pollutant/killer.
Finally, I suggest that economy and ecology and psychology and musicology and broadcast are inextricably linked.
You need to find some higher ground on which to make and take money, with some greater social, spiritual dividend for you community of service and business.
With best wishes for continued success , not excess, on higher ground.
Sincerely,
Corey Mason
Citizen, Educator, Parent, Broadcaster
1334 Lawrence Street
El Cerrito, CA 94530
CC: Lowry Mays, Mark Mays
