WUKY cancels (Garrison Keillor!?) radio program over offensive content

[Newsjock]

Missed the cutoff for LBN.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/12361462.htm

By Jamie Gumbrecht
HERALD-LEADER CULTURE WRITER

A few weeks after The Boston Globe called The Writer’s Almanac radio program “a confection of poetry and history wrapped in the down comforter voice of producer and host Garrison Keillor,” WUKY-91.3 FM canceled the daily featurette for offensive content.

The five-minute segments aired on the University of Kentucky’s public radio station at 11 a.m. until Aug. 1. It opened with soft piano music and the voice of A Prairie Home Companion’s Keillor remembering major moments in writing history. It was a break for history between news broadcasts and pop music, each day ending with a poem and the wish to “be well, do good work and keep in touch.”

But in a time of Federal Communications Commission crackdowns on radio content, WUKY officials say, the poems Keillor read were too risky for airplay.

“I don’t question the artistic merit, but I have to question the language,” WUKY General Manager Tom Godell said. “It’s not that he’s behaving like Howard Stern, but the FCC has been so inconsistent, we don’t know where we stand. We could no longer risk a fine.”

more

[rodeodance]

1. I hope there viewers get on the stations case. good grief!!

[prole_for_peace]

2. but they had to cancel it

they said the word "breast"...TWICE :sarcasm:

[AnnInLa]

4. Was that REALLY the offensive content?

Or was it because his liberal slant is well known?

[bloom]

6. This quote from Keillor about that is too funny....

“There isn’t one of them I would hesitate to offer to any high school English class,” Keillor wrote. “The fact that someone is troubled by hearing the word ‘breast’ is interesting, but what are we supposed to do with A Visit From St. Nicholas and the ‘breast of the new fallen snow’? Should it become a shoulder or an elbow? I don’t think so.”



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That people are so easily offended by innocuous poetry is quite sad, though.

[ironman202]

3. Wow, what an example of editorial fortitude.

Those filthy wisconsinonians must be stopped! Before the children of Kentucky start ice fishing.

[punpirate]

7. Minnesotans...

... might be mildly offended by that.... :)

[HereSince1628]

10. Only if the aren't Lutherans, Rev. Inkvest just feels guilty

for having become a fan of something so profane.

[alfredo]

5. I was going to post this. Glad you did

I forgot.

[DefenseLawyer]

8. In hindsight, reading selections from "Penthouse Forum"

was probably a mistake.

[alfredo]

9. WUKY has backed off and have reinstated the segment.

Their switchboard was swamped.