Video killed the radio star -- or at least his cable TV show.
NBC's decision Wednesday to cancel its simulcast of Don Imus' morning radio show is the latest development in an escalating furor that might have burned out by now, if not for the television and Internet clips that blasted Imus' comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team well beyond the hot-air belt of talk radio.
The network's decision to drop Imus from its MSNBC cable network ratchets up pressure on CBS Radio, which late Wednesday evening would only state publicly that it was still weighing its future with Imus, who is heard on about 70 stations around with the country with an estimated audience of 3 million. Monday, the company announced it was suspending its longtime money-making shock jock for two weeks for referring to the basketball players as "nappy-headed hos."
But racist, sexist and even homophobic comments packaged for laughs are nothing new on talk radio. After all, Imus once crudely denigrated gay tennis star Amelie Mauresmo. He slapped Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz with an unabashedly anti-Semitic nickname. And those remarks were relatively tame compared with those of other nationally known shock jocks such as Howard Stern and "Opie and Anthony."
The difference this time is that, as with the Rodney King beating and, more recently, ex-"Seinfeld" star Michael Richards' racial tirade captured on a cellphone camera, the epithets came with video that turned them into incontrovertible and immortal monuments to the misdeed.
Similarly, the Imus media nugget exploded onto the Internet, feeding the 24/7 news cycle and quickly galvanizing an unlikely coalition of name-brand analysts -- including NBC weatherman Al Roker, feminist Eleanor Smeal and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama -- all calling for his ouster from the airwaves.
"Twenty years ago, you said something stupid on the radio and it disappeared," said John Kobylt, half of L.A.'s "John & Ken Show" on talk-radio station KFI-AM 640. "Now, it's replayed endlessly, and 99% of the people who are reacting to it haven't seen the show and/or know its context."
By Wednesday, a host of advertisers didn't need any more context for Imus' week-old remark than the protests it has sparked. General Motors Corp., GlaxoSmithKline, Procter & Gamble Co., American Express Co., Sprint Nextel Corp., Bigelow Tea and Staples Inc. all yanked their commercial support. But NBC officials denied that loss of advertising dollars for Imus' show -- neck-and-neck with CNN in the morning ratings -- figured in his cancellation.
