This Week's Attitude
Resurrection Of Imus Will Be Under Media Microscope
By Neil S. Friedman

He's baaaack! Millions will surely tune in Monday morning when irascible, controversial radio host Don Imus returns to the airwaves. (He'll be heard locally on WABC-770 AM, the flagship station for Citadel Broadcasting Corporation, which owns the ABC Radio Networks on which he'll be syndicated.)

It's almost eight months since the "Imus in the Morning" program on WFAN Radio and scores of stations nationwide, and the simulcast on cable news outlet MSNBC, were cancelled more than a week after the veteran shock jock and producer Bernard McGuirk, the in-house bigot who prompted the discussion, caused an uproar of controversy over insensitive and inappropriate remarks they made about the Rutgers University women's varsity basketball team.

It's not necessary to repeat the comments, but, in case you've been in a vacuum since last spring, the derogatory remarks referred to the female athletes with racial and gender slurs. There is no excuse to condone what Imus said about the Rutgers' women, but over three decades he's probably insulted every ethnic group. At a time of overt political correctness and constant media vigilance, Don Imus utterances were not only insensitive, but also badly timed.

Imus wasn't the first radio host to use such terms, but since the team had just lost a national championship, dissing (street slang for disrespect) the team was unnecessary, albeit within the Imus niche. Not long after the exchange aired and was posted on the Internet, the matter snowballed and a few black organizations condemned Imus and called for advertisers to immediately withdraw advertising from his programs or confront a national boycott.

When money threatens to walk, station owners listen, especially since "Imus in the Morning" brought in a reported $50 million in annual ad revenues for CBS and a smaller, but significant amount, for the cable news channel. Nevertheless, he was fired by MSNBC and suspended for two weeks by CBS after black activists, including Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson leading the pack, put pressure on the media outlets. Even after Imus' public apology, calling his exchange "really stupid," the storm of protest continued. CBS initially suspended him without pay for two weeks, but fired him before the period was up.

There's no doubt Imus should have been suspended, but to fire a host, who is a pioneer of the shock jock genre and whose career is peppered with politically-incorrect humor and bad-mannered repartee, was excessive.

Before the April episode, it was estimated Imus had several million daily listeners. Many who tuned in to 660 AM, whether during the workday morning routine or in the car driving to work, probably didn't do so primarily to hear the cowboy curmudgeon. Most, like me, listened for the interesting array of guests - politicians, authors, non-gossip newsmakers, etc. - he featured on a regular basis. It was, more or less, a rare erudite program in an otherwise dull morning drive radio world.

In the months since Imus was dismissed, my bedside clock radio remained tuned to WFAN, but that'll change Sunday night. I find morning sports talk to be boring, especially since the baseball season ended. Unless you're a 24-7 sports junkie, hearing about local teams that have as much of a chance of winning a championship as the shock jock does of receiving an NAACP Image Award is a waste of time. I went up and down the dial a few times, even trying monotone National Public Radio for a few days, but always drifted back to 'FAN. The station is, after all, a sports network and that's all you get without the I-Man.

Most of Imus' guests showed up merely to publicize a book or the latest project in which they were involved, but the host, who was more of a boor than boring, made the conversations interesting and sometimes even enlightening. I bought several books based on what I learned about them on the show. The political discussions were usually moderate to left - which suited my political orientation just fine - and occasionally gave me an insight about issues that I previously thought or knew little.

Imus was never my cup of tea. In his early days on New York radio, his "Are you naked?" query to callers he phoned at random was juvenile, but isn't most shock jock radio? Nevertheless, his audience mushroomed over the years, obviously appreciating a regular dose of crude humor and his loose cannon style, which ebbed a bit when he began the MSNBC simulcast in 1996 because he likely realized he was being seen by more than just sports fans.

I'll be there when Imus is resurrected Monday morning, not to see him push the envelope of political correctness, but for the mature tone his show regularly offers as an antidote to other morning fare. Surely, there'll be those tuning in to see if there's another slip of the lip and ready to pounce. With almost 40 years of radio experience under his cowboy hat, you can be sure Imus won't make the same dumb mistake he made last spring.