The VIA CON

Being in radio, I have watched with interest the Viacom story develop. Now to be fair I must disclose I have worked for Viacom and there is no love loss. I have seen from the inside out what the company is about and I will tell you they will be whatever you want them to be, so long as they make money doing it. To give you an idea of who Viacom is, you need to look at who they own: CBS, UPN, Spike TV, TV Land, VH1, MTV, Nickelodeon, Showtime, CMT, Paramount Pictures, BET, Simon & Schuster, and Infinity Broadcasting which owns 4 radio stations in the Pittsburgh market including the Howard Stern station. They push cartoons to kids, music videos to teens and smut to adults through the likes of Stern.
Viacom will pay a record $3.5 million to settle dozens of federal investigations into alleged indecency on TV and the radio, and introduce delays in more live programming to help catch troublesome material before it gets on the air.
The settlement closes investigations dating back to 2001. One involved shock jock Howard Stern, and two focused on Opie and Anthony, who lost their Viacom-owned New York radio show after it featured a couple purporting to have sex inside St. Patrick's Cathedral. The settlement is not related to the agency's $550,000 fine against Viacom after the exposure of singer Janet Jackson's breast during the CBS Super Bowl halftime show in January. Viacom has said the public, not the government, should decide what it is exposed to on radio and television. I agree, but they need to listen when we speak out, not just write us off. If they really listened, Stern would not be back on the air in Pittsburgh! There have been investigations into about 50 radio and television shows. Infinity Broadcasting paid fines totaling $1.7 million in 1995 to settle FCC violations by Stern yet they still just don't get it. For a communications company they sure are deaf when it comes to the public.